He laughed and sucked in dust. “That was amazing!” He tugged on Bonesnapper, jerking the chains back to his side. They were light, their return almost effortless. He examined them for damage, unsurprisingly finding them glinting and without a scratch. Three burning scars were left in the plateau, stone a molten red, edges blackened and smoking.
He whipped Bonesnapper around his back and over his head again in a diagonal slice, Stormcaller binding with the chains without his beckoning. He focused on Stormcaller, willing its Dragon fire tendrils into a single unit. The chains of Bonesnapper complied, twisted together, blades at the ends whispering pain. He growled, dragging them down hard against the plateau. They tore through a great section of stone, screeching and cutting out a wedge large enough to crush him flat. His mouth dropped, watching the stone slab slide away from the plateau’s edge. It turned in the air, splitting in two against the jagged rocks at the bottom, a deep crack carrying up.
He felt the chains, expecting some heat, but they were still cool. He inhaled deeply, hefted them in his hand. He felt a sense of vigor course through his body, mind refreshed, muscles energized. After all this time, after so many deaths, after all the struggles, he’d finally found them. It was a small victory, one he felt that should be celebrated. Water would be a good start. He felt for the cork on his waterskin, remembered it was empty and frowned. “Damn it.”
Something shifted in the corner of his eye. He swiveled his head, meeting a pair of blood-red eyes on a neighboring plateau. A pale-faced man stared at him wearing a threadbare and badly tattered shirt and pants. His beard was thick from years of growth, likely a lice breeding ground.
“Hey!” Walter called. It probably wasn’t the best greeting for something looking at him like he was its next meal.
The man’s mouth opened, tongue nervously flicking at his lips, rimmed with what could only be blood.
“Blood Eater,” Walter hissed, winding Bonesnapper around Stormcaller in a few twists of his forearm. “Come on! You want a taste?” Walter raised his chin, showing his neck. “Why— how are there Blood Eaters here?” he said to himself.
The Blood Eater hesitated for a second, turned and scrambled on all fours in the opposite direction, kicking up dust.
“Where are you going?” Walter said to himself. He drew in a breath and a portal split the air. Without hesitation, he leapt through, landing on the plateau where the Blood Eater was, the height appropriate this time. He ran, following its tracks to the other side. He slid to a stop at the edge, arm waving for balance, saw it scrambling along a winding ravine. It looked up, yelped and sprinted over the craggy path, dodging towering cacti.
“Shit,” Walter whispered, glanced south towards Helm’s Reach, then down at the ravine. He jumped, opened a portal below his feet, came out the other side about six feet above the path, landing with a thump. “That worked.” He grinned, mentally patted himself on the back. Running, he followed the trail of brown dust curving around a bend. “Where are you going?” he shouted. “Not hungry today? Scared of a mortal, are you?”
He heard it scrambling on stones around another bend, rounded it, caught sight of its legs trailing down a fork. “Fuck,” he barked, leg slipping out from under him and catching himself from smashing his face with his arms, stump splitting open against something sharp. His head snapped up, growled, expecting the Blood Eater to be on him to take advantage of his fall. He stumbled up, wove a portal to bridge the distance between them. He jumped through, hurling a flickering ball of fire.
The Blood Eater turned to look over its shoulder, scarlet eyes going wide with terror and letting out a shriek. The fireball collided with its shoulder, threw out a spray of blood, fireball skipped off and exploded against a wall. It was a graze, but it was enough. Walter’s breath heaved in his lungs, paused to watch it stagger through a narrow opening in a plateau.
Walter shook his head, staring at that darkened entrance, a black slit into the bowels of the realm. Every part of him said that this was a bad idea, but his curiosity overrode those voices. If there was a chance he could learn something about Juzo, he had to take it. For Juzo’s honor. For Walter’s endless repentance.
His heart pounded in his temples and he started with a cautious step towards that dark spot. His boots became leadened with every step, cold sweat beading on the back of his neck. “Damn caverns, why did it have to be fucking caverns,” he muttered. A coyote howled from nearby, followed by the bellowing of other howls echoing all around. It was hard to tell exactly where they came from.
