The air above Juzo’s chest shimmered and a blue aura spread from his body, the humming magnifying in intensity, vibrating in Walter’s head. Juzo lurched against the straps, trying to sit up and blowing out a breath as if he were trying to cough and vomit at the same time. The tendons around his neck jumped out like cords, a string of spit sliding across his cheek. Walter realized his mouth was wide open and closed it up tight.
Something rattled on the table. Walter pulled his eyes from Juzo to the sound as Nyset strode around the bed, her hand clamping over Blackout, pinning it to the wood. The sword rattled with increased ferocity, shaking her arm. She slammed her other hand on the hilt, her body leaning over it, pressing it down.
“Help me, damn it!” she yelled at him.
“Right!” Walter croaked, his legs feeling heavy as he worked his way around the bed.
Juzo let out an inhuman screech. His bladed teeth snapped at the air, trying to draw blood from it. “Kill! Drink their souls!” he roared. His arms flexed against the restraints, the bolts and wood groaning at his strength.
Walter had stopped in front of him, then looked back at Nyset, whose eyes were red with the glow of the Dragon, her hair dancing in the air. Her teeth were bared, palms red with the effort of keeping the blade down. “Walter!”
Walter embraced the Phoenix, wanting to touch the Dragon, but had to ignore it. The Phoenix filled him with peace, the quivering in Nyset’s arm slowing such that he could see each of her muscles waving with the sword’s quivering. Walter added his hands to the sword’s sheathe as it jumped out, the dark metal sucking in the reds and blues of the god’s powers.
“No!” Nyset shouted, her hand foolishly wrapping around the blade, red spattering onto the floor.
“Shit!” Walter gasped, slamming the hilt into the sheathe. Then Nyset was gone, as if she’d never been there.
* * *
Nyset spun around, eyes still burning with the warmth of the Dragon, darkness all around like a heavy fog. The smell of rot, putrid water, coal smoke, shit, piss and decay jabbed at her nose. It looked like she was on a street, feeling the uneven cobbles through her soft boots. She conjured two flaming discs, the Dragon surging within and yearning for more release, hovering and crackling beside her hands.
“Where am I? Walter?” she whispered into the black. The sound was all wrong, not echoing, as if speaking into a pillow.
She forced more energy into the discs, flaring brighter with taller flames, doing nothing to further dispel the encompassing abyss. She couldn’t see further than ten cobbles ahead and started walking. A second later, pain lanced through her hand and she looked down at it, black liquid leaked from a long cut across her palm. A wind cold as the dead lapped at her face, blowing her hair back, stinging her nostrils and teeth, streaking her blood down to patter on the cobbles.
She remembered now. She was in the healer’s room, in the Silver Tower, helping Juzo. But where was everyone?
Something whitish and translucent rose from the black, a human form. “Help!” The strange figure screamed, its hand reaching limply towards her, fingers missing and oozing translucent blood. The wind blew harder, washing the figure away as if it were cotton in the breeze. Her heart thundered in her chest, sweat trickling down her temples. Her discs burned brighter.
Then there was another figure, a young girl with pigtails. “Run! He comes,” she wailed, seeming to cling to some invisible handhold. She tilted her head up, throat opened in a grisly slash, blood leaking down her skirts. Other human forms materialized in the sheet of dark, adding their cries to hers.
“Go living one!” An old man, lean as a spider fumbled at the offal spilling from his gut.
“The eater comes,” said a round faced woman, both hands missing and ethereal, blueish blood seeping out her freshly cut stumps.
“Do not resist him,” wept a young boy, long gash across his chest, ribs splayed open to reveal his punctured lungs.
“Fight!” roared another voice above the din of the others. She turned to face this figure, swallowing hard, stomach twisting into knots, forcing the bile down her throat trying to edge its way towards her lips.
“No, you’re dead,” she stammered, shuffling back.
It was the Lord of Death, the beast from the battle at the Plains of Dressna. Its body was still littered and smoking with the hundreds of holes Walter had burned through it. Its fingers and toes were missing. Dark blood wept from its wounds. Its face, stitched together components of other men, flashed her a sickly grin. “Fight,” it hissed, dissipating in an arctic breeze.
