"The Well of the Sea Beast"
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dochermes"Well of the Sea Beast"
7/29/1990
With some trepidation, Stephen Weaver alighted alongside the dirt road. He folded his wings and looked around. It would be getting dark soon and he had found nothing after six hours of searching. Flight was not effortless by any means. He lifted into the air by drawing on gralic force, which took deep concentration, and he steered by body language, which took physical effort. A few hours in the air was exhausting. Weaver unfastened the Black Angel helmet and lifted it off his head, took in a deep breath of the humid Florida air and looked for a place to sit down. There was a fallen tree lying on its side parallel to the road, so he went over and plopped down on it.
Without the concealing helmet, Weaver was revealed to be an American black man, in his late thirties, with medium dark skin and a thick mustache. He wasn't bad-looking. He had an oval face with friendly eyes and a good smile but right now that face was tired. He felt like he had been running uphill dragging a weight. The tight fullbody suit he wore reduced air resistance, the fins on the gloves and boots acted as rudders. It was black with bright red trim, designed by the USAF twelve years earlier. Weaver unzipped the front and reached around in the inner pockets until he found one of the fruit and nut bars to munch. Sitting there in the humid dusk, he didn't like the way this assignment was going.
First thing that morning, before dawn, Jeremy Bane had called him down from the room where he had been sleeping. Weaver normally lived in New Mexico but when in New York, he stayed in his room at the KDF headquarters on 38th Street. Coming down to the conference room in his pajamas and bathrobe, he had mentioned that he was just visiting and had been told that he was on active duty and could be called at any time. Within an hour, they were in the CORBY storming south. The jetcopter approached but did not hit the sound barrier. As they neared this area deep within the five thousand square miles of the Everglades National Park, Bane had explained his assignment. As the CORBY slowed to hover three hundred feet above the swamps, Weaver had popped open the hatch of the pressurized cabin and dived out into the air. Bane had continued, on his own urgent mission near New Orleans.
A whole day of searching had not turned up what he sought, and now he rested for a few minutes. The energy bar helped, maybe his blood sugar had dipped after all that flying. Too bad he couldn't have pulled a cheeseburger and a cold beer out of the suit as well, he thought. Weaver tucked the wrapper back inside his suit and stood up. As he lowered the helmet over his head, he was looking through the goggles with their enhancers and everything popped into sharper focus. The wide bat-shaped wings of red nylon and aluminum tubing spread open across his shoulders and flapped once. Then, drawing on his gift of levitation, he crouched and leaped and rose straight up faster than a man could run. Black Angel circled wide and glided off deeper into the marshy domain.
As he flew, Weaver used his artificial wings only to guide and stabilize his course. The power which propelled him came from gralic discipline. Without the wings and aerodynamic Black Angel suit, he could still fly but clumsily. He held his body like a diver, back arched, arms and legs spread. Below him, the Everglades rolled by, miles after miles. Finally, as night was near and he was about to cut in the light-amplifiers in his goggle, Weaver spotted what he had come so far to find.
"Jackpot," he said out loud from habit, even though this time there was no ground team tracking him. Weaver dove and whizzed over the saw grass to a solid island of dense packed muck. Somehow, God knows how, a circular well had been dug. It was easily twelve feet across and water slopped over its brim. A low table of rough stone stood on short legs, its head touching the well, lit by three fierce torches. And on it was the body of an elderly man.
He could see no one else. Weaver circled at treetop level, his hand reaching back behind his hip for the butt of his concussion pistol. Where was the warlock he had been sent to intercept, Gimwar Yin? Was he in time to stop the ritual? Only one way to find out. Black Angel let his legs drop down and landed as lightly as if he had stepped off a curb. As he came to rest on solid ground, the strain of levitating was eased and he flexed his shoulders to make the red nylon wings fold up again.
Weaver found the intended victim was still alive, drugged and barely conscious. He was a bony man in his late sixties, wearing only a white smock painted with arcane symbols. The thin arms and legs were roped to iron rings sunk into the stone table. The victim saw him and struggled against the ropes. Looking about a bit nervously, Weaver unfastened the fibreglass helmet and tugged it off. He hoped that a friendly expression on his face would be more reassuring to this poor old guy than the blank googles and shutters of his helmet would be.
"It's going to be all right, buddy," he said firmly. "I'm here to help. I'll have you free in just a minute." Putting the helmet down, his back to the well, Weaver reached down for the commando knife sheathed on the inner side of his boot. Where was that warlock guy? His eyes kept moving, looking around suspiciously as he drew the seven-inch knife and straightened up. Weaver got the biggest surprise in his life when he was seized from behind and yanked violently up and backwards into the freezing cold water of the well. What the hell...? In his shock, he dropped his knife and gulped a mouthful of water despite all his training.
