Halve Human

by Stephanie Fazio

  The reeking smell of urine becomes almost unbearable as a small puddle trickles out from beneath the prisoner curled beside me. One of the guards reaches a gloved hand down. I feel the displacement of air as he reaches for me.

  Not yet, a voice in my head screams.

  Almost too quick to see, Dayne shoves the prisoner beside me until he falls against the guard.

  There is a squeak, and then a howl, as the guard’s gloved hand drags the other man to his feet.

  “You’ll be the appetizer,” the guard announces.

  “No, p-p-please,” the man begs.

  “I got the entrée,” the other guard announces farther down the wall. He holds another weeping, struggling prisoner like a fish dangling from a line.

  “And what about some dessert?” The guard nearest me swoops down and grabs the man beside Dayne by his armpits.

  “I’ve already pledged allegiance to the Dark God!” the man shrieks.

  “Well then, say your prayers,” the Dusker replies. “Because you’ll be meeting Him for judgment soon enough.”

  “No!” The man reaches out his bony fingers, grasping at nothing. “I know where to find the Solguard leader. I can lead you straight to her.”

  Fear flashes through me. Who is this man? I look at Dayne, but he just puts a finger to his lips and shakes his head.

  “Shut your trap.” There is a dull thud as the guard’s boot connects with the prisoner’s ribs. “The Supreme doesn’t need filthy scum telling her what she already knows.”

  I don’t have time to worry about what any of this might mean for Aunt Jadem.

  As the three prisoners twist and turn in their captors’ grips—pleading, threatening, and sobbing—the rest of the prisoners follow the guards, pulling Dayne and me with them. Someone pushes me from behind and I find myself at the front of the crowd. A rickety wooden balustrade is all that separates me from the endless darkness beyond.

  Instinct tells me to keep back from the edge, even though it’s impossible to tell how far the fall might be. One of the guards plucks a candle stub from the ground. As he holds it up over the fence, the prisoners around me erupt into raucous shouts. They stomp the ground with their bare feet and begin to chant.

  “Wormy! Wormy! Wormy!”

  “Up and over,” a guard says.

  The chanting stops, and it’s as if every person in the cave is holding his breath.

  The guards toss the prisoners over the fence one by one like they’re nothing more than empty sacks.

  I clap a hand over my mouth to silence my cry. The wood groans as everyone presses forward.

  There are splashes as the men hit the bottom. I can hear the scraping and whimpering as they try to claw their way back up to the top. There is the sound of loose dirt and gravel sliding down. For a moment, everything goes quiet.

  And then there’s another sound, this one unfamiliar. It’s a great sucking, like the belly of an enormous snake is ploughing its way through a muddy riverbank.

  Something white cuts through the darkness below.

  “’E’s here!”

  I grip the rail to still my shaking hands. That thing, the wormkill, is as tall as Vlaz, and many times longer. The giant, shapeless white blob moves slowly, lazily. It stops, swiveling what must be its head back and forth on its fleshy body.

  And then it lunges.

  The wormkill’s maw is open, displaying a set of double fangs that shine luminous in the darkness. There is a cry that sounds like “help,” and then the beast’s fangs slam shut. All three of the men are gone.

  There’s a sigh as the prisoners around me release a collective breath.

  The wormkill slithers backward, making the same disgusting, sucking noise as its belly cuts through the filth beneath it.

  “Well,” one of the guards rubs his hands together. “Same time, same place, tomorrow, shall we say?”

  The other guards laugh as they stomp out of the chamber. Almost as an afterthought, one of them unslings a bag from his shoulder, opens the drawstring, and overturns it on the ground. The smell of rank meat mingles with the stench of body odor. My stomach turns even as the other prisoners race for the food.

  The guards amuse themselves by watching as the prisoners rip and tear at each other for their share. Dayne and I hang back. When I glance at my brother, I see his face is as gray as the Duskers’ cloaks. With a pang, I realize he’s living through this madness for the second time.

  Eight years. My brother was down here for eight years.

