by Samuel Sykes
These were problems for men with perspective, men with nobler causes, men who had gone so far into the light they couldn’t see the filth they stepped in anymore.
Lenk had simpler problems. And a sword.
It wasn’t reflex. It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t easy to pull himself from the water and rush toward the netherling. It was bloody. It was painful.
He struck the netherling with his good shoulder. It still hurt. They tumbled to the ground in an unpleasant mess of metal. His sword found her armor, grinded against the metal. The tip found something softer and bit. Then, he pushed until they were both bleeding and lying upon the floor.
Only one of them moved. And then only with Kataria’s help.
“I came back for you,” he groaned.
“You want a kiss or something?” she all but spat at him as she tore her belt free.
“Well …”
“No.”
“Oh.” He winced as she tightened her belt around his shoulder as a makeshift tourniquete. “I don’t think that’s going to help.”
“Better ideas?”
“No, it’s a good one. But I was talking about—”
“AKH ZEKH LAKH!”
The longface came charging toward them, leaping over the body of a venom-doused Abysmyth. Her feet never struck the floor. A tentacle the size of a tree trunk swept out of the darkness, snatching her into the air and twisting her warcry to a desperate scream as it dragged her beneath the waves.
From the shadows the tentacles came, snatching the longfaces from the stone. Dragging them screaming into the air, crushing them in fleshy grips, pulling them from darkness to darker.
And all pain was drowned, all agonies rendered moot as the water erupted and Ulbecetonth rose.
“Yeah, that,” Lenk grunted.
A child torn from the womb of hell, she came into the world pale and screaming. The shadows slid off her body in tears, as vast and cold as any of her statues, reluctant to leave her as she loomed over the waves. Barnacles and shells grew in clusters upon skin so pale as to be translucent. Coral sprouted in pristine, rainbow-colored rashes across her body. Creatures of many legs and many eyes crawled across her, into the shadow of her navel, across the slope of her breast, into and out of a mouth gaping wide and lined with bone-white sawblades.
Lenk felt his eyes fleeting across her in unblinking flashes, unable to look at any part of her for long, unable to turn away. His gaze was fixed upon the bright gold of a single eye not by his own choice. It burned with such hatred that it commanded his attention, demanded he look at it until he could see how he was going to die reflected in its gaze.
Her mouth grew wide, her shriek the sound of a thousand drowning maidens that sent the tears of shadow and the many skittering fiends falling from her body.
And Lenk felt himself moving.
“Come on, come on.” Kataria had both arms around him, equal parts propping him up and hauling him away. “We have to go.”
“We can’t.” Reflex. His voice, even if it shouldn’t have been. “We can’t run from this.”
“I said it and I meant it,” she snarled, “but I thought we were going to get the tome before it happened. Now we run.”
“We can’t. She’s limitless,” Lenk said. “Down in the chasm, I saw her. She’s under the island. She’s the blood of the land. We can’t outrun her.” He looked into Kataria’s eyes. “Not both of us.”
“That’s not what we’re going to do,” she said, pointing to a nearby archway. “We’re going to run to that. We’re going to keep running. We’re going to go somewhere else and hide there until we can figure out something else.”
“We can’t do that,” he said. “Neither of us makes it out unless …”
“Don’t use that word if you’re going to do something stupid.”
“Too damn late for that.”
He tore free from her grasp, took off running before she could grab him again, threw himself into the water and disappeared beneath the darkness before she could scream at him and make him think just what the hell it was he was doing.
He had no room for thought, though. That was not what duty was about.
Because he certainly had no idea. Not beyond giving Ulbecetonth something to focus on, something she couldn’t resist attacking. How effective that would be with just a sword on his back was another problem best left to men who weren’t incredibly stupid.
Men with simpler problems had simpler goals. Both of his were bobbing in the water. The severed heads of the Deepshriek floated, brushing against each other as though they couldn’t bear to be separated in death.