What had hold of him? What was he dealing with? Spreading his wings with inexorable mental force, he broke the enemy's grip. The unseen enemy tried to grab him again and Weaver kicked free furiously. Trying to drown me, huh? he thought. He had not taken any air into his lungs and could not see in the cold dark water but he could still tell which way was up. Drawing on his full ability, he shot up through the water like a missile fired from a submarine. The enemy could not hold him. Weaver broke the surface in a geyser and shot up forty feet into the air before slowing his flight. With his wings spread to their full extent, he hovered over the stone altar and coughed up water.
He could not see his foe, who was apparently still under the surface of the water in the well. Black Angel rubbed his bristly wet hair and scowled. His helmet! It was sinking right now to the bottom of the well and without it he couldn't use the small oxygen tank built into his suit. If he had kept the helmet, he could dive into the well and confront the enemy on equal terms.
Descending a bit, Weaver stayed just over the intended victim on the altar. All right. Now he knew a bit more and he wouldn't be caught unaware again. The enemy, whoever he was, would have to show himself to sacrifice the poor old guy in the ritual and when he did, he would find Black Angel ready to beat him like a dog. Four minutes passed that felt like hours while Weaver hovered and studied the surface of the well. He honestly could not spot any sign of life in there. Was there a subterranean exit? Was he wasting his time waiting? Finally, he decided to flush the enemy out. He couldn't hover here all night. That man on the altar needed medical attention. Reaching behind him, Weaver unsnapped the flap holster and drew out the thick barrelled air pistol. He did carry some anesthetic darts but he was packing resonance caps as a rule. Setting the gun to single shot, he got close and fired down into the water. The shell exploded and flung up an impressive spout of icy black water five feet in the air. Let a scuba diver ignore that, he thought just before the enemy finally revealed itself.
While that waterspout was still in the air, a big man-shaped figure lunged up out of the well and up at the Black Angel. Weaver had a brief glimpse of dark green armor and red eyes as the thing tackled him with stunning impact. They fell back together toward the water but Weaver kept enough presence of mind to swerve over and land on the surface of the island, rather than in the well. They hit the ground hard, rolling, and Weaver leaped up and out of reach. Now he got a good look at what he was fighting.
It was a Ulak, a Sea Beast, a manlike amphibian slightly over six feet high. Covered with hard green scaly plates, armed with long savage claws on webbed hands, it was a monster he had never seen in person before. The Sea Beast had gills on the side of its head that opened and closed as it breathed through a lipless froglike mouth. The eyes were bright red and glassy. As it lurched up onto its hinds legs, the Ulak roared a deep bellow that would have done justice to a prehistoric beast.
These were creatures of sunken Ulgor. Rarely had they been reported in the real world, only three or four times that he knew of. One had been captured in South America, in a lagoon far up the Amazon, but it had escaped. There was also a rumour that a colony of the beasts had been discovered in the waters off New England, and they had been wiped out by the military. To the scientists who had briefly gotten to studies the creatures, the Ulakim seemed to be simple subhuman animals but Weaver knew their true nature. They were shape-shifters as werewolves were. Humans transformed through gralic sorcery into a water-breathing form that had never arisen through natural evolution. They could not speak, but they retained much of their Human intelligence.
The Sea Beast was not agile nor quick on its feet,but its clawed hand slashed out quick enough to rip open the fabric of the Black Angel uniform from neck to waist. Underneath, the flexible metal armor was exposed. Weaver cursed, realizing he had been lucky the creature had not gone for his exposed face. He flew up and back well out of reach, raised his weapon and snapped off a shot that detonated point-blank against that scaly chest. The Ulak whirled and heaven up over the rim of the well back into the water. Weaver wasn't happy with that. There was no blood and no way to tell if the beast had been injured.
Cautiously, Black Angel landed and peered at the dark waters. Nothing, not even bubbles. He waited a minute and decided he had to try to free the victim on the table. Holstering his gun, he searched for the knife he had dropped and finally found it in the moss. Keeping a wary eye on the surface of the well, he began sawing through the thick ropes. The old man was no longer conscious and his breathing was ragged. As he worked on the ropes, he tried to remember his Tel Shai history.It hadn't seemed all that critical at the time, but he recalled the Ulakim had their origins after the sinking of Ulgor at the beginning of the Midnight War thousands of years ago. The Darthim had used their sorcery to create Ulakim from normal Humans to retrieve treasures from the underwater city, and then to repopulate the place. The Gelydrim had come later.
