That was it. I didn’t want to hear anything more about magic, ancient lore, or what happened to home.
Summoning a deep breath, I got to my feet and got the straps of my rucksack over my shoulders. As I stood, I got a whiff of the spicy soup bubbling in the cauldron. Too bad, my appetite was miles away.
I made it a few steps toward the entrance that led back to that room when Meriel rushed to my side and grabbed my arm.
“Stay, please, I know you must be feeling—”
“I’m done talking to you.”
“Oliv—”
“Meriel,” I said just shy of a yell. Taking a step back to control my voice, I faced her head-on. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t ever talk to me again.”
Her mouth locked shut for whatever she had ready, then a crushed look overtook her features. And with that, I turned and left.
The snake-women, or lamia, as Nolala said, parted away to give me a wide berth to the corridor. Looking blankly ahead, I padded across the cold stone and rounded the bend to the infinite hall.
“Oliver!” Meriel called from behind, the anguish in her voice bouncing off the walls in a distorted echo.
Without breaking step, I continued, even as she ran up.
She grabbed my shoulder, and by the time it processed, I had her pinned to the wall with my hand wrapped around her slender neck. I stopped myself before applying any serious pressure, but my hand started where it was. Her larynx flexed against the nape of my hand as she swallowed, and I could feel her elevated pulse as her steely eyes stayed wide.
“I’m so sorry,” she squeaked in a brittle voice. “I just want to help.”
Help? She wants to help me, but not the seven billion people on Earth? The fucking audacity.
“And why do you feel obligated to?” I proposed. “Because we fucked?” She swallowed heavily, and her eyes started to shimmer. “You think that makes us something? I’m a man, Meriel, and you threw yourself at me. What’d you think was going to happen?”
Her chin trembled, and the first streak over the scar under her right eye and down across her olive-toned cheek.
“The guy I buried next to your wizard friend, his name was Judge. And he was my friend. He wanted to help you guys when we had no reason to. Even with a mortal wound, he wanted to do good unto others, and his last request was for me to help you two.” I cinched my teeth and fought the urge to start squeezing until she turned blue. “I thought if I could keep you two alive, then his death wouldn’t have been so pointless. But now I know he died for nothing. He had a small chance, but he sacrificed it for the lives of two random chicks ransacking our world for their own good.”
I turned my head at the sound of shuffling feet. Fell watched on despondently; a few lamia had gathered some distance behind her. Forgoing any response, she just shuffled forward and took my free hand, lightly wrapping my fingers around her own throat.
“Would this make you feel better?” she asked.
My gaze practically burned holes in her face. Letting both my arms fall, I stepped back and considered the pair. The fox-woman’s face was as blank as a wall, and the elf cried freely, silently. There were hundreds—thousands of things I wanted to say to them, things that I want to cut deeper than a honed edge. But they didn’t even deserve that.
Staring for a few seconds longer, I said nothing and continued down the corridor. Only my footsteps echoed in the hall as the girls remained where they were.
When Nolala escorted me, I subconsciously counted how many rooms down I was from that big room. All the little cells were identical and barren except for the bedrolls. It probably didn’t matter which room, but I felt compelled to the twentieth room on the right. Twenty was a nice, neat, even number.
The first thing I did was set my bag down. The next thing was popping in a fresh magazine and charging a round in my rifle. That one woman, Sanvi, had been messing with it, but it was still clean, and the action functioned smoothly. Shouldn’t have to clean it. That did beg the question of where my other shit was—my other Beretta, to be exact. The spare pistol parts were in the other rucksack. And my boots. Where were my damn boots?
I should’ve asked for my other shit, and that was still doable, but I don't want to see them. Any of them. For the rest of my life, if possible.
The light in one corner of my room faded, the winked off. Moments after the first one, two more did the same. Staring at the last corner, I watched as the light dulled, and then died. The weak light from the hall hardly illuminated anything three feet from the doorway.