He could feel the great emptiness below him again, the vast yawn of space and silence that came before the moment of calamity. His shoulder seared with the agony. The water boiled with Ulbecetonth’s anger. He made a single desperate grab and caught the auburn and ebon hair of the two heads a mere moment before the water erupted and something seized him.
He struggled to keep ahold of sword and heads alike as the tentacle wrenched him from the water and pulled him into the air. The world spun around him as he hauled up to face a coral-scarred visage and a single burning eye.
“You came back,” Ulbecetonth murmured, voices echoing off of each other. “You hateful, vile little thing. You came back.”
Her voice robbed him of any sort of reply he might have had. It drank the breath from his throat.
“I could have given you anything, I would have given you anything, just to leave my children alone.”
“Can’t,” he replied, straining as the tentacle tightened around him.
“I wanted to believe.”
The world shifted, the tentacle raised him. The ceiling loomed closer, the mossy stalactites shimmering against the green firelight. For a moment, he thought he might be crushed against the tremendous stone teeth. The Kraken Queen didn’t like him nearly enough to be that gentle with him, though.
He looked down. In the shadows of the waves, he saw the thousand eyes staring up at him like a thousand hateful stars. Her mouth gaped open beneath him, baring row upon row of jagged saw-teeth that stretched down her gullet. And from the darkness of her mouth, eyes stared back at him.
They came lashing out of her gullet, eels snapping and screeching and smiling wildly as they reached out to snatch and chew and wail for his blood. His sword slashed wildly, beating back each eager maw, each wild eye. Heads were bloodied, the eels fell back, but rose again and again. His arm seared, his shoulder bled and Ulbecetonth’s teeth loomed ever closer as the tentacle lowered him like a writhing worm.
Tactics that did not range from stupid to desperate had never been plentiful. Now seemed a poor time to shun them. He hurled his blade and watched it lodge in Ulbecetonth’s cheek, the demon not even flinching.
Right, he thought. That’ll do it for stupid. He hefted the twin heads, aimed them as best he could. Now for desperate.
“Scream.”
They obliged as their sister had. The sharp whine amplified to a wail as they opened their mouths and made the air quake. They erupted, swallowing both his screams and Ulbecetonth’s as the great demon was sent reeling. Her tentacle flailed, weakening, as it shot up toward the ceiling.
Lenk seized the moss purely by chance, slammed against the stalactite as the tentacle tossed him, the screams of the Deepshriek having left him barely any wit to know what was happening. He held on purely by grit, clinging to the moss as he watched Ulbecetonth trying to shake the shrieks loose from her skull. She turned her scowl upward and, slowly, every tentacle joined in purpose as they slithered up from the deep and reached toward his precarious perch.
Desperate, stupid, everything.
He tied the heads to his belt, pried a patch of the moss from the stalactite, jammed it into his ears.
Sorry, Kataria. Sorry I couldn’t do it the right way.
He felt a tentacle brush against his boot, straining to reach him.
But it’s you I’m going to think of when I die. With my own thoughts,
no one else’s.
He tore the heads free, lifed them, aimed them toward a sizable stalactite hanging overhead.
Hope that’s enough.
“Scream.”
They did.
The air and earth shook, their wails joining the Deepshriek’s agonized harmony. The air was flensed, the stone was cracked, Lenk felt blood pooling behind the moss in his ears. His shoulder bled. His arm felt too dead to hold the heads.
But the stone cracked. The stalactite quivered at its ancient root. Lesser spears broke, fell to dig into Ulbecetonth’s arms, face, ignored by the demon. The great old stone groaned ominously, its pain rivaling even that of the Deepshriek. Lenk felt something coil around his ankle, tug appraisingly. He could feel Ulbecetonth’s mouth yawning beneath him. He could feel her whisper to him from the dark.
“It was always going to end this way.”
And then, nothing. No more sound. Everything went silent as the stone cracked, quaked, broke.
