He stopped half-way down the hall, looking at the statues staring back. The Reapers were still as felled trees, incredible mouths on their abdomens yawning open, wide enough to swallow a man in a single bite. The top half of their bodies from the waist up were humanoid and female, dark skin glittering with magic, the outside lined with a spiked carapace. Their heads had six long horns jutting out in all directions, sharp as blades at the ends. Juzo let out a long held breath. This was good, just as long as they remained where they were.
Something caught his eye to his left, glowing bright with magic. He forced himself to release his crushing grip on Blackout. Juzo walked into the tomb, parting cobwebs, thick dust motes fluffing into the air. A sword was lodged in mortared stone, stacked sarcophagi on either side. Juzo stepped closer, curiously eying the blade. The memory of the Northman he had killed here came rushing back. This was the dead man’s weapon. He let his magic vision fade and his night vision returned. The walls were still covered in the man’s blood spatter.
That adventurer had come to the wrong place. The darkness was his domain and no other’s. Juzo planted his boot on the wall and gripped the long sword in both hands. He gave the wall a hard kick and pulled the blade free, stone dust puffing into the air. It was well crafted, heavy and made for killing blows.
Juzo strode from the tomb, long sword held loosely over his shoulder. He started towards the main chambers again then paused after a few steps. Something didn’t feel right and he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. He paused again, listening intently. It was quiet. The familiar screams of people being mercilessly tortured was replaced by the occasional rumble of the volcano and ancient stones dislodging from the cavern’s ceiling. Maybe they had found a way out? Maybe an honest soul found their way down here and freed them?
He started again, tripping over something heavy and squelching under his boots. He barely caught himself, getting a leg underneath him before falling, almost running himself through with the sword. He recovered with a sharp breath, sword held before him, knuckles white and hands sweating against the hilt. The volcano groaned, sending a low hum over the hall. A rivulet of dirt started raining down. He wheeled around, finding only the flickering torchlight. He looked down to see what had almost caused him to run himself through and finding a maggot riddled corpse. His boot was covered with decaying skin and stringy flesh. Then the smell hit him like a hard slap. He must’ve freed it from its fleshy prison. He wanted to pinch his nose and blow the noxious odor out, but knew it was too late for that now.
“Fuck me,” he said, exhaling slowly to calm his nerves. Terar’s dead torturers lay strewn about the hall ahead, three other bodies in dark, twisting shapes. They were the ones who had attacked him last time, trying to avenge their fallen master. He wasn’t sure if they were brave or foolish. What he did know is that they were only maggot food now, likely deserving what fate befell them.
Something started in the distance, stones tumbling on the floor, skittering along the columns and hissing like thousands of tongues. The Reapers, ancient defenders of Terar’s chambers, were moving, slithering down their stony perches towards the passageway.
Juzo froze and his hands wound tight around the Northman’s sword, the tip of the blade trembling. They were fast, much faster than they should have been. Their legs were encased in hard shells, long as a man, clattering onto the floor at the end of the hallway. Their bulbous lower bodies were so wide that they couldn’t squeeze down the hall together and resigned themselves to walking in a column after trying. Their hissing grew into a fury, booming like the Lich’s Falls. Their eyes hummed with a dim glow, the color of urine.
“Shit!” Juzo raised the Northman’s sword behind his head, muscles taught like a bowstring, and hurled it as hard as he could at the first Reaper. The sword spun through the air and almost fell short, if not for the Reaper’s speed. Instead, it buried itself up to the hilt above its gaping maw. The Reaper screeched and fell onto one of its pincers. It yanked the sword free from its hairy abdomen, wielding in its spindly human arms, blood spurting out like liquid snakes. Its chest heaved out another ear piercing screech, its round breasts thrust out.
Juzo’s eyes went wide as the beast charged, its incredible mouth spreading like a chasm, the sword drawn to strike, massive legs scoring deep lines in the walls and dislodging torches. Juzo didn’t remember drawing Blackout, seeing it clutched in his hand, dimming the light and cutting through the air, intercepting its sword slash. Blackout clanged into the Reaper’s sword and blood sprayed from its sword onto his face, hot as boiling water. He twisted his body, avoiding the bite of its abdomen, bathing his skin in its slick humidity.
