by Sam Sykes
“Kill. Kill them both.”
“Shut up, shut up.” He only barely spoke, his voice forced in slivers between his teeth. “She’ll hear you.”
He stared into the chasm, from shadow to shadow, darkness to deeper darkness. The sunlight was forgotten, only the narrowest sliver slipping through. The violet glow of the kelp was no honest light. It revealed nothing, only served as another source of shadows, to make the darkness deeper, an absolute blackness in which she hid.
Watching.
Waiting.
The air stirred above him. A shadow fell over him. He whirled about, choking on a shriek, and saw nothing. His eyes drifted up to the creatures circling in a shadowy halo overhead.
The rays slid calmly through the air, as unperturbed by the darkness as they were by the terror bursting out of him. Their tails swayed like the kelp they wound through, their fins rippled like wings too dignified to flap. They flew. Artistically. Hypnotically. Not vultures presiding over a pit of death, but doves, too elegant to be moved by the corpses staring up at them with envious, hollow eyes.
It would have been nice to fly away at that moment, Lenk thought, up out of the chasm and into the sky until he couldn’t see the land anymore.
But he was down here. Somewhere beneath the land. With her.
The air stirred.
Beside him.
He had a moment to see her face, a mask carved out of green, hard lines and all points. He stared at her, mouth scrambling for a word, eyes searching for a way out. She stared at him without a snarl, a growl, so much as a blink.
She almost seemed to smile, like she was thinking of a pleasant summer day, as she casually brought a sharp-edged tomahawk over her head and aimed for his skull.
“MOVE.”
One of them had yelled it. He didn’t care. He threw himself to the side, a bright spurt of red bursting as the tomahawk gave his arm an envious caress, the metal whining spitefully as he pulled himself to his feet.
“FIGHT.”
“KILL.”
“HATE.”
“DIE.”
They shrieked, pounded at his skull, clawed at the bone, trying to dig their way out. His head swam, mind pounded to ground meat by the screaming. He couldn’t hear, couldn’t think, could barely see. There was too much noise, too much cold.
Perhaps it was because of it, the madness, the pain, that he could feel a brief touch of warmth, hear a voice too close, too kind to be down here. Perhaps that was why he listened.
“Run.”
Panic propelled him. He flew across the sand as the rays flew overhead, bones crunching beneath his boots, kelp shuddering at his passing, light appearing, reappearing, disappearing as he rushed through the chasm, trying not to think of the greenshict behind him.
He didn’t.
She wasn’t behind him anymore.
He caught glimpses of her out of the corner of his eye. Her muscles shimmered in the flashes of light as she swung, leapt, tumbled through the air, hand over foot, kelp to coral. She flew, effortlessly leaping alongside him, over him, between the light and into the shadows, in the air, on the ground, running across the sands before him, slipping behind him as he stumbled through the darkness.
She was everywhere, every movement blending together. Every shadow held her, every twitch of movement was her as she stalked him, chased him, laughed at him without words.
He tried to track her, tried to watch her, tried to tell which shadow was hers and which was his. The kelp shook violently around him, its glowing fronds a riot of light. He lost himself in the darkness, unsure where he had been running, which way she had gone.
Then she came out and made it all abundantly clear.
Leaping from the darkness, her shadow sailed over him. He felt her feet wrap around his throat, their thumbs crushing down on his windpipe as she tumbled, landing on her hands and snapping powerful legs up and over to send him hurtling breathlessly through the shadows.
He left that breath in her grip, his blood on the sand, didn’t bother to pick up either as he pulled to his feet and continued running, trying not to let her impassive stare look deeper into him than it already did. His body fought him every step, fear fighting the cold in his blood, each one trying to hold him.
“Fight,” the voice urged. “Turn and FIGHT.”
Can’t, he thought back. No sword. Can’t kill her. Can’t fight. Kataria betrayed me. Left me. Can’t fight. No point. Run. Run.
“We don’t need her. We don’t need any of them. We can do this. With or without a sword.”
