The Mortal Tally

by Sam Sykes

  And as one light died, another was born. In the distance, through the oppressive press of spires and towers, a red light blossomed, a drop of blood pricked from a black finger. It grew with each step, a bold and hellish crimson that seemed to brighten and dim with every breath Lenk took.

  A heartbeat.

  And with it a voice.

  “Kapira… Kapira… Kapira…”

  Growing in cadence, in fervor.

  “Kapira… Kapira… Kapira…”

  And in volume.

  “Over here.”

  Shuro seized him by the shoulder, pulled him into the darkness of a nearby building. A pack of abominations came slithering past a moment later, heading north toward the light.

  Just how many were there? Lenk wondered. How many had they already seen?

  “Stairs over here,” Shuro whispered.

  The interior of the building seemed to be a library of sorts, its scrolls and tomes long rotted away and its shelves well on the way to joining them. And though it was difficult to see within, Lenk made out a dim shaft of light at the rear of the room illuminating a spiraling staircase leading up. He followed Shuro as she followed it, scaling up to another level, then another, until they emerged onto the roof and into the chill wind of the night.

  The buildings here pressed close together, and it was easy enough to pick their way across the rooftops and toward the red light that reached up into the night sky with darkly luminous claws.

  While it had been merely unsettling when viewed from the ground, from this high up it seemed less like a light and more like blood painted across the sky. It pulsed and quivered with a life that it should not have. Just looking at it made Lenk want to turn and run until he reached the cliff and then hurl himself off.

  Yet Shuro did not turn back, so neither did he. They moved carefully across the roofs until they came to the very last edge of the very last building. And there he saw it.

  Carnage.

  Perhaps he had been naïve to believe that Rhuul Khaas had fallen bloodlessly, or perhaps simply hopeful at the dearth of evidence of violence around the city. Whether it had been foolishness or hope, he didn’t bother asking. As he gazed upon the vast circular plaza that opened up before him, he realized that the savagery that came with casting down Khoth-Kapira hadn’t been absent.

  Merely contained.

  Here was the destruction, in the char and soot and dried ichor that painted the faces of the buildings black. Here was the devastation, the benevolent faces of the statues that had watched over the plaza smashed and scarred. Here were the dead…

  And there were many.

  They stood, rather than lay, their flesh rent from their bodies and their bones scorched black. Some held rusted weapons aloft, some hid behind shattered shields, some were caught in mid-stride, fleeing from a horror they’d never escaped. They, mortal men and women who had had the tragic honor of witnessing the fall of a god, forever frozen in their final, fleshless moments.

  And all of it was illuminated by the light, red as blood, weeping from a wound at the very center of the carnage.

  A great rift, as though someone had taken a rusty knife and carved a jagged scar in creation, sprawled across the plaza. From within, the hellish red light emanated, illuminating crumbling stone and painting shadows deeper than the night.

  “Kapira… Kapira… Kapira…”

  Among all the horror, the misshapen and malformed bodies of the Khovura were almost unremarkable. They huddled around the rift, their chant sounding more like a collective pleading whimper. Upon each of their twisted faces, illuminated by the red light, was etched the unmistakable desperate need of people who had nowhere left to turn but here.

  “Look there,” Shuro said, pointing down. “Is that…”

  She didn’t finish the question. Nor did she need to.

  There, at the edge of the rift, given a respectful space by the Khovura, stood Chemoi. Her attentions were turned to a black book in her hands, its pages wrought with twisted sigils that became black words from her mouth, carrying loud and clear to wrench themselves in Lenk’s ear.

  He knew the speech, if not the words. He had heard them before, on the tongues of demons he had sent back to hell.

  “The Tome of the Undergates,” he muttered. “How the fuck did she get it?”

  “Irrelevant,” Shuro snarled. “We were idiots to leave her alive, but that’s also irrelevant.” She hefted her blade, rose to her feet. “We move quickly. Once your boots hit stone, I want you to rush Chemoi. Stop her at all costs.”

