“The Entana will appear any minute. They’ll offer us a choice. And once that choice is made, they’ll attack. I …” He broke eye contact, suddenly seeming very fragile and full of regret. “I have to be dead by then.”
Dragana’s voice rang through the corridor. “What!”
Raeb tensed like a rabbit who’d heard a fox in the bushes. “The Entana have offered me a deal: kill Aeo, destroy the Bok’Tarong, and live. There’s no other way for me to make it out of here alive.”
“You can’t be serious,” she whispered, much quieter this time.
“I am. But I can’t do it.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to die!”
“It’s either that, or waste away from the Entana madness. I can’t return to the Entana’s service. I would rather die, and I would choose to die with my mind and memory intact.” He looked at Aeo. “Just before your moment to strike comes, I’m supposed to kill you. When that happens, I would ask you do me the favor of killing me first.”
“By the gods, Raeb, you can’t ask me to do that!”
“Your power is the only thing that can set me free.” He looked Aeo straight in the eye, unblinking. Sorrow and sincerity radiated from him. “I’m asking you as a friend, Aeo. Don’t leave me to die at the mercy of these monsters.”
“There has to be another way,” Dragana said. Aeo heard the desperation in her voice, matching his own. “What if you just refuse and fight with us?”
Raeb shook his head. “The Entana have a hold of my mind. As soon as I do anything they don’t like, my thoughts turn into their next meal. Refusing their offer would give me seconds to help before I go mad.”
An insane plan started forming in Aeo’s mind. He wasn’t sure whether it was his own thoughts or the voice of the Bok’Tarong that originated it, but his gut told him to run with it. “Raeb, give Dragana your blades.”
Both of his friends looked at him like he was the one suffering from Entana madness. Understanding dawned on Dragana’s face first. She nodded and extended her free hand for Sunray. In her other hand, she offered Raeb her copy of the Bok’Tarong.
Raeb held up his hands, warding the double-bladed sword away. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Dragana’s Bok’Tarong holds almost as much power as mine,” Aeo said. “And here, its power is increased tenfold. It’s death to the Entana in the spirit world. It could free your mind from them, at least for now. Maybe even permanently.”
“It’ll never work.”
“It can’t hurt.”
“It can’t help, either,” Raeb spit back. “The dangers are too great.”
Aeo didn’t respond. Neither did Dragana. She still held her hands out, one offering a blade and one waiting to accept another.
“Dragana, we don’t know what Sunray will do to you. This damned blade is a curse in and of itself.”
“We don’t have much choice, do we?” she asked. Her voice was as calm as a lake on a windless day. Aeo marveled at her control.
Raeb took a step back. “I can’t let you do this.”
They stood at an impasse, none relenting. Until Raeb clutched his head, opened his mouth in a silent scream, and crashed to his knees.
Aeo’s heart plummeted into his stomach. The Entana had pushed their way into Raeb’s mind at last. They’d run out of time. And now they would know what he was planning. They’d know he was going to betray them, and they wouldn’t go easy on their punishment.
Aeo knelt beside Raeb, pulling Dragana down with him. She extended the hilt of the Bok’Tarong before her, right against his palm. Aeo did his best to imitate Dragana’s calm confidence. “Take the sword, Raeb. Stop them.”
He blinked, as if it had taken an immense effort to do so. Then in sudden, harsh movements, he shook his head.
“Take the Bok’Tarong, Raeb, before you go mad!”
He grimaced against the intrusion of the Entana, but he did not reach for the blades. His teeth ground together as he grunted out a strained “No.”
He convulsed once, twice, and a true scream escaped his throat. It lasted impossibly long, and all the while his eyes widened and darted around. Finally he slumped to the ground, shaking, covered in a clammy sweat.
“Can’t …” he whispered. “Danger …Dragana …can’t …”
“Take. The. Sword!”
Dragana cursed. She leaned forward, quicker than Aeo would have expected, and pulled Sunray from his hand. Her face twisted in pain as soon as she touched it, but she didn’t let go. She thrust the Bok’Tarong into Raeb’s palm, and Aeo closed the man’s fingers around the hilt.