How?
A pain lanced his arms, shooting down into his wrists, draining the warmth from his palms and freezing the blood in his fingers. He looked at them, watched the fleshy hue of his hands slowly be replaced by something cold, something dark, something gray.
“I can save you.”
The color drained from his extremities, the gray crawled up his arms. His breath grew frantic and came out on cold, freezing puffs of air.
“I can make everything stop hurting.”
Icy talons sank into his skull, numbed thought, numbed action.
“Just. . stop. . fighting.”
He screamed. For the cold seeping through his body. For the voice snarling in his head as he shook it violently. Mostly, though, for the sound of feet-with-thumbs padding up behind him.
Panic was as good a remedy as denial; the voice slipped from his thoughts, if not from his body, as he continued to rush through the chasm. The sound of the greenshict behind him faded, but that meant nothing. She could be anywhere, in the kelp, in the coral, in the shadows, even right in front of him.
Actually, he thought as he skidded to a halt, probably not in front of me.
Another forest stretched out before him. A forest of pale, thin tendrils, hanging like unknotted nooses from the darkness high above. The jellylike creatures hovered serenely overhead, either oblivious or uncaring to the eerie curtains they had laid down beneath them.
Lenk happened to catch a hint of movement: a stray fish, something that had lost its way and found something much worse, hanging limply in the grasp of one of the tendrils. It coiled about the body and dragged it up into the shadows to be consumed, preserved in the creature’s bell-like body like a frog in a jar.
A crunch of sand behind him was all it took to break his hesitation and send him flying into the mess of tendrils. He was bigger than a fish, including them, he thought, and whatever they could do couldn’t be worse than what she could.
He thought that right up until he felt his flesh on fire.
They stung, bit, did something to him that he couldn’t see. But as he weaved his way frantically through the tendrils, he could feel the agony of tiny cuts nicking his arms, tiny venomous burns sizzling on his flesh. They conspired, grouped to attempt to overwhelm him.
Fear turned out to be a pretty good solution for that, as well.
The pain lingered, but only lingered. No fresh agonies visited him and when he looked up from his mad rush, he saw the tendrils behind him. And only the tendrils. They swayed with the same gentle impassiveness, as though he had never even run through them. Certainly, she hadn’t followed him.
Had she?
He squinted into the shadows, trying to see his pursuer. She hadn’t. She hadn’t even come to the edge of the tendril curtain. There was no kelp for her to climb, no way through except the way he had come.
Did she just give up?
Perhaps her ears were long enough to hear thoughts, for her retort came in the whine of steel and the shriek of air as a tomahawk came hurtling through the darkness straight at his head.
Fortunately, he felt the air erupt from his lungs before he could feel his head cloven from his shoulders as someone tackled him to the earth. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the sense not to look at his rescuer.
“You,” he hissed.
“Yeah,” Kataria replied. “Nice to see you, too.” She took quick stock of his wounds and stings. “What’s left of
you, anyway,” she said, reaching out to touch his face.
“Don’t,” he said, batting her hand away. “Contact with shicts isn’t exactly working out for me today.”
“You can’t blame a shict for these. What did you expect you’d get, running through a bunch of jellyfish?
“Jelly. . fish?”
“The sailors back on the Riptide said their touch is dangerous and needs immediate treatment.” Her hands went for her belt. “Hold still a moment.”
His eyes went wide with alarm. “Wait, what are you doing?”
“The sailors also told me what the treatment was. Stop squirming.”
“No, you stop whatever you’re about to-”
“Look, I’m not going to-”
“There is absolutely no way I’m going to let you-”
“Damn it, Lenk, I am trying to help you, so would you just hold still so I can piss on you?”
“Get off, get off, get off, get off, get off!”
“Fine,” she said, hopping off before he could hurl her off and holding out a hand to him. “We shouldn’t stay here long, anyway. I don’t know why Inqalle isn’t following you, but it won’t last for long.”