He rolled into the wall, back crashing against it as one its arachnid legs impaled the stone, sending a shock wave through his body. Its abdomen crashed down upon him, mouth drawn to swallow. Juzo kicked and his foot connected with its lower jaw, the force of his leg pressing into it, the only thing keeping him from being crushed. Its mouth snapped and bit like a bear trap, pressing him further into the wall. The Reaper uselessly slashed the air with its blade, too far way to cause harm. It raised one of its legs into the air, stabbing and attempting to impale him. Juzo turned his body sideways, the spiked tip of its leg crashing into stone beside his head and raining dust into his eye.
“Help,” he said through gritted teeth. Help. He directed the thought at Blackout still tight in his hand. His eye wept and he blinked the clumping dust out of it.
Feed, Blackout said in his mind. Juzo felt the blade had a deep longing for these beasts, a hunger that had been long overdue. The leg in the wall pulled free and another came after it, he hunched his back over, leg slamming into the wall above his head, stone bits raining down the back of his coat and along his skin.
Juzo stabbed up and Blackout joined him, lending its own ferocity to the blow. The blade plunged through its chitinous leg, in and out twice before the creature withdrew it, hot blood bubbling down into his white hair. Its body pressed harder, legs poised behind it, forcing itself upon him. Its mouth was snapping, its red tongue as wide as a saddle hungrily lapping at the air. Juzo slashed at the tongue, sword bouncing and tearing through its spiny teeth, cutting through a big chunk of tissue. It recoiled and stumbled back into the one behind it, humanoid hands curled into angry fists.
The one behind the wounded Reaper tried to push the one in front out of the way, but the leader slashed with one of its spiked legs, cutting a line across the human part of its body. The first Reaper turned back to Juzo, the one behind it screamed in rage. Blood rolled from the massive mouth of the lead Reaper, across its abdomen, sticking in curls of shaggy hair.
Juzo rolled to his feet, eye weeping with tears, Blackout held loosely by his side.
“I will break you,” he whispered.
Feed, Blackout hissed.
The Reaper behind the front one snarled, reached with its pincher arm and clipped the head from the front one as if it were a flower from the garden.
“What the…?” Juzo said, shuffling back a step. The horned head rolled from its body, bouncing from the hairy abdomen and onto the floor with a thud. The front Reaper collapsed, its body sagging over, uncontrollably flailing limbs, streams of blood pulsing from its neck.
The Reaper behind it crawled over its slain brethren, legs and pincers dancing in the air. The humanoid head smiled as it advanced, and he smiled back. It seemed to have paused for a brief second at that, as though it never stood against another who was as unfamiliar with fear as it.
He and Blackout were one, darkness allied in its most insidious form. Its pincer flew at him, jaws open and ready to clamp shut. Juzo stood motionless, feigning the notion of one who’d given up all hope. The pincher started to close and Blackout went to work. Rapid slashes of dark whistled through the air, hewing the jawed part of its arm off. The pincher closed as it fell to the ground and the beast’s eyes went wide with renewed anger.
The arm leapt behind it, blood spewing from the gaping wound. It lunged
forward with a ferocious bite and Juzo leaped onto its abdomen, hair thick as mountain dog’s and slick with oil under his boots. It punched with its long woman’s arm and Juzo easily dodged it and hacked it off at the elbow. Blood spattered into his mouth and he licked his lips, tongue bright with pink warmth.
Juzo’s eye burned brightly with hunger. The blood of this beast was like melted sugar, sweet and tantalizing. He was no longer questioning his reason for coming here. He had found it. He seized it around its narrow waist with one arm, swiveled around to its back, hugging it under its breasts as tight as a lover. He jammed Blackout between its ribs and out the other side, hand tightly gripping the hilt. The Reaper bucked and screeched wildly, trying to toss him back onto the hallway floor. It smashed its head back, trying to gore him with its many horns, skin squirming as its other arm raked through the wet in his hair. Every living thing had a vulnerability, he supposed. His was the lure of blood. Most others were Blackout’s edge.
