My own laughter filled my head, ringing off the inside of my skull like it was a great rusted bell. Isn't it, though? Lie all you want, little cat. You destroy everything you touch. Just look at this planet. You've brought about the doom of all of these people. The voice changed then, no longer my hideous doppelganger. It was not the voice of a human at all. It was a disgusting, writhing mass of rotting, feeding maggots, shaped into a voice. It was a wasp's nest kicked open, the horrible clockwork abomination of their spawning chambers exposed for the whole world to see. I gagged and retched thin bile onto the ice. NOW BE A GOOD LITTLE KITTEN AND DIE ALONE.
Huge, crushing footsteps shook the ice beneath me. I looked up and saw something straight out of a nightmare charging straight for me. It was like something out of a Lovecraftian re-imagining of old Greek myth. Rotting, seething flesh covered its horrible humanoid frame, dead muscle piled on itself into a physique that never could have existed. Its head was the bleached skull of a bull, framed on either side by the magnificent horns of a great steer. All through its vile body was woven twists and strands of metal, and it bore armored plates in place of skin, seemingly at random. It was, impossibly, some kind of Minotaur, and it was coming straight for me.
Something inside my skull broke then. The mask I had worn for so long shattered into a thousand pieces, and I grinned, wider than I had in fifteen years. Sure, that little dream pageant hadn’t been entirely accurate. Sure, the whole fucking thing was some kind of horrifying nightmare/false memory meant to make me doubt myself, meant to tear me apart from the inside. Or maybe it wasn’t. I honestly couldn’t remember who Pim had really been. But the thing in the defaced standing stone was right about one thing. I was a monster. I killed Pim, a beautiful boy with pale blue eyes on a road outside Los Angeles. Maybe he had been my friend; maybe he had been just a mark I shot in a rage. Maybe I had been a bandit; maybe I had been a slave. It didn't matter now. Oh yes, I was a monster. I was the Tigress. And the thing in the monolith had just decided to piss me off and pit me against a glorified cow.
I snatched up the billhook I had dropped and leveled it like a spear, the lantern falling free of its hook and clattering to the ice. I showed the charging minotaur all of my teeth and screamed, “Come and get it, Bessie!”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Volistad
The Minotaur
We walked for a long time, down beneath Ravanur's frozen skin. I took the lead, my metal bow in my hands with its impossibly thick wire bowstring bearing one of the precious arrows from my limited supply. Thukkar followed me; his concentration was mostly fixed on keeping his footing on the uneven, barren rocky ground. He was doing well, but I could tell he was in pain even through his tightly maintained mask of traditional ranger stoicism. Nissikul had been working on him whenever we stopped to rest, and the regular contact seemed to be making them more and more familiar with each other, to the point where I had to suppress my long-maintained elder brother instincts to run the wounded ranger off the scent of my admittedly beautiful sister. She was a grown woman, and a Stormcaller, and could take care of herself. It hurt me to see the horrible stump of her missing arm, but she seemed to have adjusted to it with her characteristic mental agility. She couldn't summon a simulacrum here, not while touching the stone of the Great Mother, but the lack of an arm seemed not to be bothering her much at all- at least not while I was watching. She brought up the rear of our ragged hunting party with one of my axes in her hand, her little glowing orb of cold light circling us slowly and lighting our way in the crushing darkness.
I could not precisely say what I was following, or how I knew in which direction to go to find Joanna. But there was a power, somewhere out there, an energy that I could almost feel rather than seeing, hearing, or smelling it. I didn't know what that feeling could be, but it made sense to me, and I followed it. It was only after our third break of the day that I realized what I was actually sensing. I had turned to help Thukkar sit and rest his injured back, and I felt some of that same energy that I was following, flicker across my mind when I accidentally brushed against his Deepseeker blessing, a silvery cuff strapped to one of his forearms. It was running out, possessing little more than two week's energy in its subtle design, and I could feel that power in my mind. Was this some kind of side-effect of my magick heart? When we resumed our trek a short time later, I tried to focus on that feeling and compared the sensation from Thukkar's blessing to the one I somehow knew connected to Joanna. I couldn't tell anything about distance. That didn't seem to be how it worked. But I had a definite direction, and I knew that whatever blessing she was wearing was seething with power. If it worked the same as the ones I was familiar with, then her blessing could last her for a very, very long time.
