The creature of light let out an ear-piercing screech.
“Skin Flayer!” Grimbald roared from the ground.
Walter fell into a forward roll as Kez’s legs crumbled beneath him. He came out of the roll, the sword of flames at his stump, and saw the horse had been beheaded. Blood came in great gouts from its ruined neck.
“Kez! Where?” Walter shouted, his eye scanning for the beast.
“Running!” Grimbald pointed with an axe in his hand.
Half of its body was a sheet of red, the other half waving light. Its footfalls were hardly a whisper as it tore across the square, heading the same way as Scab’s men. Walter ran with his eye locked on the red horror. Walter’s legs were filled with the strength of the Dragon and he needed every ounce of it to follow. Where was it going? Why was it running? Something felt wrong about seeing Death Spawn run. They never ran.
He hurled a pair of fireballs at it when it turned to look back. It sprinted, then dropped into a forward roll. Walter willed the fireballs to arc down, skittering into the earth and striking a tree. They struck with a thunderclap and burning splinters streaked across the air. “Shit!” he hissed. He raised his arm and brushed away scraps of burning bark.
It was almost impossible to hit the beast while running he realized, but it wouldn’t stop him from trying. He threw fireball after fireball and the Skin Flayer skillfully dodged each one, twisting like a snake. A portal split the air in front of its path, but it incredibly leaped over it, soaring at least eight feet in the air. Its robes shifted mid-leap, going from violet to the hue of the gray sky, then back to the colors of earth when it landed. If not for the blood covering it, he would have already lost sight of it. Walter heard the clopping of hooves from behind, likely Grimbald.
They rounded a bend on the Coastal Road and before them were the beginnings of Scab’s men. A pudgy man turned on his saddle and grinned at Walter, missing the Skin Flayer a few paces before him. Walter tried to get his legs to move faster, but they wouldn’t respond. His head pounded with his every step and heart pushed acid through his legs.
“Look out!” Walter screamed and reached uselessly for the man with his opened hand.
The man squinted at Walter and mouthed something. His head was slashed free from his neck and sent bouncing across the weeds. Blood lanced across the road in its wake.
“Damn it!” Walter said through sore teeth. The beheaded man’s body slumped from his saddle and thumped to the ground.
The Skin Flayer whipped past three other men on horseback and blood streaked the air from each man as it passed. Screams of pain and the ringing of a sword from a sheath followed. Two men dropped from their horses and one clutched a severed arm when Walter passed them.
“What happened?” The man with the missing arm asked with surprise, staring at the other half of his arm on the ground.
“Death Spawn!” he yelled at him and to the other mercenaries ahead. The group thickened just outside the gates, circled up in what sounded like jovial conversation. Scab’s pack looked to be figuring out what was happening. Arrows slipped from quivers and the glint of steel shone in hands. They got their horses moving and fanned out in a tight arc as the bloodied Skin Flayer drew closer.
The Skin Flayer turned on a dime, darting into the woods. Arrows hissed from twanging bowstrings and soared through the air. Walter growled and threw up a luminescent Phoenix shield that covered his side from head to thigh. The arrows weren’t for him, he knew, but he was now where the Skin Flayer was seconds ago. Two arrows struck the shield simultaneously sending a jolt through his shoulder. Phoenix shields are much like any other shield, excluding that few things could get through them and their weightlessness.
Walter followed, pushed aside jabbing boughs, eye still locked on the half-red form. His boot snagged on an arcing root seemingly designed for the sole purpose of tripping men. He caught himself before falling by getting his other leg under him in time. He took a few more staggering steps, arms waving for balance, before vaulting back into a sprint. His breath heaved in and out of his lungs and his stomach worked like a smith’s bellows. Juzo was faster. He would’ve already been able to catch it.
“Damn it,” he hissed. Even if he couldn’t see the Skin Flayer, it’d be easy to follow. It left a careless trail of broken branches and smashed plants in its wake. Its robes shimmered with the verdant greens and earthy browns of the forest.
A bulbous Sand Buckeye snapped its great mouth on a piece of the Skin Flayer’s flapping robes and jerked it to the ground.
