by Lucas, Naomi
A gnarled groan escaped his lips, and he collapsed back onto the ground.
When he reopened his eyes a moment later, the torment bursting through his chest had dulled to a throbbing ache. He found his battleaxe again and gripped it tight. This time when he slowly began to rise, he made it to his hooves, only wavering slightly from side-to-side. He clenched his left hand but found it unusable, nearly limp with weakness.
Astegur turned toward the temple; the centaurs were breaking the last of the pieces that blocked their path and were stumbling forward. The thralls at his side moved with him.
He pointed his axehead forward and rasped, “Attack.”
The thralls breezed by him like a gust of air and swarmed the first centaur.
“Behind!” a horsebeast yelled.
Astegur lumbered up the first temple step, hunched over, as the thralls moved from the first horse to the next. By the time he made it up the last step, there were only three centaurs remaining, stabbing with their spears, with their backs to the broken barricade, screaming out for reinforcements.
Several arrows flew by his side, one grazed his skin, two more embedded into the muscles of his back, and he fell heavily to his knee. He gritted his teeth and forced himself back up, wobbling forward. What he at first thought were six thralls working their way up the centaur’s spears were only three when his vision cleared itself.
“Take down the minotaur!” another one of them screamed, but it was too late.
Astegur braced his shoulder against the stone wall and roared.
Fire erupted from his throat again, straight through the thralls, melting the skin from their bones, up the spears that held them off, and over the centaurs. It caught the scattered blisterbark and burst everything into brilliant flames.
More screams filled his ears.
He didn’t wait. Pushing himself off the sidewall, he walked through the fire that had incinerated the broken crates and caught the edges of vilevines that hadn’t moved fast enough. He rounded the burning corpses as much as he could and raised his axe to break the last of the barricade to pieces. The fire licked at his flesh, the tip of his horns, and singed the fur on his legs and the edges of his loincloth. The flames sparked the blisterbark on the other side as it fell to embers at his hooves, lighting up the normally gloomy passageway beyond.
The sounds from outside died down as he caught sight of Calavia lying in a pool of blood on the other end. He fought his way forward, fear and unease seizing his soul as he made his way to her side. Pure and tainted blood alike filled his nostrils as he fell to his knees beside her.
Her eyes were open wide, frightened and staring at him as he bent over her.
“Calavia,” he rasped, reaching his right hand toward her face to wipe her plastered hair from it. “We did well.”
She gazed up at him, her throat moving, as if she was trying to respond. Astegur leaned forward as her lips moved. Her breath was cold and weak against his skin.
“She’s dead.”
It took him a moment to realize she spoke of her mother. “Yes, she’s dead.”
Calavia’s eyes closed as tears budded her lashes. He continued to pet her forehead as she came to terms with that knowledge.
Weariness overcame him as he waited, unsure if she would even live through the next several minutes—if he would live. It pained him to realize their time together had been so short. When she reopened her eyes, his hearts beat with the excitement of having another few moments left in her presence.
Her eyes dipped down, and he followed her gaze, lifting her hand from where it lay on her lower stomach. A wound much like his own revealed itself. His throat tightened.
“It will be okay,” he said, petting her cheek, bringing her gaze back up to him.
She nodded and dropped her shaking hand.
Astegur watched her for another moment, then lowering himself closer to her side, reached down to pull the wax out of his chest. Bloodied and loose in his hand, he pressed it to the wound in her stomach. A weak moan escaped her lips.
“See, hag? All will be well.”
Astegur dropped the rest of his way beside her and closed his eyes, listening to the noises outside. The screams of centaurs, the wails of the remaining thralls, the distant roar and blaze of the bonfires, and finally Calavia’s shallow breaths and heartbeat. She moved at his side, and he nuzzled her arm in submission.
“All will be okay,” a firm, feminine, familiar voice sounded in his ear. “Astegur?” the voice said louder, and he was shoved onto his back.
He forced his eyes back open with one last spark of strength. His mouth parted as Calavia rose over him. His eyelids fell shut.
“Astegur, wake up!”
He lifted his right arm, but his strength failed, and it dropped back down.
“Get the human witch!” another yelled.
Astegur managed to open his eyes again and look up at her, now over him, staring at something beyond his view.
“Calavia,” he rasped. “Run.”
She turned to him and shook her head. “And live when everything I love is dead?”
“Run!” he ordered, louder this time. He knew there were other, hidden, smaller cracks and holes in the walls where she could escape. If she left now, as the centaurs focused on him, she could get away.
She startled upright and looked back down the passageway again, and when she rose to her feet, a calmness overcame him, knowing she would finally listen to him. That she would survive.
That he had done his job, completed another quest, and kept his oath.
He stared up at her, picturing this terrible moment and capturing it in his skull to last him for an eternity...or at least for the next several minutes as he lay in wait for his death. The edges of her sodden dress, wet with blood, with sweat, brushed his skin and dripped down upon his skin. A minor comfort, a final touch to bring him comfort for the remainder of his life. He groaned and clenched his jaw, raising his hand to touch her dress one last time before he never saw her again.
