Asunder: A Gathering of Chaos

  A

  GATHERING

  OF

  CHAOS

  ISBN (Digital) 978-1-1954720-05-3

  ISBN (Print) 978-1-1954720-04-6A

  Gathering of Chaos an Asunder Novel is Copyright © 2020, The Failed Superheroes Club, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise (except for brief quotations for journalistic review purposes), without the express written permission of The Failed Superheroes Club, LLC. For permission requests, write to ari@failedsuperheroes.com. All names, characters, events, and locales in this publication are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), event, or places, without satiric intent, is coincidental. Failed Superheroes Club, Failed Superheroes Club logo, Asunder and the Asunder logo are trademarks of The Failed Superheroes Club, LLC.

  A

  GATHERING

  OF

  CHAOS

  A novel by

  CAMERON HOPKIN

  Based on the fantasy

  role-playing game, Asunder

  for Adam, who gave me the opportunity

  and Lisa, who helped me make the best of it

  Chapter 1

  Before the Silence

  Nira stared out over the water and tried not to listen as her best friend died. She clenched her bloody hands on the liveship’s bone railing, eyes darting wide and wild, looking for anything that could distract her from the burbling, sucking, wet noises behind her. She knew they weren’t coming out of Fi’s mouth – she didn’t have one anymore.

  Fiolamir was the last. The others had all fallen blessedly silent after what felt like hours of screaming, shrieking, and other noises that became less and less human the longer they went on. Nira thought she’d heard some sort of shrill trumpeting at some point, but she hadn’t had the courage to look for its source. Fi was the only one she knew on the ship, the only other one aboard who’d escaped from the backwater cult that ruled their seaside village. Together they were going to find recruiters and join the Bone Army in Far East; they’d sworn it to each other. They’d even started training together. And now the bitch won’t do the decent thing and just die already.

  She bit her lip hard against the horrific thought, but it wouldn’t leave her. The sounds were driving her insane. It sounded as if the blood were bubbling through two airpipes instead of one, and Nira didn’t want to think about where the exit holes might be. She passed a shaking hand over her brow and realized she’d just smeared a bold red stripe across her brown skin with Fi’s blood. Like a painted Beast Rider. A hysterical giggle welled up at the thought, and even though she heard how crazy she sounded, at least it was a brief moment where she couldn’t hear the breathing.

  She looked out over the water and realized that she could see the port of Far East drawing nearer. She’d been looking right at it for several minutes without seeing it. Land ho! she thought. No point in saying it aloud. That was the Seafarers’ job, and they were all quivering masses of meat and bone somewhere on the deck behind her.

  She could tell Far East was a shit place even from this far out. The docks were embarrassingly small for what was supposed to be one of the great cities of the Mainland. She cast her desperate gaze onto the towering, tottering Sentinel of Far East off to her right. The stone soldier and his crumbling trident stood in the mouth of the harbor on a rocky little islet only a few meters above the waves. He was covered in moss and bird droppings, and the whole thing listed noticeably to the left. Scaffolding skirted the statue’s legs, but as she sailed past, the only workers Nira could see were on their backs, smoking blue hash and staring at the sky. They were enjoying the potent drug so much they didn’t even notice the ship of horrors as it churned past. Their attitude seemed a fitting welcome to the city.

  Sudden silence assaulted her from behind. She’d thought she was ready for it, thought she wanted it, but now that it had arrived fresh tears coursed from her eyes. No more awful, bloody breaths. No more violent mutations. No more Fi. She clutched hanks of her straight black hair with sticky hands and gave one last shuddering sob.

  When the unbearable brightness had fallen on them, Nira thought for the briefest moment of lightning, but even in that first breath of surprise an undercurrent of dread had told her she was wrong. She’d been schooled by her zealot parents too well to fail to recognize this searing whiteness. It lasted far longer than lightning ever could, and it made not the slightest sound. Nira had laughed bitterly at the irony of it all and waited for the burning.

