by Scott Hale
Eighty miles out of Caldera, thirty from Llyn, Aeson snuck into the meadows of Trist, the second town on the route. It wasn’t a hard place to find, but because, again, the Night Terrors had murdered everyone that once lived there, the place had been forgotten. There were no proper buildings to speak of. Nature had swallowed them up. The overgrown regurgitation—a large, hairball-looking hill impaled by wood beams and stone chips—was all that remained.
Death wasn’t here. After meeting Death face-to-face, that statement meant more for Aeson than most. Instead of slaughter, he found a sacristy. There was flesh and blood, of course, but not the defiled variety. The flaps of skin, sewn-together muscles, and organ ornaments stashed inside the hill weren’t trophies, but uniforms. Like someone’s Sunday best, they were laid out with great care, wrinkle-free, except for those hides that came from the elderly. There weren’t enough uniforms to dress the whole of the Cult of the Worm, which Aeson reasoned must be in the hundreds, but the sight was, despite obvious reasons, disturbing all the same. Not for what it was, which was revolting, but for what it represented, which was ritual, intent—something more than senseless debauchery. Above all else, there was meaning.
There was that, and then there was the Cult of the Worm’s symbol. One gigantic, double-headed stick figure icon that appeared to have been painted onto the hill with the celestial colors of the Abyss. Unlike the symbols of the Cult Aeson had seen previously, this one was different. The body of the stick figure was thicker; it had depth. It wasn’t because of the hill, or some trick of the light. The line was a gouge.
Pushing aside Bjørn’s bear mask, Aeson put his eye to the line, and recoiled. There were sights inside the symbol. Grayness, and a solitary retreat suspended in darkness. The Void. It was here, just out of reach, waiting to be called forth. What was holding it back? Why here, rather than Angheuawl?
The road to Marwaidd was paved with bad intentions. The third town on the route straddled an impassable swamp and an impossibly thick wood in the deepest part of Kistvaen’s range. Following the route through each of the settlements was the only reliable way to reach Angheuawl, but by the time Aeson hit Marwaidd, he started to consider other options.
Half of his hesitation came from the vermillion veins that had sprung up like weeds in the area—six foot, pitcher plant-like weeds that followed him as he passed. The other half came from the songs rolling out of Marwaidd, and the fact that he couldn’t find anyone singing them.
He was getting used to Bjørn’s bear mask, but when panic set in, it was the first thing he took off. The Night Terrors wore the dead on a daily basis. But wearing the skull of his dead friend, even if it wasn’t really his skull, made Aeson feel like a flesh fiend. And he couldn’t deal with that shit right now.
“Okay, okay,” Aeson said, slipping off Marwaidd’s road, towards the swamp side of the area. There weren’t any vermillion veins there. Not yet, at least.
He stopped beside the water’s edge. Catching his reflection, the air caught in his throat. Mask or no mask, he looked like a flesh fiend. His hair was greasy and hung unevenly above his shoulders. His eyes and his cheeks were sunken; pallid, he wasn’t palatable to even vultures. He didn’t know what he’d weighed before leaving home, but he had to have been twenty or more pounds lighter. He had muscles, sure, like Bjørn would’ve wanted, but they were the cheated kind. The kind that showed when there was barely an ounce of fat on someone’s body. The kind that was soaked in adrenaline, and would be useless to him as soon as they did what they had to do.
Death had spared him, but for how long? If he killed the Witches, would the moth cart him off before Vrana made it to his arms? Better yet, would she even recognize him? He laughed, thinking that Vrana could hardly be picky about his appearance given her own, but she could, couldn’t she? He wore his hurt inside and out, now. He was supposed to be her reflection. An image of strength, like she had always been for him.
Aeson found a tree and leaned against it. If he sat, he was liable to not get up again. Digging into his bag, he pulled out a squirrel he’d cooked and finished it off. It tasted awful; he’d probably pay the consequences for his poor cooking skills later in the day. He knew how to survive in the wild, the same way a rat knew how to survive in the wild. He had all the knowledge, and yet all he did was scavenge. He was doing the best he could, but if Bjørn were here… if Bjørn were here he would be doing so much better.
