by Scott Hale
The Skeleton kicked Camazotz’s sides. The bat slowed down to spite him. They were crossing the ocean now, and headed southward.
He spied hints of Geharra behind the ragged mountain range, and wondered if the Scavengers and the Mer had stopped beating around the bush and just started the beatings.
Looking to the Frozen North, he saw the endless, glacial fields of Hoarfrost bore the brunt of the snowstorm sweeping across it. Not much could claim dominion in that bitter domain but him and stubborn sons of bitches like him.
Glancing east, he couldn’t catch much. The land, in winter, lost much of its detail and most of its color. He could make out the Blasted Woodland and the mountains near the Southern Cradle, but even then, he wasn’t sure. The world was round, but he tended to see things flatly. A series of consequences, or problems followed by solutions. Angheuawl was, at least, hours away, but his pressured mind kept seeing it everywhere—on the coast near the Elys, or the hardened crust of the Dires. He’d done the deed of securing armaments; next came rescuing his family from the peril he’d put them in. Salvation had a sweetness that made his black tongue prickle. It would be the last time, he told himself, that he did this to them. But even then, he knew he’d have to leave them again. To go back for the weapons. To go to the Nameless Forest. To go to Eldrus. To go wherever it took to keep the hunger for life at bay.
Would it be easier if you knew they could not die? If you knew they were like you?
“No,” the Skeleton said.
There is only one way to find out.
“I do not think I want to know the mystery of what moves my bones.”
There you go, talking like us again.
“Oh.”
We do not believe you.
“Don’t care,” he said, correcting his accent again.
Tear us out. Throw us into the sea.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
You wouldn’t. That’s why you haven’t.
Camazotz jerked. She reared up, threw her wings back. They caught the air and she slowed down. The Red Worm’s stone slid down R’lyeh’s chest, off it, and—
The Skeleton grabbed it before it went singing slaughter to the world below.
“The hell is wrong with you?” He fixed the stone back around R’lyeh’s neck and wrapped his arms around her and it. “What’s the matter?”
Animals can sense danger.
The Skeleton’s eyes rolled around in his skull. He consulted Geharra behind him, the vague, jagged outline of the Heartland before him. Gut sinking, not that he had a gut, he strained his vision, trying, though he knew it was impossible, to see the Nameless Forest from here, thinking that the Vermillion God had begun to stir.
The danger is from within.
“Cammie.” The Skeleton grabbed a tuft of fur. “What—”
Camazotz twisted its neck around. The bat’s beady eyes were blacker than black; that foul extract of fear itself. Its nose was sniffling, the stench of terror setting on alarm all its senses. She opened her mouth, bloody blessing running over her fractured teeth and scarified gums, and whispered, “Don’t.”
The Skeleton, taken aback, reached for his chest and gripped the Black Hour’s growth.
“What the hell is—”
A flash of light. Shades of red and black. A burning pillar, like one of the supports of hell itself, tearing through the earth.
A boom. An explosion, like a summation of all thunders of all storms. Hell’s blaring horns, raging across the continent, beating what it touched into concussions.
A crack. Hundreds of them, like whips; the sounds of demonic taskmasters setting on new, frightened subjects.
The Skeleton’s jaw dropped open. In the Southern Cradle, a volcano had erupted. Magma was spewing out of it in violent, melting arterial patterns. Even from here, hours away, he could see it lobbing massive amounts of lava, dousing and destroying everything they came into contact with.
And then there was the ash. The great, bulbous, boiling pillar of ash, filling the sky, covering the sky, as if the sky had a ceiling and it couldn’t escape. The outpour was endless. Winter had been white. Now it was black.
“Angheuawl…” the Skeleton whispered.
The clouds overtook the volcano. The fiery vomit of Kistvaen became glowing shapes behind the choking plume.
“Clem…” The Skeleton gripped the Black Hour’s growth on his ribs harder. “Will.”