Interspersed between the wailing figures emerged animals of all kinds. There were whimpering dogs, cats, horses, wolves, jaguars, and strange creatures she had never laid eyes upon even in books. There was a beast as big as a house, thousands of legs padding at the cobbles. Another was like a goose with a neck spanning about three arms lengths, shrieking into the heavy air.
The apparitions started fading away and their pleading with it, leaving only the empty black. Nyset felt a great hollow form inside of her, like everything that mattered in her life was being sucked away in the enveloping void. The sound of her breath and the once crackling fire of the burning rings was swallowed, dashed away before reaching her ears. The shred of hope she held onto for finding a way out of here slipped in the endless silence. She scraped her boots on the cobbles. Silence. She still had the Dragon though. That would keep her safe, give her light.
Footsteps, soft like her mother’s shuffling, came from behind. The singing of a blade being drawn came from all around. An amber ball of light appeared, overcasting a familiar face in deep shadow. It was Juzo, lips bared in a menacing grin, blade drawn at his side, muscle taught on his sword arm.
“Juzo? What are you doing here?” she asked. She realized she still didn’t know where ‘here’ was herself. Given the color of things, she assumed she was somehow experiencing a vision related to Blackout. No, not a vision. You don’t continue to bleed in visions or feel pain, she thought, glancing down at the blood trickling from her palm, sparsely illuminated by the flickering of her discs.
He just stood there, staring back at her like he didn’t hear, his black eyebrows drawing down and his eye forming a red slit. He marched towards her, raised the dark blade high into the air for a killing blow, his long coat flapping.
“Juzo?” she asked, eyes wide, blade hissing. She reacted with animal instinct, discs whizzing towards him, one sliced through his elbow and the other his knee, dropping him to the cobbles, severed arm still clutching the hilt. The sword broke into three pieces with the sound of a breaking icicles, strewn about his crumpled body. The burning discs briefly parted twin holes in the black, then fizzled into smoke.
“No!” She pressed her hands to her lips, gnawing on a finger. He started crawling towards her with feral grunts, the remains of his leg pumping out jets of dark blood. “Why? What are you doing? I’m trying to help you! What’s wrong with you?” she babbled.
Juzo slammed the broken sword into the ground with his other hand, using it to pull himself forward, Nyset stumbling back. He looked up at her, then smiled and licked the blood that had speckled his lips. He laughed, a deep, terrible laugh that only could come from something inhuman. He flicked his head back, clearing the hair from his face. There was something wrong with his cheek, sliding down his face like melting wax.
“It has been eons since a mortal entered my realm,” the thing that was clearly not Juzo said. “I have been bored in this prison,” it said, the rest of Juzo’s face melted the same, slipping off like liquefied skin. She rubbed at her throat, feeling it was hard to get air, hard to breathe properly. Her mind felt thick with honey, unable to process what to do next. She was breathing too shallow. She had to fight to regulate it, had to kill this beast.
“Burn!” she roared, remembering who she was, what she could do, the hundreds of Death Spawn she’d killed before. A cone of fire spiraled out from her fingertips, wave of heat washing over her face, ch
arring the flesh of the creature on the ground. She panted from the effort, sweat matting her hair against her cheeks.
It started rising from the melting suit of skin, crab like claws snapping in the air, round body the color of a bruise. It stepped out of the skin that was Juzo’s body, wiry, scaled legs with three gleaming talons the size of Nyset’s arms stuck out from its toes. Its body was bulbous with an incredible mouth between the two claws that gaped open and lined with jagged teeth. Gelatinous spindles of saliva hung from its fat lips. One hit the floor and sizzled, filling the air with the familiar stink of acid.
“By the Dragon,” she whispered, her hands glowing like embers. She extended her long fingertips, blasting it with another gout of Dragon fire, but it continued advancing seeming unharmed. Fire smoked on the strands of Juzo’s hair attached to the top of its body. Her mind raced, spinning out possible ways to harm the creature. Above its gaping maw was a single eye, the size of her fist, its iris black.
