The Skybound Sea

by Samuel Sykes

  Ah, wait, no, he thought as he pulled it from his pocket. That’s not the right one, is it?

  This was the meager granite chunk from a black necklace that Denaos had found. Thick and raw and thoroughly useless.

  “Where did you get that?”

  It was his head, he was certain, all the noise and the dust was getting into his head. That’s how people kept sneaking up on him. Or maybe he really was so stupid as to be able to miss the great sikkhun approaching. It remained there, panting as its rider stared down at Dreadaeleon.

  The other male, tall and thin and sporting a white goatee. His face was more expressive than the others, full of shock and horror at the sight of the boy. Probably not for the good reasons.

  “That stone, I gave it …” He held out a hand, as if to grasp it. “You took it. Qaine, she …”

  “Uh …” Dreadaeleon began to back away, hoping he wasn’t necessary in this conversation.

  “Qaine. Qaine.” The male reiterated.

  His lip trembled for a moment, eyes quivered for as long as it took him to draw in a breath. He held it there, shut his eyes tight. When they opened again, they burned red with energy.

  “I need you,” he whispered, “to die.”

  Gariath was still alive.

  He had never been aware of his failure to die without a sigh of disappointment and resentment. He felt a dizzying rush as blood and breath fought to reassert themselves over his body. He swayed as he staggered to his feet, feeling strangely empty, as though his head hadn’t quite realized he was still alive and his spirit had already taken off for the afterlife.

  Slowly, it returned, as if rejected and skulking back dejectedly.

  There were hundreds more in line before him.

  Something brushed his foot. A long, green limb groped blindly across stones slick with a pool of sticky red and black. Five fingers. An elbow joint. Skin. Claws.

  All that remained of the Shen, buried beneath the stone. It dragged its claws against the stone until they snapped, tried to pull itself out until the flesh of its fingers shredded.

  The emptiness of his head filled with the screams and the blood and the explosion and the twitching limbs and the statue flying through the sky and the scent of death everywhere, rising up on curtains of dust, the resigned sigh of an earth that had seen too much blood already.

  Blood and broken bodies and glistening pink matter that had burst out of mouths and spilled upon stones. This was what remained. Of the Shen, nothing else.

  But what about the others? Where were the humans? The little one had just been standing here, hadn’t he? Was he somewhere in this broken heap under the statue? Was he one of the shadows rushing about, screaming into the dust?

  Was that him there, Gariath wondered? That stark black shape growing closer? He leaned forward, peered into the dust.

  The jagged head of a spear shot out silently, found the muscle of his side and bit with iron teeth. His roar was eaten by dust. He reached down, seized the spear’s haft in his claws.

  The warrior emerged from the dirt. No face, no eyes, untouched by the dust and the agony. Gariath saw his twisted grimace reflected in the carapace of her helmet as she approached, twisting the spear. He could feel it taste him, express the hatred and fury that the netherling’s faceless stare couldn’t.

  This would have been a good death, he reflected briefly. At the end of a long fight, by a worthy foe. It would have, if he was ready to die.

  But that time was passed. He saw no reason to reward latecomers.

  His fist shot out, caught the female’s chin with the clang of metal. Her grip loosened enough for him to smash his fist again onto the haft of the spear, snapping it in two. He tore its splintered remains from her with one hand, reached out and slammed the butt of the other’s palm against her chin. Her neck twisted back as she lashed out with fist and shield, bending so far back it seemed it might snap at any moment.

  That, too, would have been a good death.

  Less messy, too. But again, latecomers.

  He flipped the splintered haft in his palm, jammed it forward. It punched through her exposed purple throat to burst out the other side. She bled, she staggered, she collapsed and disappeared beneath the swirling dust and sand.

  Too much dust, he thought. Too much sand. It wasn’t natural that sand should be this irritated, should linger in the air like a cloud of insects. There were lots of problems with this particular situation, the biggest one being the spearhead embedded in his side. He reached down to tear it out, braced himself for the scream to follow.

