Beyond the Hell Cliffs

by Case C. Capehart

  “Enough!” Raegith howled at the beast. His frustration was peaking, as the predator would not even allow him a moment to close his eyes and slow his breathing, much less eat or drink anything. “Stop being such a coward and come for me, already!”

  Raegith reached the bottom of the mountain on the fifth day after spending the entire night awake inside the small space between two boulders. The beast had finally disappeared for a time and Raegith took advantage of its absence. He spent some time below, among the thickets and rigid stalks of the oak-like mushrooms, then he climbed back up onto the mountain.

  When the cat finally found him again, he was lying in place, screaming over his injured leg. Just as the beast had planned, he had slipped and hurt himself and as the cat approached him, all he could do was edge his back up against the heavy rock behind him and wait for his hunter to get close enough.

  The cat stalked slowly towards him, its yellow eyes searching him for any dangerous weapons or defense mechanisms. It kept its discerning eyes on him during the entire approach, but it should have been watching the snowy ground below it as well or it might have noticed the divot Raegith put a few yards in front of him and right in the cat’s path.

  As soon as the predator’s face was over the divot, Raegith dug his heels into the ground and pushed his back hard into the rock behind him, knocking it over the ledge and down the cliff. A thick vine popped up out of the snow it was buried under and the cat dropped down into a defensive crouch, uncertain of what was happening. The snow around the cat shifted quickly as a circle shrunk around its paws. The vine slid against the knot as soon as it hit the cat’s legs and cinched inwards. The cat was able to get three of its legs in the air, but one of its hind legs was not quick enough and when the vine went taught the big animal was yanked sideways into the snow and zipping toward Raegith.

  It tried to dig in; to stop itself from following the rock over the cliff, but there was no purchase for its claws in the fresh snow. It turned and swiped as it closed in on Raegith, but he was quick enough to lean back and the massive paw passed over his face as the beast was pulled over the edge.

  Raegith laid back into the snow and listened to the yowling as his hunter fell for several seconds. Then there was a hard impact followed quickly by a sound that was more crunchy-sounding and then silence.

  “I won’t be stopped... not by you… not by anything,” Raegith whispered to the mountain.

  The cat was all tough muscle and gristle, but it was still food and Raegith was grateful for it. He skinned the cat, but could not carry the heavy pelt with him and had to abandon it. He did the best he could to clean out the stomach and use it to wrap up as much cooked meat as he could. He also ripped one of the long tusks from its jaw and kept it with him before setting off toward the south under the expansive canopies of the tree-sized mushrooms.

  It took two days for Raegith to find a way through the swamp he found within hours of setting off through the forest. It was a quagmire in the valley of the mountain and the humidity was unreal. After the first night he spent sweating through his clothes, he longed for the cold of the mountain. He could not understand how the temperature could be so incredibly different in such a short distance. His body did not adjust well and sickness took him, but he pushed on.

  In his feverish state, he saw Onyx. One moment he was marching along the only dry path between bogs he could find, keeping his eye on this particularly greenish mushroom in the distance to keep himself straight and the next instant she was beside him.

  “You’re going the wrong way,” she said. She wore the rags of her caste, but she was just as beautiful as the day he first saw her. Her slender form glided atop the water of the bog on his left, not disturbing the surface at all.

  “Are you… real?” Raegith asked, stopping.

  “Of course not, sweet Raegith.”

  “Why can’t you be?” he asked, his voice wavering in her presence.

  “You know why, Raegith. I’m still there, Raegith… beside that road. No one has touched me; they all avoid my bones just as they avoided my body in life. Everyone has avoided me, except you.”

  “You’re just here to haunt me.”

  “You still have not found a place for us, Raegith. You have not carved a place for those like us, as you promised me.”

  “I’m lost, Onyx. I thought I was supposed to find this girl… to gain power… I don’t know where I’m going. I might just lie down here with you.”

  “I’m not real, Raegith. You can’t spend the rest of your life here with me. You have to find someone else. Look for the firefly.”

  Onyx began to fade into the mist as the night came upon him. He made his way up the trail, wavering and staggering with sickness. When the shrieks started, he thought they were just another hallucination until one of the shadows at his feet came alive and grabbed his leg.

  It dragged him for a few seconds before he was able to right himself and kick free. Suddenly they were everywhere in the dim light of dusk. He turned and ran, flailing his arms to rid himself of the dark creatures.

  Tiny, emaciated bodies like those of a malnourished baby and overly large heads, beaming with glowing yellow eyes and steely, saw-toothed grins; their black, leathery skin was loose and flapped as they squirmed. They screamed like frightened children and chased after him. They were not strong enough to drag him down to the ground, but they were able to scratch and tear at him.

  He ran on, tossing the black, frenzied things off of his back and screaming fanatically into the night. They were innumerable and the more agitated they became, the quicker they scurried in their jerking, twitchy movements. He was being overwhelmed and probably becoming even more lost in his panic.