Raeb became deathly still.
Complete, choking silence smothered them. An eternity passed between one heartbeat and the next.
Then Raeb took a deep breath, coughing and sputtering as if he’d been half-drowned.
Aeo sat back, at last daring to breathe. His heart hammered in his chest and his throat was open, raw. He was lightheaded with relief and shaky with passing terror.
Dragana put a gentle hand on Raeb’s shoulder. Other than the coughing, he hadn’t moved. “Raeb?”
The man groaned, levering himself up to a sitting position.
His face looked like he’d stopped to have tea with Death himself. He was pale, with bruise-dark shadows under his Entana eyes. His hair was plastered to his head with sweat. When he looked at them, there was no spark of recognition in his eyes.
Dear gods, how much did the Entana take from him?
“Raeb? Can you hear me?”
Raeb focused on Dragana, following the sound of her voice to her face. He looked at her blankly for a moment, then his eyes fell to the blade clenched in her right fist.
Aeo followed the man’s gaze. Rage and disgust filled his throat with bile. Dragana’s fingers were blue with frostbite. Sunray’s frigid blades were coated in ice, and her skin was rimy halfway up her hand. Even as he watched, frost was crawling its way toward her wrist.
All three of them stared at Dragana’s hand for several seconds. Raeb drew another breath. “Sunray,” he breathed.
Aeo pulled his focus from Dragana’s hand and looked at Raeb. The panic in his gut eased when he saw the man recognized him at last.
“I told you it was dangerous,” Raeb said. His voice was hoarse and filled with pain.
“How much did the Entana take?” Aeo whispered.
Raeb’s eyes clouded with tears. “Too much. I … don’t remember much. But I know that blade, and I know you.”
“Do you remember what we’re doing here?”
Raeb looked at the obsidian walls surrounding them. He seemed confused, as if the memory of this place was just beyond his reach.
Then the ominous, gurgling laughter of the Entana rolled over them. Every line in Raeb’s face hardened and his eyes filled with fiery rage.
“We’re here to kill.”
Aeo clapped him, gently, on the shoulder. “Good enough for me.”
Then he turned to Dragana. Her face was tight with pain, but she managed a smile for him. He knew better than to ask if she was all right. She wasn’t, but she would never let that stop her. Not now, when they were so close. “Are you ready?”
Now she grinned, and it was the toothy smile of a predator savoring the hunt. “Let’s go kill these bastards and end this.”
Aeo’s smile almost hurt his face. He pulled Dragana to him and kissed her. She wrapped her free hand around the carving of her spirit, the bracer on his wrist that bound their spirits in love. It warmed at her touch and filled Aeo with the most profound sense of peace—and a powerful surge of passion—he’d ever felt. He knew, instinctively, Dragana felt the same.
He released her, still tasting her on his lips. This could be the last time they were together like this. Once this was over, and they returned to the physical world, she’d be out of his reach. He’d return to the confines of the Bok’Tarong, never again to feel the heat of her kiss or the softness of her skin.
He kissed her again, pouring every
ounce of love into it. If this was to be their last kiss, he wanted it to be one worth remembering.
When Dragana pulled away from him, his head was spinning and his entire body was flaring with desire.
She smiled at him, though her eyes were shimmering with tears. Her expression turned sad, and a single tear fell onto her cheek. Aeo kissed it away.
“Whatever happens, my love, never forget this,” he whispered.
She kissed away the tear on his cheek. He hadn’t even known it was there. “You will always have my heart, Aeo. Whatever happens.”
They locked eyes once more, and there was nothing left to say.
They clasped hands and stood. Aeo helped Raeb to his feet, then summoned the Bok’Tarong into his hand.
Together, they walked down the long, black corridor leading to the Entana.
34
Raeb felt like a ghost of the man he’d been. Huge swaths of his memory were gone. Only the gaping hole in his sense of self was left to show him how much he was missing.