  I try not to think about Dayne being forced to fight for his share of the rotten meat. I don’t want to know what he had to do to avoid the wormkill for eight years. When I look at him again, I realize I can’t possibly imagine what it must have meant for my brother to agree to come back here.

  If I had known, I never would have pushed for it. How could Aunt Jadem have let him come, knowing what it would be like for him?

  Barely a minute goes by before the meat is gone and the prisoners have slunk back into their shadowed corners. Two prisoners are left behind, their bodies contorted and crumpled next to the empty food sack.

  The heavy iron grate clangs shut behind the guards.

  CHAPTER 19

  Wake up, Hemera.”

  My throat feels like a thousand tiny fires have been lit inside. I had been dreaming about a man-eating worm in a black tunnel. When I realize where I am, and that my dream was far too close to my reality, I sit up so fast my head spins. I grab instinctively for my sling before remembering I’m weaponless.

  Dayne is standing between me and the other prisoners, a living shield. I jump to my feet, guilty. He should have been the one resting.

  Before I can say anything, the sound of metal screeching against stone in the background cuts through the eerie quiet. The other prisoners are already pushing and shoving each other to get as far away as possible from the wooden fence.

  There isn’t enough time for me to steady my shaking limbs before the light of the Duskers’ lantern floods the tunnel.

  The whimpering begins as the two guards tramp into the chamber.

  They walk slowly, probably to prolong the anticipation and misery. But as they come closer, it’s obvious something is wrong with one of them. He’s leaning against the other, who is dragging him across the dirt. The Duskers make their way into the center of the chamber, and then the taller of the guards, the one holding up the other, does something no Dusker guard would ever do in the presence of a non-Dusker. He takes off his hood.

  Her hood.

  Aunt Jadem, sweat beading across her temples, shifts her arm to better support the dead weight of the Dusker.

  A sob of relief is cut short partway through my lips.

  “We have to go. Right now.” Aunt Jadem’s free hand makes an urgent gesture.

  “What’s happened?” Dayne demands, finding his voice first.

  Aunt Jadem’s mouth is pressed in a tight line. “He’s already been missed.”

  “Were you exposed?” Dayne is pulling me to my feet.

  “Just help me with him,” is her only reply.

  Aunt Jadem drags Hendrix to the fence.

  The other prisoners, who have been gawking at Aunt Jadem and the bound and gagged Dusker, awaken from their stupor. Moving as stealthily as they had when Dayne and I were first brought to the dungeon, they surround us. The prisoners clutch their makeshift weapons. Their hollow eyes gleam with desperation.

  “What the ’ell you doin’?”

  Morey, the one who threatened Dayne and me when we were first brought to the dungeon, stands in front of Aunt Jadem. A dozen or more of the prisoners gather behind him. They look like some kind of skeleton army.

  “I’m the Solguard leader and friend of all who oppose the Duskers.” Aunt Jadem’s eye shifts to the dark tunnel once, twice. Her meaning is plain: we have to get out of here. But Morey has planted his feet and shows no sign of backing down.

  “If you’re our frien’,” Morey waves a bony hand at the
other Dusker, “then who the ’ell is tha’?”

  “Hendrix.” Jadem pulls the hood off the man. “The Dusker Supreme’s second-in-command.”

  Even with the gag stuffed in his mouth and the trickle of blood that has smeared and dried across his forehead, it would be impossible not to notice how perfect he is.

  Hendrix’s pale, muscled body looks like it was cut from marble rather than made of bone and flesh. His hair, a rich brown, falls in perfect, silky ringlets down to his shoulders. And his eyes really do look like glowing emeralds.

  Aunt Jadem looks at the tunnel again. This time, I can hear movement near the grate.

  “We have to go,” Aunt Jadem tries to drag Hendrix through the mass of prisoners standing between us and the fence. “The exits have already been sealed. This is the only way out.”

  “They’ll punish us,” an especially bone-thin man points an unsteady finger at us. “They’ll throw us all to Wormy at once.”

  The iron grate creaks to life, followed by the unmistakable sound of boots clomping down the tunnel.

