Wulf (The Fifth Place #1)

by Set Sytes

The woman made a small imitation of a grunt, an echo of surprise. Her lips hung loose and her eyes were bright and looked right into his as she died. With one aggressive pull his Rathian knife was free, and the woman slipped to the ground. Jay touched his side. He was bleeding himself; her sickle had been . . . provoking. Unlike her, though, he would certainly live. He wiped his knife (Ugly was its name, carved into the handle, for ugly was its work) on her breeches,

He found what he was looking for: a drawstring bag of yellow jewels. They shone like bright little suns of piss.

He remembered. He saw faces of all the people he had killed, faces of the people who had tried to kill him. They were mostly the same, but not always. He saw many women he had lain with, many women he had hunched against, thrust against, pulled forwards, bent over, women whose cheek he had touched and women who he had stripped: all those creatures whose morsels he had tasted. Women who had tried to murder him before, or afterwards. The men who had interrupted, to their shame and anger, and often to their mortal regret. He remembered why Sal at the saloon didn’t like him. He pictured his laugh: part of him cringed, and part of him didn’t care; only the parts were blending, sipping at each other and spitting back. He saw perfection, and as he did storm clouds gathered and the lilac in the sky darkened to a bruised magenta, and she became shadowed and lost to him. Under the Circle’s Shadow . . . He saw horses rearing in fire and flame as guns cracked around him and cannon fire threw up volcanos of dirt. He remembered scrabbling, coughing, trying to make out the shapes in the smoke and the sprays of blood, and the endless, endless cries.

He saw himself pawing at her, leering and laughing and making crude come-ons into jokes, and jokes into come-ons. He showed her his new sword: a wicked thing, a saber as yet without a name, and perhaps too nice for one. He showed her his guns and he showed her Ugly. She seemed most interested in the knife, purring in his ear that she liked ugly things. ‘You won’t like me then,’ he’d said. She’d laughed at him and batted his hands away. When he came on too strong, pushing her to the ground, she explained to him, with a smile on her face, how very quickly and easily she could give his penis a snip – well, she added, serrated was a better word, or sliced.

Red, green, black, blue White, orange, yellow, purple Faster and further Distance travelled in colour Sound as picture Light as thought The key that unlocks the door Red green black blue White orange yellow Purple Over hill and under stars We’re going on an adventure RED GREEN BLACK BLUE This hurts WHITE ORANGE Stop YELLOW PURPLE We’re going on a

He woke up to the sound of melodious squawking and bright rays of white-lilac light. He’d left the window open, and a bird had pushed the curtains aside, letting in a stream of morning glare. It hopped on the sill and continued to squawk, chirrup and yap to some kind of half-tune. The bird was about a hand high, purple-feathered with a hook beak and a tall, jagged white crest. It shifted feet constantly, cocking its head at him. A trill, Jay’s mind remembered. Native to Appalia . . . Is that where I am? He got up, stretched, and shooed the trill away. It yapped again, and then took off, the curtains left flapping behind.

Looking at a completely different reflection to what you have been used to your entire life is an experience some would call disturbing, others mesmerising, and they’d both be right. He’d seen bits of him before, of course. He’d seen his arms, looked down at his torso, and been aware of his face in that vague, shadowy way people perceive themselves without a reflection, the blur of the nose and the cheeks and mouth with a presence so permanent to our vision that we forget they are there. He’d almost seen his face reflected in Sav’s eyes. Here, though, was the full article, and minus the cracks in the mirror it was as clear and defined as it could ever be. He felt like he was looking through a window into another world, seeing another person mimicking his movements.

The same red markings, the tribal wine stains that careened over his body were present on his face. They lined his cheeks and brow like war paint, and yet the effect was more, well, wild, wild and mystical, than savage.

He spent long minutes inspecting himself, dividing between marvelling at his skin design – the patterns made him want to call them extensive tattooing, but they were all-natural (just look at those hands), and miraculous for it – and his new face: a tough, dark-eyed and somewhat Middle-Eastern looking face, an on-the-dark-and-dirty-side-of-handsome face. He pleased himself thinking it possessed a kind of heroic villainy.