Something snapped inside the Skeleton’s skull. The locks he’d had in place inside his mind were undone by the catastrophe, and broken for good by the guilt he’d sown. Angheuawl was under the volcano, not far from its liquefying grip. Clementine and Will. He’d put them there. They were there. He’d put them there. They were there because of him. He would never reach them in time. And if they couldn’t die, they’d be just as bone as him, just as blood as him. He had sent them there. They were there—
—because of you.
The Skeleton screamed.
Camazotz bucked to break off his tightened hold, but he wouldn’t budge. She started to squeak and cry pathetically.
He tipped his head back and ripped the Black Hour’s heart out of his chest. The organ’s growths shot up the Skeleton’s neck and into his head, and then went downwards, to his feet, until, like Winter’s snow, like the land, like the bodies of his loves, his bones were charred black.
“Don’t,” Camazotz rumbled.
But the Skeleton didn’t hear her. He didn’t hear anything anymore. With the heart raised high, he dug his fingers into the bat, steered her towards the volcano, and started raining Black Hours down upon the world—laughing and crying, but mostly crying, as he did so.
CHAPTER XIX
Vrana grabbed Aeson by the hand and tore out of the spellweavers’ lair. Behind them, the ceiling opened. A tongue of magma lashed the room, and Anguis and the others were consumed by Kistvaen’s unsustainable hunger.
She could tell she was hurting Aeson. Pain had been her mentor. His hand in her claws, arm stretched to the point of dislocation—Vrana ran him through the wispy portal to this place. Coming out on the other side, they hoofed it up the hill of polished stone and prismatic pillars. Fire spewed from widening vents. Lava leapt at them, and it lapped at their feet. Kistvaen wasn’t erupting. Kistvaen was dying. From what Aeson and the elders had said, this should’ve happened long ago. Its life support had been pulled. And so, too, had the Night Terrors’.
They reached the top of the hill. Aeson went down on all fours and frantically worked the puzzle of the obsidian boulders. Vrana stood over him, her wings outstretched, bearing the brunt of the rocks that broke free from above. He was her way out. And she was his. They had to get out together, or they wouldn’t at all. In here. In everything.
“Fuck… fuck.” Aeson made fists and wiped his eyes. His hands were shaking, and they kept slipping from the boulder. “I can’t… I can’t.”
Vrana didn’t want to lie to him and tell him that everything would be okay. Most of what she had known about herself, her birth, her mother and father, and her people had ended up turning into a lie. The same could be said for him and for the struggles he faced, in his mind and memories, where flesh fiends roamed beyond just the helixes of his genes. Lies were like the fingers of Death snipping souls: they could only take so many cuts before the whole of their beings came crashing down.
“There, there. I think…” Aeson took a sharp breath and grabbed onto Vrana’s ankle. “Okay, okay!”
Black water formed around their feet. As Kistvaen heaved, launching them off the hill, the black water from the boulder reached out and pulled them into its shallow depths. In one moment, they were in the heart of the growing inferno. The next, they were in the house of the elders, tearing across the seamless room, out into the halls, and towards the doorway rimmed in vermillion light.
Aeson stopped before they reached the front of the house and planted his feet like a pouting child.
Vrana, thinking of her mother, hadn’
t noticed at first. Reaching the door, almost tearing it open, she spun around and croaked, “What’s wrong?”
For the first time since he’d saved her, Aeson looked the way she imagined he would. The way she expected him to look after the all the horrors he’d seen and experienced. Gone was the strength. Gone was the grit. She knew he’d been putting on an act, pretending to be better than he was. But Anguis’ news had broken him. He was bent, and panting. Bjørn’s bear mask somehow didn’t fit him as well as it had before. The firelight from outside filled in the emaciated pockets of his frame. His hands were clawed, too, like hers, and his features were pulled tightly, as if something was beneath his skin—the something beneath all their skin—and it was trying to come through.
“What’s the point?” he said with a whimper. “It’s just like I said. It’s the same bullshit, always!”