And fell.
A spear sent from above, it plunged into her, making her two as it drove down into her chest. It split her squarely down the middle, dividing her, spilling darkness into darkness. Her scream matched the stone’s, the air’s, the water’s, sending the waves trembling and the rocks falling from above.
And still she reached. Still she pulled.
“I SHOWED YOU MERCY!” she howled. “I GAVE YOU THE CHANCE TO RUN! WHY? WHY DO YOU HATE ME SO MUCH?”
In every part of him, every drop of blood, every dying limb, every thought that was his own, there was no answer to that question.
The earth met her scream with another of its own. The ceiling cracked, the great wound left by the stalactite’s plummet widening. They came at first as small drops of silver, splattering upon her flesh to blacken the translucence. Then, they came as rivulets, seeping into her eyes.
Then, it came as a flood.
A great column of water descending from on high, drowning her in silver and steam and shrieks, with no end in sight.
The blood of the mountain.
The water that carried her to hell.
She remembered it.
The ceiling cracked further. His own perch twitched, quaked, collapsed. He plummeted into the water below. In the darkness, he drifted and watched her die. Her teeth gnashed down there, screaming out in water that wouldn’t obey her anymore. And Lenk watched her, breathlessly and bloodlessly, as her countless eyes winked out, one by one, until only one remained.
And it remained, fixed not upon him, but on the vast, dark emptiness surrounding it. Until it, too, disappeared.
Lenk closed his eyes and told himself he did the right thing. Ulbecetonth was dead. He was content to follow her.
Someone else, apparently, was not.
He felt himself dragged awkwardly through the water, Kataria’s violent thrashing pulling him away from the walkway vanishing beneath a rising tide and through a veil of steam.
Ulbecetonth’s skin crunched beneath him as he was dragged up onto her back. He stared up at the silvery water raining from above, falling through clouds of steam rising on sighs glutted by suffering.
Pretty, he thought. Kind of like clouds, right?
No one answered.
Never seen something so pretty.
A face, dark and stained by blood, appeared over him a moment later.
That’s more like it.
“You were supposed to run,” he said, voice weak.
“Where?” she asked.
“Somewhere else.”
“There is nowhere else.”
He heard the ceiling cracking overhead. All around, more and more scars appeared in the earth as more stalactites fell and more columns of silver plummeted into the water. The water drank the stone, the walkway, the statues, the archways disappearing as it rose upon tides of black and silver. Lenk felt himself rising as Ulbecetonth rose. And fell.
She was breathing.
She was still alive.
“I should not blame you.” Her voice rumbled beneath him. Lenk turned and saw a single eye staring at him, wide and white with a gold iris from skin blackened. “You did as you were supposed to, as your kind did back then, too, listening to a father of your own.”
Water, neither silver nor black, rimmed her stare.
“Perhaps you wanted to protect those you loved. Perhaps you wanted to prove me wrong. Perhaps you will, still. I should not hate you.”
Her voice rasped on plumes of steam.
“My children have no mother. I have no children. I hope you live your life well, Lenk. And I hope that whatever hell you go to when you die, I will be waiting for you.”
The water carried her up on the rising tide, closer to the dying earth. Lenk lay still upon her body, felt her breathe no more. Despite the steam, despite the blood, he felt cold.
“Mother?” A voice, weak and trembling. “Mother.”
He looked and saw the Abysmyth, wading up to Ulbecetonth’s body. It laid claws upon her, tried to shake her colossal form.
“Mother,” it said, its voice a whisper. The silver water splashed on its skin, sent it steaming and charring like its mother’s. It took no notice. “Mother, wake up.”
“Please, Mother, please wake up.” It was joined by more demons, more hands upon her, more voices pleading to the dead. “Mother, please don’t leave me.”