Suddenly the old man gave a deep rasping cough and went limp. His eyes rolled up in his head. He was dead. Weaver had seen enough corpses in his career to realize when he was standing next to one, but he still checked for a pulse. "Aw, Hell no!" he shouted with genuine anger. Too bad, just too bad. He felt a heavy weight in his chest at the failure. After a minute, though, he realized it wasn't his fault, it was that damn beast that had delayed him. With a violent splash of cold water, the Sea Beast heaved up from the well right behind and landed right on him. The monster slammed Weaver's head on the ground, breaking his nose and stunning him. Even taken by surprise, pinned down under a creature much heavier and stronger than himself, Black Angel was no helpless prey. He drew on his levitation powers and shot upward into the muggy night air. Weaver drew in his arms and and spun in a tight somersault, flinging the roaring gillman to the ground. The beast hit hard and took a second to rise. Weaver came down as fast as he could, levitating in reverse to smash down on the monster.
The impact was as if he weighed a ton, and the Ulak was knocked down flat on its stomach. Standing with his boots on the brute's spinal fin, he forced himself down with all his might. The force that could lift and propel him over a hundred miles per hour was exerted downward in reverse. In a moment, the hard plate and bones of the Ulak gave way with sharp cracking noises. He felt the body flatten out under him. The Sea Beast convulsed and was still.
Weaver's nose was bleeding freely and the whole front of his face was swollen. It took a few seconds for him to calm down from the exertion. His leg muscles cramped from the strain he had put them under he found himself limping as he went over to lean against the well. From inside his suit, he took some gauze pads, ripped the paper covers off and rolled them to plug his nose. His face throbbed and the blood going down the back of his throat made him nauseous. Phew, he thought, this is getting old real fast. Weaver turned around and cupped some water from the well to wash the front of his head.
Something bobbed up on the other side. He froze, then realized what it was. The top of a man's back,the back of his head, floating in the water. Weaver went stiffly over and examined the corpse. From the clothing and hair, it was an Ulgoran, which meant it had to be the very warlock who was behind the whole disaster. A deep gouge ran across the back. The man had been killed by the Sea Beast he had brought here. Black Angel growled sullenly, "See? That's what you get."
4/19/2013)
7/29/1990
With some trepidation, Stephen Weaver alighted alongside the dirt road. He folded his wings and looked around. It would be getting dark soon and he had found nothing after six hours of searching. Flight was not effortless by any means. He lifted into the air by drawing on gralic force, which took deep concentration, and he steered by body language, which took physical effort. A few hours in the air was exhausting. Weaver unfastened the Black Angel helmet and lifted it off his head, took in a deep breath of the humid Florida air and looked for a place to sit down. There was a fallen tree lying on its side parallel to the road, so he went over and plopped down on it.
Without the concealing helmet, Weaver was revealed to be an American black man, in his late thirties, with medium dark skin and a thick mustache. He wasn't bad-looking. He had an oval face with friendly eyes and a good smile but right now that face was tired. He felt like he had been running uphill dragging a weight. The tight fullbody suit he wore reduced air resistance, the fins on the gloves and boots acted as rudders. It was black with bright red trim, designed by the USAF twelve years earlier. Weaver unzipped the front and reached around in the inner pockets until he found one of the fruit and nut bars to munch. Sitting there in the humid dusk, he didn't like the way this assignment was going.
First thing that morning, before dawn, Jeremy Bane had called him down from the room where he had been sleeping. Weaver normally lived in New Mexico but when in New York, he stayed in his room at the KDF headquarters on 38th Street. Coming down to the conference room in his pajamas and bathrobe, he had mentioned that he was just visiting and had been told that he was on active duty and could be called at any time. Within an hour, they were in the CORBY storming south. The jetcopter approached but did not hit the sound barrier. As they neared this area deep within the five thousand square miles of the Everglades National Park, Bane had explained his assignment. As the CORBY slowed to hover three hundred feet above the swamps, Weaver had popped open the hatch of the pressurized cabin and dived out into the air. Bane had continued, on his own urgent mission near New Orleans.
A whole day of searching had not turned up what he sought, and now he rested for a few minutes. The energy bar helped, maybe his blood sugar had dipped after all that flying. Too bad he couldn't have pulled a cheeseburger and a cold beer out of the suit as well, he thought. Weaver tucked the wrapper back inside his suit and stood up. As he lowered the helmet over his head, he was looking through the goggles with their enhancers and everything popped into sharper focus. The wide bat-shaped wings of red nylon and aluminum tubing spread open across his shoulders and flapped once. Then, drawing on his gift of levitation, he crouched and leaped and rose straight up faster than a man could run. Black Angel circled wide and glided off deeper into the marshy domain.
