by Samuel Sykes
Lenk cried out to her and felt the Abysmyth’s talons press against his throat. Even then, he struggled, flailing until another titanic claw caught his arm. It was only then that he noticed another frogman come scampering from the black water, searching over him with webbed hands until they found what they sought in his satchel.
With trembling reverence, the frogman pulled free the perfect black square of leather that was the tome. Eyes, demonic and frogman alike, turned toward it with breathless adoration as the creature slowly slid back to the water.
The man in the ice, Lenk could only think, he led me here. He wanted me to come here to die.
Or to kill.
“Is it cold?”
Risen from the surface of the blackness like a stone, two golden eyes peered over the water at Kataria. Strands of auburn hair floated atop the water like kelp, eerily delicate.
“The earth,” the voice came from the darkness. “The stone. Is it cold?” The eyes narrowed sharply. “It always felt such, even when we had legs, even when we walked upon it. She made it bearable, of course, but now it’s … cold. It’s hard.”
The shadow clung to its skin as it rose out of the darkness, rising with needy tendrils as a human face, milk-pale, glass-boned, rose on a thick stalk of gray flesh. The woman’s lips pulled into a frown.
“We were Her most trusted, Her most ardent. We turned to Her when our families turned us away, when our lovers turned us to whores, when the earth turned us to bodies. And She welcomed us.”
“And She loved us.” Another head rose from the water, hair ebon black, eyes narrowed angrily. “And took us from cold earth. And when the mortal armies and your wicked people came for Her, we leapt into the darkness after Her. And we came back. For this.”
The Deepshriek turned both heads to the frogman with the tome and nodded. The creature dove beneath the water, disappearing into shadow.
“Don’t—” Lenk managed to speak before the demon’s claw tightened around his throat. He struggled with one arm, grasping and beating on the demon’s hand, hoping the other wouldn’t be noticed as it crept closer to the hilt of his sword.
“Are you so selfish, creature?” The Deepshriek spat the words. “Did you not see the suffering your breed caused? Did you not look at the faces of the hollow children and the dead? Do you think that your own twisted nature is enough to deny the world Her warmth?” Fangs bared, a hiss burst forth. “I heard you speak to that cold thing in the darkness.”
“I am nothing like—”
“You are. You are everything like it. She has been in your head. She has seen your thoughts. Murder. Treachery. Hatred. All that grows in your mind is born of the same murderous seed. You came here to kill Her, She who only wishes to be reunited with Her children.”
Its eyes steadied. Its lips closed. It smiled.
“That’s why She wants you be alive to see this.”
The heads disappeared beneath the water. Lenk reached after them, as though he could still stop them. The Abysmyth held fast, not even bothering to remove the arrows from its eye.
And soon, the darkness was alive. Words burbled up, too powerful to be contained by the gloom, too powerful to be spoken by mortal lips. Red light flashed in great spurts beneath, illuminating them in flashes: Abysmyths and frogmen swimming in a dark halo. The Deepshriek’s heads bent over a book as its shark body swam around it, the epicenter of the endless circles. A great shape, a vast circle of light that painted the darkness in brief flashes, ever longer, ever wider.
The Aeons’ Gate.
Opening.
And from the light, something greater emerged, something painted dark against the crimson, a stain of ink spreading into a pool of blood. Great tentacles emerging, golden stars winking into life, a pair of bright jaws opening.
“No, no, no!” Lenk screamed.
His blade was in his hand, drawn free. He swung it, struck the Abysmyth’s arm. It dropped him, though with no great roar of agony, no blood. His blade could no longer hurt the thing. He had left that power behind, in the chasm. His shoulder hurt. He was tired. He was terrified.
He didn’t care.
He ran toward Kataria. His blade could still cut the frogmen. She lashed out a leg, striking one in the groin. It gurgled, loosed its grip on her. The others tried to seize her arm as she reached up and began to claw at their eyes.