But he pulled down his pants anyway. He was, after all, still a man in a man’s body. And there are some things a man’s gotta know. He stood there, no shirt and his pants around his ankles, a stupid smile plastered to his face (but it’s not so stupid, is it? It’s better than the last guy’s smile, remember that? . . . No) as he looked at and touched himself with investigative measure, inflicted with the kind of small amazement that beds well with amusement. Fronting this amusement, however, there came first relief. Jay was relieved to see that his package didn’t look vastly different to what he was used to. The thing that struck him most, quite aside from the size (his grin increased, although his only comparison beyond the hints of Jay’s memories were those of Earth men), was the bendiness; it was quite pliable even when hard, he noticed, and almost stayed in the positions you left it, like plasticine. It had that rubbery quality, both look and touch. The head was tapered slightly. Apart from that, though, it was both recognisable and appreciable as a cock and balls. Thank god for evolutionary similarities, and not giving me tentacles. The only immediate sense of alien was that the whole area was a dark, streaky red. He enjoyed himself for a while manipulating himself into vague turns, revelling like a child with a toy snake or one of those bendable figurines. He had only meant to check himself out, but found himself quickly carried away.

He was surprised at how quickly he was becoming accustomed to the colour, although the purple-ringed sun still sent a shiver through his body whenever he looked up. Everybody looked slightly different outside than inside – but then he supposed that was true on Earth, too. There was a transformative quality about it – something that lent a faintly mystical, secretive, almost furtive air to everything

There was the Bone Bin, a windowless establishment – if establishment would ever fit such a jumble of timber. It had been made with boards and bits of boards, stakes and sticks – all made from some kind of – the white gumba tree – and affixed all over with thousands of bent nails. The wood lay crooked off each other, broken planks attached more by spirit than strength to mere shards. It was a ribcage of a house, and seemed to come in layers: for there were many gaps between the bones, but inside he could make out a second shell, one that seemed just as pale and hapless. Inside, he knew, they smoked every kind of smoke there was, and the air within seemed to float with ghosts.

he remembered, it came naturally, in slices, pages so torn they might as well be shreds. He could not force it. Even when he knew a name, or a purpose to something, it was not a real understanding, not a memory he could connect to as though it was his own. It was as though reading about something in a book a long time ago

A stall selling what looked like bread. The loaves were cut into ovals and cylinders, and even spheres, and it looked rather soft and spongey, but the smell was good. The vendor – male or female? Or both? Neither? – had four breasts like shelves on the chest, and a black-and-white beard that was forked in all directions. The eyes were big and lidless and without irises. ‘Good morning, Rathian!’ the vendor said, in a high, squirrely voice, clasping two four-fingered hands together. ‘What good crust can I offer such a warrior like yourself on this fine hour?’ ‘Um,’ Jay said, taking his hand out his pocket. ‘What can I get for four jackals?’ ‘A host of loaf, Rathian!’ the vendor cried, arms sweeping the assortment of breads. ‘Oh, good. What do you recommend?’ The vendor picked up a big ball of bread, spotted orange. ‘A sunbursted loaf for a sunbursted man! A handsome Rathian, with such beautiful patterns! Four jackals, just for you!’

This girl was another matter. She wasn’t classically beautiful, not in that statuesque, instantly stunning way. But to Jay she was pretty, that kind of pretty where it wasn’t clear how others saw her, and who knew if she might only affect a handful, or him and him alone. Her hair was the colour of sand and sunset; a beach blonde kissed by ruddy swathes that seemed to move as she did. Her skin the colour of pinkened milk. She had a loose green dress on, wrapped around a body that was short and just shy of festively plump.

She told him of the time they had been waylaid by a couple of bandits, and how she had watched her father’s man Jerrens shoot one of them in the chest, how the blast had torn open the woman’s ribcage and spattered the horses with her blood. Jay saw her eyes were alight as she told him, how it kept replaying in her head when she slept, but she didn’t make any mention of nightmares or horror. She seemed simply . . . fascinated. Drawn. She’d spoken to Jerrens differently after that.

