Temple of Cocidius

by Maxx Whittaker

  “Good,” Etain says, marching past. “Let’s go.”

  The grin Finna throws over her shoulder is all sass. She recovers my fallen blade, tosses it to me, and hurries after Etain.

  I jog to catch up with them as the sound of the dead behind us redoubles. They’re still coming, and a quick glance behind reveals a crowd that looks undiminished by our bloody swath.

  Time to go.

  Our path leads out to another cul-de-sac, twice the size of the one holding the mausoleum. A few skeletal alders dot each corner like bent worshippers at the feet of a warrior monument in the center, tall enough that its helm half-blots the moon.

  “This was the landgravine’s wood, once,” Etain pants. “Ewanach uprooted it to honor himself, and the undertakers plowed it for the dead.” She sniffs. “When he came to me that night, expecting me to fall into his arms, wet and ready, I told him he could honor himself with his hand.”

  Finna’s laughter shakes her so violently I’m afraid we’ll have to put her back together.

  We skirt the statue. It’s terrifying, massive, its black armor all hard lines and functional angles. There’s no decoration to it, and it doesn’t look like any stone I’ve ever seen. On its back is a sword as long as one of the banquets tables of my family’s castle, and twice as wide. It looks more like a massive meat cleaver than a blade, aside from the hilt that juts from the bottom.

  Etain is still talking. “Before he put this square here, this was my favorite place to read. Books of war, mostly, though the local schools would hold class here, on sunny days, and on those days, I would read to them.” She sound so sad, so lost for a moment that it breaks my heart, and it’s hard to reconcile the acid tongued head we found under the tree with the quiet reminiscence now.

  “Lir?” Finna’s voice is tight, bridled panic. I follow her gaze.

  The statue’s head has turned, tracking us.

  Because of course it has.

  Blades hiss from sheaths. It feels futile; will my swords even puncture its armor? Its head clears the tree tops.

  It turns, takes a shuddering step toward us, shaking the ground. A hand goes back, clasps its sword, which swing ponderously over its shoulder. It’s movements radiate power, strength.

  “Do we run?” I hiss, looking for cover.

  “It’ll just follow us,” Etain says. The fire in her hand ripples, grows. “We can’t fight Ewanach and this thing at the same time.”

  “Great. I just love fighting massive suits of fucking armored death.”

  “Stop babbling,” Etain grits out, her hands coming up. The ball of flame heats, going from orange to white, an oven driving me back a step. “It’s unbecoming!” She shouts the last word, and a lance of white flame connects her to the armor as she shoves her hands forward.

  It connects with the thing’s breastplate, driving it back a step. Then it braces, regaining the ground it lost, pushing against the fire.

  “It’s not working!” Finna yells over the deluge.

  Etain pulls her hands back, flames banking. The armor’s chest piece is unmarred by the blast, and is glowing so white hot I can feel it at fifteen feet away.

  Its sword comes up, hanging in the air a moment.

  Another beam of fire comes from Etain, this time connecting with the massive blade. When it hits, it splits around the edge, and the thinner metal heats instantly, so rapidly that it seems it’ll catch flame.

  But it doesn’t melt, and I can’t see any damage whatsoever.

  “Stop!” My laugh is pure panic at the ridiculousness of the situation. “You’re just making it more dangerous!”

  Etain curses, and the flames die. She backs a step, draws her blade, and familiar golden tongues dance up its length. “Guess we’ll have to do this the hard way.”

  The sword drops. We dive to the sides, Finna dissolving as Etain and I roll opposite directions. The blade hits the cobbles, sending up an explosion of stone that pelts me, battering my face and hands. The world shakes with the power of it, and the massive blade is halfway buried under the ground.

  How the hell do we fight this thing?

  It pulls it’s sword free. We have moments. Etain recovers faster than me, flies at a stone arm, leading with her blade. It cuts deep into the metal. The damage is pointless, even when she drags her blade downward, trying to sever the limb.

  The statue’s hand smashes Etain, launching her across the square. She tumbles to a stop on the far side.

  She doesn’t move.

