by Scott Hale
And just like that, she was gone again. It was as though she had never returned.
Summer was waning, and soon autumn would fall upon the heated land and cool its temper. A day out of Caldera, Vrana decided she wanted to see Cadence, the village where she’d unknowingly placed the Holy Child of Penance. It had been music and the maddened flames of a bonfire that led Vrana there first. Now, she had the tornados of smoke twisting on the horizon to guide her way.
Cadence had collapsed under the weight of its declared blasphemy. Houses were gutted, smoldering altars to the god of ruin. The bonfire, which had once stood before a score of dancing bodies, had fallen over, revealing the burned corpses of the village trapped inside. Vrana considered for a moment that these corpses could have been wayward travelers offered up in human sacrifice, that the people of Cadence were cruel and had deserved their fate, but she knew better. Penance had come to this village upon receiving word of the Holy Child’s location and murdered it for daring to look upon him and seeing, with unworthy eyes, their lord’s vessel as he was: Corrupted.
Blix cawed and clutched the roof of one of the few houses still standing. He scanned the devastation carefully, as though taking notes. Vrana nodded at the bird, which he took as a sign to move further into Cadence, and dismounted from her horse. The conjured beast’s flesh swirled and coalesced with the substance of its making—soil and rock, root and bone—as it stood diligently beside a dry trough.
Vrana felt partially responsible for Cadence’s outcome, if only for giving the boy into their custody. Ax in hand, nose wrinkling at the smell of burnt flesh and rain, she rummaged through the rubble of misery, finding more dead among the debris. Bodies clogged her path as she went deeper into the village, their arms rigid, outstretched, forever posed in a plea for mercy. Had the welfare of the Holy Child truly been Samuel Turov’s reason for stealing him away from Penance? Or had his act of kindness been premeditated, preapproved by those who shared his station? She wished Alexander Blodworth had still been alive the moment they happened upon the pit, so that she could have taken him by the throat and bled from him his secrets.
Vrana let out a sharp whistle that brought the horse to her. She mounted it, had one last look at the last of Cadence, and then kicked the beast into a gallop. The village became a gray blur of squandered potential, and before she knew it, Vrana was in the countryside once more.
Days later, at dusk, when the conjured horse had finally returned to the earth, Vrana found herself a niche in the land, a shallow cave wreathed in weeds, and rested. The carcasses inside told her that something had recently been there, but her hunger countered the prospect that this thing may make a very nice meal itself. She consulted the map from the elders to verify what she already knew, that she was still days away from her destination, and removed the sealing stone for closer inspection. It was the color of a robin’s egg, with streaks of white, as though the image of lightning had been seared into its surface. The stone was heavy to hold, and the notion of what was inside intrigued Vrana. The elders provided no information as to where they’d procured the object or how it functioned. They told Vrana to simply find the chamber, drop the stone into the Worm’s hole, and swiftly leave the scene.
“Don’t wait around to see if it works,” her mother had whispered to her the night she left. “Come back to us. I don’t want you to be the one to suffer if they’re wrong.”
At midnight, Vrana camped at the entrance of the cave, ears pricked and eyes set on the field before her. Moon cats padded through the brittle grass, the limbs of their prey flailing through the gaps in their fangs. Black boars meandered with snouts to the ground, tusks signing the soil with their red signatures. An alligator in a distant lake clamped its jaws shut and rolled its meal into an early grave. Nearer the cave, where the trees grew out of one another, a skyswallower ambled forward on two legs, planted itself, and extended its jaw. Vrana could not help but smile as the creature’s skin became camouflaged with the colors of its surroundings.
“Awesome,” she whispered. Then: “What’s that?” She gripped the ax and leaned forward.
She strained her ears, lifted up her mask to hear more clearly. Someone, or something, was crawling in the underbrush. Her mind immediately went to the last place she wanted it to: Geharra’s pit, and the flesh fiends inside. It’s dark, and I’m alone, she thought, so why wouldn’t it be one? Now that I know they’re out there, I’ll see them everywhere.