With nothing else to do, I rolled onto my side and brought my rifle in close, taking stock.
The first encounter with lamia cost me an additional rifle magazine, putting the total down to one hundred and eighty rounds. Assuming that those two hadn’t abandoned the other rucksack and that my gear other gear was somewhere here, that’ll put the count for my pistol at seventy-five rounds.
I don’t have my knife, either.
I ran through the count again. And again. And several more times after that. Senseless facts and things I’ve learned through the years refused to manifest as I stared blankly into the wall. Something, anything. God, what I wouldn’t do for a fucking puzzle.
To keep calm, I closed my eyes, letting the darkness bury all other thoughts, and started to count backward from five thousand. No. Ten thousand.
Forty-five thousand.
As the numbers ticked down, everything else fell away. And then the numbers faded away.
✽✽✽
Opening my eyes slowly, I felt a tingle in the back of my neck. Without the sun, there was no way of telling how long I slept. I felt groggy, my head throbbed, and my stomach had the stinging pang of hunger. A few hours, maybe. Not like it was important.
“What do you want?” I asked.
To confirm the presence felt, I heard what sounded like someone dragging something, then a quiet clink of something being set on the floor.
“I’ve brought you soup and bread,” a gentle, unfamiliar voice said. They moved away to one corner, and then a soft bloom of light filled the room.
Sitting up, I sat my rifle across my lap and turned to face the visitor—the Chieftain's daughter, Nuna.
She caught my eyes, then looked away to busy herself with the sconce in the other corner. With nothing in her hand, she reached up to the mounted fixture and touched something, then it came to life with light.
Looking away, I saw Sanvi leaning against the doorway; her powerful arms crossed under her heavy assets. With a weak smile, she gave a nod.
Nuna winded back to where the bowl was, the snake portion coiling beneath—her way of taking a seat, I guess. There was no bitter inflection to her earlier tone, and the nasty expression was absent, too.
Growing tense from my stare, she looked away and made a gesture to the bowl and small disc of what looked like flatbread. Naan was the proper term, I think. Or was it one of those hard to pronounce Indian words?
I was hungry, so I took the bowl and started on the fishy broth. About time to get something in me with some flavor for once.
“I’m sorry,” Nuna said meekly as I ate.
I swallowed what was in my mouth. “For what?”
Her gaze clouded, and she opened her mouth but shut it a second later. “Um… about your home,” she said uncertainly. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry for your loss.”
I set the empty bowl down with an audible clack. “Did you open the gates of hell and doomed my home?”
Nuna stared back with a slack face. She looked over to Sanvi, who was just as expressionless and then stared into her lap. “N-no.”
“Then why are you sorry?” Seeing her struggle for a response, I shook my head. “I don’t need any sympathy; keep any apologies to yourself. What happened happened, and it can’t be changed. I’m not in the mood to discuss the nonmaleficence with the way your cosmic alliance or whatever handles its decision-making process. If there’s nothing else, go away.” My gaze flicked to Sa
nvi. “Both of you.”
Nuna’s lips bunched as the flames of anger began to grow, but she doused it with a great breath through her nostrils.
“There is more,” Nuna stated with forced calm. “All that I ask is for you to spare me some of your time and accompany me.”
The gut reaction was to deny her, but then what would I do? Sulk? Not much was going on in this barren room— something to keep me busy. Busy was always good. There was still the mystery of my missing gear.
However…
“And her?” I asked, nodding towards Sanvi.
“Oh, ah, Sanvi just happened to be…”
“Making sure the Chieftain’s blood stays safe,” Sanvi answered. “You’ve gained my respect for slaying a Prowling Terror, but my trust remains out of your reach.” Sanvi raised her chin, giving a playful smirk that made the threatening gleam in her eyes brighter.
“I appreciate the honesty,” I said as I came to my feet, slinging my rifle. “And Prowling Terror?”
“The great, dark beast you’ve killed. Monstrous things, hunting at night to catch prey in their sleep. Very difficult to kill.”