  “They’re coming,” Dayne says. “Make your choice.”

  For a moment, no one moves. The prisoners remain poised with their pathetic weapons. I don’t dare to breathe.

  “Go,” Morey says. “We’ll hold ’em off as long as we can.”

  He makes a complicated hand gesture at the prisoners. They move their bodies to create a makeshift shield between us and the entrance to the chamber.

  “Thank you.” Aunt Jadem puts her right hand over her heart. “We are in your debt.”

  “Then build me a palace an’ fill it with meat pies an’ pretty girls,” Morey calls to our backs.

  “We can’t just leave them,” I say as Dayne grasps my elbow. “The Duskers will know they helped us.”

  “No one leaves the dungeon without a sacrifice,” comes my brother’s grim reply.

  I don’t have time to say anything else, because we’re standing at the chamber’s edge. The blackness beyond the fence looks endless.

  “The wormkill is blind, so it will sense you by sound and smell,” Aunt Jadem is saying. “Make sure to stay clear of its fangs.”

  I grip the railing as I stare down into nothingness.

  Except it’s not nothing…the wormkill is down there.

  “The slime coating its belly is poisonous,” my aunt adds. “Its touch acts faster than the Burn.”

  “You sure about this?” Dayne asks, turning my shoulders so I face him.

  “It’s a bit late for that now.” I clear my throat to cover the waver in my voice.

  The rhythmic click of the Duskers’ crossbows, followed by screams, fills the chamber behind us.

  For a moment, it’s not Morey and his army of ghostlike prisoners, but my own army that’s crying out. I have to save them. I have to help.

  But it’s too late for the army at Tanguro.

  “The mission, Hemera,” my aunt says. “Too much depends on our success.”

  Even though every part of me screams to go back, to fight alongside these defenseless prisoners, it would only serve to get me, and probably Dayne and Jadem, killed. All of this would just be a waste. But if we can get Hendrix out, if we can use him as leverage against Crowe and the Banished leaders, then we might be able to save hundreds…thousands….

  Not trusting myself to speak, I duck between the slats of the wooden balustrade. The sounds of fighting grow louder.

  I step off the ledge.

  CHAPTER 20

  My body hits the bottom. My ankle twists and I go down elbows-first. Before I can catch my breath, I’m being sucked into a pool of reeking mud.

  A horrible squelching sound sucks all around me as I try to stand. The bones in my leg click back into place, and I have to bite down hard to keep from screaming.

  As soon as I’m on my feet, the stench hits me full force. I turn to the side and retch. My every step is weighed down as I sludge through wormkill refuse. My stomach convulses.

  There is a heavy splash somewhere nearby, although it’s too dark to see much of anything.

  I take a step forward and stumble over something beneath the surface of the sludge. I kick my foot out, raising whatever is stuck at the bottom. It bobs to the top, visible for a moment, before it sinks back down.

  A human skull.

  What I had imagined to be rocks making the ground uneven beneath my feet are bones…thousands of them. As the muck thins out, bones crack and crunch with every step.

  I take a shallow breath, trying to steady my racing heart. I have to move deeper into the wormkill’s den so Jadem and Dayne will have a clear path to the Outside. I know this—I remember the drawing Aunt Jadem made on a piece of script tree bark, and the amount of time I’ll need to distract the wormkill to give the others enough time to make it out—and yet my feet protest every step that takes me deeper into the darkness.

  I hear the plunk and a muffled grunt as either Jadem or Dayne lands in the tunnel behind me. My instincts scream for me to go still and be silent so the wormkill won’t be able to find me. Instead, I force myself to make extra noise as I move away from the others…away from any chance of an easy escape.

  Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t—

  A squelching sound, not matching my footsteps, comes from somewhere nearby. I stop moving. My heart stutters in my chest as something enormous and white fills the mouth of the tunnel.

  The wormkill.

  If I thought it looked big when I was staring down at it from the fence, it’s nothing compared to the enormity of the beast making its way toward me now. It slurps and sucks its way through the mud, moving with all of the slowness of a predator that knows its prey is trapped.