  I run for her, boosted by impossible speed. The armor turns on us as I reach her. Etain’s eyes are half closed, and though there’s no blood, her face is twisted. “Arm,” she coughs.

  I feel behind her in the dark. Her arm is gone, ripped free.

  A footstep behind us, coming closer. A meter ticking out our death. He’s coming.

  I cast about, looking for her severed limb. It’s already moving, clawing toward us. Grabbing it up, I hold the stump at her shoulder, and the threads lace tight.

  “Run!” She yells, up and dodging. There’s a whistle from above. I know that sound. I scramble madly toward the statue.

  I dart between its legs just as the sword comes down, and a glancing hit from its gauntlet sends me pinging off one massive ankle, cracking my head.

  Freya’s gift kicks in, mending my skull. Dizziness throws me off. I can’t tell which way I’m stumbling.

  All while the statue turns and turns, bearing down.

  An arm circles my shoulders, steadying. Etain limps me on her shoulder to the square’s edge. She drops me without preamble and she’s off, dancing past the statue. It follows her flaming blade.

  Finna crouches, hands on my face. “Lir!”

  “I’m good. Just need a second.” The agony of the healing courses through me, but I feel better already. Thank you, Freya.

  Maybe my thanks is premature. Behind us drones an ocean of corpses. An army of the dead.

  Fantastic.

  “How do we fight this thing?” Finna shouts.

  Etain darts under a sideways swing of its blade that would have cut her in half.

  Finna throws out her arms. “It’s armor is too thick!”

  An idea spawns from her words.

  “Get on my back!” I yell, darting for the armor. It faces away, tracking Etain, blade chasing her. Finna adheres to me and I leap, one foot on its back, and pivot upward. We launch above its head and stick a landing at its neck.

  It spins, tries to throw me off, but it’s not fast enough. I kneel, searching in the dim light, and there. At its neck, a seam. I grip under and yank.

  Adrenaline and Callista’s gift course through me. From the corner of my eye, I see a giant hand raising to rip me from my perch.

  I redouble my efforts, panic giving me the last burst of strength I need. The visor lifts, ripping free.

  No time to celebrate. I flatten, dodging the massive fist, and Finna oozes into the statue’s hollow body without needing to ask.

  On its next twist the statue bucks me free.

  I land on my back, cracking my head again. This can’t be healthy. I get to my feet, dart to Etain’s side. She’s watching, wide eyed, blade leveled. “What did you do?”

  “Finna!”

  Her eyes narrow. “I hope this works. I’ve tried everything I can think of.”

  “Got your body back, didn’t it?”

  “Fair.” She turns, throwing a ball of flame across the square. Ranks of the dead, just now cresting the rise, are incinerated to heaps of greasy ash.

  We stand side by side, at the ready. The armor turns, lumbering toward us. Its blade raises for a deathblow. I tense, set to dodge.

  It lurches, stutters, and stops. The body shudders violently in place, a war playing out in its limbs. It tries reaching for us. It draws back. One leg bends and one kicks out, ripping up cobblestones. A shout of triumph rings from inside. Then a yelp.

  “Finna!” Our voices twine.

  More clanks from inside. Shudderin
g stops.

  Etain looks to me, brow raised.

  Come on, Finna.

  Her head pops above the things collar, ridiculously small. “Got it!” She yells. “A minor spirit, really. He’s mine.” She licks her lips. “And now…”

  Her face screws up. The sword swings a few times, long cuts to the air, experimental. “This is great!” she shouts, rotating a tottering step a time toward the advancing army of undead. Her blade swipes, annihilating scores of corpses at a time.

  I watch her go, her tiny head controlling the living armor, decimating our enemies.

  “I’m really sorry I called her a puddle,” Etain says, and I can’t believe it, but I hear awe in her voice.

  Following in the swath she’s cut toward the city, I feel the same way. Even when she gets drunk with power and tips the thing over, pouring herself out into an empty grave.

  -The Gates of Eirenè-

  Black slab steps move in rises up and up, each landing the size of a small forum in my city. We move in the shadows of buttresses and spires, buildings of state on each side and ahead the observatory, its domed tower reaching skyward like a thick finger.

