Black Halo

by Sykes, Sam

  And you said …

  Her ears twitched, still listening even if her mind was not. They rose up on either side of her head, slowly shifting from side to side as they heard a sound.

  Water?

  She followed it, the roar of rushing liquid growing more thunderous with every step. She glanced down at the earth; the tracks continued to it, though the earth still refused to yield the speaker of their stories, even as it became moister.

  Soon, the ground turned to mud beneath as forest and river met in battle. The trees refused to yield, leaning in close over the great blue serpent that slithered through the earth. It flowed swiftly, fed by a distant waterfall thundering down a craggy cliff face not far from where she stood at its bank.

  Not ten feet away from her, where the water was at its most shallow, an island of earth and stone rose like a rocky pimple. Long and wide, it defied the nature of the river with its stone-paved floors, crumbling pillars and the occasional vine-decorated statue. But the forest challenged even this, those trees and underbrush that had managed to grow over it encroaching upon it, obscuring the finer points of its decay as it strangled the island with leafy hands.

  Odd, she thought, but not the oddest part about this place.

  She surveyed the river, eyes narrowing. Certainly it sounded like a river ought to. The water was clear and, at a glance, clean enough and suitable for drinking. Her dry lips begged her to drink, her ears told her it was safe. Only her nose rejected it.

  The scent of freshness was nowhere present in the air; the aroma of growing things fed by the flow was overwhelmed by a reek that lurked just beneath.

  But surely, water was water. Even the water couldn’t be tainted if it caused such plants to grow. There was no harm, she told herself, in simply taking a drink. It would enable her to hunt farther, faster, and do what must be done.

  She glanced down at the water, smacking her lips. Her nostrils quivered.

  Still, she thought, glancing over to the waterfall, no sense in not taking a drink directly from the source.

  She stared up, wondering exactly where the river came thundering from. And, atop the great crags of the cliff, she found an answer pouring from great, skeletal jaws.

  The skull, resembling something of a massive, fleshless fish, stared back down at her through empty eye sockets as it hung precariously over the edge of the cliff, wide as a boulder, water weeping through every empty void in its bleached surface. Liquid poured from its great, toothsome jaws, burst from each empty black eye, weeping and vomiting in equal measure.

  Not that such imagery didn’t unnerve her, but it paled in comparison to the fact that she had seen this skull before, in a much smaller form. But she had seen it, cleaned of shadowy black skin, sockets where vast, empty white eyes had once been. She remembered the teeth, she remembered the jaws, she remembered the gurgling, drowning voice that went with them.

  An Abysmyth. She was staring at a demon’s skull, far more massive than any she had ever thought possible.

  But it was just a skull, she thought. Whatever demon it had belonged to was dead now and there was no need for her to fear. Nor was there a need to wonder where it had come from. She had tracks to follow, tracks that had to have led through the shallows, over the island and onto the opposite bank.

  Rolling her breeches up to her knees, she carefully waded in. The current was swift, but not deep enough to drag her under. Still, it was a slow and steady pace that carried her across, mercilessly leaving her time to be with her thoughts.

  If there are demons here … she thought. I mean, I know that one’s dead and all, but if they’re here … you’re actually doing them a kindness, aren’t you? You’d be killing them before they could have their heads chewed off. Of course, you’d be eaten moments later, wouldn’t you? But that’s fine, so long as they die before that happens. That’s just the kind of selfless person you are, right?

  She laughed bitterly.

  Sure. I’m certain they’ll see it my way.

  Her foot caught. A root reached up from muddy ground to tangle her. She cursed, reached down to free herself and found no rough and jagged tuber. Rather, what caught at her ankle was smooth and came easily out of the water and in her hand, the mud of the riverbed sloughing off to land in the flow like globs of great brown fat.

  She might have thought how fitting that metaphor was, if it weren’t for the fact that she was currently staring at a fleshless, skeletal arm in her hand.

  Before she could even warn herself against the dangers of doing so, she looked down.

  And the small, rounded human skull looked back up, grinning and politely asking for its arm back.