  It never came. Instead, there was a purple afterimage of the sky that dazzled her eyes as the brightness died, followed by the murmurs and confusion of the Seafarers that had taken them on as passengers. Only Fi understood what had happened, and as soon as she could see again, Nira locked hands with the girl and waited. She’d been the best friend a runaway disbeliever could ask for.

  Then came the screaming that started low and ratcheted ever higher, sounds of agony and disbelief that couldn’t be held back as the bodies of every soul on board began to mutate and twist from within. The bosun who had flirted so insistently with Nira, even giving her his coral dagger, came flailing past, his fingers suddenly far too long, boneless, and growing suction cups. His eyes were wide and his breath panicked. These were not the usual adaptations the Seafarers had from living on the shifting oceans such as an extra arm, or gills, or fins shaped to aid them in their work. No, this was all at once, changes shaped by a blind sculptor frothing with madness. The bosun only made it a few more steps before his legs fell free from his body, a mass of wriggling tentacles bursting free from his pant legs. On the far side of the Seafarer liveship, Nira caught sight of the captain as he tore off his shirt, exposing multiple clusters of eyes that erupted on the surface of his torso only to explode like swollen cysts. The screaming grew on all sides.

  Nira and Fi huddled together at the prow, hugging each other and hiding their faces. The old prayers they’d been taught by the Sun’s Sons came unbidden to Nira’s lips and they chanted them together, forgetting in an instant all the time they had spent ridiculing the faith of their backwater friends and elders. The cleansing of the Light had come, and they would be spared, just as Papa and Madra had taught her.

  Except that then Fi’s hands had flown to her forehead, and she’d said it hurt. Her questing fingers had felt the change before Nira could see it, and she began to cry, great gasping heaves that rose in volume and fear as the moments passed. Nira had sought to comfort her friend, thinking her overwhelmed by the horrors that surrounded them – and then she saw it. Fi’s head was splitting in half.

  The insanity of mutation that had overtaken them all had not spared her friend. As Nira watched, Fi’s hairline had descended inch by inch down the center of her forehead, new hair sprouting blonde and wild as the halves of her head began to draw away from each other, a valley beginning to form where the peak of her head had been moments before. Her crying took on a hysterical edge, a terror deeper than she had ever heard before. “It hurts, it hurts!” she screamed. “Please, make it stop!” Similar cries had echoed from all around, but Nira heard only hers. “It hurts!” Over and over and over. As the split reached the bridge of her nose the words turned into gabbling and nonsense. Skin and hair had drawn over her eyes, and she scarcely looked human. Once the cleft had reached her upper lip, she could see through the gap all the way to the wet, pink recesses of her throat.

  So Nira had done the only thing she could think of. She drew the coral dagger the handsome bosun had given her and drove it into her chest. The fragile coral blade snapped at the hilt, the porous shard turning pink as it soaked
up her blood. Fi screamed anew and Nira retreated to throw up over the railing. There she had stayed, hearing her gasp and bubble until, finally, she didn’t.

  We found the thing the Sun’s Sons spend their lives praying and hunting for. Madra would be so jealous. If the hot-eyed, hard-handed woman had been in front of her, Nira would have gladly stabbed her too. But why aren’t I dead?

  It was too big of a question, and she was so tired. None of it seemed to matter. Neither did the rapidly approaching docks. The chitinous Seafarer liveship cut through the harbor’s chop, seeming to pick up speed. The bosun had tried to tell her that the ship was a living creature, an intelligent thing living in symbiosis with the crew, but she hadn’t listened. She’d been too busy keeping track of where he was putting his hands. But now she remembered and wondered what changes had been wrought in the ship itself. It was definitely moving faster, and the prow pointed right at the docks like a moth flying for the flame.

  Better this way. All she had to do was stand here. Everything would take care of itself. After all, she was now the embodiment of everything the Sun’s Sons taught. It was the bitterest, cruelest draught she’d ever tasted, but it was true. I can deny them this victory, at least. I won’t be the one to justify their rabid beliefs. Just because they were right doesn’t mean they’re right. And so she stood still and gave the rapidly-approaching dock workers an airy little wave.