Behind me, Nissi stopped, suddenly. I turned to look at her and found her frozen in place, her eyes closed, her head tilted slightly to the side as she listened for something that she couldn't quite hear. Thukkar and I froze as well, and I scanned the darkness. I couldn't see anything. Then I heard it: the scream of a woman, distant and faint. It seemed to be coming from somewhere just ahead. Nissi made a throwing motion, and her little orbiting ball of light lanced out ahead of us, growing to several times its previous size and illuminating a dense forest of the same sort of strange pillars I had seen where I had landed. The scream came again, and this time, I recognized it as one of wild rage. Was it Joanna?
Without waiting to confer with the others, I sprinted ahead, fixing my grip on my bow, dodging between the irregularly placed standing stones. I quickly outpaced Nissikul's orb of light, and shadows fell upon me, but I kept moving. Something was casting a steady, warm light a little way ahead, and though it was dark, I could still see more or less where I was going. The woman's voice came again, a wordless cry of challenge, and this time, her shouts were answered by a crackling, seething roar that sounded like it had been ripped out of shredded lungs. It was not a sound I had heard before.
I burst out from behind a great pillar and into a small clearing and saw it all. The stones here had been arranged in a tight circle, as if they had been placed to create a tiny arena for the duel which was unfolding within. A monster like no creature I had ever known roared and lunged around the little clearing, its body fashioned from semi-frozen, spoiled meat. It was huge, shaped like a hideously overgrown man, and it was covered in metal and wire at seemingly random intervals. Its head was not a normal head- rather it was the skull of a beast I had never seen before, cunningly fashioned from some enameled metal, and great curved horns jutted from both sides of the false skull. Locked in combat with the beast was something even more remarkable- a single woman, fighting the beast, and apparently keeping it at bay with a polearm of a design I didn't fully recognize. She looked like one of us- like one of the Erin-Vulur, but it was hard to tell due to the tattered ranger's furs she wore, and the hood that obscured most of her face. The strong sense I had followed to this point was now indistinct, and I couldn't tell if this was the god I sought or just another lost traveler beneath the skin of the world. It didn't matter. She was a warrior, she was brave and fierce and strong, and though she fought admirably, I could see her beginning to tire. It was time for me to put my new tools to use.
I raised the bow and drew to my ear, sighting quickly along the strange arrow and aiming for the raging monster's chest. The drawn bow felt like an avalanche held in check, so much force waiting, just waiting for my command. I loosed. The bow snapped forward with a sound like the closing jaws of a trap and the arrow vanished. An eye blink later, the monster reeled, and rotten black blood spewed out over the stone. The beast did not fall, but as it staggered and regained its footing, I saw that arrow had not lodged in its body at all, but rather it had exploded out of the creature's back and taken a chunk of flesh the size of my fist along with it. The arrow, still straight as ever, lay innocently on the stone in front of one of the monoliths, surrounded by vile gore. Palamun’s teeth! The monster turned its great skull-face toward me, and tiny pinp
oints of red light flicked around and settled on me from within the gaping sockets. I showed the creature all of my teeth, already drawing back my bow once more, this time sighting on one of those glowing eyes.
Then the woman with the spear appeared from behind the raging monster, not sparing me a single glance, and thrust her weapon up at its neck. It turned at the last second and tried to swat her away with the back of its great, oozing paw, but the woman ducked the blow expertly and stabbed the point of her spear into the creature's columnar leg, right in an unarmored spot in the center of the thigh. Sensing the retaliatory blow coming, she let go of the spear and rolled back out of the way, coming up in a crouch with a ranger's climbing axe in one hand. The monster roared again and slammed a disgusting fist down on the spear, but the weapon, made entirely of iron, just ripped itself out of the brute's thigh and clattered across the stone. I loosed just as the great fist touched the ground- when the monster would be too committed to its strike to dodge the blow, if it were even smart enough to try.
