A War in Crimson Embers

by Alex Marshall

  The blazing furnace of desire propelling She Who Comes up out of the First Dark.

  She Who Comes? Better to worry about She Who’s Already Here. Maybe this thought-transference crap worked on kids who hadn’t spent every ugly day of their ugly lives scowling into the looking glass, but for Zosia it wasn’t even a diversion. It was an opportunity. While the Tothan creep was rooting through the panty drawer of her soul, Zosia gritted her teeth and hoisted the hammer that had almost slipped from her grasp at the shock of a psychic invasion.

  There’s a world of difference between almost and had.

  Like, for example, Zosia almost brained the fucking monster with her hammer, but one problem with having your thoughts connected to another is that they see your attack coming even as you launch it. The fiend slipped its ghostly hand out of her skull, slipped just out of range of her swing, and bad as that was the worst was how much she missed it as soon as its fingers fell free of her mind. She fucking sobbed at its absence—how was that for fucked up?

  “Do not despair, dearest Zosia,” it said, its voice as light and warm as its eyes were black and cold. “Now that I know your wishes I shall grant them.”

  The possessed priest came even faster and sharper the second time, or maybe Zosia was just slow and sloppy, because she didn’t have a fucking prayer … but then when was the last time Zosia had taken a knee to old gods or new? Knowing she had no chance she swung her hammer all the same, because that was what heroes did, and it tapped the back of her hand, snapping bones and sending the weapon skipping across the murky surface of its melting lair. Before the pain even registered it tackled her into the warm mire, but she must have landed on some hummock because even lying flat on her back the slushy filth barely reached her ears, not nearly deep enough to cover her mouth. Some blessing, that.

  “Welcome home, Crimson Queen.” It leered down at her, close enough to kiss but refusing to finish her off, the oily reek of the cockroaches swarming its emaciated flesh almost as bad as its breath. “You have such sights to show us, don’t you, Cold Cobalt? Your crimes are legendary even in hell.”

  “Come a little closer and I’ll show you,” said Zosia, hoping to punish it for postponing the inevitable by biting off its withered lips. Its smile widened, those burning-cold fingers brushing her brow, and she wondered if it sensed her intentions even now. Before she could make good on her final defiance or it could talk more shit, however, an ivory blur flew in from the side … and then bounced over them, the big cocoon splashing down a short ways off in the pooled gore.

  The wizened priest sat back up on its haunches and waggled the more material fingers of its right hand, and just as Hoartrap charged into Zosia’s periphery he was sent flying backward. The Touch crashed through the back of the web-strewn throne where he’d been kept prisoner, the living seat snapping with a wet crack and erupting in a fountain of green slime.

  Hoartrap hadn’t left. He’d cut himself free but he hadn’t left. He hadn’t been able to save her, true, but he hadn’t escaped when he’d had the chance, instead using his sorcery to hurl the heaviest thing he could find at this monster dressed in human skin and a suit of foul black bugs. And that was what made Zosia’s eyes fill with tears even as the fiend squatted back over her, even as her unbroken fist futilely battered its grinning face, even as the corporeal fingers of its right hand closed on her neck and the phantasmal fingers of its left resumed toying with her brain. The shifting sleeve of spitting cockroaches scuttled down the arm that held her throat, swarming up her neck and all over her face to form a stinking mask that prodded at her closed lips and eyes, squirming inside her nose and ears.

  Zosia tried to shut off her thoughts, to deny it any satisfaction as it kept cutting off her air only to mercilessly let her breathe again, filthy insects crawling into her mouth as she gasped and gagged. She chomped the intruders before they could crawl down her throat, vomiting from the caustic taste, vomiting again as she felt one wriggle under her tongue to hide from her gnashing teeth.

  Even in calmer settings meditation had never been her forte, alas, and since thinking of nothing wasn’t an option she settled for the next best thing and tried conjuring up all the nonsense songs Maroto used to constantly sing under his breath back when they first met, before he mellowed out with the aid of drink and smoke and the occasional bug; the ceaseless gibberish of a perpetually anxious mind. Even as her every fiber shuddered in revulsion at her torment and her mind twitched at its curious fingers she tried to shut it all down. It would draw neither sorrow nor joy from her memories, no bliss nor heartbreak nor even hatred, richly as that last was deserved—this fucker would get only bland nonsense, and it could choke on it the way it choked her on its swarm of cockroaches.