  Jadem and Dayne had told me the wormkill’s body took up all the space in the tunnel and that I wouldn’t be able to simply skirt around it, but until this moment, I hadn’t really understood what that meant.

  The tunnel is molded to the wormkill; I hear the scraping and sucking as its flesh pulls along the rim of the circular tunnel. I won’t be able to run past the beast. I have to keep it here, in this part of the tunnel, until enough time has passed for the others to make it out.

  That constricting, panicky feeling I used to get in the Subterrane takes hold of me again. My breathing constricts. What made me think that even with my abilities, I’d be able to take on a creature like this?

  I can’t fight something this huge.

  But if I fail, Jadem and Dayne will die. And it’s not just them. If we don’t take Hendrix captive, the Banished will surrender to the Duskers and it will mean the end of the Solguards. I can’t let that happen. I won’t.

  I bend, fumbling through the sludge, until my hand closes around something solid. I grasp a bone and throw it at the eyeless head of the beast.

  The wormkill lets out a sharp hiss that sets my teeth on edge. It stops moving. I had thought the sucking and scraping sounds were bad, but this silence is worse. I stand rooted in place, waiting for the creature to move again.

  The wormkill thrusts its head forward so fast it blurs. My body reacts before my mind has even registered what is happening. I fall to the ground on my back, barely avoiding being knocked out by the force of the wormkill’s strike.

  When I lift my head from the mud, the beast’s great maw is already open, displaying double sets of rotten fangs. A wave of hot breath fills the air with the smell of corpses.

  Jaws clamp shut on the edge of my cloak as I dive out of the way.

  Run, Hemera! my brain screams.

  But I can’t. It’s too soon for the others to have made it out of the tunnel. I have to stall the wormkill. Just a little longer….

  As the beast descends on me again, I’m forced to take several steps back down the tunnel, in the direction of the Outside.

  Too fast. The wormkill is forcing me to retreat too fast for any human to outpace, even if they were running flat out and weren’t dragging a hostage’s dead weight.

  I have to stop it.


  The wormkill slides back, like it’s getting ready to lunge at me. Instead of backing away from it, I hold my ground.

  My hands search the waste at my feet until I find a jagged bone. This time, I hold it like a spear. When I see the flash of the wormkill’s teeth, I throw the bone with all of my strength.

  The bone disappears into the darkness of the creature’s throat.

  Elation is replaced by terror as the wormkill rears up its great head, breaking straight through the ceiling above. Dirt rains down, filling my mouth, choking and blinding me. I hurl myself against the wall as a thick, mucousy strand of slime drops down from the wormkill’s swiveling neck. Before I can move, the beast snaps its head down, pinning my body to the ground with what I imagine to be its snout.

  My eyes sting at the fetid breath rushing out of its flaring nostrils. Thick mucus wavers just above my head. Terror paralyzes me.

  Move, I command myself.

  I manage to free one of my hands and swing it around to strike the side of the wormkill’s head. It roars, an earsplitting sound that shakes the ground, and releases me.

  I scream as a fiery pain rushes from my fist up my arm. The wormkill slime has already burned through my clothes and skin. It feels like my bones are melting. For all I can tell, they are.

  But if the wormkill gets past me, Jadem and Dayne will be next.

  The wormkill continues to rear its head, taking out whole chunks of the ceiling. We’d be buried in the tunnel except that the creature is swinging its head from side to side, blasting new holes into the surrounding earth. I force myself to a standing position, ducking the wormkill’s next strike. I’m not finished yet, beast.

  I back up just enough to give myself some space. With a running start, I use the banked base of the tunnel to climb up the wall. I jump at the last moment, swinging my hand around to strike the side of the wormkill’s head. It shrieks as it’s hurled backward, cutting through earth and bedrock.

  But without any bones in its body to break, the beast recovers and is lunging at me again in seconds.

  The wormkill’s jaws click together in anticipation. I let out a frustrated scream. It seems like all I’ve managed to do is whet its appetite. This is it, I think. This is how I’m going to die.