Mom, Vrana thought. The house of the elders shook violently. All around them, she could hear things breaking, falling from shelves. Floorboards buckled. A flash of flames exploded out of the seamless room they’d just left; a searing discharge from the portal yet to be closed. I have to find you, Mom.
Aeson held his head. “I can’t be one of them.”
“You’re not.” Vrana ran for him.
Aeson backpedaled. “We all are!”
I swear to god, Aeson…
“They made me Archivist.” He bit on his lip until he drew blood. “Do you… do you think that’s why my parents wanted me to die with them?”
The house of the elders sank. A portion of the floor split apart and fell into the pit that had opened up beneath it.
“I don’t know!” Vrana screamed at him. “But I don’t want to die right here. I have to find my mom. Aeson…” She took both his hands, and then pulled him into her arms. “You’re not an Archivist. You’re not the elders’ lapdog. You’re as much a flesh fiend as me or anybody else. You beat Death… twice. What the fuck are you doing going at It for a third time?”
Aeson, shaking, said, “I don’t want to become her.”
He felt so much smaller in her arm; like the subterranean child he used to be. Alone, under the earth, with only his thoughts and the written word regarding dead worlds. His life support had been pulled, too. And right now, she wasn’t enough.
“I don’t want to become this,” Vrana said, pointing to her feathers and beak. “But I have. And I haven’t. We’re both fucked up. At least we’ll be fucked up together.”
Aeson stepped back, nodding. “I don’t know how to stop this.”
Vrana didn’t know if he was talking about Kistvaen’s eruption, or his change. And she didn’t care. She took off for the front door, and he followed behind.
Outside, there was screaming. And bodies. Not one separate from the other, but melded, entwined; a metamorphosis. The Night Terrors were not only Night Terrors, but a surging stream of unrelenting terror and dread broken down to their baser being. Under the red sky, upon the shaking earth, they crawled and they cried and tore at themselves and one another, as they moved through the streets and through the houses, deciding what to take and if they wanted to stay. They didn’t turn on each other, but they seemed to turn on themselves. They became the skulls they wore, and moved like those animals—be it beast, bird, or reptile—through Caldera and its fields.
Vrana saw them as flesh fiends, because she knew they were flesh fiends. Her father had regressed, but that could’ve been blamed on the Blue Worm and the birthing process. If Kistvaen went off, what would the survivors become? Without the homunculi to shape them, what cruel forms would they take? Aeson was right. She couldn’t tell him he was.
“Do you need anything?” Vrana screamed over the cacophony.
Aeson shouted, “No, just you,” and took the lead.
Vrana darted through Caldera, somehow never keeping up with Aeson. Her talons clicked against the warming earth, and she caught the gazes of her fellow villagers. Some pointed. Some shouted blame. A few called out her name. But no one stopped.
“Mom!” Vrana cried, her house in sight. “Mom! Mom! Are you—”
A flash of light. Shades of red and black, in a mire of Void and Abyss.
Vrana and Aeson looked to Kistvaen.
A boom. An explosion, like a summation of all thunders of all storms.
And they were flattened to the ground.
A crack. Hundreds of them, like whips scoring the backs of the thousands who’d dared to survive the Trauma.
Vrana pushed herself off the ground and staggered as she took small steps. But the world was quickly darkening. Aeson was disappearing in that darkness. And so was her home.
She made it to Aeson, the air becoming so much hotter and harder to breathe, and together, they cast their eyes to the sky and witnessed the hell coming out of the heavens.
In a roiling cocoon of smoke and ash, great gouts of lava spewed from Kistvaen’s peak. The force of the eruption sent the glowing molten cords miles into the air, and in every direction, for as far as Vrana could see. Down the side of the volcano, pyroclastic flows were gaining speed and mass, consuming or obliterating everything the avalanche of ash, lava, and gas came into contact with. A large flow, already the size and span of Caldera, was racing eastward, back the way they’d come, as if Nature meant to wipe from its wilds the Cult of the Worms’ outposts, from Llyn to Angheuawl.