He jerked its head to the side, gripping it under the jaw, exposing the angrily pulsing arteries along its neck. His mouth parted in a feral grimace and his mouth clamped over its neck, teeth sawing through midnight skin. The blood wept from the sides of his mouth in warm spurts as he drank and drank until he was near vomiting on its sweetness. The Reaper’s legs shivered, then crumbled and dropped its heavy abdomen to the floor. Juzo let out a long breath and let the lifeless head flop over its shoulder.
The sword pulsed with its familiar soul draining glow, the miniaturized Reaper pounding away from the inside. He wiped the blood from Blackout on the Reaper’s shaggy body and sheathed it.
The remaining torches burned in a soft hiss. All that screaming and crunching stone was giving Juzo a headache. He was glad to hear the silence return. He strode towards the door to Terar’s chambers and in one motion kicked the door open with a slam. It was empty. Terar’s body was strangely missing as was—Malek. He had forgotten about that man up until now. His first surrogate.
“Please stay there, please stay there,” a voice said frantically. Juzo wheeled around the room, Blackout drawn. Juzo held his breath, listening to the tap-tap-tap of the Reaper’s blood dripping from his coat. Terar’s chair remained just where he left it, toppled over and constructed of white bones.
Someone’s thoughts. He was hearing someone’s thoughts like Terar could hear his. Not the lower chambers, please stay up there, the voice said. He narrowed his eyes as he recognized it. It was Malek’s. Just what he needed, a third voice in his head to confirm his madness. He had gone this far into the pit of hell, why not a little deeper?
He walked around the circular chamber, walls thick with rusted chains, hooks, beaked clubs, pliers, and blades of all sizes with which one would need to inflict suffering. Juzo took a staggering breath, the agony of living under Terar coming back in waves.
“Not me, not this, not anymore,” he breathed, running his fingers along the dark tools, clinking like a wind chime.
He shouldered his way through an iron door, rusty hinges screeching, blood of the Reaper now infusing his body with renewed strength and power. He felt like he could run from each end of the realm without a rest. The torches burst alight, casting their green upon the long set of stairs leading further down into the black.
The walk down into the torture chambers was much longer than he’d remembered. When he reached the bottom, he could feel Malek’s presence, his shivering terror, his desire for Juzo to turn away and leave. Juzo couldn’t help but enjoy the feeling of being on the other side of that emotion for once.
His eye swept over the expansive cavern, carved in a perfect circle, a column as wide as a house in the middle. Whoever had done this had a lot of patience, or very determined taskmasters at the helm. He thought he had stored this place deep into the depths of his memory. Here it was, back like a festering sore. The stink of piss and shit was more terrible than anything Juzo remembered.
Something shifted behind the column, a waving piece of cloth perhaps.
“Come out,” Juzo beckoned. “I won’t hurt you, Malek.” What the fuck am I going to do with him? Can’t believe this sad creature is still here, he thought, surprised by his own empathy.
The figure yelped and shuffled from the column dressed in a heavily soiled and tattered robe. Malek gnawed on one of the stumps on his arm, eyes glowing a dull red. His eyes rolled around the room, vibrating with terror, seeking an escape. Malek pulled the stump out of his mouth, leaving a string of spittle drooping from the corner of his lips.
“Wha-who are you?” Malek hissed, eyes wide, stumps tightly wrapping around his shriveled up body.
“You know who I am,” Juzo said flatly. He walked around the man, looking worse off than any vagrant he’d ever seen, eying the spoiling tower of refuse in one side of the room. “Have you already forgotten the face of your father?”
“What?” Malek said, awkwardly limping away from Juzo, drawing his threadbare hood around his hallow cheeks.
“Why are you still here?” Juzo asked, already knowing the answer by the soft moaning coming through the bars of the surrounding cells. Terar’s leftovers were a convenient food source, now that Malek was like him, a Blood Eater. A fitting place for men. No—for beasts like us. He thought that maybe he should join him and live out his days in here. That wouldn’t do though because he still had hope. Hope that someone in the Tower could free him of this curse and he could leave this nightmare behind.