She had a clear, well-spoken voice, almost posh, and it was obvious that she had been raised with good manners, manners that Jay did not have. She took in small mouthfuls of food every few sentences, swallowing quickly before she’d open her mouth to continue. She kept match with Jay as he chewed stolidly through his steak, and her eyes rarely left his. He got the feeling she was analysing him as she talked, that she was engaging in several things at once, most of them behind the scenes. Behind those green ocean eyes.

Tell me something. Where am I?’ ‘Nohaven, but then you know that.’ ‘I mean, outside that. Go bigger.’ ‘Appalia.’ ‘Bigger.’ ‘The Westlands . . . The Basin.’ ‘I’m afraid I still need the bigger picture here. What planet am I on?’ He grinned. She looked at him hard for a moment, her spoon lying on her plate, temporarily forgotten. ‘Earth,’ she said at last. ‘What is this, some kind of con? Are you making fun?’

‘So you’re an alien, are you? You come from another planet?’ He looked up, brightening. ‘Does that happen here?’ ‘No.’ ‘Oh. I’m . . . just joking. Let’s go back to saying I’m an amnesiac. That was more agreeable.’ ‘Yes, it was. You are very curious. I like this, even if it is a joke.’ ‘I’m afraid it’s not a very good joke.’ ‘No, I suppose not.

‘Thanks for the meal,’ he said. She opened her mouth to reply, but shut it again as there came a great BANG from outside the saloon. It was followed by a cluster of sounds, all wrapped in chaos: the whinnying of horses, cries of alarm, and what sounded like the crunch of huge wheels. Alexia looked startled, and then her eyes shifted, her face grew harder, and her lips moved oddly. She turned away from Jay without speaking and walked quickly to the door, as outside the cries were punctuated by one long, trailing scream.

Alexia was standing outside the thick semi-circle of people, with her back to him. She wasn’t moving. Some of the crowd shifted away, shaking their heads. There were gaps. Gaps showing high wheels, and a pool of burgundy blood that looked dark and unnatural. The body of the carriage was trying to hide it in shadow, but the bright bruise of the day was everywhere, and there would be no hiding. Bathed in the blood, just behind the wheel arches, was Alexia’s father. Alexia moved through the crowd as it parted, as stiff as an automaton. Her feet scuffed the dust behind her, at one point almost tripping her up. She walked to the side of the carriage, where the light pointed to her father’s stony face and his broken torso. Pointed to the rut of the wheel that had grooved his body as though he were only a patch of mud. She went slowly to her knees. She went in silence. Jay moved closer, caught the side of her face. The pink flush of her cheeks was gone, now she was only white. Her lips were pale, her eyes hidden by the fall of her hair that no longer glowed of sand and sunset, but echoed the gore and the mocking of the morning light. Translucent tears streaked down her face and dripped to the ground, where they diluted her father’s blood. This was where she kneeled, as it continued to flow around her.

When Jay looked back at Alexia, she was reaching inside her father’s jacket. He saw her pull out a leather wallet. She took a wad of money from it and secreted it inside her dress. ‘What are you doing?’ he said. ‘Robbing my dead father.’ She stood up and faced him. The tears had dried on her cheeks. ‘I will need this money, if I am to survive now. He would not have begrudged me taking it.’ She was not looking into his eyes. ‘I want you to go now.’ ‘I —’ ‘I want you to go,’ she repeated. ‘I will collect what I need from the carriage, and I will see to my father’s body. He will be interred in the Nohaven Cemetery.

‘Yes. I want to do this on my own. The fewer eyes, and the fewer words, the better. I will take care of what needs to be taken care of – short of wiping the blood from the street, I’m sure the desert will cover it in time – and then I will retire to the rest house. Do not disturb me today, and do not disturb me tomorrow. I will not want company. Do you understand?’ She said all this very calmly and deliberately, without meeting his eyes. She was looking at a fixed point, or maybe she was not looking at anything at all. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I will be around, if you need me.’ ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Goodbye.’

