The Skybound Sea

TWENTY-NINE

The world and he choked together. Blood and dust rose up around him in great curtains of red and black. It throttled vision, smothered sound, strangled him from within as he crawled across the earth. The shattered barricade lay amidst the bodies, cutting hands and feet of those who still ran in panicked confusion. He could hear the screaming only in hairs’ breadths, their voices lasting as long as they lingered near him.

The sound of metal, however, he could have heard for miles.

Without a noise beyond the rattle of their boots and the whisper of their spears sliding into flesh, the netherlings moved through the dust, their shadows black. Mechanically, they sought the survivors scrambling to flee, spared a killing thrust, and moved on.

Maybe he was just too insignificant, crawling breathlessly on his hands and knees, for them to notice. Perhaps they were so focused on their goal, as they charged past him and toward the stairs-or where he thought he remembered the stairs were, it was hard to tell-that they simply couldn’t be bothered with him.

Or maybe they see a guy in a dirty coat with a mouth stained with puke crawling around and trying not to piss himself and they just don’t have the heart to finish you off.

Do not question good fortunes, lorekeeper.

A cricket chirped in the back of his skull.

Greenhair! Where the hell have you been?

Watching, lorekeeper.

Ah, was it a good show, then? Saw what just happened? Are all the broken and mangled corpses quite a sight?

What horrors that man has wrought are nothing to what is coming, lorekeeper.

Oh, good. I was getting really bored with the godlike, limitlessly powerful wizard hurling giant statues around.

Cease your weeping, loreekeper. That thought came with a surge of agony, like someone screeching at him. I require a wizard, not a sarcastic worm. I need a hero.

He had no thoughts for that. None that came with words, anyway. She didn’t seem to need them. Whatever it was that surged inside him, she sensed.

Come to me.

No words that he could hear in his ears. A song without language beckoned him, drew him to her. Weaving his way between the iron legs and the bodies falling around him, he followed the song.

The curtains of dust thinned as he crawled out and clambered to his feet. Still more of the black-clad warriors brushed past him, charging into the fray. The screams of the dead and the wounded were fainter here, smothered beneath the gigantic statue of Ulbecetonth that lay, her smile spattered with crimson, upon the stone steps surrounded by sheets of dust and screaming.

The bulk of the netherling force was still midring, as though waiting. Sheraptus was ambling back to them atop his sikkhun, back casually turned to the slaughter, as though it weren’t even remotely the most interesting mayhem he had seen.

Of Greenhair, there was no sign. Nor thought.

Or there might have been. It was hard to hear himself with all the thunder. The clouds were roiling, roaring, groaning. And amidst them, all he could hear was the slow and steady sound of something.

A heartbeat?

No, too fast. Footsteps. Feet? Many feet.

Coming his way.

The gibbering alerted him first, the slathering cackle that turned him about and then sent him lunging to the ground. The sikkhun came roaring past a moment later, its claws tearing up the earth and its wailing laughter cutting the air as it rushed past him.

He looked up, met Xhai’s hateful glare for a moment. And a glare was all he got, spared the great blade in one of her hands and the thin, pale spear in her other. Those were weapons meant for a nastier job than whatever it would take to finish him off. And that job lay in the dust cloud as she charged after the black-clad warriors.

And his job?

Return to the fray?

He glanced back at the dust and slaughter and quickly discounted that.

Run away?

He glanced at the surrounding kelp, netherlings, and aforementioned slaughter.

Find Greenhair? No, she’ll just tell me to stop Sheraptus or something. Not that that wouldn’t be a bad thing to do.

But with what, he wondered? He was weary, breathless, armed only with an apparently beneficial insignificance and a rather ominous inkling that he was about to explode out of one orifice.

That might work. Position it just right and-no, no, no. Look, you’ve got something that can work here, right? You had one of their stones, didn’t you? If you could use that. . no, it’s heresy.

His fist found itself in his pocket, regardless. His body, apparently, was done waiting for his brain to decide if it was ready to live. He fished around, wrapped fingers around something firm and cold. The stone. The stone that would cure him, that would give him enough power to-

Ah, wait, no, he thought as he pulled it from his pocket. That’s not the right one, is it?

This was the meager granite chunk from a black necklace that Denaos had found. Thick and raw and thoroughly useless.