He squared up with the entrance to the plateau from ten paces away. It was most certainly man made by the way the stone had been cut. It was an archway, perfectly smooth and forming a point at the top. “Strange.”
Something snarled. A wolf with a sandy coat emerged from a rock, slipping behind another. More moved from behind him, quiet as the wind, the scraping of paws on gravel giving them away. Walter turned to face where he guessed most of them were, shapes matching the colors of stones and darting between them. He let Bonesnapper’s chains clink to the ground at his side, his eye burning with the fire of the Dragon.
“Turn back! I’d rather not hurt you,” he called, knowing full well the futility of it.
The wolves emerged from hiding, fanning out and circling him, drawing in. He counted at least eight. All the noise he’d made earlier chopping up rocks must have brought them.
The biggest of them all had to weigh over a hundred pounds, bristling with quivering muscles, white teeth showing through a sea of growls. Another wolf feigned for a leap, Walter swiveled to face it, it slid to a stop, snarling with frustration. A bark came from behind, head whipped over his shoulder, stabbed up with this stump. Something dragged against his sword of fire. He had cut the beast from neck to tail, the body split into ragged halves twisting in the air and bouncing off a cactus, painting him in gore.
A wolf yelped at the body of his pack-mate squelching against the ground beside him. The alpha’s growling became a series of furious jaw snappings. The growling grew softer and the wolves backpedaled, retreating behind rocks and shrubs. Walter heard some, but they were whispers. He watched others slink away at the alpha’s behest, wise enough to know they should search for easier prey.
He waited until he was sure they were gone. He thought of his old dog Wiggles. It felt like he had died over ten years ago. Walter had sacrificed him to the voices that beat in his head, to grant him the strength to smite his enemies. The metallic stink of the wolf’s blood filled his nostrils, face painted in a drying swath of scarlet. He wiped his face on his shirt, scrubbing the skin until it was an angry red. The scent of blood lingered in his nostrils, eye and lips rimmed with it, a grisly mask, not unlike a Blood Eater.
Walter raised a stone the size of his fist from the ground with the Phoenix, hovering and humming in the air. He sent it into the archway, testing for traps. He intended on it going through, but his aim was off and it struck the bottom. Script on the floor flashed with a sky blue. It was a ring with triangles of various sizes within it. He flinched back a step, Phoenix shield sparking to cover his front. The air around the archway filled with a bright orange gas and billowed out like a cloud. It crawled up the archway and over the plateau’s side, hissing. Insects he didn’t know were there dropped from the sky, pattering down like pebbles before the archway. A moment later the gas dissipated. Hundreds of upturned bugs were dead or dying upon the archway’s entrance.
Some type of ward trap, he surmised, like the one Baylan had placed on the Lair. It was fortuitous that he had used a portal to enter the Lair rather than climbing the stairs. Perhaps he would’ve been like one of these insects, limbs frantically twitching with his last breaths.
He stepped through the archway, air cool and heavy. There was a dark and shiny spot of blood on the floor between a few ancient stones. There was more blood trailing down a set of jagged stairs that curved down and around an endless cylinder. Some of the carved blocks making up the steps had shattere
d down the middle, others were missing entirely, and some badly cracked. He took in a tremulous breath, first step sending pebbles bouncing from the edge. He held his breath to listen for them striking the bottom. No sound returned. Breath slowly escaped his lips.
He looked back through the archway, a bright sliver of light in a sheet of black behind it. It looked like the entirety of the plateau been hollowed out, like it was only a facade of a plateau. Why do I continue to do these things to myself? He thought, setting his gaze on the treacherous stairs. He carefully started on, summoned a ball of fire by his side to illuminate the shattered steps. He kept one hand on the curved wall, cold as dug earth and barnacled as if once submerged in ocean water. He eyed sconces on the walls, lacking torches or signs of ever having being lit. “Magic, but what kind?”
After a few minutes of navigating the ever spiraling steps, he approached a section of stairs that had crumbled against the endless march of time. The gap was nearly ten feet across to the next section. “No problem,” he said, feeling his spirits perk up a bit at knowing the solution. He dismissed his fireball and a portal split the air between the gap and he went through, cautiously stepping.