  Wait. He forced himself to stop. Pull it out, the blood comes gushing, you’re dead in a few breaths. That’s what the human said, right? That sounds right. Leaving a giant wedge of metal embedded in your skin sounds right …

  He blinked. Nothing about this made sense. He had to get away from it. He had to get higher.

  He clawed his way up her stone body, over her hand, slipping on a patch of blood, trying to ignore the feeling that he could feel their screams in the palms of his hands. He emerged atop the statue.

  He was not alone.

  “Rhega.” Shalake did not turn around. His eyes were out over the sandy field. His club hung limp in his hands. “You are alive.”

  “Shalake,” Gariath grunted, “are you …”

  “No, Rhega. I am not.” He slowly turned around. His skull headdress was gone but for a single shard lodged into his right eye. “I am dead.”

  “You aren’t,” Gariath replied, stalking forward. “You’re wounded. The rest of the Shen are scattered. The longfaces are moving up the stairs. You need to—”

  “I can’t. I can’t hear my people. I can’t see my ancestors. I am somewhere else, Rhega. My body is down there, in the blood and dirt. My soul is here, talking to you.” He blinked. His eyelid trembled, flickering over the bone shard. “Are you dead, too?”

  “No.”

  Gariath’s fist shot out, caught Shalake across the chin. The Shen staggered, spat out blood.

  “Neither are you,” the dragonman grunted. “Now, get down there. Rally the warriors. We have to—”

  “We can’t, Rhega.”

  “We can, we just have to—”

  “We can’t.”

  Shalake raised a claw to the coral-splintered horizon and the crown of storms swirling atop it. Thunder crashed, banished the war cries and the screams and the rattle of iron and left the ring in an echoing silence. A great flash of lightning lit the sky and cast in shadow a mountain. A mountain that bled red in great weeping streaks across its body. A mountain that grew steadily bigger.

  A mountain that walked.

  “They’re already here.”

  From the forest, out of the silence, a voice emerged. A distant wail, a bestial gurgle, the echoing reveberation of a bell, a hush of whispers and the flutter of wings and over it all, blending it into a single sound, the beating of a heart.

  A cry went out from the netherlings, only barely heard, even echoed amongst the warriors. Their line began to move as they shifted to change their face toward the edge of the ring and the creature emerging from it.

  The sheets of kelp parted, trembling as it came forth, a tall and skeletal shadow. On long, thin limbs wrapped in glistening ebon flesh, it strode onto the sand. Through great white eyes, empty as the void between its gaping, fishlike jaws, it surveyed the carnage. Thunder muttered overhead. A drop of crimson rain fell from the sky to splash and leave a weeping red streak across the white of its eye.

  Its ribcage buckled. Its webbed claws tightened into fists. The Abysmyth threw its head back and howled to heaven and hell.

  And the world exploded behind it.

  They came streaming over the horizon in sheets and tides. The Omens flocked in great, sweeping streams, their withered faces alight with an echoing chorus. The frogmen surged out from the forest in a sea of pale flesh and glistening spears, flooding onto the battlefield and rushing toward the center of the ring. The Abysmyths strode amidst
the hairless flood, leisurely strolling toward the impending slaughter.

  The netherlings were not so patient.

  “QAI ZHOTH!” they roared in their iron voices, challenging the storm and its demonic chorus.

  “ULBECETONTH!” the tide shrieked back.

  “AKH ZEKH LAKH!”

  “THE KRAKEN QUEEN!”

  “ZAN QAI—”

  “ULBEC—”

  All of it lost in a crash of metal and flesh as they collided in the middle of the ring in a great spattering, screaming agony.

  Gariath’s breath was lost somewhere in it all. He had seen carnage. He had caused carnage. But this was …

  “The end, Rhega.”

  Shalake had a rather good way of putting it. The Shen held his hands out helplessly, the club hanging limp and impotent from his claws.

  “This is everything we fought for. The chance to watch it all end and go with our ancestors.”

  “I’m not ready,” Gariath snarled.

  The Shen’s good eye flickered, dispelling a fog that settled over his pupil. “No, not ready. We can’t go … we … we need to help the others.”