“Mother, it hurts, please don’t—”
“—Mother, I don’t want to feel it, anymore, please—”
“—we succeeded, Mother, we got the book, you can—”
“—Father is outside, Mother, please, just—”
“—Mother—”
“—please—”
“—I’m scared—”
“—Mother—”
Their flesh turned to steam, their claws to bone, their voices to ash. As, stain by stain, piece by piece, the water unmade them, their fears, their whispers, until only bones remained. They rested their skulls upon her body. They lay still and peaceful.
“I killed them,” Lenk whispered. “All of them. And her.”
“Yeah,” Kataria said. She wrapped her arms around him, pulled him to her body. He felt his own life painted upon her skin. “You did.”
He reached up, wrapped his fingers around her hand. “You’re still alive.”
“Yeah.” Her grip tightened. He steadied the tremble of her hand, she found the life left in his arm. “I am.”
He felt her breath upon him. He felt her heartbeat through her hands. He felt her hair brushing against the blood on his face. He felt warm.
“Wish I had something better to say,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it.”
They looked up toward the ceiling. The earth was gone. Only the great clouds of steam, all that was left of Ulbecetonth and her brood. Only the water, falling in sheets and tears.
“Pretty, though,” Kataria said, pulling him closer to her.
“Yeah.”
And they rose. To the closest thing to heaven they would ever see.
Carried on endless blue.
THIRTY-FOUR
THE REMNANT
It was funny, she thought, but he weighed less than she thought he would. She had seen him unclothed. He had always seemed a strong man, then, a man of weight. But she could feel his ribs through his vest, hear his breath come so weakly, see his eyes glazed over like a sick man’s.
And still he smiled. All that was left of him was the mask. A face that belonged to a man at peace.
“How’s it look?” His voice was a hollow, fading thing.
“Shut up,” Asper said. He knew damn well how it looked. She had stolen only a glimpse under his tunic, saw the pink organs, the copious blood. She knew what it meant. “You’re going to be …” She looked around. “I just need my bag …”
“If you did, you would have gotten it,” he said.
“I said shut up. You’re not helping anything by talking.”
“But you didn’t. You’re here. Holding me
like I deserve it.”
“Denaos, please, just—”
“Because you can’t give me anything else.”
And she offered nothing but silence. The kind of weak, painful quiet that came when only three words could be written on a long, blank piece of paper.
She could have contented herself saying there was nothing else she could have done. She could have watched him die. She could have lived with that quiet.
But then he spoke.
“Last rites.”
“No.”
“Come on.”
“No.”
“I don’t have anything left, Asper. Nothing but a dead girl and a lot of sin. I can’t take that with me.”
“Denaos, don’t ask me to do that. I can’t do that. You’re supposed to die long after we’ve parted ways, grinning as someone sticks a knife in you.”
“What, you’ve thought it out?”
“A little.”
“Well, it hasn’t worked out that way. Just listen to me while I’ve got the blood to speak, okay?” He forced a smile, red at the edges. “Look, I’ll even grin while I do it.”
What else could she do but nod?
“Riots in Cier’Djaal. You heard of them, right?”
She had. She had been amongst the few to work the injured who were sailed day and night to Muraska, propelled by the Venarium when Cier’Djaal’s own healers were overworked.
“There were … a lot of people dead,” she said. “A lot. We saved … three. Three out of the hundreds that came to us.”
“You know how it happened?”
She said nothing.
“Please, Asper, it saves me from having to say it—”
“She was murdered.” Asper said, choking on something. “The Houndmistress. She challenged the Jackals, drove them back, and they … someone killed her and that started the riots.”
“And people died.”
“Yeah. Fourteen hundred.”
“More.”
She looked down at him. He looked up at her. Past her. Into heaven.
“How many,” she asked, “did you kill, Denaos?”
His smile faded. His mask broke.
“One.” He coughed. “All of them.”
“Which is it?”
“Both.”
Had she not been so numb, had the feeling of her body not been welled up inside her throat, she would have dropped him. Had she worshipped any other god, she would have risen and walked away.
