by G. D. Penman
Drawing a quavering breath Kaius said, “I do not wish to harm you. You are ignorant to the injuries that you have done to me. You are kept ignorant so that you may serve your master better. All I ask is that you stand down.”
Negrath had up until now held silent, terrified by the lash of flame, but now it squealed out, “Kill him. Kill them both. Quickly. Do not let him speak his lies. He seeks to twist things.”
For the first time Valerius eyes left Kaius, first to glance at the great bloody mass of Negrath, then to the girl lying by his side. He shuddered, then his eyes narrowed bitterly, “Now I see how it is, my love. What lies did she offer up to turn you from the true path?”
Kaius looked down and whispered, “It doesn't have to be like this.”
Valerius scoffed then leapt back in startled surprise when Kaius unleashed a roiling mass of flame between them. He startled back another step, blinded by the sudden light, then cast lightning out wildly into the room. He struck his master and the roof with two of the more frantic bolts.
Gouts of fire blossomed up over the roof, searing more of Negrath's dangling skin and leaving thick clouds of smoke in its place. Visibility in the dark cave could be measured by the length of your arms and even that only barely. Negrath pressed down into Valerius’ mind, the ancient will beating down on him constantly. The crooked face on the slab wailed again, “Kill him. Kill them both.”
A great torrent of fire lanced out from the dark and struck Negrath. It roared in anguish as the infected flesh of what remained of its torso bubbled and burst into reeking chunks. The ribs blackened in the sudden lash of fire. Valerius charged off in the direction the fire had originated to find nothing but an expanding cloud of choking smoke that his armour nearly smothered him trying to protect him from. He released his steel and roared, “Stop running you coward!”
A kick to the back of his knee sent him tumbling to the ground but with a burst of called speed he was on his feet and swinging the pointed metal of his arms at the space Kaius had so recently occupied. More flames rolled over Negrath and its wailing intensified, shaking the walls with its volume, “Kill. Kill.”
Valerius charged again to find emptiness but this time he spun around and unleashed a cascade of electricity through the room. Kaius' fist caught him at the base of his neck and his head filled with a bright white flash of pain. He was lost to the pain for a moment too long before he recalled his armour and swept his bladed arms around him wildly. He staggered back and forth and screamed in impotent rage. Kaius called out from the distant end of the cavern, “Before you became this creature, this servant of that vile beast, what were you?”
Valerius stomped forward a few steps then realised his mistake. He froze in place and unleashed a succession of electric bolts in different directions, illuminating the room in blinding white sections and punching further holes in Negrath's still breathing corpse.
He spun around looking for any sign of Kaius and listened for his breath. Then he spat on the ground from between grit teeth, “I was a scholar and a poet. I wrote great verses praising Negrath that the Halls still teach to their children. I was a genius and the nobles loved me. I was the greatest man in the city. There was no question, when the time came, that I should be the Beloved. Known by all as the greatest man in the world.”
He walked backwards as he spoke, eyes darting around the room as he moved towards Negrath and the helpless girl by its side. A useful hostage. He backed right into Kaius chest. A dagger's curved blade pressed softly into his cheek. A drop of blood rolled down the razor-sharp edge.
Valerius barely moved, he whimpered, “Kaius, please.”
Then the young man whispered in Valerius' ear, soft as a lover, “I was a warrior.”
He jerked his arm and slit Valerius’ throat. The Beloved of Negrath toppled to the floor like a rag doll. Kaius spoke calmly to the silent room, “I am a warrior.”
He advanced on Negrath and jammed his gore slick dagger into one of its eyes. It roared in pain and Kaius twisted the curved blade inside its skull. He screamed in its ruined face, “Any more tricks?”