He did know a few things. His name was Raeb, though he hadn’t remembered that until the woman—what was her name again?—had said it to him. The stocky man beside her was Aeo, the spirit of the Bok’Tarong. Dragana—that was her name!—now held Sunray, the blade that had held a huge part of his identity. So why did she have it, and why was he clutching the Bok’Tarong as if it was the only thing keeping him alive?
A sound he’d heard a million times in his mind echoed through the corridor. The Entana’s laughter.
Oh, he remembered them. Nothing could make him forget the years, maybe even centuries, they’d tormented him. The demands, the humiliations, the constant enslavement to their dehumanizing intrusions … he remembered it all.
They were here to kill the Entana, once and for all. If they’d had a plan, the Entana had taken that from him. But it didn’t matter. He would do anything, give everything, to stop these monsters.
The corridor they were in widened drastically, becoming large enough to encompass an entire city. Raeb felt as small as an ant in this place. He had an intense desire to kneel, give supplication, surrender to whatever presence was large enough and magnificent enough to live in this shiny black cathedral.
“If only you’d accepted our presence,” the Entana said, “you could have been a god.”
Raeb and his friends stopped. An image was coming into view in front of them, though it seemed to have difficulty doing so. It was as if it couldn’t decide what shape to take. It was a man, easily eighty feet tall, then an equally massive woman. Next a being Raeb didn’t recognize. Another woman, wearing a wedding dress. A man in laborer’s clothing. A strange mixture of the two.
Every shape it took was grotesque and misshapen by Entana possession. Behind the images, Raeb could see the disgusting knot of tendrils that was the true Entana. It stretched across the entire metropolis-sized room, radiating oily, parasitic darkness. This creature was far larger than anything Raeb had ever dreamed, even in his worst nightmares.
The form continued to shift, though its eyes remained fixed on Raeb. “The Entana could have given you a world free of pain, fear, and death. All you had to do was kill this man and welcome our presence in your mind. Why do you continue to reject our gift?”
The Entana took the shape of a woman, comfortably chubby with a wide, kind smile. Beside him, Dragana gasped. “It’s Mara,” she whispered.
The form shifted into a man, his fingers stained with ink and scribbled-upon parchments peeking out from his trouser pockets. “Matow,” Aeo said.
Raeb knew he should know those names. He knew those people had held a special place in his heart. But he had no clue who they were anymore. His sense of loss swelled and reddened with rage.
“It was very clever to give my servant that cursed blade,” the Entana said. Underneath the compliment was a disdain that left a sour taste on Raeb’s tongue. “It gives him a brief respite from his punishment. Or a chance for salvation, if he is willing to turn back to us and accept our gift.”
Raeb’s hand tightened on the Bok’Tarong until his joints popped and his nails reached around and cut into his palm. “It’s not a gift,” he said, staring at the images passing before his eyes. Who were these people? How did they shape Raeb into the man he was—or rather, the man he’d been? Without those memories, he wasn’t the same anymore. He would never again be the man he was when he’d entered the Entana hive. “It’s a curse. You take away our memories and emotions. You feed on the events that shaped us into who we are.”
“You could have given us the memories you didn’t want. We’d have fed upon them so you didn’t have to live with them.”
Aeo snorted. “How benevolent.”
“We must feed. It does not matter how we do so, or what we feed upon. A willing host is a much better supply of nourishment. Why do you not accept us, choosing to suffer through pain and torment instead of giving it to us?”
Dragana lifted her chin, speaking in a voice so loud it should have echoed throughout the chamber. It didn’t. “Life isn’t all about happiness. It’s a balance, enjoying the good as well as the bad. Emotions are what make us human. Sadness and happiness, pain and comfort, tears and laughter. They’re paired, and alone they’re worthless.”
The face of the Entana’s image grew stern, disapproving. “Stupid humans. You refuse to accept logic. We can remove the unpleasantness from your world. You can live quiet and peaceful lives, if only you stopped fighting us.”
Raeb sneered. “Right, because the willing -taken are so peaceful, with their swords and wars and all.”