  Its shadow falls across an open square at the top of the stairs, beckoning us in. People filled this square once. Merchants, money changers, pie makers, and fish mongers. Or maybe in a city this vast each of those had its own square, and one for exotic spices, and wine, and silk clothes.

  It had those things once, and a populace to support them. Now...The city and palace aren’t separate from the Boneyards. They’re a part of it. This whole place is a crypt.

  Standing in the square beneath the battlements pricks cold sweat on my neck. My father stood there, and my mother stood there. Tagan fought his bonds and Esmanth–

  Finna rests a cool hand on my neck. It’s too real; it takes a moment for the memory to pass. The architecture, the alignment is one of terrible familiarity. Then I remind myself that cities are built the same, and castles; buildings of learning. It’s just coincidence.

  “The mirror will be up there,” Etain says as we reach the top step, and she nods to a circular opening beneath the observatory’s dome.

  I glance above. The moon has begun its descent; its white-blue light creates a concentric circle with the porthole. We have minutes now.

  Etain sets both feet on the landing.

  Leaf litter in the center of the square rustles, tumbles over itself, and begins to swirl. A green glow paints the small storm.

  We’ve passed beyond the Boneyards. Protection from Ewanach is gone.

  “Go,” I order Finna. “Etain, guide her up the tower.”

  “I should stay here.”

  “You know the way to the mirror, and it might take two of you to move it. I can’t risk you to Ewanach.” If he separates Etain and her body again, it won’t go well. “Go.”

  “Listen! His helm comes off before the light strikes…”

  A shape takes form behind her.

  “Go, Etain.”

  “The helm!

  “I’ll do it! Go!”

  Etain charges around the wall of green light and Finna flows over the stones. They disappear into the observatory, and then its doors are obscured behind the specter of Ewanach at his full height.

  What I saw on the horse was not this, not him. Large and menacing, but man sized. What hovers before me is almost the statue reincarnated.

  “I smelled you on the Marbhán Road.” His words hiss like a dying gasp. “And in the Hollow. Mortal; your stench is almost intoxicating. I could divide your soul between countless soldiers. Farming the Boneyards…” The word scrapes like a coin inside a metal drum. “The harvest is so small. You would give me a legion.” Green energy pulses inside his spiked helm, flickering in a rhythm with each word.

  “You were defeated, in life, in death. I’ve come to send you into exile.”

  He draws his sword. It rips the night, and for a moment, I hear the screams of lost souls, the thousands harvested by the villagers and fed to his blade. Green flames dance up a length of black onyx, and it’s as tall as me, edges serrated, with teeth like distant mountains, uneven and jagged. “This land must be ruled!” He screams.

  “It has a ruler.”

  “Not her! No. It needs strength. Eirenè needs a ruler who won’t cower, who will take risks that elevate it to a realm of the gods!”

  I wonder if he’s ever met his wife. “You are lord of a dead land and a village of thralls!”

  “I am lord of this!” He screams this with a shriek of twisting metal, sweeping his arm out over the land. His rippling and bobbing cease a moment and his green light dims. “Where are my vassals? My lords?” His shade lurches forward, darts in a nimble circle for a thing so hulking. “Where is the daylight? Where are the merchants?”

  I almost feel bad for him. He’s genuinely confused. But once upon a time, he chose his path with eyes open.

  No sounds from inside the observatory. I can’t stall forever, partly because I can’t hold my tongue. Countless slapped cheeks and black eyes attest to it. “They belonged to Etain of Eirenè, and you squandered them.”

  His acid flames erupt from every seam in his armor. “I gave my only child! I gave her to Mordenn for our glory!”

  Mordenn. Of course. “She wasn’t yours to give!”

  Ewanach shrieks like a hundred birds of prey descending. “Ungrateful!” His blade cleaves brick, sending deadly ricochets from the walls. “Ungrateful, ungrateful!” He sunders a stone column, shaking the ground. “I sacrificed! I waged war! I killed because I loved, and I resurrected because I loved, and she has always been ungrateful!”

  “You killed and resurrected for your own glory! You sent your child to Folkvangr and dragged your queen from it to feed your selfishness.”