‘What more do we know?’ the man asked, his eyes closed. ‘We are no closer, sir. We have been investigating the network. It is turning up nothing. The fault . . . it is not there sir.’ ‘Not there?’ ‘There is no log of the event on the network. There might be a malfunction. But personally, I believe it has been deleted.’ ‘Then there is a culprit.’ ‘I think so sir. But without a record we cannot localise it to a particular machine. Not only do we not know where the event transpired, but we do not know when. I mean, in which time window occurred the hacking of the machine, if that is how it happened.’

The man with the green eyes stroked his bare chin. ‘How many Servants are available, not working on Reshuffles for the current thread?’ ‘We have sixteen million, sir.’ ‘That is not enough. Not enough at all. Pull out any Servant not working on a Top Tier Reshuffle. Put them on this. I want at least three billion to start with. One million will work the machines, scanning for anomalies. Look through all our subjects. All of them. Anything we can find that doesn’t fit, that raises questions. The rest . . . boots on the ground. Cast the net. Hide in plain sight, they’ll know the drill. Search the universe.’

‘Sir . . . Is all this really necessary? It is only one mind . . .’ ‘You do not understand the importance. That one mind has in all likelihood pushed out another mind, which has been driven out and pushed into another . . . It starts a chain. If we are unlucky, that chain could continue on, and on. More and more minds behaving not according to Direction. The clean-up work required has the potential to be vast, even limitless. Damage control . . . The universe is already chaos. We do our best to reign in that chaos, to shape it to Her Direction. But no matter the ability of our machines to predict, to calculate, there will always be unpredictability. There will always be chaos.

‘There is no point continuing work on the lesser Reshuffles. We have no idea which world this mind had been sent to. How can we have Direction if one or an endless chain of minds are set free, causing their havoc? It would be futile, continuously wrecking our work. Hole after hole in the system, widening, turning against us. I can only hope that the target world is not an advanced, space-faring one. If it is, and the ripples are interplanetary, maybe even cross-dimensional . . . the effect could be ruinous to all our efforts.’

The alleys opened into a small square, the centre glazed by a circle of sunlight. Here there was a waterless stone fountain, the stone cracked in a dozen places. On the fountain’s basin there lay a cluster of well-used money, held together by a clip. Assuming all the notes were the same, it looked around . . . quite a lot. Jay hesitated. His instinct told him not to take it. But he had no money. He couldn’t rely on Alexia; for all he knew, he might not even see her again. He would need to eat again before the day was out. And in a town like this, what else might he need the money for?

Ah. And here we go. Of course. Six kids, four girls and two boys, had surrounded him. They’d moved silently, out of the shadows, blocking off the exits. They may have been kids, but they were older kids, with a feral intensity about them. They’d been viciously sharpened by hunger, by an uncertain life living under the breadline, a life in the dark backstreets of Nohaven.

Jay dodged the nailed fist that came flying upwards to his chin, his back arching backwards to evade the blow. He twisted, a stiletto blade of the youngest boy missing his side by less than an inch. His foot lashed out, kicking the other boy in the chest before he had a chance to strike with his stick; he dodged the nails again, and his balled fist connected with the girl’s stomach, lifting her up into the air. He withdrew and leaped back from another slash of the blade. The boy overbalanced, and he grabbed the boy’s arm and twisted it, disarming him. The boy cried out at him as his head was grabbed, as Jay’s knee met it with a crunch.

His movements seemed pre-ordained. His body did not wait for instruction, did not wait for the seconds of thought that would serve him an early death. It merely did. A girl with shaved black hair and exceptionally long arms pounced on him from behind. She heard the snap before she felt it. She screamed and wept on the floor, holding her broken arm with nobody paying any attention to her. His elbow took out the boy he had kicked, and he disarmed the stick from the fourth girl, using it to chop at her neck. She backed off, choking, as black tooth was upon him. He dropped the stick and grabbed her wrist with one hand, grabbed her hair with another, pulled it, and headbutted her in the face. Her nose burst and she fell away, wailing. With a quick movement he was behind her, pulling the knife from her hands and holding it to her throat. Stop. The knife razed her throat, drawing a thin red line. About him the gang – the kids – were crying and moaning in pain, clutching themselves. The girl who had taken a stick to the throat was retching.