A little on the nose with the name. But damned if it wasn’t accurate.
I turned my eyes to Nuna. “Well, lead the way, Princess.”
Her nostrils flared as she struggled not to glare. Uncoiling, she stepped out with me following, Sanvi slithering from the rear. Instead of going towards where the big room was, turned right to where the corridor seemed to go ad infinitum. We passed numerous rooms, all identical to mine, but they all ended abruptly, and it was just solid stone on either side as the long, silent stroll continued. It was subtle, but I noticed the floor sloping more and more as the minutes ticked on.
The overhead light sources ended, but the path continued into the darkness. Nuna looked over her shoulder when she didn’t hear me walking anymore. My knuckles turned white around my rifle sling, and I grew hypersensitive to Sanvi’s presence. I never did switch the safety on.
“No need to be alarmed,” Nuna assured. “This is part of what I want to show you.”
Burying the uncertainty, I continued to follow her, the light growing more scant after every step. Soon there was darkness, and I had to walk with my hand trailing along the wall to keep from losing my bearing. Walking in total darkness with the sound of only slithering made me feel like some dumb character from a horror movie.
After some time, the details of the walls felt rougher and more uneven. Without vision, my sense of touch picked up more nuances of the unusual surface until my mind created a picture, an ominous picture: a never-ending and winding wall snakes.
My hand slid off the wall and reached into empty space. Sanvi reached out from behind to stop my misstep from turning into a fall.
“Tread carefully in the dark,” she warned in a smoky voice. She slithered closer and stood off to my side, pinching my shirt and giving me the appropriate tug in either direction. Difficult to say, but it felt like we were winding a lot more as if navigating a maze.
I didn’t like having the lamia so close, but I didn’t like the idea of getting lost in the dark even more. That did raise one question: how the hell were the two women navigating?
“There was darkness before there was ever light,” Nuna announced. The suddenness and quiet tone was sounded more like a ghostly whisper. “Without the sovereignty of light, the darkness birthed some of the most monstrous and beastly creatures no eyes should ever see. The first and most devious, heinous, and wretched of all monsters from the abyssal void were the Schlangüsters—shadow serpents of vile gluttony.
“All they existed for was to scour the void and consume all, especially each other. If one didn’t consume, then it would be consumed. The void was nothing more than a slithering mass of serrated scales and cavernous maws dripping with bile and viscera. Stretches that no form of time could fathom passed, all while the Schlangüsters grew to horroring proportions, sizes that would make the cosmos minuscule in comparison.
“It appeared that such a bleak existence would continue until only one Schlangüster would remain, where it would then devour all the lesser monsters. Eating until it was alone, eating until there was nothing left so it would be left to starve. Perhaps it was mere chance, or a logical end, or maybe divine intervention, but one Schlangüster would break the cycle and bring forth the light.”
As if to emphasize her point, light began to permeate around what looked like a sharp corner ahead. The light felt harsh when we rounded the bend, so I hand cover my eyes until they adjusted. It took a moment of blinking to get the definition back, but when clarity came, I saw that the walls and ceiling were of some onyx stone. Every square inch featured terrifyingly realistic carvings of serpent bodies entwined around each other. Ugly heads jutted out from the walls like they were frozen mid-snap.
The snakes may be carvings, but I couldn’t suppress the ominous chill in the soles of my feet while we progressed. The end opened out into a space that was holy in comparison to the nightmarish hall.
Nuna crossed into the expansive, circular space. The floors, walls, and ceiling featured elaborate etchings and carvings on every inch. The scaly potion of her body moved soundlessly over the manicured and polished floor, and she stopped about twenty feet in, turning her head up to the centerpiece of the unusual space.
Set in the ceiling was a carving of a great white serpent that looked as though it were carved from a single piece of pearl, the milky iridescence putting out an ethereal glow that illuminated the room. The immaculately and ultra-realistic carving was about forty feet in circumference, and it was posed in a perfect circle as the serpent was eating its own tail. Within the inner portion were more carvings of the lamia set in a circle with joined hands.