There was a muffled crack. His leg plunged through a section of brittle stone, stopping at and cutting into his thigh and blooming with a ring of pain. “Shit!” he hissed, arms spreading to distribute his weight, breath gasping. “Shit!” His other leg, knee high and awkwardly placed on the next step, slipped off. A great cracking roared in his ears, the ground heaving underneath him. He reached out and caught hold of the next step, Bonesnapper’s chains rattling. The step he was snared on popped and ripped free from the wall before it fell from his thigh, thudded against his ankle and into the void, snatching his boot off with it. He heard it smacking on and off the tubular walls as it plummeted.
His fingers wriggled against the step’s edge, slick with sweat, tendons screaming, stump uselessly flailing in the dark. His legs kicked at the wall, finding only air. “Damn it!” Every muscle in his body writhed and contracted, fighting to live.
He tried to pull himself up, but he wasn’t strong enough to do it one handed. “Think, think.” He swallowed. One finger started to slip and he squeezed down harder but was still slipping. Terror pierced his gut and his arm jerked free, his hand closing on empty air. “No!” His eye went wide, dark whooshing, tears streaking his brow. Portal!
A portal snapped open, aiming for below his descent, but he heard it fizzle open above. Again! His aim was true, falling through the beautiful blue disc, opening beyond the yawning stairs. Fire ripped at his shoulder, a wall of glowing stone trained at his face. Not again!
He screamed, put his arms up to protect his head. Sharp edged stairs beat against his neck, stabbed at his ribs, tore at his legs, thudded on his bones. He spun around and around and around. His back slammed into something flat, blasting out the air from his lungs. He fell onto his side choking, gasping, writhing for breath.
He padded around with his hand, tried to grasp and felt a finger, maybe some toes bent the wrong way. He let out a hoarse cry mixed with choking. Hot tears sprang from his eyes, his breath a frantic heaving. The enveloping darkness surrounded him in its silent, strangling embrace.
His body was fire, shoulder screaming. Light filled his eyes, Phoenix flashing with blinding brilliance. He saw he was at the bottom of the stairs, at the start of a long hallway. The Phoenix flared a bluish-white, knitting up cuts, patching up bruised bones, righting his twisted finger. He felt his finger snapping back into place, cringing at the clunking sensation. His shoulder was missing a great chunk of tissue, cleanly cut and showing the white of bone through oozing blood. “Must’ve struck the portal’s edge,” he thought with a shiver.
The Phoenix continued working on his shoulder. Skin and bone knitted over it as if a pair of unseen surgeons were painting on new bone, muscle, tendon and skin. He fought to watch it, a blend of fascination and excruciating pain, lips twisting, eyes blurred with tears. He put his head back against the cold wall and closed his eye, waiting, listening. Water dripped somewhere. He clutched his stump over his stomach, quietly sobbing, sick burning in his throat. The wound he’d taken from Alena screamed.
Panic suddenly stabbed at his mind. Blood Eater! He snapped his eye open, the fireball sputtering to life in the black. He waved the fireball around like a torch, illuminating the long hallway, scanning. It was empty as far as he could tell, but his light only went a few feet. He pointed it up the stairs. He thought he could see the spot where they had broken away and where he had come through his portal. It was a miracle he hadn’t fallen off again, he thought. He must have rolled against the curved wall as a guide until he landed in the hallway. “Fuck,” he breathed. He sighed with a wave of relief at seeing the Chains of the North tightly wound around Stormcaller, handle pointing out like a strange new metallic cock.
He rose on wobbly legs. He gave them a few shakes, loosely kicked them, got them back under conscious control. “What am I doing here?” he asked the gloom.
Something skittered from the blackness beyond his light. Air whooshed by his head with startling speed. He wove a Phoenix shield facing down the hallway. A stone thudded from it near his head, skipped over, and tumbled into the cylinder winding into the earth. Blood Eaters, incredibly strong, he remembered. The creaking of metal on metal rang from the hall.