“Hah!” Walter victoriously breathed. He snarled and three lashes of fire cut the air, each taking on the form of a semicircle and stacked a foot above the other. The Skin Flayer’s golden eyes drew wide and it pressed itself flat against the earth. One arm lay propped up in the air by the grinning Sand Buckeye’s hold on its robes.
One of the firey arcs carved a path through its arm at the bicep, splashing dark blood over the bulbous plant. The plant shook and the Skin Flayer arched its back, squealed, then sprang up with feline grace. The Sand Buckeye released its hold on the Skin Flayer’s robes and twisted down to snap up the severed arm. The Death Spawn’s eyes flashed with a malevolent glow and it ran and Walter followed. The beast’s ashen hand hung out from the corner of the Sand Buckeye’s maw, its body too small to contain it all.
The Skin Flayer jumped between a pair of dense shrubs. Walter briefly lost sight of it and leaped through to follow. Something struck his chest and pain unfurled over his body. A web of fine wires pinned him to a tree, cinching down all around and welling out with blood under each wire. They drew down tighter and tighter, Phoenix flaring to stitch the deepening wounds back together. Some kind of trap. He growled through gritted teeth, tried to get an arm under the crushing wires but only managed to trap it against his stomach.
“Shit!” he gasped. His skin had healed over the wires, but they continued to drive down and down, cutting deeper and trying to cut him into cubes. He flared fire and his body became a burning orb. Whatever mechanism had been driving the wires deeper relented, but now fine nubs of metal sprung out of his skin in every direction.
He remembered this weapon. Nyset had been hit with it in Midgaard when they chased the Skin Flayer in the king’s palace. When it had hit her it was a simple net, this was something more sinister.
“Dragons. It healed under my skin. Under my skin!” His lips contorted and he stared down at the bulges of wire under his arms and wrapping over his stump. The Phoenix could heal wounds wonderfully, but did nothing to assuage the misery of pain. “What am I going to do?” he cried.
He took a step and it felt like being stabbed by hundreds of daggers, every nerve firing from head to toe. He knew what he had to do but dreaded doing it. He reached for one of the nubs of wire sticking out of his arm, fingers trembling. He wound two fingers around it and inhaled sharply. It was better to fully commit to a thing than to do it with half intent.
“Fuck. You,” he hissed and stared off through waving pine trees where the Skin Flayer had fled.
He exhaled and jerked the wire up as hard as he could. His skin tore with red lines as the wires emerged out from under his flesh. His skin squelched and raged with pain. The wounds flared with the whitish-blue light of the Phoenix and trickling blood snakes curled around his arm. He ripped and ripped and screamed until a web of metal was freed from one arm. He heaved out a ragged breath and wound up the net of wires into a neat ball. Walter’s guts churned at the sight of seeing all that clumped up metal hanging out of his body.
He kept pulling, screaming, and healing. It was one thing to be injured by an enemy and deal with the pain, another entirely for it to be self-inflicted. The wires were stripped out from his chest, peeled up his neck, and shredded from his face.
“Ugh. That was the worst of it,” he breathed heavily.
“Walter?” Grimbald’s voice shouted in the distance.
He craned his head around the tree, the bark rough against his cheek.
“Over here,” he yelled.
Walter listened as Grimbald’s boots snapped on twigs and dry leaves. He leaned against the tree and waved with his arm. “Need your help.”
“Hey!” Grimbald rounded the great oak and his eyes bulged. “What the? What happened to you? Are you alright?”
“Death Spawn weapon.” Walter bit his upper lip.
Grimbald’s hands went for his axes and he whirled around, searching for threats.
“It ran. I lost it. Rip the rest of it out, would you?” Walter eyed the gleaming bundle of wires hanging from his neck.
“Me?” Grimbald’s jaw hung open.
“Yes, you!”
“Shit.” Grimbald winced and inspected the wires. “You want me to just grab it and pull it out?”
“Please. Do it quick, like an old bandage. I’ll try not to scream, but if I do… keep pulling. I’ll heal as it comes.”