The Blood of Before brushed against Aeson’s fingers. He took it out and opened to the last page he’d been trying to decipher. The eerie songs from Marwaidd swelled into a teeth-aching howl, but he ignored them. He had to ignore them; otherwise, every note would take him back to that night in the Dismal Sticks, and Ichor’s dinner party at House Gloom.
Tssnrt sa nrie su osri k.caiesheZ
Aeson was a little less than three-fourths of the way through The Blood of Before. After the entry about the Dead City and the disease the Night Terrors brought back from the place, there had been several more of little significance. He was getting closer to the portion of the book where the words were written in blood. The only thing stopping him? This entry here. One sentence. Either it was the strain of the journey, or his mind had finally snapped, but either way, he could not figure out how to decipher it. He had stared at it for so long, he didn’t even read it anymore. But until he understood its meaning, he couldn’t go forward (or rather, backward in time, since the book was in reverse chronology).
He put The Blood of Before away and closed his eyes. He thought about Bjørn, how little he had truly known him, and how much he missed him. Aeson reached behind his breastplate, where he carefully hid the Red Death weapon. Keeping the Bear’s rib close was what kept him going. He would’ve liked to have said it was Vrana, but this weapon and Bjørn’s sacrifice was the only thing that gave him enough hope to finish the mission.
A piece of parchment fell out of his bag and landed over his feet. He snatched it up before the wind could. It was the small list of names of the Children of Lacuna Anguis had given him to investigate. How many “Children” were there these days, he wondered. Children of Lacuna: they were either Night Terrors or Corrupted, or some indiscernible combination of the two. Children of the Witches made more sense, though. Thinking this, he thought back to House Gloom and how he’d seen Joy carrying babies back into the Void. There were more children coming, he knew. Not flesh fiends, Corrupted, or Night Terrors. Abominations. Grotesque playthings of the two daughters spurned for eternity by their heartless mother.
Fuck, he should’ve asked for more Red Death weapons. Bjørn would’ve been pissed knowing the rest of his ribs went to waste.
The songs of Marwaidd stuck with Aeson as he made his way to the next town. The verses and chorus swirled inside his head—a ravenous repetition that feasted on his senses, leaving him deaf to his environment, and nearly blind to himself. As if such a thing were possible, the song gave him a mild case of synesthesia; except the only color he saw in the songs was blue. Blue, like the Worm the Witches were using Vrana to somehow draw from. If Pain and Joy had managed a way to harness a fraction of the Worm’s power without actually having to summon one…
The fourth town, Rhyfel, found him before he found it. Lost in the greasy lines of the Cult and Choir’s horrendous art, he walked into the town without even realizing it. He couldn’t remember what Rhyfel had been before the Cult took it over, but they had turned the town into a factory. The wide, open spaces between buildings and the poor creatures shuffling from them gave Rhyfel the appearance of an internment camp.
Aeson ducked behind one of the buildings. Damn near sweating through his armor, he inched along the stone, three-story building, carefully minding the scrap that had built up behind it. Voices and footsteps rose and fell around him, in a language that wasn’t a language, much like the song reverberating through his head. But he could recognize orders when they were being given. And progress, too; the sound of creation; intense metalwork, furious crafting. Hammers and anvi
ls, knives and leather; the jangle of chains; the hiss of steam. Progress, of a nefarious purpose.
Already he could feel his body breaking down, giving itself over to his own personal Trauma. Like the continent he called home, his insides shifted and memories twisted, and suddenly even the most recognizable things became foreign to him. From the piles of scrap, fingers, like worms, wriggled through the gaps and beckoned him to them.
“Stop it,” he said to the visions, just as angry as he was afraid. “Stop!”
Aeson slid alongside the building to where it stopped. He was tired of this shit. Not a day or night went by that he didn’t find himself reminded of House Gloom and… her… it. He knew his mind was trying to make it easy on him, because the memory of what’d happened to him was getting hazier and hazier. The narrative was always the same, but the details that made it kept going missing. Like the disease that afflicted his people from the Dead City, or the Corruption that tainted the Corrupted’s arms, his rape was a sickness his body was trying to push out.