  “What?” Lenk blinked. “And what will you be doing?”

  “I will handle the Khovura.”

  “But there are at least twenty down there!”

  She seized his hand in hers, his stare in hers. “This is what we were made to do, Lenk. Everything relies on us doing it.”

  What we were made to do.

  Made. Not born.

  “Are you with me?” she asked.

  He swallowed hard, nodded. She returned his nod, released his hand.

  A breath held. A blade quivering. A grip tightened.

  And then they were running.

  They swept across the edge of the rooftop, toward the crumbling ruin of a statue looming high over its eaves. They leapt as one onto its shoulders, slid down the length of its stone robe, hit the floor of the plaza.

  And they were striking.

  No war cries, no oaths, no curses; not for weapons like them. They were silent, no noise but their feet upon the stones. They were swift, no hesitation in their blades flashing in the darkness. They were fearless, charging even as the Khovura took notice and turned to rush toward them.

  And they were killing.

  Lenk saw the battle in fragments, a glass portrait of slaughter shattered into a dozen pieces.

  A hulking brute lunged at him with monstrous claws outstretched and found his blade thrust deep into its chest. No sooner had he kicked its carcass away than a writhing serpent appendage swooped toward him, fangs bared and hissing. His sword was up, carving a perfect arc and cleaving it just behind the neck. The coils of its body writhed wildly, spraying gore from its stump even as Lenk’s sword found the abomination it was attached to and struck it to the earth in a messy, violent chop.

  They came in a shrieking charge: a mass of twisted flesh and many mouths, rushing toward him.

  And he hacked. And he cut. And he carved, tearing limbs from sockets, wrenching blades in ribs, smashing heads with pommels.

  And still, somehow, his carnage paled in comparison to Shuro’s.

  Where he was brutal, she was refined. Her body was a shadow, insubstantial wherever the Khovura tried to strike. Her blade was lightning, striking wherever she set her eyes. And her voice was silent, but for a single word.

  “Go,” she told him.

  As more Khovura came wailing from the shadows, Lenk saw his chance. A path was clear to Chemoi, who cast him a glance before returning to speaking from the dread book in her hands, her voice urgent and wild. As Shuro swept forward to intercept the Khovura, he rushed toward Chemoi, leapt at her, and caught her in a tackle.

  They skidded across the stones, dangerously close to the edge of the rift. And from here Lenk could see down into its depths and saw nothing. A blackness so deep and so hungry that it reached out for him with unseen hands, begged him to come down and keep it company.

  He looked away, lest he find himself seized. And in the moment his attention was distracted, Chemoi’s knife flashed. She cut him across the collarbone, drawing a spurt of red. He cried out, clutching at the wound and giving her enough room to wriggle out from under him and get to her feet.

  He leapt to his own footing, held his sword out before her as he moved to keep her from the rift. Without her veil, her face was twisted in a scaly, reptilian snarl and her yellow eyes were wild.

  “The dead cultists we found you with back in the jungle,” Lenk said, “you weren’t following them. You were leading them.”

 
; “That was the plan,” Chemoi said.

  “From the beginning?”

  “The very beginning. Ain’t no accident you wound up with my crew on the Old Man.”

  “Should I ask why?”

  “You shouldn’t,” Chemoi growled. “Because you should already know. I scrape and bow and serve humans for the scraps they deign to throw me. I watched my friends and family starve in the Sumps. I grew up in a world that treated its bugs better than it treated me. And when Khoth-Kapira told me he’d make it better?” She spit. “Why wouldn’t I do it?”

  “That doesn’t mean you can do this.”

  “Try and stop me.”

  She shrieked, hurled herself at him. He swung his sword high over her head as she ducked low and angled her blade at his belly. He caught her by the wrist, twisted it, tore another scream from her mouth that he silenced by smashing the crosspiece of his sword against her face.

  She fell to the ground, groaning. He reversed his grip on his sword, brought it up to plunge into her chest. She looked up with a sneer full of blood.

