The heavy cargo doors sealed themselves closed with an alchemic hiss, and a Forgemaster of Ferranus stepped closer, metallic mandibles peeking out from beneath his molten hood.
“I am surprised my master trusted you to come through with your part of the bargain,” he said, his voice barely comprehendible amid the metallic clicking.
“A gentlemen always keeps his word,” Lord Krýo said with a courtly bow. “You’ll find this ore to be of the highest purity, as promised.”
“Why would you help us, Agadisian? Surely you must know what this ore will be used for.”
“That doesn’t matter. What does matter, is that this conversation never occurred, and you and I were never here.”
A pneumatic hiss shrieked out as the Forgemaster raised up the metal appendages attached to his back. “Agreed.”
The Forgemaster stepped through the metal of the ship’s hull as if it were water, and then the entire vessel slowly submerged beneath the waters. A faint trail of alchemic smoke was all that remained as it steamed beneath the waters and away from the dock.
Krasi’s attendant looked on Lord Krýo with disgust. “I hid the tracking spike within the containers. If they find it…”
“They won’t. They’ll be too elated to finally have the ore they need.”
“Is that what this was all about? To learn where they would take the ore?”
“You need not concern yourself with it.”
“You’re playing both sides, I’d say that concerns me.”
He turned to her thoughtfully. “A war is coming between Erotan, Agadis, and Philian. A very costly war. A very destructive war.”
“And you mean to win?”
Lord Krýo sighed and leaned against a dock brace, the material melting at his touch. “No one wins in war. Some people just lose more than others. Leaders boast of victories and glories and honor, but it is the people that suffer.”
“So what is your game?”
“This is no game. I am doing what must be done.”
“Which is?”
“I aim to end the war as soon as possible, with the absolute minimal loss of life.”
“By enabling Ferranus to build even more warships?”
“That is just a means to an end. What will truly end the war is this.”
His hand became liquid sunlight, and he formed a silver vial in his palm.
Seeing his powers in action made the attendant lick her lips with hunger.
“I performed your stupid tasks. Now will you free me?”
“You are no prisoner, you can leave whenever you wish to.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Ah, yes, freedom from pain. It’s been a while. You must be hurting bad by now.”
She grabbed her elbow and scratched it, the skin worn and sore. “Just give it to me.”
Lord Krýo created a dish of liquid silver and held it out to her. She snatched it from him and sat down, greedily lapping up the contents, her eyes rolling back into her head in ecstasy.
A careless drop fell down onto the changeling bracelet she wore, and with a spark, the magical illusion peeled off of her, revealing Erolina beneath.
The amazon leaned back, relieved for the pain to have subsided for a few hours.
“It’s a heady tonic, isn’t it?” he asked. “The essence of the forest. You lap it up like a mangy dog.”
“How dare you insult me, you of all people?”
“You misunderstand. What I say, I say from a place of compassion. When I see a stray animal, weary from sickness and a life of violence, filled with hate and pain, without utility, without hope, I wish to end its suffering and give it release from its misery. That is what I see when I look at you.”
She looked up at him murderously. “I hate you.”
“That is your right, of course. But hearing it makes me feel sorry for you.”
He turned away and tugged open his shirt, revealing a glowing wound going straight through his heart, and exiting out the back. He thoughtfully ran his fingers through the sunlight pouring out from the wound.
“I’m sorry you hate what you have created.”
* * *
The human village atop the mesa of Dasikí Chará was a cemetery of impacted stones, the boulders listing like fallen tomb stones above the shattered remains of houses and barns. The black, ichorous remains of the dípsa tou aímatos they had fought had seeped into the soil, turning it a caustic black, the corpses of dead grass hanging dryly where they had perished. Everywhere, severed metal limbs and heads lay strewn about, empty eyes looking blankly up at the sky, as if questioning in their last moments of tortured half-life, wondering if it had meant anything at all.
This was a place of cold stones and frigid wind, the dew of night becoming a slick slime of rotting juices whispering under a sallow moon.
Glancing over the edge, Philiastra could see where Storgen and Skotádi had slid down into the forest. She could see the shallow impression in the ground where she had been frozen solid. The memories of their places haunted her like nothing before ever had, and the weak moonlight gave it an eerie, otherworldly quality that sent shivers up her spine.
Wei weaved between the boulders and ruins, tracing his fingers over the surfaces thoughtfully. “When the light of the forest was stolen and our borders made vulnerable, the centaurs came looking for revenge. They set the trees alight; the night skies burned red with fume and ash. Our people died by the thousands. The centaurs seemed unstoppable.”
He flicked a brass skull sitting atop the remains of a well and sent it splashing down into the polluted waters within. “The panicked survivors struggled with what to do. Many of the elders felt we should flee to other forests, but they were accused of cowardice. Still others felt it was our duty to stand and fight, hopeless as it may have seemed, but they were accused of being fools. It came to my father, the tribal chief, to make the final decision.”
Wei stopped before the ruined shrine of Jenala. “He chose to turn to the humans of Dasikí Chará for aid.”
“That makes sense. The humans had defended the forest before.”