  “They’re down there somewhere,” Gariath muttered. “Dreadaeleon is … somewhere. I have to find him.”

  “Him? No, no. Them. The Shen. There are survivors, lead them to … to …” He stared at Gariath. The shard lodged in his eye wept a thick substance. “We can’t go looking for—”

  “There is no ‘we,’ ” Gariath snarled suddenly. “I am not Shen. I am not ready to die. I am Rhega. I am the only Rhega. I will do what I have always done.” He reached out and tore the club from Shalake’s grasp. “And I need this.”

  It wasn’t until he launched himself off the statue and into the ring that he bothered to wonder what he needed the club for exactly. It wasn’t just a fight that was raging, it was a massacre undiscerning.

  The frogmen continued to stream out, the netherlings did not give a single footstep before drowning it in the frogmen’s blood. The Abysmyths swung their great limbs, seizing warriors, strangling them as the Carnassials and their great blades rushed forward, heedless of their breathless comrades as they brought their metal to bear.

  Against that, he wondered what good a hunk of wood full of sharp teeth was going to do.

  “QAI ZHOTH!”

  She came leaping over a drift of corpses, pulling free from the great spreading stain of flesh and blood of the melee. Her sword was above her head, her shield was hanging off her arm. Blood covered her purple flesh as she charged toward him. The netherling’s mouth opened in a roar, jagged teeth bared.

  Without realizing it, he swung.

  A satisfactory crunch. Enough that he could barely feel the agony of his wound. The netherling’s teeth lay on the ground. The club lodged somewhere between her jaw and her left temple. Her eyes stared with a thick chunk of wood between them.

  Ah, right, he thought, watching a bit of gray porridge slide down the wood. That is good.

  His earfrills twitched with the sound. Not screaming. They were screaming, of course, but all that was drowned out in the sound of embers crackling and smoke belching. The frogmen fled as bipedal pyres, scattering like cinders on the wind before the gouts of flame pouring from the netherling’s hands. Not the netherling everyone was worried about; this one was smaller, weaker.

  As weak as anything spewing fire from its palms could be, anyway.

  But neither the netherling nor the creatures scattering before him were Gariath’s concern. Just one of them.

  Dreadaeleon stumbled, scrambling on whatever limbs happened to be on the ground at the time in an effort to get away from the male and the great, laughing beast he spurred after the boy. The male seemed in no hurry. He possessed a burning serenity, leisurely sweeping great reins of fire through the crowds to sear blackened roads across the sand to leisurely follow after his quarry.

  Gariath drew in a deep breath. The air was full of blood and dust and smoke. And for the first time in a long time, it tasted sweet. The scent was full of life, fading fast. It was a scent he wanted to cling to.

  He didn’t want to die.

  Which made it hard to justify what he was doing.

  Running. Charging. Roaring. Swinging. A hairless head split apart, black eyes drowned in a spray of red. It fell, was replaced by another, purple one. Iron lashed out, his arm bled, a jaw splintered apart. More came, one after the other, blends of purple and white and red. It was hard to tell them apart. Color didn’t matter. Sight didn’t matter. The scent of life was growing stronger as it painted his face and stained his hands. The club hung to him. It belonged in his hands.

  The longface with her head split apart didn’t really belong there, but he found her body in his hands all the same. He drove the body forward with a roar, a limp, leaking ram that smashed through the knots of combatants across the field, taking spears and swords and arrows meant for him as he bowled over frogmen and longfaces alike.

  It was a disjointed and ligamented mess that he tossed aside when he emerged. The scent of life brimmed, in plumes of smoke from the scorched sand and in the hot breath of the sikkhun beast. The beast’s ears were fanned out, its rubbery lips peeled back in an eager smile as it advanced upon Dreadaeleon, stumbled and scrambling backward as the male rider looked on with contemptuous eagerness for the impending evisceration.

  Gariath was slightly more enthusiastic.