Vrana waited with bated breath, a stilled sentinel of the forgotten cave. While she watched the strange shape crawl through the shadows, she searched her thoughts for all she knew of the flesh fiends. They were said to move through the fissures in the deep earth, their fear of, or vulnerability to, sunlight having driven them there. Some claimed that Vrana’s people had locked them away underground so as to prevent them from surfacing for new flesh. Others, however, stated that the flesh fiends had merely become lost in the catacombs of the world. Their origin was often a point of contention among self-proclaimed scholars as well. Were they newborns that had clawed their way out of the Old World’s cadaver? Or had they existed before the Trauma, under a different name, fulfilling a different role?
Vrana was tired—and tired of waiting. Carefully, she backed into the cave and found a place where she could rest. She lifted with the handle of her ax a loop of razor nettle and laid it out a few feet before her. She rummaged through her satchel for a vial she had taken from her mother’s supplies prior to leaving. Finding it, she removed the stopper and made around her a circle with the cloudy contents. Extracted from a grumbler’s gut, the liquid smelled like soured milk, burnt hair, and rotted teeth. She would not sleep well, but when she did, she could do so without worrying about waking to something gnawing on her neck.
The next morning Vrana awoke to find the circle unbroken and the razor nettle undisturbed. She was certain she’d dreamt while she slept, but the moment she tried to grasp it, the dream was gone. She gathered up her belongings and shambled towards the sun. At the mouth of the cave, she yawned loudly, stretched and squealed, and then stumbled backward as her eyes finally adjusted to the light.
All around her and throughout the field were strips of fur and muscle, chunks of skin and shards of bone, souvenirs for her viewing from the unseen hunter. Vrana stepped over a stiffened skyswallower; its mouth had been torn apart, its tongue crammed into its throat. That could be me, she thought, staring at a patch of blood-striped grass, where flies fought for property on a pair of lungs. Why didn’t it come for me?
The days that followed were uneventful and the nights equally so. Vrana slept without harassment and traveled freely the untended roadways of the eastern expanse. There was little to find beyond Cadence, and it seemed strange to Vrana that the Corrupted had neglected to colonize this side of the continent. As the days wore on, her mind began to turn on itself. She began to see in every distant forest and ragged mountain the spires and steeples of civilization. Is that a town? Is this the Heartland? It never was and never would be—she was still weeks away from the Northern kingdoms—but unfortunately for Vrana, common sense had a tendency to flee when it was most needed.
“I could always wander amongst the Corrupted, like Mara,” Vrana mumbled to herself days later as she consulted the map under the shade of an old oak. Voices lifted her eyes from the parchment to a hill crowned with orange grass. “What’s this?”
Two young Corrupted males were walking down the hillside, each bearing a bucket, one filled with water, the other fruit. They were shirtless, and the Corruptions on their right arms glowed like hot coals. They spoke loudly, went about their business carelessly. If they’d seen Vrana, then they were not intimidated by her presence, which made it all the more imperative she move from her position.
“David, David, David—it doesn’t matter what you think,” one Corrupted said. He stumbled over a rock, sloshing a bit of water on the parched earth.
David laughed at his friend and said, “Martin, Martin, Martin—you�
��re too gullible. You’d swim in the Black Reef if someone said you’d find gold there.”
Martin shook his head and spat. “I’ll take my cock over gold any day.”
Vrana moved carefully around the tree, pressing her back hard into the crumbling bark. From where she sat, she noticed embedded into the soil the stump of a wooden pole. Running her fingers through dirt, she found the remains of a telephone cable, once vocal chords of a now-muted nation.
“What are you going to do then, eh?” David asked as they stopped, dropped their buckets, and rested.
A shadow glided over Vrana. She looked up and saw Blix circling against the clouds. Stay there.
“I’ll see what he’s about.”
“You know what he’s about.” David picked up his bucket, snatched an apple from inside, and bit into it. “How can you put your trust in a man who ran when things stopped going his way, yeah?”
“Well, he’s not really man is he?” Martin grinned as he said this.