  “Do it,” she said. “Ain’t like anything’s left for me here.”

  Lenk’s hand twitched. His blade trembled. He began to move.

  “Do you see, Lenk?”

  A voice, calm and clear amid the chaos. There, at the periphery of his vision, he saw the man in white. Mocca, hands folded behind his back, walked forward.

  “People who would rather die than live in this world? People for whom there is nothing left? I can save them.

  “I can save all of them.” Another voice. Mocca was behind him, looking over his shoulder. “I can fix all of this. You know I can, Lenk. You’ve seen my works, my sins, my potential. You know what I can do. I can save them.

  “And you can kill them.” Another voice. Another Mocca. Standing over Chemoi, looking down at her with pity. “Those who live tomorrow will envy those who die today. I have seen it, Lenk. A great war, one that will span this desert and this entire world and drown it. You have seen it, too. In the wars and hatreds and fears that shape these people. It will birth a monster. And it will consume everything you hold dear and everyone you love.

  “But you know that.” The fourth Mocca. Slowly they all turned to him. Slowly they advanced upon him. “Kill her, Lenk. You will kill forever. You will kill everyone. You will be the very sword you sought to put down and you will be the blade that bleeds the world dry.

  “… a war to end all wars…”

  “… rivers of blood, mountains of corpses…”

  “… I could save them, all of them…”

  “… without me, this world will…”

  They kept talking, all four of them, one after the other until their words were a whirlwind in his ears. He shut his eyes, clenched his teeth.

  “Lenk.”

  He opened them. Only one Mocca stood before him. Honest fear in his eyes, hands held out in benediction.

  “If you love Kataria,” he said softly, “then help me save her.”

  In his eyes Lenk saw it. The dread truth, the realization that for all his treacheries and sins, Khoth-Kapira spoke one truth.

  He loved Kataria.

  He had to save her.

  And he knew the words that would be spoken next before they left Mocca’s lips.

  “Stand aside.”

  Lenk lowered his sword. Lenk backed away.

  Mocca closed his eyes, smiled, and disappeared.

  What confusion Chemoi felt was short-lived. Instantly she was up. The dread book was in her hand, unfurled. She was at the edge of the rift, her chant resumed.

  And Lenk stood aside.

  And watched.

  “LENK!”

  Only for a moment.

  When he turned he saw Shuro standing at the center of a massacre. Well-carved Khovura corpses littered the ground around her, contorted in their final spasms of agony and bleeding from the cuts she had left them.

  Her face fell as she took in the scene before her. And she was once again that little girl: small and afraid, with eyes struggling to find the words to ask why.

  Why he had betrayed her.

  “Shuro,” he said, “I’m sorry. I had to—”

  “No.”

  A cold voice. A cold stare. A cold blade.

  The girl was gone. Shuro was gone. The woman standing before him was somewhere in between. Tears fell from her eyes. Her face was twisted with fury and pain. She took her sword in both hands.

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  And she rushed toward him.

  If she was fast before, she was inhumanly fast now, sweeping up to him in the span of two breaths. Her blade was flashing, striking him at all angles, all openings. His own sword fought to keep up, groaning where hers sang, stumbling where hers danced. And with each blow he blocked, he felt the shock of it run down his arm and into his ribs.

  She struck with fury. She struck with sorrow. She struck with pain.

  And he felt it. His guard slowed, his feet tripped. Her blade scored him and opened up his arms, his legs, his shoulders. He felt as though he wept from a hundred cuts, so that when her foot shot out and caught him in the belly, it was but an afterthought, just one more pain among many.

  He staggered to a knee. His blade came up, blocked hers as it came down. But she pressed with such anger that she pushed his sword nearer. And over their locked steel, he could see in her tearstained eyes that she would extend him these last few breaths as a courtesy.

  He breathed in.

  Her sword came lower.

  He breathed out.

  Her steel grazed his cheek.

  He shut his eyes.

  “Lenk,” she whispered, “I should never have—”

  He didn’t hear what she said next.