  With a sneer, she obliged, dropping the appendage and scurrying out of the water. Suddenly, the vague reek made itself known to her, the familiarity of it cloying her nostrils.

  The water was rife with the scent of corpses.

  ‘Still alive.’

  The sound of a voice beside the one in her head caused her to whirl about, tense and ready to fight or flee. And while she breathed out a scant relieved exhale at the sight of red flesh stretched over muscle before her, she didn’t outright discount either option.

  Gariath, for his part, didn’t seem particularly interested in what she might do. Perched upon a shattered pillar beneath the shade of a tree, he seemed far more interested in the corpse twitching on his feet. She recognised it as one of the rainbow-coloured roaches, its innards exposed and glistening, loosing reeking, unseen clouds as he scooped out its guts.

  Strange, she thought, that a dead roach should be more recognisable than the creature she had once called a companion.

  It certainly looked like Gariath, of course: all muscles, horns, teeth and claws. His tail hung over the pillar and swayed ponderously, his wings were folded tightly behind his back, as they had been many times before. His hands were no less powerful as they tore a whiskered leg from the roach and guided it into teeth glistening with roach innards. His utter casualness about having a corpse at his feet and in his mouth was also decidedly familiar to her.

  And yet, there was something off about him, she thought as she studied him with ears upraised. His skin appeared stretched a bit too tightly. His jaws opened with mechanical precision instead of morbid enthusiasm. The disgust on her face was plain as another wave of roach reek hit her nostrils, but he showed no particular joy at the discomfort he caused her.

  This was all strange enough without considering his stare. There was intensity behind it, as ever, but it was not a fire that flickered and burned. His stare was hard and immutable, a stone that pressed against her.

  ‘So are you,’ she said, observing him coolly as he shovelled another handful of innards into his jaws.

  ‘You sound disappointed,’ he grunted through a full mouth.

  She was, she admitted, if only slightly. Things certainly didn’t get less complicated with a hulking reptile still alive. She was certainly surprised to see him, given his rather obvious intent on dying the last time she saw him.

  Still, she took some satisfaction in his appearance. It merely confirmed her previous suspicions: If Gariath was alive, Lenk would be, too.

  And if Lenk is alive …

  Gariath’s neck suddenly stiffened. He looked up, ear-frills fanning out. She started, unsure whether to run. He made no movement beyond sitting, ear-frills twitching, as though hearing something she could not. This, noting the differences between their ears, she found disconcerting.

  ‘Angry?’ He glanced to the air at his side. ‘Maybe. Probably. I don’t care.’

  ‘Are … you talking to me?’

  ‘If I was talking to you, I’d be angry.’ He cast a sidelong glare to the emptiness. ‘As it is, I’m only mildly irritated.’

  While there were many oddities one could accuse Gariath of, madness was not one of them. What dribbled from his mouth on insect ichor might have sounded like lunacy, and she wasn’t ready to discount that it was, but it was uttered with such clarity that he was
not possessed of even in his more lucid moments. He was serene. He was coherent. He was calm.

  That unnerved her.

  ‘You look upset,’ he observed.

  She said nothing. ‘Concerned’ and ‘observant’ were two other qualities one never accused Gariath of having.

  ‘Understandable, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘I’m standing in front of a lizard who, up until moments ago, I thought dead and was pleased for it, because, as of a few days ago, said lizard tried to kill me by bringing down a giant snake on my head.’ She sneered. ‘Maybe a little upset, yeah.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just said—’

  ‘Not you, stupid.’ He held a hand up and looked to the side again, shaking his head. ‘No, she always sounds like this. Stupid humans cry about things like near-death experiences.’ He laughed morbidly. ‘No, no. They call it “attempted murder”.’ He snorted. ‘Babies.’

  She stared at the nothingness beside him intently, straining to see what he saw. It became evident that trying to do so was as futile as trying to see what crack had split his skull from which this sudden lunacy leaked out.

  She took a step back warily.

  ‘Going somewhere?’

