The Custodian

The group sprinted out of the chamber into a dark hallway thick with dust and decay. Gunfire, piercingly loud now, echoed from down the hallway to the left. Enmei saw a series of muzzle flashes light up the dark before his view was blocked by a soldier pushing him and screaming to MOVE, MOVE. 

They advanced in a tight pack – Matchlight first, Katsumi and Enmei a step behind. The lead soldier's pace should have been tough, but Enmei found his body took the strain effortlessly. Still, a hand clamped to his shoulder kept pushing him onward.

Their feet kicked up thick clouds of gray particles as they ran, caught and reflected by the flashlights secured to each soldier's rifle. Enmei was thankful for the mask. His eyes itched and stung. Faster. Faster. Katsumi almost tripped, but Enmei steadied her quickly, continuing to move.

She was breathing hard into her respirator, and now Enmei noticed that the soldiers were too, hissing inhales and exhales at a rate far faster than his own. Artificially enhanced, the Flesh Artisan had said. He saw the effects of that enhancement now.

Matchlight led the group right down a long straightaway. Broken windows looked out onto a ruined mess hall, then into a lab, then another. They were in a research facility of some kind, collapsed and abandoned.

"Our current dimensional trajectory is inbound, CTP 14.233," Matchlight called without slowing, looking at the screen on his forearm. "The Custodian will catch us by the next jump, if it doesn't catch us here. We're at twenty meters to breach."

A soldier on Enmei's right rushed forward to flank Matchlight, tapping at his own forearm datapad.

"Here!" Matchlight called, holding up a fist. The party lurched to a stop. The two soldiers in the rear trained their rifles back down the hallway. Stillness, save for the stirring dust.

"Ten seconds. Breach trajectory calculating," said the soldier at Matchlight's side.

Ten seconds of tense silence, punctuated only by heavy breaths. Katsumi had her eyes locked on the darkness behind them. Still nothing.

"Breach confirmed. Arming gauntlet."

The soldier flanking Matchlight raised his fist diagonally into the air ahead of the group. A device was mounted over his hand and forearm, a barrel protruding out the end.

There was a click as the soldier pulled the device's trigger. A rapid beeping, and the soldier shifted his head away from the gauntlet's trajectory, covering his face. Katsumi and Enmei both lurched backward as the two other soldiers shielded them with their bodies.

"Breaching."

Over his protector's shoulder, Enmei watched as the air in front of the device ruptured, fracturing into pieces and shooting outward like shards of glass. One shard sped past Enmei's face, slicing his cheek and drawing blood.

Huh?

Where once had been a dark hallway was now an open field of thick grass. Evening light from a red sun shone through the broken air, down onto the group.

 It was a portal. The device had smashed its way into another world, another dimension.

A dimensional rift.

The rift's edges were badly defined, with the edges of the hallway surrounding it still visible. From those dark edges, cracks of light began to show in the air, until the air broke further, separating into standalone shards – shards of what Enmei could only surmise to be reality itself, floating loose and aimless like lost stars.

The edges of the portal, along with each shard in the air, glowed with a sharp blue-white light.

Enmei was reminded of the so-called Amorphic Magicks the Flesh Artisan had hinted of. Somehow, a part of Enmei's mind recognized this strange scene. Not just the rift, but the floating iridescent glass itself . . . it felt familiar, somehow. Enmei felt the metal discs in his palms. Memories surged through him.

Him, bounding through a battlefield in massive leaps, body light as air, soaring over enemy trenches as gunfire arced upwards at him. In the sky above, squadrons of fighter jets were caught in spiraling dogfights. Enmei flew, landed amongst the impacts of artillery fire. Someone was beside him.

An enemy. A soldier, shrapnel embedded in his arm, staggering blindly through the open warzone. Enmei set a palm on the man's chest. The man seemed to notice him at last, looked up, then back down in horror as his chest imploded, fracturing into shards of glowing glass.

It was a shockwave, cast from Enmei's palm. From an outlet.

He had killed someone. No. I couldn't have. That wasn't me, it was someone else. These are someone else's memories.

I don't know what's real.

Someone slapped him. "Get yourself together, we need to run!" 

It was the soldier who had shielded him from the majority of the blast. Enmei saw the soldier that had shielded Katsumi glance back at them, a concerned look on her face. Matchlight and the man with the breaching device had already stepped through the portal.

"We don't have time for this, Orbital," Katsumi's guardian yelled. "What's the holdup?"

Orbital set a gloved hand to Enmei's cheek, wiping away the blood. "He got nicked with Glass – Must've fucked with his head. Can you stand, kid?"