Ignoring her hand, Lenk clambered to his feet. “You know her name?”
“All their names,” Kataria replied. “They’re shicts.”
“So are you.”
She affixed a glare upon him. “Don’t.”
“I won’t. I shouldn’t have. Any of it.” He glowered at her, saw the hilt in her grasp. “You have my sword?”
“I found it earlier. I’ve been trying to track you down since.” She held it out to him, snatching it back as he lashed out a hand for it. “What do you plan to do with it?”
“I don’t know. I was intending to kill the thing that’s trying to kill me, but I suppose I could just turn it on myself before you can say anything more stupid.”
She stepped back. “That won’t be necessary.”
“Like that,” Lenk grunted, reaching for the weapon again.
“It doesn’t need to be like that. They’re. . I can talk to them. I can reason with them. They think they’re protecting me, saving me from you. I just need to tell them that-”
“Liar. She consorts with them. Kill her.”
“No,” Lenk growled.
“I don’t know, maybe I can just say. .” Kataria said, searching for an answer in the darkness.
“Strike her down. Kill her now. Remove one less threat.”
“No.”
“It’s a misunderstanding. I can make them see. No one has to die here today-”
“KILL HER.”
“NO!”
He clutched his head, scratched at his skull, tried to pry out the icicles digging into his brain. His scream was violent, his howl wretched, the tears in his eyes frozen upon his cheeks.
“Traitor!” he screamed. “You left me to die! You led her to me!” Shrieking turned to snarling. “No, can’t do this. Not yet. Run. Hide. Don’t want to do this.” He choked on the voice coming out of his throat. “I can’t. . I can’t. . I can’t. .”
She did not move. She took no step forward, reached out with no gentle hand as he cowered beneath something she couldn’t see, covering his head from a gaze that wasn’t there. Nor did she run, resisting every instinct and shred of common sense that told her to.
She stared. She held back tears of her own.
“I didn’t betray you,” she said softly.
“You didn’t choose me, either,” he said.
“I couldn’t. I can’t.”
“Neither can I,” he said. “Any of it.”
“Then. .”
He rose. He turned to face her. Halos of frost ringed his eyes, but he was impassive. His skin looked drained, colorless, as though all the life had seeped out of his body and into his eyes. And they, bright and vivid and full of something cold, held her captive as he approached her.
He reached out. The fine hairs on her belly rose as his fingers brushed against her midriff, disappearing to encircle around her waist. They returned with a sword held firmly in hand. She could feel the chill from his lips, cold as the steel in his hands, as he spoke.
“Then don’t.”
It hurt to walk away from her. His body rebelled, unseen frozen digits trying to wrench his muscles into their control. And accompanying each twist and jerk, the voice screeched.
“Kill.”
He had no voice to retort with, no words to refuse. Every ounce of his being was focused on holding back what was inside him.
“Don’t turn your back on her!”
He sighed, dragging his sword in the sand as he pressed on, trying to ignore the voice.
“Either of them.”
“LOOK OUT!” Kataria screamed.
He turned and his blade turned with him. The steel saw his foe before he himself did. It whirled up, caught the tomahawk crashing down in a spray of sparks.
The greenshict trembled, holding the weapon in both hands as she tried to drive it down, to break the deadlock and finish it. But her eyes were calm, her lips were still even as the rest of her trembled; she took no pride in this.
He glanced over her shoulder and saw her opposite in Kataria’s face. She glanced from him to her and back to him, eyes wild and confused, hands fumbling between her bow and nothing.
“She can’t help you,” the voice snarled. “She never could.”
It ate the color in his hands, turned his flesh gray. The greenshict’s eyes widened at the sight of it, at the sensation of him pushing back. His blood ran cold in his veins, wouldn’t allow him to feel the strain of the deadlock.
“I can.”
His body twitched.
“I will.”
The blade snapped forward.
“We will survive.”