He pushed the girl from him, sending her sprawling into the choking girl. She looked back at him from the ground, furious, pained . . . scared. He picked up the money again and separated the ten ones from it, which he sent fluttering towards the dead fountain. The rest he put in his pocket. He looked at the knife. ‘I’m takin this, too,’ he said. ‘Not cause I much want it. But cause I don’t want you to have it.’ He slid it into a hook on his belt, just hidden behind his empty holster. Then he walked away, back the way he had come, back to the wider, sunnier streets, knowing that if any of them got themselves in a fit enough state to come after him he could easily, easily take care of them.

Past the red doors, he found himself moving through a swamp of scarlet light. Incense seemed to pour from the walls, wreathing the insides in pungent fog. Any further than a foot, and he could only make out vague shapes. The occasional body would move past him, but he was never sure they weren’t tricks of the light, dreams hidden in mist. Music hummed in the background, composed of long, lulling notes, and he felt increasingly relaxed, while at the same time almost deliriously aroused. Hypnotic,

‘Welcome to The Drain,’ breathed a voice behind him. He turned to see a beautiful woman smiling at him. She was dressed all in beads, glowing like rubies in the light. The fog cloaked her, wisping around her arms and legs and hiding her secrets.

once more he was lost in a house of lust. A house that seemed to live to its own time, its own crimson pulse. He was feeling light-headed, his loins throbbing, aching. He was about to sit down on a cushion when the woman reappeared, carrying a glass. The colour was impossible to tell in the light, but smoke seemed to rise from the top of it, and yet when he took it the glass was cold.

‘How much?’ he said. ‘That will depend,’ she said. ‘On what you want, and who you want it with. How much do you have?’ This kind of transaction sure ain’t gonna go in my favour. ‘I have . . . well . . . how about just, you know, regular, uh . . .’ ‘How much do you have?’ she asked again. ‘I got twenty,’ he lied. She sniffed, and her finger dropped from tracing patterns on his arm. ‘That will get your cock sucked,’ she said. ‘By you?’ ‘No. By . . . male or female, or other?’ ‘Female.’ ‘Species?’ ‘Uh. Human.’ ‘For twenty, you don’t get to be picky about race, or anything else.’ ‘I’m not picky.’ ‘Then go downstairs, knock on door three.’ She jerked a thumb behind her. ‘Okay,’ he said. He made to go, but she put out her hand to stop him. ‘Money first,’ she said. ‘Please.’

As he descended, he left the fog behind him. The red lights were still here, but without the incense to veil them they seemed glaring, like baleful eyes. He opened a door at the foot of the stairs, and found himself in a stone corridor lined with more doors, each daubed in white paint with a number. It was damp, with a cloying, unclean odour. Some of the doors were rotting. They did not block out the sound: the noises of violent, bestial fucking. The shades are up, he thought. Curtains back. Welcome to The Drain.

It was late afternoon, and the purple cast of the sky had deepened, yet still shone bright and warm. The thoroughfare was busier now, the crowds seeming ever more exotic to Jay Wulf’s gaze. There were hulking men and women in great overcoats, their trailing ends yellowed with dust; diminutive chittering creatures, covered in hair, with rusting shoulder plates and ugly muskets strapped to their backs; a fellow Rathian (also covered in skin patterns) who ignored his eye; a figure that seemed like a walking shadow, as black as the night, with a domed head and four obsidian orbs for eyes. There were people with squashed, beaten faces, and there were people without noses, at least not as he knew them; many-holed protrusions ran the length of their jaws and flared as they sniffed. He was passed by two bird-like figures, their noses long and hooked, almost like beaks, their skin leathered and cracked. Their shoulders were high and arching, adorned with long tattered cloaks. Their eyes were invisible beneath darkened goggles. He could only understand one side of the conversation, the other figure’s voice too harsh and croaking to easily comprehend.

Jay thought he recognised one word, though he could have imagined it. Tiger. Jay hesitated for a while, and then made his way to a nearby meat stall. He used the last of his money to haggle a slab of raw meat from the vendor, a sexless looking creature with scaly, sickly yellow skin and rapidly blinking eyes. He also bought a cooked burger from the same stall, both purchases wrapped in separate foil. He considered later the wisdom of buying raw and cooked meat from the same stall, in this heat, but there had been no flies or unpleasant smells, and the truth was he hadn’t truly cared.