Kaius dragged out the blade and thick white pus poured from Negrath's latest wound. The stench of it in the dry heat of the room was sickening. Kaius dragged the blade along Negrath's hide and when the scales rattled off onto the floor and the flesh separated, yet more corruption poured out. Negrath hissed and moaned deep in its throat. Kaius spoke calmly again, “Tell me everything that I want to know or I will carve you like a beetle. When I slice all the dead flesh away, how many mouthfuls do you think will be left. How many moments will it take to slide them down her throat?”
Negrath hissed as he approached again then whimpered, “What do you want?”
Kaius made a show of smiling to the one eye still remaining, “First, tell me how to fix her. Then tell me what made you this way.”
Negrath snorted in disdain, “I ate of the god flesh. As the god died I ascended. The more who ate, the weaker each was. So of each god, only one of us fed. The gods were gone and only the eaters remained. All mankind was freed from their tyranny.”
Kaius stared at the creature, so ancient and powerful, but so completely unaware of the significance of its actions. It rumbled on, “Then that one turned on us. Slaughtered us. Burned us. Twisted brothers and sisters to each other’s throats. Only through our power combined did we starve it out.”
As Negrath spoke Kaius moved around Lucia. Lifting her eyelids and feeling for her breath. Patting out the little flames still clinging to her ruined clothes. He placed a soothing palm on her head and then reluctantly pulled her back up into a sitting position. Kaius released his steel. His entire body was covered in bruises, rising up under his skin from every vein the lightning had touched. The parts that were not bruised were bleeding. If strength was not constantly flowing through the link he would have been immobilised or dead. Instead, he moved freely and life was draining from Lucia. Negrath snarled and sprayed mucous as it spoke, “Each is possessed of infinite power. So long as we dwell within our element. From the moonlight Walpurgan drew her witchcraft. From the earth Vulkas drew his might. From the sea Ochress drew its boundless life. From the sunlight this filth grew bloated and blinding.”
Kaius frowned and interrupted the ranting for the first time, “The moon has no light. It is the absence of light”
Negrath let out another gurgling laugh, “Walpurgan thought herself so clever. Starving the usurper. Leaving her kin mutilated and feeble. She thought to rule us all. She did not know. She blotted out her own power in the same stroke.”
Kaius cut it off again, “This is not answering my question. How do I help her?”
Negrath gasped in a sickly breath and then gargled and laughed at Kaius again, “You cannot. All four of us are bound in Walpurgan's work. It is eternal as we are eternal.”
Kaius seemed to be ignoring the creature now. Working his hands over Lucia, rubbing life back into her limbs, bundling her up for travel and slapping her gently on the cheek in a vain attempt to rouse her.
Sighing, he hefted her over his shoulder and started walking towards the door. Negrath's laughter rolled and echoed through the chamber. It cut short when sparks and then five tiny flames began to trail from Kaius' fingertips. He laid Lucia down carefully by the door. With a mournful look at the sallow skin of her face he turned back to the dark beneath the city and flooded it with scalding light.
Chapter 13- The Rise
Far out in the dark lands, steel fell in thick rivulets from every one of Negrath's chosen. Their strength failed them. Their speed failed them. One died under a ghul's cleaver as he faltered.
One fell to her death as she was leaping over ravines and lost all velocity. Everywhere the Chosen became mere humans again. Some for the first time in decades. The effect rippled inward as Negrath drew all of that power back in to protect itself. The Chosen on the city walls stumbled and fell to their knees, bereft. Without a Beloved or Marked they were the last true draw on the Eater's
strength, except for one. Flames caught and spread through the ruined body. It charred, burst and dried out in quick succession. The heat grew and grew until Kaius had to back away from the temperature of the air in the room. He still poured out more and more fire as Negrath wailed and flailed feebly on the grand altar of stone it had used as a pillow. The Chosen in the tower upstairs were now snatching up what furnishings they could use as weapons and scattering outside. They searched for the source of the attack with fearful faces. They searched for their commanders in vain. The people of the city watched them in confusion.