Vrana cocked her head, confused.
“That’s bullshit, and you know it!” David laughed. “When’s the meet? Maybe I’ll come with.”
Vrana felt a surge of adrenaline within her body as David paused and looked toward the old oak. Had he seen her? Heard her? Left with no choice, she stood up, forced to do that which she should’ve done a few minutes earlier. It hadn’t been since the crowd outside Nora that Vrana had fought a Corrupted. Maybe I’ll just take a limb from each to keep the balance and then let them hobble on their way. I don’t have time for this shit.
But before Vrana could step out from behind the tree, the Corrupted were already panicking, dropping their belongings in favor of the knives they kept in their pockets.
“Just… just leave us alone. We’ll go!” David cried.
“David, David,” Martin said. “Over there, there’s another! There’s two.” He tapped his friend and pointed to Vrana as she came out from behind the tree. “It’s a goddamn ambush.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
R’lyeh had followed her, and she’d brought all the hate and pain she was saving for Penance. The Octopus was crouched low, brandishing the talons of the Cruel Mother in each hand. She was drenched in sweat and sunburned and almost as dirty as she’d been when they found her in the pit. Dried blood covered her arms and mask, and dangling from her hair were strands of a cobweb, its eight-legged architect still attached.
“Please,” Martin begged, swinging his knife back and forth between R’lyeh and Vrana. “Please, let us go.”
R’lyeh launched herself at the Corrupted, leaving Vrana no time to think. The girl tackled Martin to the ground; a yelp escaped her mask as his knife glanced across her side. R’lyeh put her elbow into his throat, and as his eyes bulged from their sockets, she stabbed him repeatedly in the stomach. He tried to push her off, but he was dying too fast; all his strength was running out with the blood now pooling beneath him.
Vrana screamed at R’lyeh for her to stop, but the girl ignored her; she continued to twist the talons, and her fist, deeper into Martin. David tried to bring his blade down onto the Octopus, but Vrana intervened, catching him by the wrist and shoving him away. Quickly, he came to his feet, lip bloodied from where he’d bitten into it, and moved to save his friend.
“No!” Vrana cried, ducking as David slashed at her. She spun around; hit him in the back of the legs with the head of her ax. As he tried to get up, she slammed her fist into his face, cutting her knuckles on his teeth.
“R’lyeh!” Vrana kicked the girl off Martin, and as R’lyeh fell backward, her hand slipped out of his stomach wound, dragging with it a chunk of liver. “What are you doing?!”
“What I’m supposed to!” she sulked. She wiped her hands on the ground, giving the grass a new color to wear.
“Why are you here? How are you here?” Vrana said breathlessly, watching as Martin writhed—and then died.
David groaned as he sat up; winced as he yanked free a tooth dangling from his gum. “Get it over with, Night Terrors,” he said, spitting out mouthfuls of blood.
“He’s Corrupted, Vrana,” R’lyeh said, as though challenging the Raven.
“Get up,” Vrana said. She looked at Martin’s torso: Insects were already crawling inside it, biting and chewing their way to the best parts. “Get up,” she repeated, gripping her ax tightly.
“I thought you’d be happy to see me.” R’lyeh stood, the daggers dripping gore onto her feet.
They were too far from Caldera to turn back, and the Octopus was too far gone to make the trip on her own. Vrana shook her head. Would she hold it against herself if she were to slap the girl? Her mother had done all that she could for R’lyeh—she’d tended her cuts and bruises and filled her stomach to its brim—but it hadn’t been enough.
David started to laugh nervously. His hand searched the grass for his knife, and when he found it, he stood up on shaking legs. “What is this? Who are you?” He swatted at Blix as the crow flew past his head. “You’re not Night Terrors.”
He thinks we’re human, Vrana thought. This isn’t how Night Terrors are supposed to act.
“What do you want? I’ve nothing!” David snarled.
I’ve no reason to kill him, but we can’t just walk away. Vrana approached the Corrupted and outstretched her ax, so that it rested beneath his chin. “Who were you talking about?” she asked, biding her time.