The arrow vanished into the dark socket and exploded out the back of the "head" in a shower of foul fluids and shattered bone, but the beast did not go down. It lowered its horns and charged me, and I didn't have time to get out of the way. I was struck low in the belly by one great curving point, and the momentum of the impact flipped me wildly forward so that I came crashing down to the stone at the same time that the horned beast smashed headlong into one of the standing stones. The monolith didn't seem to react to the impact at all, standing still strong, undamaged, and obdurate. I, on the other hand, gasped for breath and pushed myself back to my feet, my legs wobbly. The Deepseeker's armor had saved me from impalement, but that blow had been immense. The woman pushed past me, snatching up one of my iron shortspears from where they had spilled out of my quiver. She took a quick three-step and flung the weapon into the creature's back, striking just to the right of the spine.
The horned monster turned again, enraged, and then leaped into the air, intending to come down on both of us with a great double-fisted body slam. But Nissikul had just arrived, and she had other ideas. She came sprinting in impossibly fast, ducking low under the foul bulk of the creature in a blur, and dropped my axe at my feet, trading it for my greathammer. She whirled with the grace that only a Stormcaller could possess, the head of the hammer flashing above her in a shining halo of motion. She met the beast mid-strike, smashing in the side of its head as neatly as if the movement had been rehearsed, viciously and totally checking its momentum. The monster crashed to the stone, the enameled skull deformed, one of its curving horns smashed deep into its own head. But still, it stood, if a little shakily.
The beast roared again, but the sound came out metallic and distorted, robbing it of its intimidating potential. The warrior woman snatched up her spear and stalked straight past Nissikul without a word. Then, in a rush of frenzied movement, she sprinted straight at the beast and jumped. She seized the edge of its skull-head with one hand and vaulted it so that she ended up perched atop its shoulders, her legs wrapped around its thick, corded neck. It thrashed about and tried to get its arms up to rip her free, but she was not finished. She gripped her spear in both hands, trusting the grip of her legs to keep her astride her unwilling mount. Then she drove the point of the strange, hooked weapon down through its head, angling the spearhead so that as it burst from beneath the monster's nominal chin, it pierced its broad chest and buried itself deep in the thick, half-frozen muscle.
The beast thrashed, trying to unpin its head from its own chest, but its movements were awkward and unbalanced. It reeled and fell, twisting over to slam down on its back. The woman let go of the spear at the last moment and unlocked her legs, pushing herself away so that she tumbled free and skidded across the stone as the monster fell with terrible finality.
Nissikul saw her opportunity then, and she took it. Though she had never hunted a burug, not as far as I knew, her execution of the hammer-and-spike technique was as perfect as I had ever seen from any veteran ranger- and she performed it with one arm. She took a running step, leaped, and brought down my hammer with astounding precision right on the butt of the jutting spear, slamming it home so hard I heard it crack the stone beneath the monster's back. The beast gave one more feeble groan, and twitched wildly, but it didn't get back up.
Hobbling, shambling steps drew my attention, and I turned to see Thukkar making his way towards the monster, leaning heavily on the borrowed short spear cane. Calmly, with the single-minded focus of a ranger, he made his way over to where the creature had fallen, eyed it critically for a moment, and then plunged the spear-point of his "cane" into its broad chest where the heart would have been on a man. He leaned down hard on the point for a moment, and we heard something crack and break inside the vast chest. Then, just as nonchalantly as he had approached, he withdrew the spear and hobbled back away from it. Speaking to no one in particular, he muttered, "You may want to back up from this one."
Thukkar, I reminded myself, was a veteran ranger, and his advice was not to be taken lightly. All four of us drew back from the monster, moving to the opposite side of the little clearing, and putting a monolith between us and the enormous corpse. For a few seconds, nothing happened. I cleared my throat and opened my mouth to speak. Then the body burst, splattering foul rot all across the impromptu arena. From within the mound of desecrated meat, something crawled free, something vaguely insectoid. It was made of a bright metal smeared black with rotting blood, and it had hundreds of miniature legs propelling it fitfully over the stone. It thrashed and hissed, rolling over and over on the befouled stone, and as it writhed, I saw a neat hole driven through its carapace. Sparks and fluorescent fluid sprayed from the wound in spurts until the strange creature gave one last spasm and was still. Behind me, Thukkar spoke. "Fought one of those about ten full cycles ago. Children of the Eater King. Don’t know how many of those things are still around, but they're pretty rare. Anyway, they like to play dead. Get you when you sleep."
