The Dark Shroud

Her legs had always been so thin. Lorelei wasn’t sure why of all the things to think about at this moment, she would focus on something so vain. Although, she was grateful they were so spare as she hid behind the desk, her arms wrapped tightly around the thin stems that had served her well in her short life. Still, it was possible they could have been filled out just a little more with a curve of the calve and the roundness of the thigh.

Oh God, what was she thinking?

Lorelei shifted just a little, pushing the handle of the dagger so that she could reach it more easily, and adjusting the harness that carried her arsenal of toys so that from this crouched position everything she might use to escape could be more easily reached. As was her habit, she ran a finger over the fine tooling on the leather strap that crossed her chest, its intricacies focusing her thoughts as she steadied her nerves.

She heard the glass break, the window on the door of the room collapsing on itself as the sound of it shattering made her briefly scrunch her eyes closed. There was no doubt now that they had figured out that this room was where it might be hidden. She wasn’t entirely sure where it could be found. Her grandmother had been very nondescript about leaving her the legacy, and even though it was now hers to protect, she had no clue where to find it.

She realized it was going to be a very long night when they found her. She furrowed her brow as she winced a little, thinking of pointy things and dull thuds that would likely be the end of her days.

Even as she leaned over to peak around the corner of the heavy desk that sat in the middle of her grandmother’s den, she reached up to close her hands around the heart shaped locket that her Gran had been very adamant about during her last breaths. She could have said that she loved her granddaughter. She could have said how proud she was of the young warrior who was going to carry on the family legacy.

Instead, she had placed the locket into the young warrior’s hand, wrapping her hands around both her granddaughter's hand and the locket, and making her swear to never take it off. Now, all she could do was clutch at it as she leaned over to peer around the desk, this piece of jewelry still making no sense to her when she knew that the weapon hidden ever since the weather had collapsed and society had fell to ruin was somewhere here in this office where her grandmother had run the Science and Magic division of the new government. Instead, she was left clutching that piece of jewelry like it held all the secrets her Gran had failed to tell her, even though the locket had never revealed a single secret concerning the whereabouts of the weapon that was supposed to change it all.

The thing was, as she leaned over with the cold metal of the heart clutched in one fist as her other hand held her up to watch them tap the rest of the glass from around the door, it pulsed between her fingers, a warm flutter against the skin of her palm that made her look sharply down at it. Even as she heard the crunch of glass under boots, she felt the locket give her an alert, which oddly enough seemed to correspond with a rapid blink of a light underneath her Gran’s desk.

Ripping it from around her neck, she reached under, trying to see if the locket could connect to anything that might lead her to the prize they were all seeking. If she could just find it…

There!

She heard the click, setting off a set of gears that allowed for a small box to descend in front of her eyes, something that had been hidden in the grand old desk of ancient wood and stone that had sat in her grandmother’s office as long as she could remember.

The metal almost gleamed, and Lorelei was pretty sure there was a quick wink from it. Sliding the revolver from its hiding place, she finally understood the meaning of the locket. Carved into the handle was the heart shape that matched the exact shape of the locket, and clearly what she now understood to be the space for the power source.

Pulling the locket out of the lock, Lorelei affixed the shape into the hilt of the revolver, which wasn’t just a gun at all, but something that everyone was seeking to end this nightmare where the sun no longer gazed down at them from the sky. Once she had pushed the locket into the heart shaped hole, she heard a click, and had to hold her tongue as a small needle had come through the center of the heart and into her flesh, the droplets of blood from the palm of her hand being pulled into the cavity and filling it with a dark, glowing red liquidity.

The color of blood rolled in the heart-shaped cavity, a menacing gleam beginning to grow, even as she stood to face her attackers moments before they would have dragged her from her hiding space.

She fired once.

The light that sprung from the barrel struck the first invader, and an explosion of flesh shattered into tiny fragments, a mist of blood and bone. She fired again, a glowing arc of light escaping the gun and making a mist of the second brigand who had just come through the door. The third one met her eyes for a moment, then ran from the door, leaving her to uncock the gun and pull back, the ornate metal gleaming in the light and the blood still pulsing through its veins.