“Shit, shit.” Grimbald blew out his cheeks. “Alright, on the count of three.” He steeled himself and grabbed the ball of metal in his mighty fist. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
“One…”
Pain roared up his face, speared into his other arm, and burned through his legs. Walter’s jaw clamped down on his tongue, filling his mouth with the taste of iron. His vision was filled with the healing light of the Phoenix, stitching bloody lines of skin back together. “Whoo!” Walter yelled, pain fading like waking from a nightmare. “Aye, that was brutal.”
“Better now?” Grimbald asked with a grin. He balled up the rest of the webbing in his hands and tossed it over his shoulder.
“Should’ve expected that from you. Thanks for the help.”
“You’re welcome. Can’t believe you didn’t get that Death Spawn.” Grimbald shook his head in mock scorn.
“Ah, fuck off.” Walter jabbed him in the shoulder with his stump.
Grimbald grinned for a second, then frowned. “Think he got three of Scab’s men.”
“They’re wily bastards. The good news is that he left us a trail.” Walter nodded towards the bloody Sand Buckeye, gnawing on the severed arm, its fat green lips bloody.
Grimbald took a cautious step towards it and Walter followed. There was a trail of blood flowing deeper into the forest. “Looks like you got him good,” Grimbald said.
“Mhm. Where’s your donkey?” Walter wondered. He started off following the spatter of dark blood. The trail wound across a clearing littered with low ferns, making it easy enough to follow.
“Tied him up near Scab’s crew. Rogue doesn’t much like the woods when there’s no marked trail to follow.”
“Sounds… donkeyish?” Walter asked.
Grimbald grunted in agreement.
Walter stopped at a spot where the fern’s leaves were coated in globs of blood. “Didn’t know his name was Rogue. You recently named him?”
“Nah. That’s always been his name. You never asked,” Grimbald shrugged.
“Suppose I hadn’t.” Walter drummed his fingers on his chest. “Looks like it might’ve stopped here to tie off the wound.”
“Mm. There’s still blood, though. Just a bit less to follow.”
The trail led through the clearing and into dense thicket. Places where they couldn’t find a blood trail, they found battered shrubs and cracked boughs.
“Not very sneaky.” Grimbald fingered a recently broken branch. Blood speckled its orange leaves.
Walter peered up at the sky. It had become crimson, as if blood hung in the air. “That late already?”
“We spent a lot of time with the dead,” Grimbald snorted. “Thinking of heading back?”
“No,” he ran a hand through his tussled hair. “Want to see where it goes. Maybe it will lead us to others.” Walter didn’t like the prospect of sleeping out here, especially without a blanket. The Abyssal Sea swept in with bitterly cold air in the evening.
“Hopefully, there’s not more than we can handle,” Grimbald muttered.
Walter pushed his way around grabbing thorns. “With those axes of yours and what you did to those Blood Eaters… figured you could handle an army of them alone.”
“I wish. Curious to see where it goes anyway,” Grimbald shrugged. “Lamb?” Grimbald offered him a strip from a pouch, meat white with salt.
“Think I’ll pass for now… maybe when I’m a little less bloody.” Walter stalked on, eyed a section of trampled wildflowers.
Grimbald popped the piece intended for Walter into his mouth and grinned. “Your loss,” he said while gnawing.
They followed the Skin Flayer’s path for at least another half-hour before finally coming upon the mouth of a cave.
“You think it went in there?” Walter asked, not without a touch of reluctance.
“Where else could it have gone?” Grimbald put his hands on his hips.
Walter groaned. He hadn’t had very many enjoyable experiences in subterranean places. Thinking of his time in the Shiv’s Fang tunnels with Juzo, Walt shivered. He truly hated being underground, he realized.
Grimbald slipped out from the trees and strode toward the cave’s entrance. Walter paused at the entrance, squinted at a weather-worn sign nailed to a tree stump beside the cave. “The Yellow Caverns,” he read.
“Looks sort of gray to me,” Grimbald said.
Walter then read a smaller, newer looking sign below it, “Cursed.”
“Sounds promising,” Grimbald chuckled. “Our sort of place.”
Walter followed the line of dark blood droplets leading into the cave. “Looks like we’re still on its tail.”