  One latched onto his face, tearing through the skin at his jawline and he lost control. Gripping the creature, he ripped it from his face and dropped on top of it. As the others swarmed him, he vented all of his rage on the formless thing underneath him, pounding it into mush with his fists.

  He grabbed another one off of his arm and pummeled it. Then another and another. He was sparing only one or two hits for each one now. He got ahold of what felt like a neck and snapped it without hesitation. There was no more running; he would kill them all before they could finish him off. Ignoring the pain and the blood loss, he captured them, one-by-one and killed them until there were none left.

  It was too dark to assess his wounds, but he knew from the pain and the slickness of his skin that he was in bad shape. He struggled to his feet, picked a direction and pushed onward.

  He lost track of time and could not remember when it had gotten light out again. The fever and the humidity were slowly cooking him. Blood and grit stained him from head to toe and he was aware that he had lost his pack at some point. He had no food to eat, even if his stomach would allow it. His limbs were not obeying his commands and he kept hitting the stalks of the mushrooms. He did not even know which direction he travelled. If only Onyx would come to him once more and tell him which way to go.

  It was not Onyx that appeared before him, though, but Zakk. Dressed in rags that the Saban soldiers had placed her in, she was badly beaten and bruised. Her hair was missing in patches and her lips were plump and cracked.

  “They did this to me, Raegith. You let them do this to me,” she said.

  “No, it wasn’t me,” he replied weakly.

  “How many times are you going to let them keep doing this?” she continued. “Over and over, until it’s all I know… until it’s all I have left… until all I know how to do is ask for more and wait until they oblige me. This is what they do, Raegith.”

  “I’m trying!” he screamed. “I’m lost!”

  “It’s not enough, Raegith. It will never be enough until you commit to it. You know what you have to do, yet you hesitate. You know what they did to me, why are you hesitating?”

  “No! No, I won’t hesitate, just tell me where to go!”

  “You have to kill them. You cannot let anyone stop you, Raegith;
not anyone. They will try to stop you; try to satisfy you. Don’t let them take this from you. You will kill them all and then we can finally rest.”

  “I will kill all of them!”

  “Look for the firefly.”

  “I’m looking.”

  Then everything went dark. Raegith opened his eyes, not understanding when he fell asleep. He was half submerged in brown water and there were black leeches all along his leg, fat off of his blood.

  It was after he pulled the last one off of him that he realized his fever had broken. He was still dehydrated and dizzy and hungry and lost, but his fever was fading. All he could remember from the night before was the vision of Zakk and something about a firefly. He had not seen a firefly since he passed out of the forests of the Wilderness in Rellizbix.

  He was beginning to think this was the worst decision he had ever made. Even if he turned back, there was no way he could survive the climb back up the mountain. He had lost blood, the wounds on his face felt sore and infected; his insides felt as if they had shriveled into husks and he could feel his heart echoing off of his ribcage. He lay motionless for a moment, wondering if the heartbeat he just felt would be the last one.

  He needed to climb one of the mushrooms and look around for a landmark or something to base his direction off of, but just the thought of it was exhausting.

  What would I find up there, anyway? There is no sense of it. There is no Path, there is no secret to power… there probably aren’t any Junrei’sha. That symbol on the rock now seems so distant and faded; it could have been just a pattern in the stone. How could Noriko have gotten through the cave and past the Urufen without them noticing? I may not even be in the right place! I’m going to fucking die here and everyone who even cares will have to eventually give up on my ever coming back. How long will they all last, I wonder?

  “The firefly.”

  Raegith looked up into the violet eyes of Kalystra. For a moment he forgot where he was and was elated to find himself back in the Spire with the Empress. He reached out to grasp the silken sheets of her bed, but his fingers dug into moist dirt and roots. He was still in the forest and his hallucinations were still just as strong.

  “Just stay here with me, Kalystra. I don’t want to die alone and I can’t go any further. I’m just getting more and more lost.”

  “Okay, Raegith,” she said, sitting down beside him and running her ethereal hand through his hair.

  “Really? You’ll stay with me?” he asked.

  “Of course I will. You don’t need to keep pushing. You can just let it all go right now and I will stay with you until the lights go out.”

  “You’re much nicer than the other visions,” he whispered, closing his eyes.

  “They all want something for themselves. All I want is you. All I ever wanted was you, Raegith, even when I sent you away to the Pit. I would have abandoned my throne, left my people and lived the life of a farmer with you along the coast if you had asked me.”

  “Why did I not ask you, then?” he asked, smiling at the thought of spending his life in her arms by a sea he had only read about.

  “I did not let you,” she answered, her voice growing cold. “Instead, I sent you away from me, so that you may live. I died knowing that you were safe, though, and now I sit on a beach very far from here.”

  “What?” Raegith’s eyes snapped open and he looked up into hers.

  “It’s a nice enough place, Raegith, don’t worry about that. Your friends are there, too. The big one with the black hair and red hairband is pretty loud and obnoxious and the little guy that was with you on the night we met has so many stories, mostly of you. He doesn’t hate me either, Raegith.”

  “Where is this place? How can I get there?” Raegith asked.