But his body didn’t forget the sounds, the sensations. The wound would heal, but the phantom pains would haunt him until he was a haunt himself.
Through his teeth, he said, “Fucking stop,” and leaned out from behind the building.
Night Terrors and Corrupted—members of the Cult of the Worm—were working too hard to notice him. Their eyes were a dazzling blue that was far prettier than they deserved to be. He couldn’t get a good fix on how many people were here, but after a few minutes of observing, he knew what they were doing.
They were forging weapons and armor, and what the hell was that? Aeson rubbed the gunk—weeks’-worth of travel—out of his eyes to clear his vision. From one of the farther buildings, a crumpled silo, several Cult members carried out three large, very heavy-looking wreaths. But the rings of the wreaths weren’t comprised of flowers, leaves, and twigs, but skin and bone tied together with tendons and stretched intestines. Blood and a dark putty—undoubtedly some torturous extract—acted as the glue that kept the structure together. Attached to the sides of the wreath and running down its center was, for Aeson, a familiar sight: the two-headed stick figure symbol.
Whatever the wreath was, it was, if nothing else, a testament to the Witches’ lack of creativity.
There were no flesh fiends here, except for those that roamed the corridors of Aeson’s brain, and that, although relieving, confused him.
Llyn was a slaughtering ground, Aeson thought, slipping back behind the building. In Trist, there were the uniforms and that big ass symbol… and in Marwaidd the Choir was somewhere. Underground, I guess.
Footsteps. Aeson straightened up and drew his sword. He had the Red Death weapon, but who knows how many deaths it had in it before the thing would break.
Heavy breathing, a cough: a shadow stretched past the edge of the building. Then the footsteps stopped.
A wicked smile stretched across Aeson’s face. He hadn’t killed anything but animals since the Dismal Sticks.
Still out of sight, Aeson watched the person’s shadow for movement. The shadow sighed; it raised its arms. Fluttering wings, and then a snap: the person threw a dead raven into the grass and then, laughing, walked away.
Rhyfel… He shook his head, crept along the building, to the edge, again. It’s an armory.
He heard shouting, and more wings flapping. He leaned out once more. From the wreaths, a handful of ravens had emerged. The cultists were scrambling after them.
Was Llyn a slaughter ground? Or a training yard?
He steadied his breathing. Watching the cultists rip the ravens out of the air and break them. It made his heart hurt.
Llyn… a training ground. Trist… a place to be fitted, or initiated. Marwaidd… a chapel. And here, Rhyfel… an armory. The towns aren’t that far off from each other. And they’re right in the middle of the continent. Easy access to the North and South, but especially the Heartland.
Aeson started away from the town, and as he did so, thought: If all the towns have a purpose… then the Witches have everything covered. What the hell are they doing in Angheuawl?
When he finally reached Angheuawl, it was the first afternoon of November, and it was snowing. There was about an inch of snow on the ground, but most of it had been reduced to a red slush. Because even as Aeson crept towards the town from the distance, there were still flesh fiends and cultists pouring into the town from every direction, and wherever they went, blood flowed; be it from their own wounds, or the wounds they made in passing on their brothers and sisters. It seemed as if the Witches’ congregations couldn’t go a second without tearing a piece out of one another. Even as they finally finished the climb to the hill upon which Angheuawl sat, the flesh fiends were fondling with and chewing on everything they could get their claws on. And the strange thing was that the cultists, whether they were Children of Lacuna or new initiates who had bought into the sisters’ bullshit, didn’t seem to mind. They welcomed the mutilation. Disappearing into the town, Aeson could still hear them clamoring for “communion.”
Aeson dropped down into the bushes. There was no wind, and yet the raucous cries of the Choir deep inside Angheuawl seemed to move through the area the way wind would—the sound waves flattening the foliage, bending trees. He checked the Red Death weapon, even though he knew it was there, in his armor, and again, stowed it away.
I’m here, I did it. He glanced up at Angheuawl. There was blue smoke in the air, rising from the center of the village. Vrana’s here. I can do this.