“Kataria!” he screamed. “Kataria, hurry! We have to—”
In the roar of water being split, he could not be heard. In the wake of the shadow that fell over him, he could not be seen. And as the tentacle, red flesh quivering, suckers trembling, swept down and wrapped about his ankle, he could no longer stand.
“Come to me.”
A voice, somewhere down in the dark, spoke to him.
“Come to me.”
The tentacle pulled, dragging him as he raked at the stone floor wildly.
“Come.”
He reached out.
“Come.”
He shouted out to Kataria.
“Come.”
He fell into darkness.
“Stop.”
His voice was parched and weak.
“Wait.”
He grasped only their shadows as they ran past.
“I need help.”
The Shen couldn’t see or hear him. They were running, screaming, trying to dig their companions out from beneath the statue, carrying off the wounded into the forest.
And he was bleeding.
And his friends were somewhere out there, in the great melee, amongst the dead. Or behind him somewhere, where the longfaces had charged up, along with the she-beast on the regular beast. His friends were gone. The Shen were running.
He was bleeding.
He walked through the dust that would not settle, the blood pouring from the sky. He walked over the bodies heaped on the ground and past the women who were alive only in their swords. He walked to the giant mountain, kneeling upon the field of death, breathing heavily as smoke poured from his flesh. The longface had done something, sent lightning into his body. He had to stop that thing before it killed the others. He had to keep going. He had to fight …
A hand went to his side, he felt traces of life slipping past the spearhead embedded in his side, out between his fingers. Slowly. It was a courteous wound, in no hurry to kill him and more than willing to let someone else take a crack at it first.
And she came. A Carnassial, tall and ragged and painted in blood. She approached him with eyes that belonged in the heads of dead people, eyes that forgot why they were doing what they did. She hefted her sword, loosed a ragged howl on a ragged breath and took exactly two steps forward.
When her foot hit the ground, the Abysmyth’s foot hit her.
The great demon had arisen from the sheets of dust and blood, emerging from such carnage that a beast of such horror would scarcely stand out. It stomped its great webbed foot upon the Carnassial, grinding her into the sand. Its flesh was carved with wounds, bits of iron jutting from its skin. In place of a left arm, a stump, sickly green with poison, hung from a bony shoulder.
“They don’t call out when they die,” the Abysmyth gurgled, “to god or man. They simply … scream. It is a strange thing to see.” At that moment, the beast seemed to notice Gariath. “When you die, who will you call out to?”
Gariath wasn’t sure why he answered honestly; perhaps because he had thought upon the question for so long it merely slipped out.
“My family.”
“Do they live?”
“No.”
“What infinite mercy do I grant you, lamb.” The Abysmyth’s foot rose with a squishing sound. “What terrors do I spare you, child.” Its single arm reached out, almost invitingly. “What glories do I send you to. Come to me.”
A green arm appeared around the beast’s neck. The demon scarcely seemed to notice the added weight on its back. Truly, Gariath himself only barely noticed the bright yellow eyes appearing from behind it. And only when the creature h
ad climbed up to the beast’s shoulders and held the waterskin high above his head did Gariath recognize Hongwe.
“Shenko-sa!” the Gonwa cried out, a fleeting and insignificant noise against the din of war. He thrust the waterskin into the beast’s mouth.
The skin punctured only barely upon its teeth, but the water came flooding out like a wolf free from a cage. It swept over the beast’s mouth, through its teeth, over its jaws. It engulfed the creature’s jaw, eyes, neck, throat, shoulders. The Abysmyth was aware of it, of the pain it caused the creature, as it clawed at the liquid with its free hand. Those droplets that were torn free and fell upon the ground quickly reformed, sped back to the demon and leapt upon it until its black skin was replaced with a liquid flesh.
The creature flailed, a raindrop falling from heaven, before it splashed to the earth. The water fell from it, was drank by the glutted earth. What remained was a gaping, skinless skull staring up at Gariath.
“You are alive.”