  She slowed, but did not freeze at his growl. ‘Back to tracking.’

  ‘Tracking what? The other humans?’

  ‘The humans, yes.’

  ‘Pointless. I can’t smell them. They’re probably dead.’

  ‘Given that you tried your damnedest to kill them, that’s definitely possible.’

  ‘They’re always snide like this, too,’ he growled to the air once more. ‘Hmm? No, you wouldn’t think so, but the pointy-eared one gets uppity about the other ones, too. Or at least, the other one.’

  She felt the stab in his words surely as she felt the ire rise in her glare, seeking to leap out and impale him. The ichor on his unpleasant smile and the lunatic calm in his stare, however, convinced her to instead turn around, walk toward the opposite bank and hope he did nothing more than continue to stare.

  ‘Never seen you run before,’ he grunted after her.

  ‘I’ve never seen you talk to invisible people before, so I suppose we’re even,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘And for the thousandth time I remind you, knowing full well you don’t care or can’t understand, I’m a shict.’

  The question came just as she set foot back onto damp soil, voiced without accusation, without malice, without anything beyond genuine curiosity.

  ‘Are you?’

  And she froze, turned around so slowly she heard her vertebrae creak.

  ‘What … what did you say?’

  ‘You’re not going about this the right way, you know,’ he replied with a shrug.

  ‘You can’t possibly—’

  ‘I do,’ he replied, ‘and I can tell you that more dead bodies, theirs or yours, won’t make your ears any pointier.’

  ‘And I’m supposed to listen to that?’ It was unwise to snarl at him so, to bare her teeth at him challengingly, but she didn’t care. It was likewise unwise to allow the tears to form in the corners of her eyes, but she could not help it. ‘You expect me to believe that you, of all people, think violence isn’t a solution?’

  ‘I don’t expect you to do much more than die,’ he replied with coolness not befitting him. ‘Someone else expects you to do so in a more meaningful way.’ He blinked, then looked to the air with incredulousness. ‘Really? How do you figure that?’

  ‘Who—?’

  ‘Right.’ He nodded once, then turned to her. ‘But this isn’t it, we agree. No matter who dies, you’re still what you are.’

  Walk away, she told herself. Run, if you have to. He’s a long way gone and he was rather far away to begin with. Go. Run.

  Sound advice. She should have cursed her frozen feet, her eyes set against his. She should have done anything, she knew, besides open her mouth to him. But she could not help it, just as she couldn’t help the genuine curiosity in her voice.

  ‘What am I?’

  ‘Well, I don’t care,’ he replied sharply. ‘But whatever you are, whatever you’re planning, it won’t work.’

  ‘You know nothing of what I’m planning, of what I have to do.’

  ‘You don’t know what you have to do. Isn’t that why you’re being such a whiny moron?’ He leaned closer; the weight of his stare became oppressive, drove her back a step. ‘What happens when you do it? When you kill Lenk? Your thoughts won’t get any more quiet.’

  ‘What do I do then?’ She was far past concern for how he seemed to know her plans, far past baring her teeth or hiding her tears. ‘What does your lunacy tell you? Because I’ve been thinking with sanity and logic, and I can’t come to any other conclusion. This has to happen. He has to die.’

  His expression didn’t change. The stone of his stare became one of body. His tail ceased to sway, his claws ceased to twitch. He stared without words, for he had no more for her.

  And she had none for him. His might be a serene madness, but it was still madness. And she still knew what she must do.

  She turned about swiftly this time, stalked back to the river. She hadn’t even lifted sole from stone this time before she heard him growl.

  ‘There, see? I told you she wouldn’t listen.’

  She heard him rise, wings flapping, claws stretching, leathery lips creaking with the force of his snarl.

  ‘Now, we do things my way.’

  In an instant, the sun was drowned behind her, choked by a shadow that bloomed like a dark flower over her. She had no thought for reasons why, only instinct. She heeded it as she leapt backwards.

  He was Gariath. He didn’t know why. Reasons were for weaklings.

