Cold Steel and Cigaretts

COLD STEEL AND CIGARETTES

By Scott Ferrara


I stood there at the gate, reality melting away like a snowman in hell. And I knew deep down that this could only lead to tears.
In the Shardlands, the Nightmare lands that form the borderland between death and dreams I stood waiting. I lit a cigarette, inhaled and calmly exhaled, sweet nicotine, you’re so good to me. I knew I should know better. But what the hell you only die once. It’s dying again that’s a bitch and dying here. Well that’s just a bad way to go. I take one last long drag and hide.
The preist of the Harvest had found his victim in a lost soul named Amanda. She was a skinny little, scantily dressed, club kid who had done way too much heroin. I had tracked him here by muscling one of my snitches and by following a trail of gore left in a ratty ass Tribecca loft.
A trail of blood to open the portal here.
The gate was unfathomnably old and kind of nostalgic in a sickeningly-violent blood-sacrifice kind of way. Makes me all misty.
Old school black basalt monoliths, with several millions year old dead languages carved into the surfaces. A table, well more of a tub lay fifteen feet in front of the aperture. Channels cut into the surround stone so that rivulets of blood could feed the dimensional maw.
The black glassy stones reeked of a dark time in the way distant past best left forgotten. Thousands of pre-human skeletons littered the avenues and alleys of the old city. The eerie sigils along the city started to glow a luminescent green.
The few scholars knowing about the strange glyphs on crumbling black basalt find themselves hearing tittering laughter in the shadows, seeing red lidless eyes in the corners of rooms and spend the rest of their tormented existences in the material world drooling into cups: the world after that being even worse.
Amanda was crying and begging. The priest, was a lesser acolyte wanting more power than he could conceivably handle. He was not a bad looking man when compared to say a lump of ground meat. The illusion he used to cover his face was fading in and out. Eventually turning two dimensional, so he was a damn handsome man when looked at straight on.
Saving Amanda was my number one priority.

“Hey Sparky.” I yelled as I charged headlong into him.

No blood, please no blood

The handsome face turned to see me. It was fading more as his real chop meat appearance bled through the illusion.
I’ll kill her. He yells. He has a wavy bladed sacrifical dagger to her bared midriff.
No blood, please. no blood.

So ‘Sparky’ starts to scream and brings his blade on high. I close, take a punch then snap his wrist like kindling to take that very dangerous knife away. He cries like the punk he is.
“Go ahead. You honestly think that the Harvester coming out of that Gate is going to look at you as anything other than a food source or were you expecting to hear Barry White when it lays it’s eggs in you.” Amanda was alert and pissed.
“You Okay?”
“Yeah, “Amanda mutters barely audible.
“Lets jet. This isn’ the…”
Just then the stupid little club kid punched ‘Sparky’ in the mouth. Busting his lip wide open.
And a single drop of blood hit the stone.

“RUN!!!!!!!!!!”

Run you stupid little girl..