Smoke began to pour out of the tower, rising up from below the earth. The Chosen did not understand the significance of the smoke. They assumed that the lower levels of the tower were turned over to servants. So much was hidden from them that they did not know that their master burned. There was less and less of Negrath left. Its eyes had burst in the heat. Its dead flesh had sloughed away. Its bones blackened and cracked. It called a thick shell of steel around the charred remains of its head. Wrapping layers after layers of metal, spaced out for insulation. The heat rose once more and the outer layers began to trickle and melt in the temple that had now become a furnace. In the throne room that was becoming its grave. Kaius was at the door now, standing over Lucia's prone form as he drained the life from her. The thick cord of power between them was swelling as he drew more and more from her.
Her eyes lolled open. They were vacant but for the constant orbits of her many pupils. In what had been a vast tangled constellation of Negrath's will, there remained only the frantic scramble as it tried to protect itself and a single band stretching off towards the horizon. She reached a hand up for it, brushing against Kaius leg and startling him. He halted the inferno and turned to her with smoking hands. He crouched over her and supported her head as she tried to lift herself up. She did not see him. The whole world was dark except for that one dazzling bright cord. She reached out and pinched it between her fingertips. Then, feeling its cool power throbbing, she snapped it before lolling back again, seeing only darkness.
Kaius abandoned his attempted murder, trusting in the still blazing fires within the room to finish Negrath, if such a thing could even die. It pained him to do it, but some things took precedence. Things that included not being roasted alive himself. He dragged the door shut to keep in the heat. Then he lifted Lucia up in his arms and carried her slowly and painfully up the stairs, releasing all of the strength that he could bear. Her cracked lips were still letting out the laboured sounds of breathing and that gave him comfort. He kept on past the ground floor and the scampering masses of Chosen and servants.
They did not recognise his face, as ruined as it was by the events of the last few hours. He passed safely up to what had been Valerius’ chambers. They were empty and unguarded. He laid Lucia on the bed before the great ivory archway. She was not dead but she was so close he did not think she would notice his absence. He walked out onto the balcony overlooking the ivory city. Soon chaos would descend. The other eaters would march on the city and slaughter any defenders, but he had no illusions that he would live that long. When Lucia passed and he could not draw on her strength, his injuries would most likely kill him. If that did not finish him then his former comrades in arms would be happy to finish the job once hey realised what he had done. He stripped the tatters of his robes from his upper body, gasping and wincing as they passed over his cuts and bruises.
He moved slowly through the Forms of Bone on the balcony, ignored by the people below and aching with every movement. He had broken a sweat with just the walk up the stairs but this left his skin damp and tight. He turned to face the coming heat-rise and closed his eyes. This would be the final time he got to experience this moment of peace. He tried to block out the press of sound rising up from the city. To imagine that he was back out in the dark lands that he loved. Not dying here in a nest of vipers. He raised up his arms and everything became bright.
Heat swept over him and his eyes snapped open. A white-hot sphere rose up over the distant mountains. The people of the city began screaming in terror. Kaius’ pupils narrowed to slits and he staggered backwards into the room trying to shield his eyes. On the bed, Lucia shimmered silver. Every inch of her skin taking in the light and shining bright. Kaius fell to his knees before her and bowed down, to protect his eyes as much as to give obeisance. Light touched every part of the world outside. The ivory city cast its very first shadow and it stretched out for miles.
Day spread out and caught in the ash and dust still drifting through the air. Mushrooms on the farms and in the gardens that fed the city exploded in clouds of spores at the sun’s touch. The herds of insects broke free of their corrals, seized by sudden terror, and started burrowing and scattering in search of safe darkness. Lucia drew in a breath and all of her pain washed away, replaced by perfect warmth. Within her eyes the pupils split once more. The bones of her face, so pronounced when she was withering, took on sharp edges.
When she spoke, her voice reverberated, “Get up Kaius. I am no different now than I was by the fire when we last spoke. I am still myself. Just... More so.”