  The ground shook as he fell where she had stood. His claws raked the rock and his wings flapped, sending up a cloud of granite-laced dust. She whirled, narrowing her eyes against the grit as he turned to face her, eyes bright and burning.

  She wasn’t surprised; sudden and irrational violence was simply what he did. Still, she felt compelled to ask.

  ‘What’s it matter to you?’ She crouched, a cat ready to spring, ears flattened against her head aggressively. ‘Sad that you won’t get to be the one to kill them?’

  ‘They don’t matter.’ He rose like a red monolith, muscles twitching, claws flexed. ‘I don’t matter.’ His legs tensed, eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t matter!’

  His roar split the dust cloud in half as he hurled himself at her. Her ears rang from his fury; she felt hairs on her neck wilt under the heat of his breath as she darted low beneath him. Her spine trembled as his jaws snapped shut, a hairsbreadth over it.

  She heard him crash into the foliage, but did not turn to see. Instead, she scrambled across the stones, mind racing with her limbs as she searched for options and found them desperately scarce.

  Fighting was impossible, even if she had her bow and knife. Hiding was futile, for his nose guided him as surely as her ears did her. Negotiation … just seemed stupid at this point. With nothing left, she turned to face him as he tore himself free in an eruption of soil and leaves.

  And she hurled the Spokesman at him.

  He lowered his head, let it smash against his skull. Such blows from a greenshict were legendary, the sticks splitting open heads as easily as they did melons. But no matter what she was, she was not a greenshict. The stick crashed against his brow, clattered harmlessly to the stones.

  He stepped over it, his tail flicking behind him to snatch the stick and send it flying into the river, where it disappeared. She watched it vanish with wide eyes, the white of the feather tied to it visible for a long, horrifying moment. She forced herself to tear her eyes from it, forced the fear from her face and replaced it with snarling, white-toothed rage.

  ‘So what is it, then?’ she growled. ‘Why fight me? You won’t get a scratch, let alone die!’

  ‘Dying isn’t important … not anymore,’ he growled back. ‘Living is.’

  ‘You can’t possibly expect me
to believe you came up with that all on your own.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to do anything but die.’ He stalked toward her with more caution than she expected. Or, she wondered, was that hesitation? ‘And I don’t care if I live, either. What’s important is that he lives.’

  ‘Who? Lenk?’

  ‘I need him.’

  She paused, blinking. ‘Uh … for …’

  ‘I don’t know!’ His roar was mostly fury, but tinged at the edges with pain. ‘Some lives … are worth more than others.’

  ‘What of my life?’ She backed away as he continued toward her. ‘I killed alongside you. I fought. I thought you respected that.’

  ‘Liked, yes. Respected, never.’ He drew back a thin red lip in a sneer. ‘You’re still just a pointy-eared human. Still stupid, still weak, still have to die sometime.’

  ‘And when did you reach this conclusion?’ she asked. ‘Was it before yet another failed attempt to kill yourself? Or after another failed attempt to kill this stupid, weak shict?’

  ‘Shut up.’ His ear-frills twitched. His gaze danced from side to side before settling on her. ‘You should have died at sea. I shouldn’t have. I see that now.’

  ‘And what of Lenk? What if he died there, too?’

  ‘He lives.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘How do you?’

  His lunge came swiftly, but it was half-hearted, all fury with no hate to guide it. She darted aside, but did not flee. Perhaps, though, he was giving her the opportunity to do just that? No. He would think that cowardly. The madness that possessed him couldn’t have affected him deeply enough that he would be afflicted with the disease of mercy.

  Still, something plagued his strikes, hindered his muscle, smothered his growl. Was he in his right mind, she wondered, or merely distracted?

  There was an opportunity she could seize.

  ‘What of the others, then?’ she shouted, adding her voice to whatever assault kept his ear-frills twitching madly. ‘If Lenk lives, the others might, as well.’

  ‘I said some lives,’ he snarled, leaning low. ‘He lives because he was strong. The others died because they were weak.’