Even against the Abysmyth’s skeleton, Hongwe looked tiny. Too clean to belong on this field. He stood with only a few cuts, another pair of waterskins hanging from his waist.
“I am,” Gariath replied. “So are you.”
“I was in the battle. Lost. But I am alive. And … and …” His gaze drifted to Gariath’s midriff.
“And?”
“And you’ve got a spear in you.”
“There’s a little spear in all of us.”
“I don’t think that’s—”
“Look, I have lost a lot of blood, so if you could speed this up a little.”
“The Shen have been trying to recover their people, salvage the dead and the wounded. I do what I can to keep the demons and longfaces away.”
Gariath looked down at the skeletal Abysmyth. “You do a good job of it.”
“The water comes from the mountain,” Hongwe said. “My father swore the oaths. My father remembered the stories. My father told me. Everything.”
“It’s not enough.”
Hongwe looked over the carnage raging and frowned. “It is not.”
“Why, then? They are not your people.”
Hongwe sniffed. “Close enough.”
Gariath stared for a long moment. He drew in a long breath and inhaled only the scent of blood and fear. He could hear no screams through the thunder and the pain. No ghosts. No humans. No Shen.
Only a voice.
“Come to me.”
From the earth.
“Come to me.”
From the water.
“Come to me.”
For a single moment, the battle died on one side. Abysmyths looked up from tearing their longfaced victims apart. Frogmen stood stock-still, heads turned upward even as netherlings lopped them off in messy blows. The great beast Daga-Mer stirred upon the field, the smoke dissipating from his form as he cast his great red gaze up, over the heads of his children and his foes and the bodies.
Toward the voice.
Toward the mountain.
“She calls to us!” the pale man atop Daga-Mer’s skull cried out. “Mother Deep cries to the faithful!”
“On the cries of the Mother do we march,” the Omens shrieked in choral ecstasy as they flocked overhead, writhing and twisting in the bloody wind, “on the faithful’s feet, we march to the mountain.”
The mountain.
Where the humans had gone, where the Shen still were. And one by one, they began to move.
Gariath reached out instinctively, tore the waterskins from the Gonwa’s waist. Without thinking, he began at a light jog, trying not to think about the spear in his flank, about the blood that still wept, about the fact that he was charging into a wall of advancing demons.
This plan required him not to think. If he did, he might start wondering exactly how he planned to use a pair of waterskins filled with freaky magic liquid to stop clashing armies of longfaces and demons. He might start thinking how stupid the only plan he had to stop them was. He might start noticing how idiotic it was to do this for them. For the humans, for the Shen, for the things that weren’t Rhega.
He had abandoned the former, the latter had abandoned him, he had found not so much as a ghost of a Rhega here, and he was charging toward a walking mountain of flesh and blood through the waves of demons and netherlings with a pair of waterskins.
Not a good plan.
But close enough.
Arrows flew, swords shot out to catch him, some scored against his flesh. More of the longfaces, though, either chased the frogmen and demons who broke off from the fight to begin a march toward the mountain or found themselves collapsing, exhausted or dead, without a foe to fight.
That didn’t matter. The humans were the ones who fought the little things. Gariath had always sought the biggest and strongest, the ones most capable of giving him the death he had craved. The only difference between then and now was that he was no longer seeking his own death.
That and this thing was much bigger than anything he had ever fought before.
“Come.”
Daga-Mer stirred to life with the noise. The smoldering black flesh began to grow bright red, his blood illuminated as it spread from the beating of his heart, into his veins, into his eyes. He rose from the earth, the corpses of those that had been beneath him when he fell peeling off like grains of sand as he turned toward the mountain.
Gariath leapt, found the titan’s ankle a mountain unto itself. Each knob of flesh, each ancient scar, each slab of metal grafted to the creature’s skin gave footing. Hand over hand, foot over foot, Gariath began to climb.