She splayed her fingers, thrust her arms forward and pushed with a blast of icy air, its saliva fanning out in burning strings over the cobbles. It lunged forward with shocking speed, slashing with its leg talons and cutting her deep across the ribs, thudding through muscle and across bone. She screamed, clutching her side, her body exploding with a burst of fire, throwing both of them back and creating distance. Fire flared in her eyes, spiraling like wisps of smoke into the air. She looked down at her hand, warm with blood, fingers trembling.
Something slammed into her, pinning her hand to her bloody chest. The claw cinched down tighter, barbs lining the inside of it piercing deep, the bones in her arm snapping like wood from the tremendous pressure. The beast’s black tongue smacked at the blood, her skin bubbling from its acidic spit. She fought back the urge to vomit at the bitter smell of her own burning flesh. Nyset knew her only hope of survival was to cling to the Dragon, its rage her only salvation. She screamed with agony, beams of fire spraying from her eyes and cutting a thick chunk from its tongue, which flopped onto the stone and then squishing under its taloned feet.
Then she was airborne, bouncing on the stone, over and over, flailing like a discarded doll. Hard cobbles punched and hammered over her body. She rolled and rolled, tumbling head over heels. Something in her shoulder broke apart against the unforgiving stone. Rather than dashing her skull open on the perfect little squares, she only shattered her nose, washing her face in a red sheet. She slowly slid to a stop, face up, laying still.
“Ugh,” she groaned. Something in her back clicked back into place. She blinked the blood from her eyes, its sting a mere annoyance in the face of the pain tearing her apart everywhere else. Her left shoulder was twisted towards her chest, her arm jutting out from the confines of the socket. Further down the same arm, two splinters of bone painted with pink probed out from her skin. She licked her lips, the metallic and sticky taste of blood slathered on her tongue.
The beast’s talons blurred in and out of focus, clacking over the cobbles and making its way to her. Black streams bubbled from its grinning mouth. Its big eye was wide and expressionless. She started shrimping away, pushing at the cobbles with her legs, arm held protectively tight.
“It has been long since I have bled,” it laughed, mouth ever widening. It raised its chicken leg high, sinking one of its sword like talons through her thigh and pinning her to the stone. She convulsed, the breath choking from her lips, unimaginable waves of pain shivering through her body. A blob of acid dripped from its mouth and mixed with its own burning blood, tearing a cauterizing hole in her cheek.
This wasn’t the sort of death she had in mind. Not an easy thing like she had imagined. She thought she would be going to bed one day in the arms of tranquility, kissing Walt’s cheek, and slipping off to the Shadow Realm. Walter would be there, ushering her to the great beyond. Their children would weep and bury her in the yard, the salty breeze of the Abyssal Sea her unrelenting companion. That death would be easy. Her body convulsed again, something popping in her hips, misery her only friend. Everything was pain—shoulder, arms, jaw, teeth, guts, head—everything was ablaze in its fury.
“You will be my conduit to freedom, my new form in the world of man,” it boomed. “No longer will I be imprisoned!” It’s grisly, bleeding tongue inched towards her face, the smell of rot billowing from its mouth.
She pushed her head back, extending her neck away from its lick, her jaw held high. The Dragon had left her alone and hope was a distant memory. Something glinted in the corner of her eye, a long splinter of the black sword, like a dagger.
Not like this. No, she would not die like this.
She twisted her body against the talon through her leg, muscle fibers tearing and snapping, pain like lightning shooting up her spine. Her fingertips pulled at the blade and snatched it into her grip. She clamped down tight creating a new gash across her palm beside the other. She punched with the splintered sword, stabbing it into the monster’s tongue. The beast shrieked, and tried to pull away, pinned by its own talon lodged in the stone.
“No!” it screamed, its pincers hissing open.