The metal embrace parted with a shriek as he lashed out a sloppy blow, not entirely sure who was driving it. The blade itself went wide of flesh as the greenshict twisted out of its way, but he snapped it back, caught her on the chin with the hilt. She reeled and he struck again, snarling as he drove the pommel of his blade against her face.
Bone snapped. Teeth fragmented and fell like snowflakes. A mouth filled with blood. A body struck the earth.
The assault was broken as an arrow flew wide over his head. He looked up and saw Kataria holding an empty bow and full eyes. He wasn’t sure which of them she had been shooting at, or how she expected such a sloppy shot to hit anything. And from the looks of it, neither was she. Someone was, though.
“Kill her. KILL HER NOW.”
Not a request. Not even a command. It was a statement of fact, one that turned his eyes upon her, one that moved his feet forward, one that raised his sword above his head.
That which was in Kataria’s eyes was something he could not describe. Despair and fear were evident in her tears, anger and impotence in the clench of her teeth. But there was something else there, in the long, deep breath. Relief? Lament? Regret?
Whatever it was, it consumed all that they both had. She stood, unable to move. His blade held, unable to fall. The voice was screaming at him in words he could not understand.
But it could not move him.
A flash of color out the corner of his eye caught his attention. First green, then, as the female inhaled and spat, red. Thick, viscous red for a moment. And then, nothing but bright, searing pain.
He screamed through burning lips, raked fingers blistering across a face that burned beneath the spatter of venomous blood. It clung to him spitefully, coming free from his face with great effort and greater agony. Through half-blind eyes he could see flashes of movement: a struggle, a limb raised and ending in a glistening tomahawk blade, stilled and trembling as two arms so pale and puny as to look like straws of wheat trying to hold back a tree wrapped around it.
Kataria cast a desperate stare over the greenshict’s shoulder and screamed something to someone, unclear to him.
The greenshict understood and made her di
sagreement known as she reached up, seized Kataria by her hair and pried her from her shoulder like a pasty tick. With a look between contempt and apology, she hurled the smaller shict to the earth and scowled up at the fast-fading form of Lenk as he fled.
He was limping. His vision was swimming. His body was breaking down. And the voice was still screaming. Screaming to be heard over his pain, over his fear, over the other voices in his head.
But he had nothing left to give them, any of them. No more blood to spill, no more thoughts to consume, no more will to keep going. Behind him, Kataria was still there. She would always be there, always with eyes full of despair and uncertainty. Before him was darkness, emptiness, a long empty road he would simply walk until he could die.
All around him was death. Bones littered the floor. His sword hung from his hand weakly, fell to the earth. Above him, caught in the kelp, a bell hung precariously, swaying along with the purple weeds that suspended it. A cathedral, he thought, singing sermons to skinless people who had seen the same emptiness he had seen and chose to stay here.
Perhaps, he thought as he collapsed into a nearby copse of kelp, they had a point.
She came a moment later, walking calmly into the clearing, unfazed by her elusive quarry or the ruin that had been her face. As though it was just an inconvenience to be missing teeth and weeping blood onto the earth. She slowly swept the clearing for him, searching.
Perhaps the pain distracted her more than she let on. Or maybe she knew what he knew, knew that he had nothing left in him, and was waiting for the inevitable discovery. He didn’t at all doubt she could hear his thoughts with those ears of hers.
Those big. . pointy. . ears.
His eyes drifted up to the ceiling of the cathedral of sand and kelp and bone, to the bell hanging above.
And he burst out of his hiding.
If he died, he died. That would be it. But for now, he was running without knowing why. For now, he was leaping to the kelp and trying to haul himself up. For now, he was giving more than he had, for a reason he didn’t know, trying to accomplish he wasn’t sure what.
For the thousandth time in his life.
She was upon him, loping after him silently as he ran, leaping after him as he climbed. Her tomahawk slashed, always catching the heels of his boots as he scrambled up into the kelp, hand over hand, coral over weed. With a snarl, the only she had spared for him thus far, she reached out, caught his foot.