Kaius dared to look up into her face and was startled to see the glow dimming to reveal her skin, still smooth and pale for the most part, now showed tiny silvered scales across her cheekbones and around her eyes. Her hair had regained its lustre and now hung gracefully down one side of her head. The filth and deprivation had all burned away. This new form that she took, strange as it may have been, was beautiful to his eyes, at least.
He looked ragged by comparison, all scratches and soot. His clothes in ruins and a branching tree of bruises running across his bare torso. She smiled down at him and he rose unsteadily to his feet. She said, “Not so bad being treated as an equal?”
With a small effort, he curled up the sides of his lips, “It will take some getting used to.”
Her smile never wavered as he re-opened their connection and started drawing strength again, he wondered for a moment if she could even feel it now that she was so swollen with power. There was a metallic ring to her voice and every word seemed to echo up from inside her, “What happened while I slept?”
She looked out over the city and heard the wailing from below for the first time with concern, “What is happening?
Kaius shifted uncomfortably, “I killed Negrath and its Beloved. Then this light appeared in the sky. I believe that the Eaters were keeping this light in the sky hidden to prevent you from regaining your strength.”
She glanced back at him with wide, alien eyes, “You killed... Wait. You can see it too?”
He nodded, “We all can. You need to consider your next move. The other Eaters have already shown their hostility. I recommend a pre-emptive strike against them. Many of Negrath's Chosen will fall into line if given the correct incentives. Or if you would prefer, you can select a new crop from the Halls of Steel and Bone. There is no immediate need to select Marked, or Masters of the Forms. Though we should consider replacing the latter, a necessity if we are to engage in a prolonged conflict.”
She waved her hand to silence him with an imperiousness that would have escaped her only a few cycles ago. A few days ago. He took a mental note that while she spoke of equality between them she found it easy to fall into her new role. “How can you speak of such things when the entire world has changed? Look. Look at it there in the sky. We no longer need bonfires to guide us. The city no longer needs lit as a beacon. The darkness is gone.”
Kaius flinched at that last statement then said, in the measured tones that he would use with a child, “The world has changed for you in more drastic ways than an oversized torch. If we do not take action, there will be riots in the streets and armies marching on us before the heat-cycle has passed by. What is your command?”
Lucia stared at him blankly, “Why do we have to do anything?”
Kaius sighed, “Because if we do not, then many of the people of this city are going to die and you made it clear that your goal
s do not include widespread death.”
There was more screaming outside as chaos spread throughout the city. She looked at him then back to the open archway and with pursed lips she said,
“Stop them from hurting each other. Fix this.”
He nodded curtly then headed out onto the balcony. He tried to call strength to his throat only but the muscles around his chest and the back of his skull started twisting in protest. He called as much strength as he could and then started shouting out his proclamation to echo out over the city and plains, “I am Kaius. Beloved of Lucia. Negrath is dead by my hand.”
In some quarters the screaming and panic became more widespread than before. He roared, “Silence!” and the city fell still.
“Negrath is gone. His servants are gone. Lucia is all that remains. By her order every one of you will be protected. Every one of you is promised safety as long as you are obedient. Every one of you is promised agony if you betray her in word or deed.”
The words echoed out and met with a weighing silence.
“Chosen of Negrath. You served well and now a time of great opportunity is upon you. Any of you who wish to end your service are free now to do so. Go forth if you wish. If you still want to fight, to be more than mere humans. Present yourself at the base of this tower. Lucia will look upon you and judge those who are worthy of serving her.”
He looked out over the people crammed into the streets to better hear the announcement. It had clearly captured their attention to drag their eyes away from the still rising sun. Kaius looked into the sun and his face broke into a momentary grin before he composed himself and resumed his firm tone, “To any who would make themselves our enemy I say this unto you. Look to the sky. By the limits of Negrath's power and artifice a city was lit. By the will of Lucia alone we bathe the entire world in light.”