Not sure if she was alone, she squatted down once more behind the desk, cradling the gun between her hands and turning it over, taking in the glory of such a find. She now realized that it was a living thing, part machine and part creature that needed her blood to feed its fury. Even now as it cooled in the aftermath, somehow seeming to sense that the threat was momentarily gone, she felt its force of life pulsing through the finely etched filigree that covered its muzzle.

Taking another look around the desk to confirm that she had remained alone in the room, every crook and corner reminding her of her Gran, she stood up and went to the gas fueled sconce on the wall to the left. Slowly twisting the key, the light rose up and created an amber glow that brought out the rich color of the wood panels and the gleaming metal objects that littered the room. Her Gran had been one of the tops in her field, and when the sky had darkened and the world had no longer known the warmth of the sun, her Gran had found the keys to the parallel world that brought magic into their realm.

She had also known that so much power was dangerous and had found toys and tricks that would lead the way for humanity to work back to deserving the resources that had already been squandered by excess and neglect.

There was no doubt that she had been infuriatingly clever and had now left Lorelei to untangle her riddles and save the world.

Lorelei examined the gun in her hands. She had been trained to wield this weapon, and the stories she had been told had been with the intention of guiding her through the long night, where light was artificial, and warmth was a pulsing magic that had only barely saved humankind. The shield was merely held together with little more than spit and tape, or at least that was the saying. She wasn’t sure how this weapon would save them, but she was sure that her Gran had a design that she had to follow, or the world would soon be plunged into endless night, with no one to remember what had once been of their civilization. There would be no life left on a cold rock where the sun could no longer feed their existence once the shield was depleted of its energy.

The shroud of dark had come suddenly. The whole world had felt it as the particles of darkness had come, slowly boiling and spreading the dense clouds around the world until there was no more light and no more warmth. They had managed to sustain through the drops in temperature, some dying in the cold as others huddled in warm places until a solution could be found. It was her Gran, after studying the walls between dimensions, who found the secret to drawing magic into the world. It was magic, but it might as well have been science as it pushed at the particles of darkness until they were held high in the atmosphere, The same magic had given warmth and cycled between light and dark, even though how it came to understand that need was never told to her by her grandmother.

In her hands now lay the second biggest secret her grandmother had never told her. The weapon was supposed to fix all of it and give them back the sun.

She stared at it for some time. Then, taking her own pistol out of its side holster she slipped the revolver inside, even though its long muzzle extended well down her hip. She tugged on each of her leather gloves, one at a time, then stepped around the desk and strode toward the door.

She had decided that it was clearly a simple matter. Her Gran had been a little crazy, but the most complicated of puzzles had answers that were right in front of the eyes.

She felt the world hold still for a minute, realizing that the granddaughter of the woman who had created the shield was a shocking sight to the people on the street. She had hidden well since her Gran had died, and this was her first public appearance.

Fueled with the gelatinous swirl of her blood mixed with the magic that it held inside, the heart shaped locket began to pulse, growing warm and filling with light. She put her hand to the hilt of the weapon, feeling the outline of the locket against the leather covering her hand. Centering herself at the crossroads, a buggy pulling to an abrupt stop to the left and a motorcar whirring to a stop to the right, she paused to take a breath. The gun practically leapt out of the holster when it knew her intention as she made one smooth movement, lifting it and pointing it to the sky. As she pulled the trigger, she felt a sort of elation that filled her with hope and joy, the power inside the gun filling her body with the ecstasy of fulfilling its purpose.

As Lorelei faded from sight a shaft of light exploded up into the atmosphere, breaking through the shield that had provided the world with light and warmth, and entering into the swirl of dark particles that recoiled with an almost living horror. People screamed as the shield shattered, hands coming to their lips and the weight of their bodies no longer held by their legs. As they came to their knees, even as some hid their eyes in their hands, others kept looking up, seeing the pulse of red light as it consumed the black particles.

For the first time in a generation, the glowing shafts of sunlight fell to the pavement, striking it with warmth. Screams turned into gasps, then into cries of relief and shouts of celebration.