  Meanwhile, her left hand had stopped punching her attacker and dumbly groped in the pipe pouch on her belt for something else to choke this devil with, but after giving her appendage the order she focused as hard as she could on anything and everything else. It was like keeping your orgasm at bay even as you kept rhythm atop your obstinate husband, trusting your body to do its fucking job even as your mind studiously avoided acknowledging whatever was happening down there. Stuff and nonsense, Zosia, stuff and nonsense, the broken right hand not knowing what the clever left was up to …

  “Brap brap!”

  More nonsense, obviously, but as Maroto-ish an exclamation as it was, it came from neither Zosia nor the ancient Tothan who invaded her brain. The bony hand released her throat and the cold fingers slid out from her skull. Batting the insects away from her eyes with her aching right arm, she saw the demoniac looking up, as confused as she was, its fingers beginning to wiggle in some pattern … but before it could complete its spell there was a small bang.

  The lower half of its face exploded, fragments of tooth and bone spattering Zosia’s face and sending the remaining roaches fleeing into her hair as its chin disappeared in a grisly cloud of red mist. Hard as Zosia had been trying not to think about how nice a distraction would be, and what she would do with one if it came along, it took her a moment to act. She hoped that brief hesitation didn’t cost Tapai Purna her life, the webbing-draped girl yipping as the mutilated witch-priest levitated her high above them with its convulsing fingers.

  Since she had no way of knowing if it was too late for Purna, Zosia had to make sure the girl’s sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain. Her fingers closed on the tiny lump wedged beside the pipe in her pouch, and still trying as hard as humanly possible not to think abut what she was doing, Zosia sat up and jammed the relic into the bloody wreckage of the Tothan’s mouth, feeling for its exposed gullet. It was the strangest thing, because even as she was pressing her cargo past the frayed meat of its tongue she could feel its flesh re-forming around her hand, could see the shards of broken molars prancing back through the air to put themselves back together.

  It was all so soft and wet and difficult to see, cold sludgy blood pumping everywhere, that Zosia really had to focus on what she was doing. As soon as she did the demoniac forgot about Purna, letting her drop out of the air as it seized Zosia’s wrist and yanked it away from its vulnerable face. The previously docile cockroaches nesting in Zosia’s hair began spitting their burning secretions and biting her scalp, and while none had been small enough to penetrate her ear one of the fuckers must’ve gotten into her nose, the pain as it spat up in her sinuses beyond description.

  “Unwise—” Its infernal voice lilted out of the jawless ruins of its face, but as soon as it spoke it reflexively gulped on the lump in its throat, and Zosia grinned as wide as a well-fed devil despite her disgust and her agony, even as she knew it was about to break her wrist, and then break everything else …

  Except it didn’t. The Tothan didn’t do anything at all, save make a faint sizzling noise, and then milky orange foam started to bubble out of the ugly red hole where its mouth had been. Maybe the cake the Chainites had hid their payload inside had delayed the response, or maybe Choplicker had been savoring the morsel befor
e swallowing it, but whatever the cause the ensorcelled bone shard they had used to knock out her devil back in Diadem had had an even faster effect on this evil fucker. Shoving its stiff bulk off her, Zosia heaved herself up to her knees in the steaming pool and went absolutely berserk tearing the insects out of her hair, pinching one nostril shut and ejecting a small roach on a bloody snot rocket. Without their patron to control them they’d stopped biting and burning her, but that really wasn’t enough of an endorsement to let them stay.

  “Fugggg!” Zosia puked again as she felt one she’d missed crawl along the roof of her mouth, but at least that washed out the last of the trespassers. Shuddering on her knees in the warm bath of greasy meat juice, the inside of her nose and most of her scalp on fire with bug venom and her right hand broken and limp, Zosia looked at her prone attacker bobbing facedown in the muck beside her. For a horrible moment she thought he’d begun to move again, but then she realized it was just his suit of roaches squirming all over one another—they’d all migrated onto his back to avoid drowning. Just the same, she had to assume he was only incapacitated for the time being and could bounce back, just as Choplicker had, as soon as one of his buddies pulled the bewitched bone from his gob.