Daga-Mer seemed to take no notice of the red parasite climbing up his leg, of the ballista bolt and chain still sunk in his chest, of the demons, frogmen, and netherlings he crushed underfoot with each great stride. And the demons did not look up themselves as he marched across the blood-soaked ring. They were crushed into pulp without a sound, those bodies that still twitched trying to catch up in his wake.
And Gariath climbed, over knee, onto thigh, up bony hip. Ignoring the pain in his side, ignoring that he had next to no idea what his plan was and no idea whatsoever if it would work.
Over metal, over flesh, over lightning-charred scars.
Ignoring the blood that dripped from him, the blood that dripped from the sky, the puddles of blood and bodies on the ground that might be the humans.
Rib over rib, clinging to the beast’s flank, watching the titanic arm swing like a pendulum with each step.
Ignoring everything. Everything for this. For them.
He drew in a breath. It hurt. He leapt for Daga-Mer’s arm. He caught the beast’s wrist, wrapped his arms around a forearm the size of a tree and looked up. The great head, hell-light pouring out of its eyes, looked as far away as a mountain itself. He snarled, he bit back pain, he raised an arm to climb.
He never even saw the fist coming until it had connected with his jaw.
On the other side of the forearm, blade slung across her back, the Carnassial took exception to Gariath having the same idea as she had. He couldn’t say when she had jumped, when she had started climbing, nor did he care. For when she snarled at him and bared her teeth, he showed her his.
Up close.
He caught the hand as she moved to strike him and, with a swift jerk, hauled her from her precarious footing and into his jaws. Between helmet and armor, his teeth found the flesh of her throat. And with one more jerk, he tore free a purple chunk, spitting it out after her as she fell, her scream painted on the wind in red.
And he climbed, still, not thinking about how much it hurt, how he could still feel pain, how his grip felt slippery the farther he got up. How, if he fell, he would be the last Rhega to fall here and disappear forever and leave nothing behind.
Only flesh. Only climbing. Up the forearm. Onto the bicep. Over the rusted plates grafted onto the blackened skin. Climbing. Bleeding. No more feeling. No more thinking.
“Lastonelastonelastone …”
Whispers in h
is head, the closer he got.
“Dieherediehereherehere … nomorenomorenomore …”
Irritating.
“Nomorefatherssonsweepingchildrencryinginthesandohpoorbeastgobacktotheearthandwaittodrown …”
A light atop the shoulder. A face appeared over the blackened flesh. A withered hag’s head, bulbous and sagging, dominated by black void eyes and a lantern light on a gray stalk from the middle of its head. It smiled with two mouths at him and spoke in whispers.
“Shecomesshecomesshecomes … theyalldiediedie … likeyoulikeyoulike—”
Interrupted. A thick red claw around a twig of a neck would do that.
“No more thinking,” he growled. A quick pull.
Whatever a demon plummeting to the earth sounded like, he didn’t care. It hurt to hear, but pain required feeling. He was done with all that. The spear shifted inside him, the wound grew bigger. That would be a problem for creatures weighed down by thought, by fear, by pain.
He was Rhega. He was the last. He died here, atop the last of the demons.
All for humans.
If he was still a creature burdened by thought, that one might trouble him.
He hauled himself onto Daga-Mer’s helmet. The world moved slowly beneath him, he could feel the tremors from each stride reverberating up into the creature’s skull. He could see the red-tinged mist of the beast’s breath, hear the thunder of the heart.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
The pale thing. Skin scarred by lightning. Eyes wide and white. Not a frogman. Still alive. The Mouth. Looking at Gariath.
“This is for the faithful,” the Mouth said, clinging to the twisted horns jutting from the helmet. “This place, this is where I belong. You should leave. So should I. But Mother Deep, She spoke and I … I …” He looked up at Gariath solemnly. “If I could see her once more, my daughter, I would—”
He stopped talking. A head cloven from shoulders would do that.
The body plummeted to the earth. The Carnassial watched the body bounce off Daga-Mer’s knee and fall into a pool of blood below. She sniffed, looked to Gariath, who settled a scowl upon her.