Wei’s eyes became dark. “Yes, and for that, the humans had been permitted to dwell here. My father took pity on the humans, he showed them mercy, that was his mistake.”
“What do you mean, Wei?”
“The humans killed him.”
“You can’t mean that. The humans here were peaceful, they would never…”
“Not just him. The humans killed every single forest nymph who came to them for help!”
Her mouth fell open. “I…I don’t believe you!”
“See for yourself.”
He stomped on the rotten wooden floor and it gave out beneath her. Philiastra fell down, crashing atop a pile of something that crunched sickly when it broke her fall.
She struggled to sit up, her eyes adjusting slowly to the darkness. “What the heck, Wei!”
He hopped down and looked around. The secret basement was arranged like wooden stables, dark piles in each individual cell, a musty rankness mixed with just a hint of sickening sweetness, like rotting meat dabbed with perfume. Everywhere, there was a spiritual iciness that chilled the bones.
She stood up, shivering. “What is this place? It feels so cold…”
“This is where the humans butchered our clan.”
Philiastra looked down and realized she was standing in a pile of green bones. She yelped and jumped back, disturbing an assortment of hanging cleavers and saws. Her face sweating, she looked around in terror. Each of the stalls was filled with the bones of forest nymphs.
Wei’s fist erupted in red fire as he looked on hatefully. “They sheared off our leaves and discarded the carcasses, one by one. I listened, Philiastra. I listened day and night to the horrible screams as our brothers and sisters were massacred by the humans, harvested for their leaves like a bloody crop. Do you know what it sounds like when a forest nymph has their leaves forcibly cut off? It’s the most horrible sound i
maginable. A soul shriek that soaks into the air and the stones. You can still feel the residue in here can’t you? That’s the echo left behind, the death knell of our race.”
She covered her mouth and began to weep uncontrollably, tears streaming down her face.
Wei stepped before her. “The centaurs may have burned our forest, but it was the humans that wiped us out.”
She stumbled backwards, flailing about. Her heart felt like she had been stabbed. Red hot pain seared through her chest. “This can’t be! No…no, I don’t believe it, I can’t believe it. It’s not true!”
“You don’t believe me? Ask your kratóntas ta chéria, she was there.”
Her whole body shaking, she turned to her magical arm band. “It’s not true, Odelia, is it? Tell me it’s not true.”
The blue fire dimmed sadly.
Wei looked on, the red fire running up his arm. “I watched, Philiastra, I watched them kill us off one by one; with all the mercy of a demon they butchered us, until finally, only I was left. Once they had enough leaves for what they needed, they cast me aside atop the pile of bodies and left me to die.”
Her legs gave way and she fell to her knees, her mind reeling, the world spinning around her. Cold sweat dripped off her chin; her heart beat like an erratic drum in her chest, her stomach lurched and twisted.
“I don’t believe it! I won’t believe it! Get away from meeeee!”
Wei stepped back and reached up to his turban. Slowly he unwrapped the leaves from his head, revealing the dried stumps that were hidden before. All the leaves on the left side of his head had been cut off.
“And the human who orchestrated it all, the man who oversaw each and every execution, was Gasper Thavma, the man you now call grandfather.”
“NOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Philiastra vomited onto the floor and collapsed.
Chapter Twenty Six
The second level of the Underworld is known by many names. The Garden of Corpses, The Plague Lands, The Realm of Pestilence, and The Soul Boughs, to name a few. It is an unwholesome paradise of rot and stench, where the remains of all physical bodies eventually come to rest when they are buried in the ground. Wars and pandemics cause its borders to grow ever outwards, and its vile vegetation to bloom with poisonous spores. Thick sheets of black flies fill the noxious air, muddy rivers slither between putrid trees, and foul fungi break through the rotted mulch of the forest floor. It is a wasteland of maggots and pus. It is home to all plagues and pestilences, the breeding ground for all new epidemics and contagions, some of which are strong enough to bubble their way to the surface far above and infect the living.
- Excerpt from the writings of Syrias the Seer, Forbidden Apocrypha
Agaprei opened the door and let out a tiny start when she found herself face-to-face with a demi-god. His skin was like grey fog, his eyes extremely disconcerting. The pupils were platter-shaped, like a goat’s. His right eye red like dragon-fire, his left blue like glacial ice.
“Master Kynigó,” she stuttered. “I was not expecting you to arrive from the Alchemy Tower so soon. I trust your journey was uneventful?”
“We were already nearby,” he said, shoving his way past her, each eye scanning the rooms independently, like a chameleon. “We’ve been tracking his scent ever since you left the arena.”
Kaia nearly got knocked over as his two crooked companions skulked inside, their twisted bodies hidden beneath robes that tinkled with chains.
“May I offer you something to drink?” Kaia asked, trying to keep the disgust from her voice. “A nice sherry, some ale…a goblet of blood, perhaps?”
Agaprei shot her sister a glance that told her this was no time for jokes.
“Where is he?” Master Kynigó pressed, looking like he might begin to tear the place apart. “Where is XVII?”