She punched again into the middle of its eye, its body, lips, tongue, eye, body and eye over and over, rending black holes everywhere, jets of blood spewing from the punctures like a fountain in the King’s garden. The pain vanished like a summer’s breeze, her only focus putting as many holes as possible into this stealer of life. Death would not take her today.
“I cannot die,” the monster hissed, keeling over onto its back, pincers sliding open, blood bubbling from its wounds. The leg pinning Nyset cracked as it fell, its knee popping over to one side, the tubby body strewn out flat.
She dropped the wet splinter, breath heaving in her chest, arm covered in the monster’s blood from fingernail to forearm. “Your lack of breathing says otherwise,” she snarled, dragging herself to her feet. She worked her fingers open and closed, forearm tendons tight as the skin on a drum. The spike of adrenaline started to fade, wracking her body up and down in shivering pain.
The air whirled around her, bitter cold raking her broken skin. A din of voices spoke at once. She picked up the sounds of some, all moans and bellows, a mix of delight and terror.
“We are free!” a child celebrated.
“She killed the master,” an old man hooted.
“The Shadow Realm welcomes us,” cried a squat apparition of a woman.
More figures stepped from the suffocating darkness, whitish-blue and translucent against the black, their light growing ever brighter. They circled around Nyset, arms raised as if praying to the heavens. She felt her lips tugging into the beginnings of a smile, the stark weight of despair at what she thought would be her last moments fading away.
Her dream was still intact and a future with Walter still possible. She could see him now, his bright green eyes twinkling across the table from her, the corners of his thin lips twitching before he smiled. Screaming children rolling elixir barrels to the market. The salted air of the sea pushing through her old hair. She was alive and the day was beautiful.
A soft warmth like the kiss of sun prickled at her cheeks. She realized she had closed her eyes, the sticky warmth dripping from her chin. Her feet were light, like walking on the air itself. She parted her eyes and turned her head, one sealed up by congealing blood.
Her jaw dropped open as the brutal cobbles dropped out below, the veins between them becoming indiscernible and then a sheet of gray.
The spirits below smiled up at her, a ring of tranquil faces, shoulders pressed together. The lifeless body of the beast lay in the center of the ring, hacked up tongue lolling from its yawing mouth. The blackness pressed away from them as their brilliance intensified, bright as the corona of the sun.
She caught the eyes of a man that could have been her father who mouthed ‘thank you,’ and she nodded at him. Realization was dawning on her now, the pieces snapping together in her churned brain. These were the souls that the sword Blackout had stolen, preventing them from
moving into the Shadow Realm where they could live in peace. They would be free now and that was a comfort in the sea of pain.
The warmth on her skin was coming from somewhere above. She looked up and had to shield her eyes. A searing white orb had torn through the black, darkness melting away like hot oil. The orb of white spread into a saucer, dilating like a pupil in the night. That blinding white washed away the last tendrils of despair she felt but a moment before. She let her arms and legs relax, sagging towards the ground a hundred feet below. It felt like an enormous finger was supporting her from her head to her hips, cradling and bringing her towards the brightness. A smile curled up her mouth at the feeling of weightlessness of the body and heart.
* * *
Walter dropped to the ground, Blackout plunged into the wall above him, a hair’s breadth from splitting his skull like a melon. Mortar dust tumbled down the back of his shirt and into his gasping mouth. He spat, seizing his only chance to stop the butchery, his hands slamming around the hilt of the blade. The sword vibrated between the stones, wedged in mortar, violently trying to rattle its way out. Walter twisted up to his feet, hands slick with sweat, his fingernails digging into the leather wrapped handle. He sunk all his weight into the blade, his teeth grinding together, driving it deeper into the stone. His hands were burning from the force to keep the blade in, fighting with all it had to resume carving a path of chaos.
Walter spared a glance over his shoulder at Juzo, writhing like the man who had been brought to his mother after trying to kill himself with Fang Cress. His lips were bubbling with foam, blood seeping out his ears and hands clutching at things that weren’t there. His hair was matted across his face, puffing from his lips with each rapid breath.
The Silver Tower (The Age of Dawn Book 3) Page 18