“What?” Strands of bloody saliva clung to his lips.
Vrana tensed her arm; she could hear the edge of the ax scrapping against his stubble. “The man you were speaking of with your friend.”
“He wasn’t my friend.” David’s cheeks twitched, and his eyes became glassy. “You’re with him, aren’t you? He’s disguising himself as a Night Terror now, isn’t he?”
R’lyeh joined Vrana. The man took a step back, his attention held by her daggers. He was terrified of her, the thirteen-year-old. “Answer us,” R’lyeh growled.
“Go fuck yourselves,” he snapped. “I know better.”
“Are you going to kill him?” R’lyeh cocked her head and sheathed her weapons.
As soon as the daggers were out of her reach, David pulled himself away from Vrana and threw R’lyeh to the ground. He slashed her palms and forearms as she tried to block her chest and neck. With a sigh, Vrana buried the ax into David’s skull and then left the man to die upon the girl, so that she would know the weight of her actions.
After one day and twelve hours of silence between the two, Vrana and R’lyeh had finally reached Nacthla. Vrana hadn’t really considered what she’d expected the town to look like, but she was certain that, if she had, it wouldn’t have been what now stood before them. Nachtla sat in the center of a shallow valley beset on all sides by craterous earth. To Vrana, it seemed as though there had once been a mountain formation in the area, but she figured time must’ve done away with it. Grass grew here, the yellowed and parched variety, but only in patches. Trees, too, decorated the dusty, color-streaked epidermis, but they were without leaves and seemed as though they would crumble like ash at the slightest touch. Vrana didn’t need to know much about agriculture to know this was no place to live, but then again, had it always been this way?
Moving closer, they saw that the town was much like Geharra—a combination of Old and New World aesthetics. A paved road split the town in two, and where the ignorant tenets required cement, they’d laid cobblestone instead. Many buildings were dilapidated, while others merely looked that way due to poor craftsmanship. But then there were those places that stood out among the squalor: great houses of power; a long, blood-red hotel; and a tower with stained glass. The Corrupted had clearly treated these remnants of the past with great reverence, for they’d been quarantined behind high walls and pointed fences.
R’lyeh cleared her throat and asked, “What now?”
Vrana didn’t respond immediately, and when she did, she said bluntly, “We’re going to Lacuna.”
“That’s not here?” R’lyeh stammered
.
Vrana, still angry with the girl, ignored her question. She followed Blix as he led them down the valley’s slope.
“I was only doing what the elders asked me,” R’lyeh said under her breath.
Vrana gritted her teeth. “R’lyeh, please don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not,” the Octopus said, shaking her head.
Vrana stopped and turned around. “Then why are you telling me this now?”
R’lyeh shrugged and nudged a rock with her foot. “I didn’t think you’d listen before.”
“Who sent you? Anguis?”
R’lyeh nodded. “It was my idea.”
Vrana whistled to Blix, and hearing her call, he went to her. “To follow me?”
R’lyeh hummed. The sun passed through her mask, and the veins inside glowed. “Before you left, that day you tried to tell me you were going, I went to the elders. I didn’t know what to say, but they let me in anyways. They said that my mom and dad were okay; they’d sent word they were safe in Eld.” R’lyeh mumbled something, patted the side of her leg nervously as she searched for her voice. “I told the elders I had to be with you.”
“R’lyeh, no. You need to be in Caldera with my mother.” Vrana considered reaching out to embrace the girl but decided against it.
“That’s what they said. But Anguis came to me the night you left; he said that I could follow you if I did what he asked.”
Blix hopped off Vrana and landed on R’lyeh’s shoulders. He nuzzled his head against her neck. “What did he ask?”
“That I go to Keldon’s Hill and kill the Corrupted there. He said that if I was quick enough, I would find you. He didn’t tell me why they had to die, but that didn’t matter. He gave me a map—” she produced from a pocket the same map given to Vrana, “—and food, and told me he was s-sorry for everything that’d happened to me.”