“He’s down here,” Agaprei explained reluctantly. “I trust you have brought the bounty as you promised.”
His heterochromatic eyes bulged in irritation. “I trust you to stand aside and not impede a tracker from his quarry.”
Master Kynigó tore the metal door off its hinges and flew down the stairs, his body becoming a spectral wraith of smoke and shadow. When he coalesced before the dungeon cell, he let off a howling shriek that made the sirens drop to their knees in pain.
“What treachery is this?!”
Agaprei forced herself to her feet and managed to stumble down the stairs, finding the cell completely empty.
“I…I don’t get it, he was just here.”
Master Kynigó roared a second time, even louder than before. The sound made the poor sirens yelp in pain.
He held out his grey-skinned hand toward his companions. “Fan out, he couldn’t have gone far.”
The chains vanished from the robes, and the crooked bodies within disintegrated into a mass of clicking alchemic spiders. Kaia squeaked in fright and jumped up on a table as they spread everywhere, passing through every window crack and every shutter, spreading out like a plague into every room and beyond, leaking out of the rented building and out into the city in every direction, an ever growing ring of screaming women and frightened children marking their progress.
Master Kynigó reached out and grabbed Agaprei by the throat, lifting her up in the air before him. “We only need one more ration of his blood to complete the stone, and if it turns out you have become an obstacle…You’d better pray we find him.”
Agaprei gagged, her face turning blue. “Certainly you don’t mean to threaten the champion of Fovos.”
“Tch.”
He discarded her unceremoniously and flew back up the stairs, flying out the front door and joining the hunt.
Kaia tried to help her sister to her feet, but Agaprei swatted her hand away. “You told him, didn’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
Agaprei stood up in disbelief. “My own sister. I can’t believe you would do something like that.”
“Like what?”
“You told Storgen the authorities were coming for him.”
“Did those look like authorities to you? That was a kill-squad and you know it.”
Agaprei looked back into the empty cell, her emotions rising up past her control. “Fovos needed that money, and this was the only way to get it in time. There’s no way the tower will give us the reward now.”
“It was wrong to turn him in and you know it. Someone had to do something.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“How can it not matter?”
“I’ve been reading about the Tower, about what they can do. It doesn’t matter whether or not we turned Storgen in, they would have caught him soon anyway. No one escapes the tower. No one. So, it really doesn’t change anything except the timing of when he was caught.”
“Is that how you see right and wrong now? A matter of timing?”
“I will not be lectured by my kid sister about the finer points of morality.”
“Well, someone has to!”
Agaprei looked on the empty cell, biting her nail anxiously. “All my years of work, all my sweat, blood, and tears, everything I worked for…”
“I only told him that Fovos was demanding money equal to his bounty, I didn’t tell him that you had sold him out.”
“…and you flushed it all down the CRAPPER!”
Kaia stood there fuming. “You know what? I don’t need this headache anymore.”
“Yeah? Well, neither do I! You’ve been following me around ever since we were kids.”
She began grabbing her things and stuffing them into a bag. “I’m outta here.”
“You know what? I think that might be best. That’s always what you do when things get tough, anyway, you just run off and leave me to fix it all!”
Kaia walked out and slammed the door behind her, leaving Agaprei alone.
* * *
Storgen crested the hilltop beyond the city and took a moment to take in the sights. He couldn’t get over how different Agadis was to Erotan.
The air was different here, a slight glacial chill mixed with mountain pine, bucolic conical huts of the local farmers eclectically mixed with underground barrows for the lahmians and the posh vertical spires favored by harpies. Magical rock circles dotted the landscape, modifying the weather to bring rain often enough to sustain the crops. Even the sun felt a little weaker here, and as Storgen shielded his eyes, he could see the tiny outline of several sky dragons flying amid the ruined buildings and battlefields of the heavens, taking their deliveries to and from the city.
But it was what he saw in the fields that really caught his attention. There, amid a group of elderly farmers was a deity, casually planting potatoes and chatting with them. If not for his divine glow, he might have seemed one of them, his long white beard tickling the top of his belly, his face sun-kissed and creased from smiling.
Gáta ran up to join him, pouncing on the dandelions to release their fluffy seeds. As Storgen approached, he could make out what the deity and the humans were saying though their heavily accented common tongue.
“Thank you so much, dear Cornett,” the bent old woman praised, fishing through her purse. “I don’t know how we would have finished the planting in time without you.”
“I’m always happy to help such a beautiful young lady,” he answered, a playful twinkle in his eye.
“You are a flatterer,” she teased, taking out a single pennig and placing it into his hand. “I’m sorry I can’t give you more than this.”
“A gift given in gratitude is a treasure to me,” he said, placing the pennig in an urn tied to his belt.
“You keep at it, you’ll have that temple in no time,” one of the men said as he wiped his forehead.
The people grew fearful when they noticed Storgen, feigning some remembered chore as they excused themselves and scattered.
“Well, I heard there was a River Guardian outside of town,” Storgen said brightly. “You must be Cornett.”
“And you must be the fugitive from Erotan they’re looking for,” Cornett said, sitting down to rest.
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