As he flew, Weaver used his artificial wings only to guide and stabilize his course. The power which propelled him came from gralic discipline. Without the wings and aerodynamic Black Angel suit, he could still fly but clumsily. He held his body like a diver, back arched, arms and legs spread. Below him, the Everglades rolled by, miles after miles. Finally, as night was near and he was about to cut in the light-amplifiers in his goggle, Weaver spotted what he had come so far to find.
"Jackpot," he said out loud from habit, even though this time there was no ground team tracking him. Weaver dove and whizzed over the saw grass to a solid island of dense packed muck. Somehow, God knows how, a circular well had been dug. It was easily twelve feet across and water slopped over its brim. A low table of rough stone stood on short legs, its head touching the well, lit by three fierce torches. And on it was the body of an elderly man.
He could see no one else. Weaver circled at treetop level, his hand reaching back behind his hip for the butt of his concussion pistol. Where was the warlock he had been sent to intercept, Gimwar Yin? Was he in time to stop the ritual? Only one way to find out. Black Angel let his legs drop down and landed as lightly as if he had stepped off a curb. As he came to rest on solid ground, the strain of levitating was eased and he flexed his shoulders to make the red nylon wings fold up again.
Weaver found the intended victim was still alive, drugged and barely conscious. He was a bony man in his late sixties, wearing only a white smock painted with arcane symbols. The thin arms and legs were roped to iron rings sunk into the stone table. The victim saw him and struggled against the ropes. Looking about a bit nervously, Weaver unfastened the fibreglass helmet and tugged it off. He hoped that a friendly expression on his face would be more reassuring to this poor old guy than the blank googles and shutters of his helmet would be.
"It's going to be all right, buddy," he said firmly. "I'm here to help. I'll have you free in just a minute." Putting the helmet down, his back to the well, Weaver reached down for the commando knife sheathed on the inner side of his boot. Where was that warlock guy? His eyes kept moving, looking around suspiciously as he drew the seven-inch knife and straightened up. Weaver got the biggest surprise in his life when he was seized from behind and yanked violently up and backwards into the freezing cold water of the well. What the hell...? In his shock, he dropped his knife and gulped a mouthful of water despite all his training.
What had hold of him? What was he dealing with? Spreading his wings with inexorable mental force, he broke the enemy's grip. The unseen enemy tried to grab him again and Weaver kicked free furiously. Trying to drown me, huh? he thought. He had not taken any air into his lungs and could not see in the cold dark water but he could still tell which way was up. Drawing on his full ability, he shot up through the water like a missile fired from a submarine. The enemy could not hold him. Weaver broke the surface in a geyser and shot up forty feet into the air before slowing his flight. With his wings spread to their full extent, he hovered over the stone altar and coughed up water.
He could not see his foe, who was apparently still under the surface of the water in the well. Black Angel rubbed his bristly wet hair and scowled. His helmet! It was sinking right now to the bottom of the well and without it he couldn't use the small oxygen tank built into his suit. If he had kept the helmet, he could dive into the well and confront the enemy on equal terms.
Descending a bit, Weaver stayed just over the intended victim on the altar. All right. Now he knew a bit more and he wouldn't be caught unaware again. The enemy, whoever he was, would have to show himself to sacrifice the poor old guy in the ritual and when he did, he would find Black Angel ready to beat him like a dog. Four minutes passed that felt like hours while Weaver hovered and studied the surface of the well. He honestly could not spot any sign of life in there. Was there a subterranean exit? Was he wasting his time waiting? Finally, he decided to flush the enemy out. He couldn't hover here all night. That man on the altar needed medical attention. Reaching behind him, Weaver unsnapped the flap holster and drew out the thick barrelled air pistol. He did carry some anesthetic darts but he was packing resonance caps as a rule. Setting the gun to single shot, he got close and fired down into the water. The shell exploded and flung up an impressive spout of icy black water five feet in the air. Let a scuba diver ignore that, he thought just before the enemy finally revealed itself.
While that waterspout was still in the air, a big man-shaped figure lunged up out of the well and up at the Black Angel. Weaver had a brief glimpse of dark green armor and red eyes as the thing tackled him with stunning impact. They fell back together toward the water but Weaver kept enough presence of mind to swerve over and land on the surface of the island, rather than in the well. They hit the ground hard, rolling, and Weaver leaped up and out of reach. Now he got a good look at what he was fighting.