Walter growled, hurled his fireball down the narrow passage. He squinted his eye to try to see what lay beyond, tracking the fireball’s path. The hallway was lined with colorless statues that looked like snakes. A few appeared to have been broken, crumbled blocks sprawled out on the ground beside them. The fireball struck something made of wood, a door. Burning chunks of it clattered along the ground. The wood sputtered and hissed on the stony floor, throwing out a ghastly light. A furious buzzing joined in the tumult. The floor was polished smooth, cool against his bare foot, light flickering over shining obsidian.
He started down the passageway, sparking two more balls of fire by his side. He passed by alcoves, stopped to look inside of one and saw they were subterranean mausoleums, stacked with ageless sarcophagi, dust motes inches thick. Ancient cobwebs fluttered against the heat of his fire. “What is this?” He pushed against the mausoleum’s icy walls, turning back out into the hallway.
The acrid stench of decay hit him like a blacksmith’s sledge. He wrapped his cloak over his mouth, but it was a moot gesture. He waded around the decidedly human bodies on the ground, overripe with decay. There had to be at least ten of them. He caught sight of a caved-in face, flesh stringy and dry as boot leather. Bones and teeth showed through a broken cheek, maggots wriggled in an eye socket like living roots. Strange, rusted instruments lay on the floor between them. There were hooks, hammers, pliers, and ancient swords strewn about.
The air was thick of with the buzzing of rot flies. There were so many that they occasionally obscured the light of the burning chunks of door. They were incredibly bulbous and it was a feat of strength that they could still fly. They feared fire and stayed clear of Walter though, thankfully avoiding trying to sample him. Some dared to get close, but let out a squeak as air left their incinerated bodies.
He stopped to look at a section of wall leaking earth into the hallway where the stone blocks had been torn free from their mortared prisons. There were deep gouges higher up the wall from what he guessed were claws and a few spots where the stone looked to have been punctured clean through. There must have been a serious fight here, Walter thought. He swallowed, scanned back through the burning door’s remnants, no sign of the Blood Eater. The smoke was starting to sting his eye, trailing over the ceiling and finding its way to the great stairwell and out to the surface.
He approached two great mounds near the last third of the hallway’s length, cast in shifting shadows. Pools of sticky liquid surrounded them, groaned as it wormed between the toes of his bare foot. As he drew closer, he saw they were covered with shaggy hair and had mouths the size of doorways, lined
with rows of carnivorous teeth. There were crumbled arachnid legs along the sides of the bodies and slumped over humanoid forms perched on top. One of them was missing a head, the other littered with what he guessed were stab wounds. They were beasts of the Shadow Realm, Walter thought.
“Could-could it be?” his throat felt dry as sand. “Could this be where Juzo had been? From where he had escaped?” Sick rose half way up his throat; he coughed and swallowed it back down. He squeezed around the hairy beasts, stopped between one of them, stomach heaving at the choking odor. His eye caught the glint of metal, a sword hilt standing out from the top of one of the rotting mounds. A bolus of vomit tore from his lips, made him hunch over, puke slopping into the sticking pool. “Damn it!” he coughed and wheezed, eyed the darkness beyond the scraps of burning door. If there were Blood Eaters here, he had to pull them out by the roots.
He marched through the doorway with harsh determination, intent on murder. The octagonal room was empty of life. He spun around. There was old brown blood everywhere, no bodies, though. A chair seemingly made of bone lay toppled over in the middle of a raised dais. Beside it, someone or something had bled a lot. Juzo said he thought he killed Terar, but never found the body, mentioned his throne of bones. Walter couldn’t believe that he was here now.
He caught a note of frantic whispers. He turned towards it, spotted a door almost imperceptible and colored to match the black stone. He walked over, grabbed the great ring and tore it open, the rusty hinges screaming. He paused and whispers silenced.
He started down the steps, no signs of dust, well used. The air was a horrific blend of festering mold and tangy urine. “Show yourself!” he called. The hissing of a rivulet of stone dust raining down from above answered. Every step he took echoed, giving his position away for miles. There would be no act of subterfuge in his approach.
A New Light (The Age of Dawn Book 5) Page 37