  Ewanach arcs his blade menacingly slow.

  Our parlay is at an end. I draw cold steel. “You love yourself, and you honor Mordenn. Nothing more.”

  His blade cuts the air so sharp and clean that it ripples reality. I jump, clearing the swing.

  “It’s stuck!” Finna calls down from overhead, finally. “But we’re getting it.”

  His blade comes back around, impossibly fast. Kumiko’s gift saves me, and I roll. “No rush!”

  Fog gathers in the square, leaking from between each brick. From a crouch I block his next strike, using every ounce of Callista’s power to surge back and throw him clear.

  Fog divides, into lines. It blurs, swirling, and faces emerge. They form an eternal scream, like the trees, like the masks in Kumiko’s realm. Weapons take shape, blades and pikes, and despite their thin forms the arms have a density that can’t be ignored.

  “Okay, a bit of a hurry!” I call up to Finna.

  No answer.

  Ewanach’s blade crosses mine, jarring my teeth and sending spots to the edge of my vision. My shoulders burn with torn sinew. We block and parry in a waltz around the courtyard, our movements fanning specters that continue solidifying. A spectral blade whispers death a hair from the back of my head.

  “Finna! Now or never…”

  My answer is the dry grating of rusted metal.

  Ewanach draws to his full height, dwarfing me. His next blow bows me back. I grip my hilt with both hands, teeth grit, and somehow find the strength to push back.

  His dead army closes in. Ewanach’s gold green fire billows from his helm, painting my face like breath. He pushes harder, and the flames lick my face, burning me, and I have to choke back a scream.

  I’m losing, about to die. He’s too strong, and I have no surprises left.

  Or, maybe I do.

  I turn away, and on a desperate surge, hook my fist and swing.

  His helm is ridged and forged from metal that existed at the start of the world. I hit with all the power of Callista’s gift and suffer all the consequences. Ewanach’s helm tears from his shoulders, while the impact separates the bones of my fist into puzzle pieces. Vomit rises in my throat.

  He stumbles back,
clawing at the hole in his neck. Unlike the living armor, with him, I see something, the barest hint of a spirit, twisted in agony, the hint of a tortured face.

  I bring my sword around. It sweeps his form and passes through.

  Fuck.

  A sound fills the square, the dull clap of an ancient mechanism. White light pours from everywhere, blinding, rendering Ewanach a silhouette.

  Pouncing flesh and metal zip the air overhead. I look up, and Etain is falling like a meteor, sword above her head, aimed toward her husband.

  She’s going to miss. We’re not close enough to the observatory.

  I leap forward, praying to every god I know, and kick, the bones of my foot shattering at the impact.

  He stumbles back, two steps, three, four.

  Enough.

  Etain lands on Ewanach’s back and her blade plunges through the curve of his neck. Unlike mine, her strike finds purchase, shrieking as it passes through his ancient armor. Ewanach writhes, scrapes at the light and the heating air.

  Etain kicks him forward onto the cobbles and his army burns away like mist under a sunrise.

  Prostrate, Ewanach clutches at Etain’s blade protruding from his ethereal skull. “You’ve given me a traitor’s death!” he coughs out like an echo.

  “You lived a traitor’s life.” Etain spits onto him. The gob lands on stone; Ewanach evaporates to green smoke and blows away on a breeze.

  Above us Finna rotates the mirror. It catches the setting moon and spills light across the Boneyards like an incoming tide.

  Souls raise from between the stones, from the iron gates and small windows of the mausoleums. Their dives and swirls are joyous, and the smoky shapes brighten and shrink until they glow like a million stars in the once-black sky. This time, when the breeze whips over us, it’s cool and gentle, and fills the world with a soft collective sigh.

  My heart is shaken by the sight. I turn to Etain, who scrubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. “There’s always so much grit on the wind,” she mutters, eyes trained straight ahead.

  The souls raise and flicker out. All but one that dances at the base of the steps. Etain walks the entire staircase, trembling, to meet it. The firefly light dances around her face and plays in her hair. Etain cradles it a moment and whispers something. Then she raises her hand and sends the soul up into the night, where it disappears against a starscape that lights the sky’s dome.