  “Fuck,” she said again, looking around the too-bright throne room to see if there was anyone left to help her do a better job of disposing of this crippled devil than the Chain had managed with Choplicker …

  Choplicker! Wiping bugshit and ichor from her face, she spied the priestess who’d been eating her devil alive last time she’d looked. At first Zosia thought it was some trick of the pulsing yellow light radiating up from the Gate, but no. Her already furious stomach did another debilitating twist as she saw the spider-covered woman sprawled out in one of the thrones, her previously skeletal figure now looking like she was overdue with octuplets. Ropes of drool and clumps of dog fur stuck to her chin and chest, and as if sensing Zosia’s gaze she looked over and met her eyes, smiling with satisfaction and patting her obscenely bloated gut. Then she clambered to her feet, smacking her lips as she gave Zosia a look that made her think the demoniac must be contemplating a mortal dessert after her devilish feast. The egg sacs set in her gown of spidersilk sparkled like diamonds, her tiara of interlocked arachnids as regal as the Carnelian Crown as she slowly approached Zosia with stately grace … only to break into a swift waddle as other figures began moving through the flashing brightness of the dissolving throne room.

  “Zosia!” The voice sounded familiar but she didn’t recognize the white-haired, one-armed Immaculate who tossed her the black hammer he’d pulled out of the bloody muck. She knew better than to try to catch it, especially with one broken hand, but as soon as it splashed in the froth beside her she rooted around and seized the haft. She was too slow, though, the devil-fattened priestess almost on top of her, and—

  “Brap brap!” Purna cried again from the other side of Zosia, her pistol punching a hole the size of a fist in the charging Tothan’s pendulous gut. The grotesque woman lurched to one side but didn’t falter, her taloned fingers stretching for Zosia as her jaw yawned wider and wider, elongating to impossible proportions. She obviously intended to do for the master what she had done for the devil.

  Zosia raised back her hammer but even as she did another corpselike figure exploded out of the shallow slime behind the voracious demoniac, and just a little farther back from the main event more reinforcements were rushing forward to join the fray. Long before those black-plated soldiers could reach them, though, the priestess pounced at Zosia, Zosia swung on the priestess, and the skeletal creeper who’d burst from the nauseating flood made a move of his own. He was indeed a reinforcement, just not for the side Zosia had assumed—Hoartrap grabbed the spider-gowned witch from behind, slowing her momentum even as they both slipped forward, and before the Tothan could recover from the sneak attack Zosia hit her dead in the jaw.

  Considering how carefully the first priest had avoided her hammer Zosia had hoped for something miraculous to happen when sainted steel met devilish flesh—a crackle of lightning or a blast of divine flames, preferably, but she would’ve settled for a modest explosion of detonated meat. Instead the only fireworks were what she felt in her arm, painful wobbles arcing down her elbow as if she’d bashed an iron beam, the hammer bouncing back and almost clocking her in the eye. The blow did send both the priestess and Hoartrap skidding backward a few feet in the slimy stew, and as Zosia recovered her wits enough to take a second swing she saw that the attack hadn’t been a complete bust—the bloated witch’s distended jaw had torn nearly free of her face, but instead of blood countless ivory spiders and streams of smoke poured out of the hideous wound.

  Hoartrap released the woman, squealing and slapping at his stick-thin arms as the arachnids swarmed him. Zosia came at the wounded Tothan with everything she had, but without Hoartrap to throw her off her game the priestess was even swifter than her roach-covered colleague. Zosia swung, and Zosia missed, and before she could parry or dodge or swing again the horrible monster that had eaten her devil grabbed Zosia by both wrists and hoisted her off her feet.