I came to a stop beside Nuna, Sanvi on my other side. Together, we stared up stone mural in sovereign silence for a spell.
“The Schlangüster to break to cycle of was known Yetzirah—The Serpent of Infinite Selflessness,” Nuna said distantly. “Being of the mightiest of Schlangüsters, Yetzirah managed to weave around a great portion of the abyss unmolested. Spending another several eons, Yetzirah circled the abyss until getting to the end of its own tail, by which it then consumed due to the weight of its glutinous sins from times earlier. The more the Great Serpent ate of itself, the more of it would die. However, at the same time, the more it would grow, the more she would grow.
“Scales of the blackest black were broken down and regrown into the purest white that they shone even in the deepest recesses of the abyss. Such a noble act moved the other lesser Schlangüster within Yetzirah’s inner sanctuary, so they embraced and bathed in her radiance. The other monsters within the sacred space would follow suit, as well. The first lesser Schlangüsters would model themselves in Yetzirah’s likeness, bringing forth the earliest lamia. Other monsters rebirthed into other species, each with their own traits, but all united and blessed by the light. The space Yetzirah secured in the abyss is what became of the universe, and those blessed by the light being the first inhabitants.”
Nuna fell silent after reciting her lore, her gaze transfixed to the stone monument of what was supposed to be The Serpent of Infinite Selflessness.
My neck started to go stiff from staring, so I cracked once on the left. The sound was like a bolder splitting in the still space, which earned me a look from either woman.
“Great story and all, but what the hell is that supposed to do with anything?” I asked dryly.
Nuna’s eyes narrowed, and I saw parts of her face twitching from desperately trying to hold back a scowl. Remembering where she was, Nuna lowered her head and summoned a deep breath.
“The point,” she said costively like she worried about an accidental slip, “is that lamia came from origins of great compassion due to the sacrifice Yetzirah endured. We cannot be permitted to exist if we lived singular and selfish lives. That is why lamia can only produce daughters, so we embrace others beyond ourselves. Our people accepted the One th
ousands of years ago, but many still adhere to the belief of The Great Serpent because of the sentiment of acceptance and selflessness. It was through acceptance and embracing others that have saved our world so many times in history. And I’m so…”
She stopped herself from apologizing again and fell silent. Nuna turned to face me, her mouth hanging open as her brain struggled with the next couple words. She clutched one arm and fought to keep from looking away from me.
“Yetzirah was a monster of darkness before she grew into herself. That can’t be denied.” She looked to the dark tunnel we came from. “The Null are the monsters who still thrive beyond Yetzirah’s sanctuary; we all came from them. And we can all return to them if we reject fail to uphold the light.” Her purple eyes met mine again. “We’re not perfect, Oliver. None of this is,” she said, gesturing to space around her. “It sounds hypocritical for me to talk about compassion and the sanctity of life when your world fell into desolation. Many of my sisters fell during the initial onslaught, but what you lost… I—I just…”
My patience was dangerously thin, and I felt compelled to snap at her, but I got sidetracked from Sanvi. With slow and gentle care, her hands reached over my sides and she crossed them over my stomach, drawing me in until I felt her firm breasts mashed against my back. The feeling her nostrils drawing in air tickled my ear, and her warmth stood out from the chilly chamber.
“What Nuna is trying to say is that you’re not alone,” she said in that tepid voice of hers. “The Isusi share everything: food, shelter, love, and sorrow. Your pain is our pain, and we’ll embrace it with you. We’ll help you.”
Nuna nodded. Taking a moment of nervous consideration, she slowly slithered forward and pressed herself into my front. The two snake-women sandwiched me in a strong embrace, their unique scents mixing and wafting into my nostrils. Nuna was so close that I could feel her heart pounding into my chest.
Heart of the Resonant- the Soldier's Tale Page 14