But when he was about to caress his fingers over the bottom edge of it, she moved away.
Farewell, Calavia.
Astegur groaned again, exhaling to expel her scent from his nostrils, to alleviate the heavy pressure in his chest. The heat in his belly had cooled in his weakness, and no smoke trailed up from his mouth.
Damn you, Vedikus.
He closed his eyes once more and waited.
And waited.
The hollers stirred him. They were closer now, the fire from the blisterbark having died back. He spread out his fingers at his side, searching for his axe. He found the edge when a powerful gust of air rushed over him.
His eyes snapped open to see Calavia standing over him, her hair flying forward, her mouth hanging open. She released a scream.
He flinched, feeling a terrible pressure build around him, a thick, wet, heavy swirl of magic that coursed over his flesh and settled on it. The noises vanished, drowned out by it, consumed by its force, and his mouth slackened.
Faint, feminine words could be heard among the shrill sounds. Offerings to the mist, sacrifices promised, and as his vision began to fade, the power around him built to a crescendo, capturing him up in the growing frenzy.
And then he was rising, moving, using his body without meaning too. A chilling numbness engulfed him as Calavia’s magic wrapped around him like shackles, not unlike those she placed on him many days prior.
He tried to stop it, but his body wasn’t responding to his commands, it responded to something else… A nearly mindless, rumbling growl tore out of his mouth as his shaft primed, lubricated, and straightened.
Then he was on Calavia, behind her, his ears filled with words she sang, words only he could hear. Gripping her dress with his right hand, he ripped it from her body and forced her to her knees in front of him, facing away from him. He fought the compulsion, fought himself, but his will was no longer his own.
She continued to chant as Astegur pushed her d
own to her elbows, kicked her legs apart, and bent over her. Even if he could control his body, he wouldn’t want to stop. With one devastating thrust, he buried himself deep. He paused for a moment before he fucked her wild. Raw. Powerfully, deliciously, wrong.
The last thing he saw, as the room flooded with the living, cursed energy of the mist, was Calavia being swallowed by the miasma. Then it covered him too, drowning him within its depths.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Calavia gazed up at the ceiling of her altar room, lying flat on the stone floor where she’d fallen unconscious some time ago.
A storm raged outside.
She’d awoken to it, to the lightning and thunder, to the fury of it blasting the outside walls of her home, as if it wanted nothing more than to wipe it from the world.
I summoned it. The weight of her power brimmed at the tip of her tongue and the ends of her fingers. It teased and oiled her skin, making her want to simultaneously rub it off and play with it to see how far the slick could go, but every time she mustered the courage to try, a terrible heaviness settled over her, stopping her. The lightning would blast the ground outside, making her temporarily deaf, or the thunder would make the temple tremble, and dust and small stones would fall around her and Astegur’s forms.
Everything she held dear, everything she had ever cared for, loved, or held precious and sacred, was being destroyed all around her. Everything but her champion.
A small smile formed on her lips as she slid her hand across the floor to grip his.
The contact eased the excitement of the curse now running through her veins, relaxed the oily feeling she couldn’t quite banish from her mind.
She listened as the tempest lashed and reformed her quiet, dead world, as it built and then died, and as time continued to pass around her, she listened until it disappeared altogether. Night had come and gone, and it wasn’t until hours after the storm had gone that she rose from where she lay.
Calavia looked down at herself, now naked, completely healed of all her wounds...all except one. She gently touched the scar over her stomach. She glanced at the room, at the passageway beyond, and finally settled her eyes on Astegur’s slumbering form.
There was no more blood. Hers, her mother’s, Astegur’s, or those that had died here. It was as if it had never been there to begin with. Even the copper, pungent scent of it was gone.
The mist had eaten it all.
Her pure blood was gone as well.
My humanity. It was the price she had paid, the price the mist had demanded of her—it was the price for stealing her mother’s power. Calavia shivered, afraid what the cost of such a thing would ultimately mean. What it would do to her.
She knelt at Astegur’s side and checked his wounds. They no longer bled but were raw and deep. His breathing was labored. She leaned down and placed a soft kiss on his mouth, but he did not wake, so she left his side and sought out what remained of her stores of herbs and medicine. She returned to him and cleaned his hurts, plugging them with a paste that did not include her wax. As she went to clean and dress his left arm, her brow furrowed, and her lips pursed. The gash was deeper, messier than the rest, and her fingers shook as she touched it to get a closer look.
His skin was opened up straight down through the thick, corded muscles of his arms, all the way down to the bone. Calavia leapt up and darted back to her stores, searching out the right materials she needed to sew the wound closed. And with the hours that followed, she carefully mended his upper arm.
When she was done, she sat by his side until his breaths evened out. She found him a threadbare blanket, covered him up, and watched him sleep.