  Zosia clung to her hammer even as the fiend held her aloft, and kicked the fucker so hard in the distended stomach she broke her toe. Eyes watering and her broken hand going from pretty-fucking-pained to completely-fucking-excruciating as she dangled by her wrists, Zosia glared down at her captor and saw that the deformed jaw she had nearly torn off was beginning to inch its way back into place, the wisps of smoke thinning to nothing. Spiders knit the impossibly wide mouth back together with silk in place of stitches, and from the delighted look on the horror’s almost human face Zosia supposed she was in the real shit now. It was obviously too much to hope for a quick death from these devils, otherwise her neck would already be as splintered as her hand.

  “Jack move!”

  Purna and the one-armed Immaculate came in on either side, both hacking the priestess’s stomach with short blades. On a human target it would’ve been a quick and brutal disembowelment, but on this ancient devil hidden in mortal skin it provided but a momentary distraction. It didn’t even drop both of Zosia’s wrists, keeping a tight grip on her hammer hand and letting her useless right arm drop free as it slapped aside Purna and then Keun-ju—it was definitely him, after traveling halfway around the Star with the boy Zosia would recognize that yelp anywhere as he went tumbling through the rancid shallows. The lesser mortals out of the way, the priestess looked back up at Zosia with malevolent delight, its monstrous repaired jaw flexing and then widening to take its first bite, and—

  A howl split the humid air, and to any other mortal on all the Star such a razor-keen wail would surely chill the blood … but it warmed Zosia’s cockles, her roach-stung face splitting in an unholy grin as Choplicker’s muzzle wriggled the rest of the way out of the rent in the priestess’s heavy stomach. The demoniac sank the talons of her free hand into the side of his drool-slick head, but before she could drop Zosia and add her other limb to the struggle he nosed forward, three feet of eely neck rushing up out of the fleshy prison of her gut and sinking his fangs into her throat. Bones crunched, and Zosia fell.

  The sounds, oh, the beautiful sounds! It was like the symphony Kang-ho had dragged them all to that night in Melechesh, a hundred discordant instruments somehow creating an atmosphere of pure emotion in the darkened hall. And what emotion it was. By the time Zosia had splashed out of the runny mire and wiped the warm slime from her eyes the performance was complete, but that lovely sonata echoed in her ears even as she saw the hollowed-out spider-priestess scuttle away over the lip of the throne room. Choplicker helped his mistress get the rest of the gore off her face with his scratchy tongue, and in that instant all was forgiven, Zosia clinging to his tacky coat and shivering with relief that he had survived an ordeal the likes of which she wouldn’t wish on even him.

  “Woo!” Purna splashed over to them from one direction, Keun-ju from the other. Now that she had time to really pay attention, Zosia noti
ced that the Ugrakari’s hair had gone as white as the Immaculate’s, as white as the fur of the familiar lapdog she carried under one arm. It yapped at Choplicker, Chop barked back, wagging his tail, and Zosia wondered just what in the unholy fucking of the false gods was going on around here—she’d seen that little devil boil away to nothing to save Purna after the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue, yet here it was in the flesh. “Don’t worry, Zosia—I saw where it went!”

  “What?” That about covered it, she figured.

  “That living fucking god we just triple-teamed!” Purna made it sound like the most obvious thing in the world, her devilish tongue making sloppy noises as she tried to talk and pant at the same time. “We’ve got that punk running scared now, no doubt.”

  “Perhaps some doubts,” said Keun-ju, looking about as rough as Zosia felt. “We may have more important matters to attend to at the moment. Now that we’re all free and Zosia and Hoartrap are … are …”

  Keun-ju faltered, staring behind Zosia, and bracing herself for the worst she turned to see what fresh hell was bearing down on them. It wasn’t what she expected, though, the spiny armored infantry that had seemed poised to attack when she faced the spider-priestess now holding back on the edge of the throne room. No, what Keun-ju was staring agape at was decidedly horrible, yes, but it was the kind of horrible Zosia could roll with, after the kind of day she’d had.

  What had captured the boy’s attention was good old Hoartrap, and the Tothan that Zosia had paralyzed with that enchanted bone. The Touch was crouched in the warm slush, eating the prone priest alive. He’d already put away most of one arm, his gaunt cheeks painted red with gore, his eyes blazing mirrors that reflected the yellow glare pulsing from the Gate at the far side of the throne room.

  “What?” he said, dripping blood from his shiny mouth. “It’s the only way to make sure it’s really dead.”