Grimbald squatted down and put his finger on a drop and rubbed his fingers together. “Still wet,” he remarked. “And still oddly warm.” Grimbald rose up and wiped his hands on his armored legs.
“Shouldn’t you taste it? To confirm it’s real blood?”
Grimbald rolled his eyes. “Don’t tempt me. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a recipe that called for Death Spawn blood.”
Weathered boards were strewn about the ground at the mouth of the cave. Some were broken and most were covered with dusty footprints. A few boards were still intact at the sides of the entrance, haphazardly wedged in between rocks, as if that’d be enough to prevent anyone from peeling them off and going in.
Walter took a few steps into the cavern’s mouth and was assaulted by a familiar, sulfurous stink. “Death Spawn,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Smells like there was a lot of ‘em.” Grimbald drew an axe and slung it over his shoulder. “Oh, look a rope.” He bent down to grab it.
It looked more like a vessel for fuzzy black mold than a rope to Walter. “You’d trust that thing with your life?”
“Better than no rope,” Grimbald beamed as he worked it over his shoulders and across his broad chest.
Walter could smell the mold puffing into the air and held his breath to avoid breathing it in. “Not so sure about that; doubt we’ll need it,” Walter’s voice was muffled over his arm.
“You’ll be glad I grabbed it if we do.”
“Maybe,” Walter rolled his shoulders. “Try not to breathe that stuff in, not good for you.”
Walter strode into the darkness and a ball of fire sparked to life at his shoulder, crackling in the air and illuminating the craggy walls. The air was cool and the path gradually sloped down. Resting along the walls were hundreds of mining tools stacked on top of each other and stretching into the black. Grimbald’s boot kicked a stone, sending an echo from the walls.
Walter flinched and whipped his head over his shoulder and found himself flashing Grimbald a scowl.
“What?” Grimbald asked innocently.
“Nothing,” Walter scoffed.
“Not afraid of a little darkness are you?” Grimbald raised an eyebrow.
“No,” Walter said flatly.
“Scared of a little cave?” Grimbald chuckled, not letting it go.
Walter snorted and started onward.
“No—” Grimbald stopp
ed in his tracks. “You, Walter the fucking Giant Slayer, the last dual-wielder, returner from the Shadow Realm, boyfriend of the Arch Wizard of the Tower, killer of Death Spawn is afraid of this here little cave?” Grimbald laughed.
“C’mon,” Walter huffed. “Do you want to find where this thing went?” He knew he should’ve been able to laugh with Grimbald, would’ve any other time. He looked up at all that mass of earth and stone held up by air alone, ready to fall and crush them to death. He felt a cold sweat prickle on the back of his neck and his hand felt clammy. At least they had light, Walter thought.
“I do. Sorry, just surprised.” Grimbald shrugged uncomfortably.
“This way then,” Walter said and forced a smile that felt more like a grimace. He forced his feet to start moving, one ahead of the other. He peered down that dark path and his heart sank to his guts. It swam with darkness with hardly enough air to breathe. They had no idea how deep it went, what direction to follow, or what they’d find. He glanced up at the vaulted stones rising up overhead and gulped. Tunnels were places for Shiv Fangs and weapons that summoned portals to steal his friends.
The density of mining tools propped against the walls thickened as the path descended. There were hammers, chisels of various sizes, pickaxes and shovels all covered in a blanket of dust. If Death Spawn had once used these tools, how had they managed to keep it a secret? The path they walked went from hard packed dust to loose shingle, their boots sliding at least two feet with every step. It was as if someone had chiseled away a cliff’s worth of rock and dumped it here.
Was Juzo in the Shadow Realm, fighting for his life against a horde of demons? He was only there because Walter had sent him there. Maybe being crushed to death wouldn’t be so bad of a way to go, after all. Assuming it’d be quick if a stone got him in the skull. Walter wasn’t feeling very keen about fighting Death Spawn here, not in this inky tunnel. Walter nodded, sucking on his teeth and bracing himself as the tunnel wound deeper.
Grimbald coughed. “You’re moving too slow. I’ve almost stumbled into you three times now.”
A New Light (The Age of Dawn Book 5) Page 11