It was a Ulak, a Sea Beast, a manlike amphibian slightly over six feet high. Covered with hard green scaly plates, armed with long savage claws on webbed hands, it was a monster he had never seen in person before. The Sea Beast had gills on the side of its head that opened and closed as it breathed through a lipless froglike mouth. The eyes were bright red and glassy. As it lurched up onto its hinds legs, the Ulak roared a deep bellow that would have done justice to a prehistoric beast.
These were creatures of sunken Ulgor. Rarely had they been reported in the real world, only three or four times that he knew of. One had been captured in South America, in a lagoon far up the Amazon, but it had escaped. There was also a rumour that a colony of the beasts had been discovered in the waters off New England, and they had been wiped out by the military. To the scientists who had briefly gotten to studies the creatures, the Ulakim seemed to be simple subhuman animals but Weaver knew their true nature. They were shape-shifters as werewolves were. Humans transformed through gralic sorcery into a water-breathing form that had never arisen through natural evolution. They could not speak, but they retained much of their Human intelligence.
The Sea Beast was not agile nor quick on its feet,but its clawed hand slashed out quick enough to rip open the fabric of the Black Angel uniform from neck to waist. Underneath, the flexible metal armor was exposed. Weaver cursed, realizing he had been lucky the creature had not gone for his exposed face. He flew up and back well out of reach, raised his weapon and snapped off a shot that detonated point-blank against that scaly chest. The Ulak whirled and heaven up over the rim of the well back into the water. Weaver wasn't happy with that. There was no blood and no way to tell if the beast had been injured.
Cautiously, Black Angel landed and peered at the dark waters. Nothing, not even bubbles. He waited a minute and decided he had to try to free the victim on the table. Holstering his gun, he searched for the knife he had dropped and finally found it in the moss. Keeping a wary eye on the surface of the well, he began sawing through the thick ropes. The old man was no longer conscious and his breathing was ragged. As he worked on the ropes, he tried to remember his Tel Shai history.It hadn't seemed all that critical at the time, but he recalled the Ulakim had their origins after the sinking of Ulgor at the beginning of the Midnight War thousands of years ago. The Darthim had used their sorcery to create Ulakim from normal Humans to retrieve treasures from the underwater city, and then to repopulate the place. The Gelydrim had come later.
Suddenly the old man gave a deep rasping cough and went limp. His eyes rolled up in his head. He was dead. Weaver had seen enough corpses in his career to realize when he was standing next to one, but he still checked for a pulse. "Aw, Hell no!" he shouted with genuine anger. Too bad, just too bad. He felt a heavy weight in his chest at the failure. After a minute, though, he realized it wasn't his fault, it was that damn beast that had delayed him. With a violent splash of cold water, the Sea Beast heaved up from the well right behind and landed right on him. The monster slammed Weaver's head on the ground, breaking his nose and stunning him. Even taken by surprise, pinned down under a creature much heavier and stronger than himself, Black Angel was no helpless prey. He drew on his levitation powers and shot upward into the muggy night air. Weaver drew in his arms and and spun in a tight somersault, flinging the roaring gillman to the ground. The beast hit hard and took a second to rise. Weaver came down as fast as he could, levitating in reverse to smash down on the monster.
The impact was as if he weighed a ton, and the Ulak was knocked down flat on its stomach. Standing with his boots on the brute's spinal fin, he forced himself down with all his might. The force that could lift and propel him over a hundred miles per hour was exerted downward in reverse. In a moment, the hard plate and bones of the Ulak gave way with sharp cracking noises. He felt the body flatten out under him. The Sea Beast convulsed and was still.
Weaver's nose was bleeding freely and the whole front of his face was swollen. It took a few seconds for him to calm down from the exertion. His leg muscles cramped from the strain he had put them under he found himself limping as he went over to lean against the well. From inside his suit, he took some gauze pads, ripped the paper covers off and rolled them to plug his nose. His face throbbed and the blood going down the back of his throat made him nauseous. Phew, he thought, this is getting old real fast. Weaver turned around and cupped some water from the well to wash the front of his head.
Something bobbed up on the other side. He froze, then realized what it was. The top of a man's back,the back of his head, floating in the water. Weaver went stiffly over and examined the corpse. From the clothing and hair, it was an Ulgoran, which meant it had to be the very warlock who was behind the whole disaster. A deep gouge ran across the back. The man had been killed by the Sea Beast he had brought here. Black Angel growled sullenly, "See? That's what you get."
4/19/2013)