  The dock looked bigger up close. It was a Weaver-made affair: a single massive tree that grew sideways through the water, shaped and cultivated to be flat on top, grippy underfoot, and as extensible as the growing city needed as the years passed. Each docking slip sported a set of whipstays – living branches that would reach out and grab any moving object nearby. It was an efficient way to secure incoming ships, even if they resulted in the occasional gruesome death of an unwary dock laborer. Such was the price of progress. As the liveship streaked into reach the whipstays darted out and lashed themselves around the ship’s crustacean-shell cleats along the starboard gunwale.

  At the speed she was moving, though, the ship was undeterred by such everyday constraints. With a groan and a snap, each of the whipstays tore free from their mother branch, one after the other. One stout dockworker stationed to receive the ship was too slow on the retreat and caught the torn end of a flying whipstay across the back. It lifted him off his feet and across the broad dock, where he windmilled off the edge and sank. New cries of alarm and terror rang in Nira’s ears. She was not moved.

  The ship hadn’t slowed at all, but the pull and jerk of the ropy branches on the cleats pulled the ship off its straight course and sent its jagged, crustacean-pocked starboard hull plowing into the side of the dock. Timbers shrieked and groaned against the ship, sounding almost like a wounded animal’s cry.

  Nira found herself airborne for a heartbeat as the ship slowed and she kept going. There was a moment of weightlessness, and then her ribs bisected the breastwork right by the prow. She felt a snap inside, and pain bloomed through her body, blotting out the world. Her head struck the hardened, chitinous deck and everything went white. Not as white as the Light, though. Nothing so bright as that. Her thoughts were scrambled, and her guts swayed crazily inside her. She would have vomited, but she’d brought back up every single scrap inside her a while ago. All she managed was to choke and cough, the sour taste of bile flooding her nose. She heard an earth-rending CRACK louder than thunder, and the wayward ship gave a mighty jerk, shuddering to a stop. There was a moment of silence, and Nira felt her body swing freely, head down, her vision still a whorl of color and noise. Her ribs burned with pain. Strangely, so did her ankle. Then the shouting began again.

  She couldn’t understand what anyone was saying. Her head was swimming and the pressure was building in her temples. Abruptly, her senses cleared, and she realized she was looking at the pocked-chitin hull of the ship. The brown, weathered surface of the liveship’s armored hide was pocked with the purple stars of shipgut seaspines, little crustaceans that Seafarer shipwrights used to seal leaks and cracks in their boats. She reached out to steady herself against the hull, careful not to cut herself on the seaspine shells, and was alarmed to feel herself swinging free, the ship first retreating from her touch and then coming close. She was hanging upside down on the outside of the ship! How…?

  She tucked her chin to her chest and looked up toward her feet, spinning as she went. A thick coil of hempen rope was knotted and twined about her left ankle and had caught on one of the gunwale spars. That explained the fierce ache in her foot, at least. She wouldn’t be walking well for a while. Blind luck. The one time I don’t want luck on my side, and I have more than any ten fools playing cards. If she didn’t know better, she’d blame some trickster god. If it were happening to anyone else, she’d think it was hilarious. Instead, anger boiled up through her pain, and her fatalism evaporated. I look like an idiot, and everybody’s yelling at me. Gaia’s tits, if I have to be alive, I’m going to do it right side up.

  It was easier said than done. She had nothing to grab on to, and no leverage besides. She reached for the barnacle-like growths on the hull, thinking to pull herself up on them, cut hands be damned – but any movement set her spinning, and the curve of the hull made everything down near her hands impossible to reach. Abandoning that approach, she bent at the waist, using her last reserves of strength to reach up for the rope that held her foot. A sharp stab under her left arm stole her breath, and she slumped back out to full length, her free leg and both arms akimbo, her face to the water. Broken rib. I could really hurt myself doing this.