Hot chunks of lava rained down upon the village. Vrana came to and hurried for her house. She and Aeson ducked and weaved through the villagers and the pelting rocks ablaze. Some weren’t as nimble as them, though. One after the other, Night Terrors crashed into the ground, as the burning hail bore into their bodies and melted them from the inside out.
“Mom!” Vrana yelled, unable to hear her own voice.
Aeson stopped a few feet from her house. He was waving at someone. He’d seen something.
Vrana caught up with him. Hot ash blanketed Caldera. She could barely breathe.
The front door to Vrana’s house opened. Adelyn stepped out, a satchel in her hand. She wasn’t wearing her raven mask. Her eyes immediately met Vrana’s.
Vrana stopped dead in her tracks. Mom. Her mom. She was okay. And shit, she had to see her like this. A big fucking bird. She had to be strong. She couldn’t doubt herself, not like Aeson doubted himself. She’d have to fly them both out of here. It was the only way, and if she had to choose…
“Here!” Adelyn threw the satchel at Aeson.
He caught it. “What is this?”
“What we’ll need!” Adelyn smiled. She mouthed Vrana’s name and ducked back into the house.
As Aeson slung the satchel over his shoulder, Vrana ran to the house, to her mother. “Mom, come on!” she yelled, trying her best to make her voice sound like it used to.
“Hold your horses,” Adelyn said, still out of sight.
Vrana, a foot from the doorstep, stopped as Adelyn reappeared, a bag in each hand.
“My girl,” Adelyn said, arms going limp.
Ash wept from Vrana’s feathers. Tears leapt from Vrana’s eyes. She reached for her mother—
—and a massive wave of lava slung across Caldera, slamming into Vrana’s home, taking it and her mother with it into a burning pool of fire.
Aeson grabbed Vrana from behind, yanking her away before the magmatic splash hit her.
Mom, Vrana thought, her eyes fixed on the place her home had been, where her mother had been. Now it was nothing more than a black, burning smear; like the trunk of a tree severed by lightning. Mommy. Her body shook, and feathers fell from her flesh. She clutched her claws so hard into her palms she bled. Momma.
And like that, like Aeson before, she was made a child again.
“No,” Aeson said, hyperventilating. “No, no, no.”
The fiery expulsions of the initial eruption had gone as high as they could, and now they were falling back to the ground, covering vast areas in lava.
Screams, and the sizzling hiss of souls succumbing to the elders’ final solution. Vrana shoul
d have felt something—the heat, the hate; the need for flesh and blood in her mouth—but there was nothing. She had saved the love inside her from the torture of Pain and Joy, but now it was gone. R’lyeh had her pit. Aeson had his flesh fiend. And Vrana? Her hell was a smoldering pool of lava and pieces of her mother floating inside it.
The pyroclastic flow had broken apart. The burning mass had scored its way down Kistvaen’s south face; it was seconds away from Caldera. If they stayed, it would destroy them. It would destroy all of them. They would be assimilated into it, just as they had assimilated humanity’s culture into their own. History would make no note of their accomplishments, for they had accomplished nothing. Their legacy was lunacy.
Vrana grabbed Aeson and pushed off the ground. Her wings, heavy with ash, struggled in the ascent. Carelessly, she dodged the falling lava. She could tell Aeson was beating out fires that had started in her feathers from the debris, but she didn’t care. Instead, she kept thinking of Adelyn, and how she had said Vrana’s name, and how it was Vrana who had reached out to her, and not the other way around.
Before they were overtaken by the clouded sky, Vrana looked down one last time. An impossible heat washed over her. Black fire poured in melting waves over the mountain range. And where the vermillion veins had grown around the area, the waves were halted, for the growths had become fists, and they held portions of the flows in their grip.
Out of the south came the clapping of hooves.
CHAPTER XXX
The Vermillion God stirred. In Its slumber, It felt want. Long had it been since the Vermillion God felt such a want, such a need. At first, It did not wake, not fully. Instead, It flexed Its veins and was surprised to find how far they’d spread. In Its grasp, there was a world. A world of want, and desperate need.