  “It’s easy, my dear. You just have to wait here with me for a few more hours, is all. The difficult part is making that decision; everything afterward is painless. I will make it so.”

  “You’re talking about death,” Raegith said.

  “Yes, Raegith, that’s what I’m getting at. You can choose to take the easy path and come with me, forever; or you can get up and leave and the pain will come back instantly.”

  “Then why would I want to do that?”

  “Because the motherfuckers who put me on a pole to the applause of an army are still out there and you haven’t done a damned thing about it.”

  Raegith’s jaw quivered and two tears spilled from the corners of his eyes despite the wretched dryness in his body. “I’m not going to see you for a long time, Kalystra, so let me have just a few more moments, please.”

  There was no reply and when Raegith opened his eyes there was nothing but a growing darkness. He had been there for longer than he thought and night was upon him. She had already left him and just as she said, his pain was back in the next moment.

  “I’m not done, yet,” he said, but it was too soft for him. “I’m not done, yet!”

  He screamed at the night around him and rolled over. His legs ached and it took him a few minutes, but he got to his feet and stumbled forward.

  “Not yet, you hear me? Do you hear me, Helfrick? Not yet!”

  There was a flash in the distance; a speck of light that was there for a whisper of time and then was gone. Raegith stopped and tried to clear his vision. It was there again, only in a different spot; another dot of light that left a tiny afterimage in his dim vision.

  Raegith pushed harder, reaching forward and falling down. It was a firefly and there was only one of them. He knew how easily they could just disappear as soon as you stopped keeping track of them and he would not lose this one. Every few seconds, only four or five times a minute, the green dot would blink in and out. It was always too far ahead of him for Raegith to reach, but it was all he could focus on.

  His knees buckled underneath him and sent him into the dirt again and again. Everything in his body protested, threatened to give out completely if he took another step forward; everything but his mind. Fury built inside of him and he soaked it all up. He pulled emotion from every source, burning memories like logs for fuel. He screamed aloud at his failing muscles, threatening to cut them out of his body if they did not move. He cursed every enemy he had, letting his mind slip into madness to keep his momentum up. He moved through the dark forest like a raving lunatic.

  “Will you shut the fuck up!” a voice called out to him. “You call in every predator this place has to offer, crazy fool!”

  “No more visions, alright? I found the fucking firefly already,” Raegith cursed aloud.

  “I’m no vision and that’s not a firefly,” the voice said. “I’m not sure what a firefly is, but you’ve been following an imp that I use to keep watch over my hut and I’m kind of tired of listening to you scream so I had him lead you back here to me. Can I ask you what you’re doing here in my forest?”

  “You’re going to have to wait until I wake up,” Raegith said before collapsing.

  Chapter 42

  When he awoke, he was inside of a stone-walled room on top of a pallet of animal skins. There was a fire going in a fireplace along one of the walls and beside his bed was a wash basin and a tray of surgical instruments that he had not seen anywhere else in the Greimere. All along the floor were blood-soaked bandages and a few strange, worm-like creatures floating in jars of liquid.

  He sat up and looked about, curiously.

  “Now that you’re awake, what are you doing here?” the voice asked from a shadow in the corner.

  Raegith tried to see who was speaking, but the light was too dim and he could not make out anything but a black form in a chair. The voice did not sound clearly male or female and there was nothing inside the room that gave him any clue who he was dealing with. That he had been treated and healed instead of finished off was only slightly comforting.

  “I am Raegith the Grass-haired, from the Citadel…” he began to say.

  “I don’t care about that. What are you doing here?”

  �
�Can I see who it is I’m speaking to?”

  “No and this is the last time I’m asking before I unravel all of the work I just did on you.”

  The figure moved and Raegith felt a tugging in his side. He looked down and saw a black thread zigging and zagging up his side and over his ribs like giant sutures. He was instantly terrified. “What the hell did you do to me?”

  “It’s conditional healing. Every piece of you I mended was linked to an individual stitch and depends upon this thread in order to become permanent. I pull this thread, your stitches unravel and you get hit with all of those injuries and infections all at once. It will be a very painful death, I assure you.”

  “Okay, don’t do that then,” Raegith said. “I’m on a journey to find someone here in these lands.”

  “You’re looking for me? You’ve come to put an end to me, like the others?”

  A tug on the thread made Raegith jump. “No! I don’t think so, anyway. I don’t even know who you are!”

  “Tell me who you’re looking for and I’ll tell you if it’s me or not.”

  “It’s not you! Unless… Noriko? You’re not Noriko, are you?”

  “No, that’s not me. Thank you; that is all I needed to know.”

  The person yanked hard on the thread and all of the stitches popped and unraveled out of his skin with an unzipping motion. Raegith seized up and stifled a scream as he braced for the onslaught of pain and misery, followed by death. He stayed that way for a few seconds, not even breathing.

  “Nothing’s happening,” he squeaked.

  “Of course nothing is happening,” the person said, lifting up out of the chair. “Conditional healing? I’m kind of amazed you would fall for something so stupid.”