He started for his feet, and then stopped. What was that? He had heard—
A curse wolf padded through the undergrowth, its stark-white face sizing him up, and headed towards the hill to Angheuawl. The wolves were said to be portents of Death, but Aeson knew what was going on. She was watching him, waiting to see how dirty he was willing to get to do her dirty work.
How the hell am I going to get up there? he thought. Will they even notice if I’m not one of them? The Cult of the Worm didn’t seem to be part of some hive-mind. If I’m with people that look like me… He shivered. I could ignore them. I could ignore the flesh fiends. I could walk right past them. Hell, they might even think I’m a flesh fiend given—
The curse wolf stopped halfway up the hill and stared into the woods, directly at Aeson. A pack of Night Terrors in heavy furs—Rimeans—lumbered past the curse wolf, as if it wasn’t there.
Despite his pep talk, Aeson immediately caved. “I can’t,” he said under his breath. “I can’t do it.”
A sharp pain pricked his chest. A tunnel of pressure slammed into his forehead; his eyes filled with black light. Something scratched his skin again from behind his breastplate. Mindful of the Red Death weapon, but frantic, he reached into his armor and took it out.
Death’s finger, which she had fixed to Bjørn’s rib, was moving slowly, beckoning him forward. Lip quivering, the effects of the weapon’s pricks waning, he looked at the curse wolf. The beast gave him a nod and went to the edge of the hill, where the woods were thin and crosshatched with sun shafts.
“Follow,” Death seemed to say. And why not? He had been chasing Death his entire life, in one form or another.
Sword in one hand, Red Death weapon in the other, he swallowed the sick in his throat and, skirting the hill, headed towards the wolf. He kept to the trees, bushes, boulders, and anything else he could cower behind. Every time the snow crunched underneath his feet, he swore the cultists climbing the hill could hear him. But no one had, or if they had, they didn’t seem to care.
Carefully, Aeson rounded the bottom of the hill. He came up the side of it where the curse wolf waited. Death’s familiar shook its head and padded off, away from Angheuawl, into the trees.
This is stupid, Aeson thought. The woods that scaled the hill’s slope were not only sparse and sun-soaked, but flooded, too. It wasn’t that snow was melting, though it flowed past his feet all the same; it was the lakes in the area. Farther on, where the land flattened at highe
r elevations, two lakes had flooded.
“Pain and Joy use water to enter our world,” Aeson said, crouched, the rushing water up to his shins. “What’re they doing here?”
The curse wolf glanced back, as if to say, “You’ll see.”
Aeson heard splashing not far from where he stood. With the wolf, he hurried towards the thickest grouping of trees he could find and wedged himself there. Sitting on the ground, lower-half soaked, hard-hitting shivers rocked his body. He made himself as small as possible, without relinquishing the weapons, and waited for whatever was up ahead to leave.
Don’t see me, don’t see me, don’t see me.
The splashing grew louder. He could make out limbs wading through the water, as if those who were approaching were down on all-fours. He heard teeth chattering, too, and wheezing.
Aeson cringed as each sound grew louder and louder. They were close enough that he could hear the cracking of their bones; he could feel how uneven their teeth must be, by the way they clicked together. He gripped his sword, started to lean out from the trees, and then quickly retreated.
They were passing right by him.
And there was his reflection in the water, scared shitless and plain as day.
Looking at the wolf, he begged it silently for a plan. But Death’s dog had no answers for him. It was as scared as he was.
Ripples from those approaching broke against Aeson’s side. A voice, loud enough that it felt as if the speaker were shouting in his ear: “She’s h-h-here… I c-c-can smell t-the way s-she tastes.”
That voice, Aeson thought. I know I know that voice. It was garbled, though, like the speaker’s mouth was filled with spit and glass. He couldn’t place it, but he knew he knew—
A fat flesh fiend crawled into view, inches away from where he sat. Like a startled animal, Aeson went stiff. He stopped breathing, stopped blinking. He retreated inside himself, to that dark and dead place where not even the most severe suffering could reach him.