  Looking beneath her, she could see that the ship had sheared all the way through the Weaver dock and impaled itself on the jagged remainder. The water beneath her churned as the crazed ship-thing kept trying to push forward even after it had taken its death blow. A huge gap in the armor of the hull gushed a pink fluid that mixed with the seawater rushing into the exposed hold. The size of the breach meant that the liveship would be lying on the floor of the harbor within a handful of minutes.

  Mentally bracing herself, she tried again, tightening her muscles against the pain as she drew her arms up toward her feet. Something shifted inside her and hurt abominably, but she pushed the sensation away with a grunt and a curse. Her fingers reached to her ankle, then crept up her boot. Just a little further! For once she was glad of her slight frame and relative lack of curves. She was even gladder for the stretching and gymnastic exercises she’d been doing with Fi for hours every day in their berth as they dreamed of joining the Bone Army. If not for all that practice, she’d never have had the strength or flexibility to reach past her foot and grab onto the rope holding her fast with one hand. The rope had been woven by a blind old grandmother on one of the nameless humps of rock the Seafarers called home out in the ocean, though she couldn’t have said how she suddenly knew that.

  Contorting herself with a gasping cry, she reached up and out with the other hand, swinging herself until she could reach the holding spar with scrabbling fingers. She latched on, and tears sprang to her eyes as she tried to haul her body back up onto the deck. Her ribs blazed in protest, her shoulders screamed, and so did her mouth. Light above, it hurts! She drank in the pain, she reveled in it. This was a pain that made sense, the pain of the flesh. She knew how to deal with that. She’d been doing it for years.

  And then she was on the deck, crying, gasping, laughing. Alive. Her limbs unknotted, and the relative lack of pain felt like a bliss in the clouds. She fumbled at the knots holding her foot and was able to extract herself. She couldn’t feel her foot, but it hardly seemed to matter. She drew her knees under herself, grasped the railing, and made as if to stand. Then she saw it. Her. Fiolamir.

  The once-pretty girl had been thrown free along with everything else when the ship rammed itself onto the dock that would soon sink it, and her limp corpse had fetched up against the prow less than two meters from where Nira now crouched. She laid face-up, her legs dangling off the gunwale to port, and by c
hance one hand stretched out toward her friend, her head tilted as if to look right at the woman that had killed her. Except there were no eyes to look with. There was no face at all, just two misshapen lumps of head covered with hair the color of clean straw. She had been beautiful and kind and strong, and now she was none of those things. For some reason – no, for no reason at all – Nira was whole and untouched. If she could have had all the Sun’s Sons in front of her, she’d have set them all on fire and danced on their ashes.

  Instead, she turned away, burying her friend in a shallow grave in the back of her mind. She crawled to the rope ladder stowed amidships, grateful for the first time to the dead bosun for the extensive tour of the ship with which he’d tried to impress her. The linen of her loose pants was soaked in gore from knee to ankle by the time she made it back to the railing. She was careful to move far enough forward that the ladder would land on the mangled dock instead of dropping her in the bay. She was in no shape to tangle with the sea serpent hatchlings that scavenged the bay.

  Over the railing she went, grunting and cursing, seeking out the loose rungs in the hemp with the bare toes of her good foot, trying to keep her weight off both the bad ankle and her upper body as well. It was tricky, and she was mostly unsuccessful, but after an agonizing two minutes, she dangled free from the end of the ladder and let herself drop the last two meters onto the dock. She led with her good foot and landed in a heap on the flat wooden surface.

  With her cheek pressed against the dock, she had the perfect view to admire the evenness of the perfect, symmetrical grooves grown into the wood that gave a good barky grip underfoot while allowing water to drain off the sides. Geniuses, those Weavers. Should have grown up with them, instead. Even if they made me pray to their shit goddess Gaia. She hauled herself to her feet and found she had reached the end of her strength. She swayed and braced herself against the shattered bulk of the hull beside her. She could hear the sucking sounds of water coursing into the ship, now sitting much lower in the water. The pink fluid had darkened to a wine-red and was mixing with the froth like blood. Maybe that’s what it is. Die and begone, ship. I wish I’d never set foot on you.