Later that day, when the darkness began to return, she went to the back of her altar room, where the vilevines were at their thickest, and carefully untangled them, reaching behind the mass to pull out one of her precious vials. She didn’t know if she needed it, or if she was now susceptible to thralldom, but she gulped it down anyway.
As the mixture settled in her belly, she turned to the passageway and looked down it. On the other end was a pile of corpses she could not muster the courage to approach. After all that had happened, she feared that if she addressed them, all the nightmares would come crashing back down on her and the peaceful quiet would vanish. That this was all a cruel trick.
Calavia swallowed weakly and returned to Astegur, lowering herself back down at his side. She lifted the edge of the blanket and shuffled under it, careful not to disturb his rest. His heat soothed her heart, and she quickly found sleep beside him.
Another day came and went as she remained by his side, only venturing out of the room to make broth, clean and dress herself, and bring what small comforts she could. Each time she woke, she checked his wounds, touched his flesh, and held him against her, whispering her thoughts in the mist around them. It thickened the air even more each time she rose, further reminding her that her humanity was gone.
By the third day, as she bathed Astegur with a rag and a bowl of tepid water, his eyes shot open to meet her own.
Her hand faltered mid-stroke. Calavia bit down on her tongue and tried to find the words to tell him all that had happened, that his arm would never fully heal, but the words refused to come out. Instead, her eyes flooded with tears.
He raised his right hand slowly and touched her chin with the backs of his fingers.
And without a sound to break the quiet of Prayer, she mounted his body and chose to forget.
* * *
The following day, she trailed behind Astegur down the central passageway, over the corpses that had begun to smell, and stepped out into the settlement for the first time since the centaurs had surrounded it.
“Look,” he ordered when she remained hidden behind him.
She clutched onto the leather strap of his belt and slowly moved forward, forcing her eyes upward to take in the devastation.
First her gaze was caught by the blanket of fog that shrouded everything. Nothing disturbed it but for the natural critters that lived in the swamp. Her skin grew cold just by acknowledging it. The broken houses and huts that lined the main pathway into Prayer were gone, even the supports that had resisted time and rot had been wiped away. The only indication that something had ever been there was the gray foundations of stone directly below clear water.
Nearly everything was beneath the swamp water now—even the raised land. The steps of her temple were submerged, leaving the central temple as the last structure above the waterline. The wood stakes that had been placed popped out here and there like slivers. In and among them were the dead, floating pale and bloated.
She looked for her mother among them but could not find anything resembling her body. She took a step forward. “Are you certain she is gone?” She had asked him the same question several times since he awoke, and his answer was always the same.
He pointed to the space directly before them, several feet out. “She saved my life. They tore her off their general and removed her from this world.” He grunted as if the words he said made him uncomfortable. “There will not be anything left, not after this.” He waved his right arm.
Calavia looked over the ground he indicated but saw nothing but a few dead centaurs. She didn’t want to believe that her mother was gone. That she had failed, had failed in restoring her life, had failed in protecting her. She rested her hand against her scared stomach, but did not feel betrayal, only unease. Calavia took another step forward to get a closer look when Astegur’s hand settled on her shoulder.
“No. It is unsafe,” he said. “There are many dangerous things in the water, fallen weapons only being one of them.”
“Do you think they are all dead?”
“I do not know now, but I will by tonight.”
She turned back to him. “You’re going out there?” Her stomach curled at the thought.
“The corpses need to be taken care of or else they may rise again.”
They discovered that the barriers had fallen, that the st
orm she caused had destroyed everything, even the dozens of centaurs that had been on the outskirts, including the bonfires, and even farther out, their camps. Those that did not die by fighting had died by lightning or drowning.
But the worst deaths of all were suffered by those that had survived the battle, by those that had fled, who had been poisoned by her wax where the stakes had cut their flesh. Huge, wet growths of vines had sprouted out from their bodies, and she was happy that she did not have to witness it when Astegur put them out of their misery and slit their throats.
Seeing their corpses dragged into Prayer, where they were to be burned, was more than enough for her.
That evening, Calavia waited at the top of the steps as Astegur checked the corpses, one-by-one, gathering the items of value they had upon them and dragging them with his good hand to the watery center of what used to be her home. As the pile grew higher, the need to leave the place she had so desperately tried to save increased. And when the first of her thralls, the old townsfolk, were placed atop the mound, she had to look away.
Nothing but her and Astegur remained alive in Prayer, and she realized nothing ever really had been alive here. Not the townsfolk, not her mother, and especially not her.
The dead could not be brought back to life. The laws of this world could not be reversed. As the evening deepened, she knelt at the top of the temple steps and said her goodbyes.
And in the early hours of the morning, with a bag of Enios sea salt Astegur had found, she watched as he lit the corpses on fire, and together they watched them burn.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Several days after the fire, they prepared to make their journey into the mountains. Astegur was feverishly ready to leave this dark spot in the world for good and finally have Calavia safe behind a barrier of his own making.