Nissikul whistled, impressed. “Then I’m glad we have you along, ranger.” She and Thukkar shared an eye-narrowing smile, and I suppressed the urge to bare my teeth at him.
I turned to the warrior woman and found her facing me in a fighting crouch; her lone climbing axe was raised before her in a defensive stance. I could just make out her eyes beneath the hood- wide, liquid brown eyes, framed by thick black lashes and set beneath a prominent brow. It was her! Struggling to remember the fragments of her language that I had learned, I bent and placed my bow on the ground, straightening and raising my empty palms toward her. "Joh-ahna, mye freend," I said, fighting to wrap my lips around the unfamiliar sounds. The "f" in particular, was difficult to manage with fangs. I remembered my helm, which obscured most of my features, and so I reached up and peeled it off, shaking out my thick, crystalline hair.
Joanna didn't lower the axe. "Volistad," she ventured, and then continued in Erin-Vulur, "Truly you?" Her eyes moved past me to take in Nissikul and Thukkar, and they abruptly narrowed. She pointed the weapon at Nissikul and said something in her language that I couldn't follow. The meaning was unmistakable, however. It was a threat. She bared her teeth to make clear her meaning, and I smiled inwardly. She was using our customs. Just a month and we had learned so much from each other. Then I realized that the god probably thought my sister was going to try to kill her again. I matched gazes with Thukkar, who wasn't moving. He shook his head, wanting no part of this.
Nissikul let my hammer fall to the stone and raised her single remaining hand, showing Joanna her open palm. Mollified, Joanna returned the ax to the belt of her borrowed ranger’s furs. She sighed and put a hand on my shoulder, then managed, in the Erin-Vulur tongue, to say, “I happy you alive.”
I forced my face into one of her smiles. “And I also,” I stammered in her language.
She said something else, too rapidly for me to understand, but then she stopped and began to gesture with her hands. She made sure we were all watching her, and sh
e pointed at one of the pillars. "Atvaqa," she said. Monster. In our tongue. She had remembered the word. She waved around at all of them. "Atvaqa." When it was clear we all took her meaning, she turned and pointed in a direction that would lead us through the forest of silent stones. "I need go Ravanur. Help?"
"We'll help," I answered immediately, not waiting to speak with the others. This was why we were here, was it not? Nissikul murmured her agreement. Thukkar just grunted. Joanna sagged with obvious relief, and then walked back into the circle, picking up the source of the illumination in the circle; a strange, clearly improvised device that reminded me strongly of the Deepseeker's work. As she moved, I saw the torque wrapped about her left arm. It was a blessing- a fine one too, but very old. How had she made it work again? Those typically worked just once, and then they were little more than decorative baubles. I shrugged it off as just a feature of her obvious godhood. Of course she would be able to renew a blessing.
Joanna made it clear through a series of quick gestures that she wanted to get out of this place and away from the pillars that she had labeled as monsters. We obliged. Those stones made me uneasy, even if I didn’t know what they did. One of them had been defaced somehow, and covered in lines from the High Epic, over and over. I decided that the less I knew about this place, the better. The four of us made our way out of the stone forest, careful -at Joanna’s urging- not to touch any of the pillars.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Volistad
The Minotaur
We made camp that night, far from the stone forest, on the side of a rocky ridge we had been forced to scale. We seemed to be heading towards the buried mountains- though whether we were close to the hidden Erin-Vulur village I couldn't tell. This was too far down, too deep. We didn't descend to the place below the ice, not on purpose. The High Epic made it clear that this was forbidden, as well as cause for summary execution due to the chance of corruption by the Dark Ones. But I had been accused of corruption already, and I seemed much the same as I had been, and I didn't know what to believe. Nissi seemed anxious about the possibility, but she wouldn't discuss it with me. Thukkar didn't appear to care. I got the feeling that any talk of gods and ancient laws didn't concern him overmuch. He was a ranger, and a ruthless pragmatist, and that was the end of it. I supposed I could respect that.
Volistad: Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Alien Mates Book 3) Page 25