The tears in the dimensional fabric broke like black lightning across the monolith surface. A hole in space time like a sucking chest wound spewed the reddish atmosphere from the hellish place that spawned the masons of this monstrosity.
Foreign blue stars winked and amber alien moons appeared on the strange horizon.
It was coming.
The Harvester. I could hear it’s screaming, it was making noises no organic thing had a right to.
It resembled a mix of mantis, scorpion and spider. It was 8 feet tall at the shoulder and weighed over a ton. Black and crimson covered in exo-skeletal plates, it’s lower quarters resembled a scorpion while it’s upper quarter were reminiscent of a praying mantis.
It was driving four armored twisted undead humans in front of it. All armed with scimitars cannibalized from a vanquished hive mate. Very few Harvesters can reach this dimension but it only takes one to breed millions. They assimilate all the knowledge and power of the beings they slay and they lay their eggs in their corpses making their egg hosts a hive ghoul. The hive ghouls host insidious larval worms which when the mature become miniature Harvesters. Then the larvae are fed a rich diet of blood, flesh, and souls.
I called my Spirit Weapons to my hands. There appeared a pair sun moon sabres . They look like an overlapping pair of crescents, one covering the fist the other making the handle, creating a quartet of grim smiles.
I crashed into the undead first, they were going to be problematic. The first hive ghoul swung wildly for my head, I parried and drew the second blade across it’s throat. It’s head fell neatly as the black putrid ichor of undead freely flowed.
The second undead lunged with his blade, I trapped it with my blades and twisted it’s blade from it’s grasp then carved a crucifix in it. I split it from shoulder to shoulder and stomach to throat. It’s interior spilled onto black stone.
The third unfortunate egg host paused. I took its eyes and with a pirouette of cruel arcs I disemboweled it. The fourth undead spun its blade with skill and feinted with a strike to my left shoulder while changing direction to my right knee, I dodged, It then thrust mid body which I parried.
All the while it’s master watched.
I lead the undead on. Moving as if I was concealing a weakness to my left side and it took the bait with a frenzy of attacks. It overextended: I took it’s hand off at the wrist and then it’s arm.
I was waiting to unleash my secret weapon. ‘Sparky’ was blathering, and fell prostrate before the monstrocity. It quickly lanced him with his forelimbs, brought poor ‘Sparky’ to it’s mouth and orally deposited it’s eggs.
Not one to rest with a demon intently watching . I spun from the final hit and threw my sabres at the creature. My ‘Brothers Grimm’ flew spinning like buzzsaws.
They flew like a pair of silver owls crunching into the beasts shoulders It wailed and then they pulled out to return to my hand. Green sulphuric smelling blood trickled from the wounds.
It’s tail came down like a stone fist, hitting me square in the sternum. There was a crunch and I spat up blood. My Spirit Armor protected me, but the impacts broke a few ribs. It caught me with one of its sharpened forelimbs and pierced my calf.
I’ll heal if I survive but it hurts like a bitch. It withdrew the limb and I rolled away, Its tail slamming the ground, I moved further into the ruins knowing it would follow.
Where to next?
The wounds were starting to heal. Always a positive thing. I threw the sabres again to buy time. And hid amongst the monoliths. It was screeching and running, it climbed up a wall after me to get a higher vantage point and then leapt.
It hit the ground like a truck dumped off a skyscraper. My blades were diving and cutting it. They were more of a nuisance to it now without my will controlling them. I ran further into the ruins. The Harvester, hot on my heels, I saw an blind alley within the stone structures. It barreled after me, crunching stone and the pre-human skeletal remains that littered the ruins.
I focused my mind. I dove and rolled away and held up my hands just as the sabres returned through the creatures head. It fell, rudely in a pile. Then I went to the nasty work of cleaning up. The larvae still needed killing. I found the little buggers with no effort. They were starting to jibber in the poor priest. The illusion of his face was still holding.
“You see. You see. “ he babbled.
“Yeah, I see.” As I picked the whiney punk up , and threw him through the gate to close it.
I found Amanda a couple hours later. Huddled in a corner. I gave here a twenty and a full Metrocard.
“Who are you,” she asked.
“My name is …..unimportant, “ I said, “I am a Namer , a Shardwalker, a demon hunter who exists between two worlds and walks the borderlands between the dreaming and the dead.”

I paused, went to grab another cigarette. But the pack was crushed beyond even my magic. She gave me one of hers and collapsed in my arms. I held her gently for a while, cast a small incantation and put this thought in her mind.
“Forget “was all I said with a small kiss on her forehead.

Namer’s Prayer -

We are all here
All Namers
They are with me
The dark has come
It surrounds

We are all here
To face fight and die
But we cannot die

We are all here
We will not go gently
We are here on the edge of the abyss
I know it’s name
The war wind comes
The flood overtakes

We are all here
To live, love and die
To stand and spite the shadow
To meet evil with will
And the songs of our deeds
Will be carried on the winds
Forever