Feed. Kill, Blackout urged.
“No, not this one,” Juzo muttered, looking up at the shadows flitting about the roof. Malek whined, taking another step from Juzo and started slurping at his stump, skin raw and peeling. Juzo ran a hand through his hair and flicked the thickening blood from his fingers onto the floor.
“I—” Malek’s eyes darted from side to side and Juzo stared at him, waiting.
“Not the chains. Not Bonesnapper. There’s nothing here but me. Just me. Nothing but me and my beautiful chains,” Malek’s voice said in his head, although Juzo heard them as if the words had found air.
Juzo tilted his head to the side and snorted. “Are you hiding something?” Juzo asked, his eye becoming a red slit.
“No, no, no, just me and my friends here,” Malek said, smiling with his rotting teeth, waving his stump towards the cells. Juzo thought he might’ve been able to smell the rot on his stumps from where he stood a few paces away.
Juzo’s boots scraped along the shining obsidian floor, reaching a wall and peering through the iron bars of a cell. A nude, haggard man’s red-rimmed eyes parted and his mouth fell carelessly open. “Help,” he breathed, the chains around his wrists rattling. There were bite marks all over his body, some yellow with pus and other’s an infected green. There was a crust of bread on the floor beside his feet and a bowl of fetid water, buzzing with Rot Flies.
Malek’s work, no doubt. Juzo couldn’t blame Malek, for he turned him into this leech on life. He was responsible for this. He had to try to make it right.
“Where are the chains, Malek?” Juzo called over to him.
Malek was on the floor now, arms wrapped tightly around his legs, rocking back and forth and muttering nonsense. “I was one of Asebor’s generals. I was one the Wretched, the most feared amongst all the realms. I was—”
Juzo took two leaping steps to Malek, causing the torches to flicker with his speed. “Don’t make me hurt you,” he said into Malek’s whimpering face.
“Yes, yes,” Malek stammered, face twisting, and getting up. He limped over to one of the cells and bumped it open with his hip. On the wall was a corpse swarming with hundreds of Rot Flies and maggots, flesh black with decay, male or female Juzo couldn’t say. Beside it was a putrid tower of excrement. Juzo pulled the collar of his duster up and around his nose and mouth, though it did little to mask the horrific odor.
Juzo wondered what he had done to deserve to be thrown into the pit of this life. There was darkness everywhere and maybe he had just happened to draw the short end of the el
ixir vine.
Malek turned back to Juzo, eyes wide, seeming to forget where he was. What had he called it? “Get me Bonesnapper, now!” Juzo barked. Malek’s eyes bobbed with understanding and he turned towards the corpse, muttering. He skillfully pulled rocks out from the wall with his stumps, occasionally swatting Rot Flies from his face.
“It’s there,” Malek gestured towards the hole in the wall, tongue slithering about his raw lips.
Juzo walked over to the wall and reached inside, feeling something soft surrounding something metallic. He knelt and grabbed the leather bag, pulling it free, puffing black dust into the air.
“No! You can’t have it. That’s mine! Mine!” Malek shrieked, leaping onto his back, his nubby arms wrapped across his shoulders. Juzo felt Malek’s ragged lips touch his neck and he threw a hard elbow into the sack of bones on his back. Malek rolled onto the floor, coughing and rubbing at his side, his eyes quivering with fury.
“That’s mine,” Malek stammered.
“Not anymore,” Juzo said with icy calm, opening the leather bag. He carefully pulled out the Chains of the North, also named Bonesnapper, mirror bright chain links clinking together. On one end was a gnarled handled that extended into a length of chain as long as his arm, then splitting into three chains, each terminated with shimmering blades.
“A beautiful weapon,” Juzo said, walking into the main chamber. He gave Bonesnapper a twirl and swung it over his head a few times, chain lengths humming through the air. “I wonder…” He blinked his eye and it glowed with a faint blue. The chains exploded with the brightness of the sun and Juzo winced at its brilliance and shielded his eye, dropping the weapon by his side. He quickly dismissed his magical vision and rubbed a chain link between his fingers.
The Silver Tower (The Age of Dawn Book 3) Page 9