“No matter what you call it, it’s still slavery,” Dragana said. “You steal our free will. Your -taken soldiers are forced to fight, and die, for you. Whether they wanted to or not. So even if we did accept you, it would still destroy us.”
“We’ll take our lives as they come, thank you very much,” Aeo added. He glanced at Raeb and Dragana. “I can’t believe we’re arguing morals with a spiritual parasite,” he whispered.
“Just wait,” Raeb replied, keeping his eyes on the Entana. “They’ve barely gotten started.”
The Entana’s image wavered, revealing more of the behemoth tendrils behind it. “This is why you’ll always be victims. A smarter race would recognize the gift we offer.”
Raeb scowled. “And that smarter race would be no more alive than the plants they ate for breakfast.”
The Entana stared at them. Raeb could feel its anger. He braced himself and lifted the Bok’Tarong before him.
“We will never let you take our race,” Dragana called. Her voice had gone calm, cool as an icy breeze and dangerous as a sharpened knife. She lifted Sunray, clenched in a frozen fist. “We will stop you, even if it costs our lives. As a Taronese warrior and the bearer of the Bok’Tarong, I declare your life forfeit.”
The image faded, leaving only the true, disgusting form of the Entana before them. “So be it. You could have been gods, but instead you choose to be chattel. If you will not help us conquer your race, then your memories will serve to sustain us while we do it without you.”
The Entana lashed out with its many tendrils, whipping them in a whirlwind of darkness and pain. Raeb tried to dodge, but each one was as thick as he was tall. He was battered to the ground by a dozen tendrils or more. He hadn’t the slightest clue how he wasn’t beaten to a pulp and killed on the spot, but he wasn’t in any place to question now. A second wave of tendrils was already bearing down on him, and he had no way to escape them.
As soon as the Entana moved to attack, Aeo slashed with the Bok’Tarong. He put up as many light trails between his friends and the Entana as he could. He could only hope those shields would stand against an attack as powerful as this monstrous Entana’s.
The tree-trunk tendrils slapped against the light trails with a sound like a gong. They stopped, unable to go further, but the Bok’Tarong’s light trails flickered. A few seconds later, they died.
Aeo didn’t hesitate to put more
up between Dragana and the next tendrils in line.
He glanced to his left on instinct. Raeb was there, flat on his back, a pair of massive tendrils poised above him to strike. Aeo sprinted to the man’s side, spinning in a wide circle at the very last moment to set a glowing barrier over his friend.
When the tendrils recoiled he helped Raeb to his feet. The man looked at him with gratitude, nodded his thanks, then slashed his sword above Aeo’s shoulder without so much as a blink.
The Entana tendril sneaking up behind Aeo shrieked and pulled back, its tip smoking where Raeb had cut it off.
Aeo grinned. “You’re awfully good at that.”
Raeb nodded. “Be glad of it, and watch your back next time.”
Aeo laughed, Raeb smirked, and the men separated.
They went on the offensive. Aeo and Raeb flew into the fight with ease, swinging their double-bladed swords with the skill of experts. Dragana was having more trouble with Sunray. She’d have done fine despite its unfamiliar shape, but by now her arm was covered with frost up to the elbow. Her entire hand was blue. Aeo guessed her fingers were so frozen she couldn’t have released the blade now if she tried.
He knew she had to be in incredible pain, but she never hesitated in her attacks. Sunray gleamed with blue and white ice as it bit into the tendrils of the monster that had created it.
The tendrils—that name seemed so inadequate for the monolith-sized tentacles—slammed around him with world-shaking force. Each impact of tendril against obsidian rattled his teeth. It was only because of their slowness he was able to leap away before they turned his bones to powder.
Aeo couldn’t go from one heartbeat to the next without slicing, stabbing, or parrying at least one tentacle. They blasted through his light trails as fast as he could make them. Whenever he forced one away, two more came barreling in to take its place.
This battle had evolved from fight to melee to sheer chaos in a matter of seconds. Now he was separated from his friends, surrounded by tendrils, and so close to death he could feel it breathing down his neck. One misstep was all it would take.
Soul of the Blade Page 31