‘So, you’re still here,’ Jay said. The tiger growled low in its throat. ‘Might be I’m wrong, but I reckon you were waitin for me. You can’t enter town without trouble, but you don’t want me to leave without you.’ He took another bite, speaking with his mouth full. ‘Is there only one way out of this town? I don’t know. Maybe you know the ins and outs better than me.’ He peeled back the foil from the raw meat and grinned as the tiger’s expression changed. It padded closer. ‘Hungry, huh?’ He dropped the meat on the ground, and the tiger immediately tore into it. It disappeared quickly before his eyes.

I’ll bring you more food tomorrow, although I’m sure you’re findin your own prey.’ Jay swallowed the last of his burger. ‘And after then . . . well, we’ll see. I’m takin things as they come, less one day at a time, more one minute at a time.’

Jay returned to the rest house as the rich purple of the sky stained itself red. He had sat outside town for a while, watching the colours thicken and grow bloody. Afternoon washed into evening, and he tried to battle his weariness, wanting to see the stars come out.

He was not exhausted physically, but mentally; his mind was in constant flux, constant challenge and learning, pulled and buffeted by opposing forces. He was split, and yet whole; twin spirits treading in unison through two mirror mazes that threatened to intertwine. The biggest worry was not adapting to Jay Wulf’s life and memories. The biggest worry was in losing his own. He sat on his rented bed, in silence. For the first proper time he let himself think of his home, his real home. No, he didn’t “let” himself. He fought with himself, pushed away the visions of murder and escaped the house of blood and swords.

You might not ever see them again turned inevitably into a facing of the facts: you will never see them again.

There was a difference between being able to return home, and not wanting to, and of the question of returning home being thoroughly impossible.

It’s not just another city. It’s not just another country. It might not even just be another planet. It could be another galaxy, for all I know. Another . . . another universe. I don’t know anything. I remember things but I don’t know anything, it’s all alien, all of it, even, even me. I can’t get home. I can’t get home. I’m alone. I can’t get home. I’m alone.

He felt like he was going insane, that the madness and true bottomlessness of despair would never end, that he would be caught like this, falling ever down, into a succession of plugholes of infinite blackness. He felt pain, actual physical pain in his heart, and his nails drew blood from his skin. He tried to imagine himself, how he had looked in a mirror every day and saw that same old same old, and he couldn’t even remember that.

Jay approached the horses by the trough. He ignored all but the black stallion. The horse snorted softly as he put his hand out and stroked his flank. ‘Hey boy,’ Jay said. ‘Sorry it took me so long to remember.’ He mounted the horse bare, for a true Rathian needed no saddle, nor desired one. It was only then he realised that, naked as the horse was, he had not been hitched to anything, but had simply stood and waited patiently for his return.

Jay and his mount left Nohaven behind them, and, as expected, the tiger leaped into view. Its pitch black coat with vivid red stripes was a poor camouflage in the brightness of the day among the rocks and sands of the Appalian Wastes, and yet until it showed itself he had seen not a glimpse of its hide.

Jay and the horse were in sync, a pairing between man and animal unlike anything he had experienced before, and yet feeling wholly natural. More than natural. It felt right. He had never ridden a horse before, not during what he now thought of as his “other” life. But here, now, he felt whole, the horse and he a jigsaw that moved through the land as one beast, a two-headed centaur. The stallion’s red mane wisped and flew in the breeze as they galloped down a slope into a white valley. Jay laughed out loud, lifting himself up with his hands and feeling the hot-blooded thump of the horse’s heart. He rode and he rode, paying little attention to the wearing of the day, only to the colours that framed the two of them: a bold shadow racing against the violet-shaded whites and oranges of the Wastes, the sky so deliciously vivid and alien against the fantasy, this lurid Old West dream. Afternoon slid into evening, and still he drifted through the country, lost and yet not lost, not caring, alive with thrill and love for the sensation of true, boundless freedom, and for a world endlessly new; yet it felt as though he had seen and felt it all before, many times in his dreams.