  The beast’s ears quivered at his roar, turning its sightless gaze upon him. It matched his howl with an eerie cackle as it turned about to face this new, more interesting quarry. Gariath matched it, tooth for tooth, noise for noise, as he closed the distance and raised his club above his head.

  Roughly about the time he felt an invisible force tighten around his throat did he remember the male.

  He felt his feet leave the sand as he was lifted helplessly into the air, snarling and clawing wildly at an unseen grip. That became slightly harder when he felt the sand meet his face as the male brought an arm down swiftly, slamming him into the earth and pinning him breathlessly beneath the magic. He swept his burning scowl between the dragonman and the boy.

  “And you,” the male said, “were you there, too? Which one of you was the scum that killed her?”

  Gariath grunted, looked to Dreadaeleon and mouthed “who?” The boy offered a hapless shrug before the air about his throat rippled. They were lifted as one, a hand outstretched to either of them as the male’s eyes burned like fire. The sikkhun beneath him giggled, pawing at the ground in anticipation of fresh meat.

  “I wanted to spare ourselves this.”

  The words came slowly, the concentration needed to hold onto the spell an endeavor even as the red stone burned brightly at the male’s throat. Gariath could feel something groaning, threatening to break as the trembling air closed around him like a vise.

  “And look where that got us,” he hissed. “Sheraptus was right. Sheraptus always has to be right. That’s fine. That’s entirely fine. We can end this—”

  A sound filled the air.

  Something long, something loud, something from a very deep hole filling up with stale water from a storm that had gone on for centuries. It rendered the din of iron and death in the ring a pitiful background noise, something easily ignored. It had to be such a sound that made the male’s concentration snap and sent the boy and dragonman tumbling to the earth. It had to be such a sound that made eyes look up to the thundering skies above in awe and fear and joy and panic.

  In thick, sticky drops, red tears fell from the sky. A shadow of a mountain with a white peak appeared at the edge of the ring. A roar rose from it, the sound of existence groaning under a great weight.

  “Tremble, heathens.”

  A man from atop the mountain spoke. A tiny, pale figure made significant, a voice made loud by virtue of from where it spoke.

  “The long march of the inevitable has led us here.”

  “Daga-Mer … Daga-Mer …” a chant began to rise from the crowd
of onlookers.

  “The sky bleeds for him. The storms are his crown!”

  “Daga-Mer! Daga-Mer!”

  “The faithless are crushed beneath him! The blasphemers tremble before him!”

  “DAGA-MER! DAGA-MER! DAGA-MER!”

  “FATHER!” an Abysmyth howled from below, echoed by many more. The mountain stirred at the word, rose as a living thing.

  “HE COMES!”

  Life came to the mountain in an eruption of hellish red light. It veined the limbs that spread out from it, it pulsed with the beat of a heart that thundered in time with the storm, it burst from a pair of eyes, sweeping out over the penitent and the damned assembled in the ring.

  The earth trembled as Daga-Mer raised a colossal foot and stepped onto the field.

  Before the sound of him, there could be no words. Before the sight of him, there could be no blinking. He stood as an Abysmyth, tall and thin. But his head scraped the bleeding skies above, his thin hands were bigger than even his demonic children, and his jaws gaped open, void seeping out from between jagged teeth. Crude, rusted plates of metal had been hammered into his black flesh, a horned helmet to his skull from which the pale man spoke, rays of red light seeping out from between thin slits carved in the metal.

  He said nothing. He made no movement. Circles of light cast from his stare swept slowly over the battle below and not a soul moved, none wishing to draw his attention.

  The frightened whine of the sikkhun could have been heard for miles.

  Gariath, however, was left with no miles. The sikkhun’s squeak, the shuffling of its claws as it backpedaled, the panicked whispers of its rider as he tried to calm the beast were agonizingly loud.

  As was the sudden sound of his heart stopping as a halo of red light fell upon them.

  A crack of lightning above illuminated Daga-Mer’s hand rising into the sky. The plates on his body ground and groaned against each other as his hand clenched into a fist. The sky, the earth and hundreds of small, insignficant bodies screamed in unison as it came down.