Enmei did. He felt dizzy, but Orbital grabbed him and pushed him towards his companion.

"No time now," Orbital said, "I'll delay the Custodian, just make sure–"

The blade of a giant spear sliced through Orbital's face, throwing him like a ragdoll and pinning his head to the wall.

Enmei cried out as the other soldier shoved him through the portal. He hit the soft grass on the other side, then came the deafening cracks of several rifles firing simultaneously. Matchlight dragged him upright with one hand, the other on his gun. Recoil pressed the rifle to his shoulder as he fired full-auto back through the dimensional rift.

Enmei screamed, clamping his hands over his ears. Again he was dragged forward, this time by the soldier with the breaching gauntlet. Katsumi was beside him, the two of them stumbling away from the portal – running now, Matchlight turning to follow.

The spear. Orbital. It had been flung from a side passage. Whatever the Custodian was, it had flanked them somehow.

From the abandoned research facility on the other side of the portal came a jarring, mechanical roar.

"FOUL HERETICS. TODAY YOU FACE THE ARCHWARDEN'S JUDGEMENT. I AM YOUR EXECUTIONER."

Enmei's breath caught in his throat. Fear. Real, animalistic fear consumed him.

"Matchlight, where's our exit point?" The soldier with the gauntlet yelled, turning to fire once again.

"Fifty meters, I'm fetching our trajectory now."

They ran across the sunlit field, the air cool against their skin. Enmei could hear the roar of crashing waves somewhere behind them. They had emerged onto oceanside cliffs, running inland. Katsumi's breaths were turning to strained gasps through her respirator.

"Inbound, CTP 14.005." Matchlight called. "Right here!"

The four of them ground to a halt once more. Katsumi pried at her mask, but Matchlight caught her arm. "Not unless you want to die."

"Breach confirmed. Arming gauntlet."

Not fast enough. Enmei watched in stark terror as the monster they called the Custodian made its way through the rift. The shattered opening was small compared to it. It had to stoop to get through, its awkwardly elongated body folding in on itself, then unrolling, extending back to its full height. Vaguely humanoid, mechanical. A mechanoid. Like the Flesh Artisan. Except worse. So much worse.

It was a demonic thing, three times Enmei's height, with unnaturally thin limbs covered in overlapping chitinous plates like the shell of a beetle.

It approached them with the patient gait of a trained dancer, head lolling upwards and to the side. White steam plumed into the air as the creature exhaled in a long hot hiss from rows of needle-thin teeth. 

It leveled its head at them. It had no face, only a symbol – a simple crescent moon, painted in red where its eyes and nose should have been.

In its right hand was the long shaft of a black metal spear, and in its left was the soldier that had saved Enmei by pushing him into the portal.

Matchlight was firing again. The click of an empty chamber, the barest second to reload, and he continued the barrage. The Custodian cast a hand over its head, shielding its mouth, and most of the shots pinged harmlessly off its insectile armor.

"I TIRE OF THIS," the creature boomed. It flung the disembodied head to the side, twisted its spear and arched its body backwards, leveling the spear.

It's going to throw it, Enmei thought. 

"Breaching."

Matchlight grabbed tight to Enmei and Katsumi, carrying them downward into the grass. With a thundering crack the air behind them ruptured again. Luminescent Glass spat down at them, but Enmei didn't feel any break his skin. He looked up.

Into the hideous mouth of the Custodian. The monster squatted above them, saliva dripping from its sharpened teeth and falling steaming before Enmei's face.

"NOT A HERETIC, BUT A TRESPASSER . . . AND SO IS SHE."

Enmei froze in despair. How had it covered the ground so fast?

The thing drew backwards, lifting up its spear. There was a gurgling sound – the soldier with the breach gauntlet, impaled on the end of the long black blade. The spear had cut straight through his armored vest, and now he spasmed, cutting his fingers on the blade as he tried in vain to rip himself free. Blood flowed down the spear shaft, pouring over the custodian's long, delicate fingers.

"I AM THE WARRIOR ISHNUT OF THE PHENEX KINDRED. HERETICS AND TRESPASSERS, YOUR JUDGMENT IS NIGH."

The Custodian shifted its grip on the spear, and spun it backwards in a fluid movement. The blade glided clean through the soldier's neck and head, bisecting him from the waist up and letting his body fall mangled to the ground, spiraling blood. It splashed across Enmei's cheek and onto his fatigues.

Just know that when I and my colleagues die out there, we are dying for you. Matchlight's words. Now Enmei understood them.

But the Custodian wasn't finished. The spear lurched forward again, slicing down toward Enmei's head. It didn't connect. 

With a splintering crack the air above him became a sea of sparkling Glass.