  He didn’t hear anything.

  Not over the sound of a single word. A wrong word spoken for the right reason. The last letter of the last word in a speech never meant for mortal ears.

  And though he could not understand it, he knew simply from the way it left Chemoi’s lips, writhing in the wind like a living thing, what it was.

  The chant was over.

  The world was saved.

  For a long moment, nothing happened. Lenk, Shuro, and Chemoi held themselves tense, looking around. The pulsing of the red light stopped. The wind ceased to howl. The night descended swiftly to smother any noise.

  For a long moment, creation held its breath.

  And then screamed.

  Clouds swirled overhead. Wind whipped around them in a howling torrent. The blackened bones of the mortal armies crumbled into heaps. But it was the earth that spoke the loudest, an agonized groan escaping it as the city shook to its very foundation.

  From deep within the rift, something screamed. From deep within the rift, something stirred. From deep within the rift, something emerged.

  “Yes,” Chemoi shrieked. “YES!”

  A tremendous black hand, wide and long as a man, rose from the rift, came smashing down upon the plaza. Another joined it, reaching out to seize the lip of the rift. The earth groaned, the rift widened, the red light dissipated and was swallowed back beneath the earth. The plaza was plunged into darkness as something hauled itself out and up.

  And up.

  And up.

  The three mortals were stunned, speechless at what they saw looming over them. Two titanic, muscular arms swept out from a colossal torso. Writhing, serpentine coils danced around a mass of a head in a wild halo of snakes. It was a man, but too great to be one. A monster, but too perfect to be one. A demon, but too… too…

  From a body swathed in darkness, two great white eyes stared down at the three mortals, each one struck speechless, unable to find any word for this.

  Save one.

  “Khoth-Kapira,” Lenk whispered.

  “The God-King,” Shuro said. She fell to her knees, her battle forgotten. “I… I have failed…”

  “No, child.” A black voice bloomed in the darkness, spoken from somew
here far away and unbearably close. “You have been blessed.”

  The great black head slowly surveyed the darkness around it, its white eyes taking in the ruin of its surroundings. Every breath he took seemed to drink in the air and sound around him.

  “The wind,” he whispered, his voice harsh and quiet. “I can feel it. I can feel…” He slid his colossal hands across the stone. “It is real.” He looked down at the mortals. “You are real. I can see you, hear you.” His eyes narrowed upon Shuro. “Touch you…”

  Slowly the great shape reached down. Black fingers extended, as though to seize Shuro, who stared, numbly, at the ground.

  “No!”

  Lenk’s voice seemed so tiny, so frail, so utterly insignificant in the face of the great darkness that loomed over him. And yet it listened. And yet it stopped.

  “Please,” Lenk said, “let her go.”

  The two great white eyes fixed upon Lenk. The black voice whispered to him.

  “She would kill you,” he said. “She does not understand.”

  “I know,” Lenk said. “Please.”

  They stared at him a little while longer, those eyes. And there was nothing in them. No fear. No understanding. Nothing that indicated that they had even heard him.

  And yet…

  “A boon,” Khoth-Kapira said. “The first of many.” He rescinded his great arm. “Go, child. Tell your masters that this world will thrive, despite their efforts.”

  Fear returned to Shuro, long enough to take her to her feet and send her running. But even as she ran, she looked over her shoulder. And even as the darkness grew deeper, Lenk saw her eyes.

  And he felt a cold pain in his chest.

  “Do not fear.”

  A voice. Not Mocca’s.

  “Her life will be one of many saved.”

  Khoth-Kapira’s. Cold. Dark. Near.

  “And even as she curses your name, it will be thanks to you that she has life to do it.”

  Lenk turned. Lenk looked up. Khoth-Kapira looked back to him.

  “I will save this world, Lenk,” the God-King said. “I will make it clean again.”

  And slowly the great demon inclined his head low in reverence. The serpents writhing about his head did likewise. And Lenk felt Khoth-Kapira’s voice touch a dark place within him.