“Where did you get that?”

It was his head, he was certain, all the noise and the dust was getting into his head. That’s how people kept sneaking up on him. Or maybe he really was so stupid as to be able to miss the great sikkhun approaching. It remained there, panting as its rider stared down at Dreadaeleon.

The other male, tall and thin and sporting a white goatee. His face was more expressive than the others, full of shock and horror at the sight of the boy. Probably not for the good reasons.

“That stone, I gave it. .” He held out a hand, as if to grasp it. “You took it. Qaine, she. .”

“Uh. .” Dreadaeleon began to back away, hoping he wasn’t necessary in this conversation.

“Qaine. Qaine.” The male reiterated.

His lip trembled for a moment, eyes quivered for as long as it took him to draw in a breath. He held it there, shut his eyes tight. When they opened again, they burned red with energy.

“I need you,” he whispered, “to die.”

Gariath was still alive.

He had never been aware of his failure to die without a sigh of disappointment and resentment. He felt a dizzying rush as blood and breath fought to reassert themselves over his body. He swayed as he staggered to his feet, feeling strangely empty, as though his head hadn’t quite realized he was still alive and his spirit had already taken off for the afterlife.

Slowly, it returned, as if rejected and skulking back dejectedly.

There were hundreds more in line before him.

Something brushed his foot. A long, green limb groped blindly across stones slick with a pool of sticky red and black. Five fingers. An elbow joint. Skin. Claws.

All that remained of the Shen, buried beneath the stone. It dragged its claws against the stone until they snapped, tried to pull itself out until the flesh of its fingers shredded.

The emptiness of his head filled with the screams and the blood and the explosion and the twitching limbs and the statue flying through the sky and the scent of death everywhere, rising up on curtains of dust, the resigned sigh of an earth that had seen too much blood already.

Blood and broken bodies and glistening pink matter that had burst out of mouths and spilled upon stones. This was what remained. Of the Shen, nothing else.

But what about the others? Where were the humans? The little one had just been standing here, hadn’t he? Was he somewhere in this broken heap under the statue? Was he one of the shadows rushing about, screaming into the dust?

Was that him there, Gariath wondered? That stark black shape growing closer? He leaned forward, peered into the dust.

The jagged head of a spear shot out silently, found the muscle of his side and bit with iron teeth. His roar was eaten by dust. He reached down, seized the spear’s haft in his claws.

The warrior emerged from the dirt. No face, no eyes, untouched by the dust and the agony. Gariath saw his twisted grimace reflected in the carapace of her helmet as she approached, twisting the spear. He could feel it taste him, express the hatred and fury that the netherling’s faceless stare couldn’t.

This would have been a good death, he reflected briefly. At the end of a long fight, by a worthy foe. It would have, if he was ready to die.

But that time was passed. He saw no reason to reward latecomers.

His fist shot out, caught the female’s chin with the clang of metal. Her grip loosened enough for him to smash his fist again onto the haft of the spear, snapping it in two. He tore its splintered remains from her with one hand, reached out and slammed the butt of the other’s palm against her chin. Her neck twisted back as she lashed out with fist and shield, bending so far back it seemed it might snap at any moment.

That, too, would have been a good death.

Less messy, too. But again, latecomers.

He flipped the splintered haft in his palm, jammed it forward. It punched through her exposed purple throat to burst out the other side. She bled, she staggered, she collapsed and disappeared beneath the swirling dust and sand.

Too much dust, he thought. Too much sand. It wasn’t natural that sand should be this irritated, should linger in the air like a cloud of insects. There were lots of problems with this particular situation, the biggest one being the spearhead embedded in his side. He reached down to tear it out, braced himself for the scream to follow.

Wait. He forced himself to stop. Pull it out, the blood comes gushing, you’re dead in a few breaths. That’s what the human said, right? That sounds right. Leaving a giant wedge of metal embedded in your skin sounds right. .

He blinked. Nothing about this made sense. He had to get away from it. He had to get higher.

He clawed his way up her stone body, over her hand, slipping on a patch of blood, trying to ignore the feeling that he could feel their screams in the palms of his hands. He emerged atop the statue.

He was not alone.

“Rhega.” Shalake did not turn around. His eyes were out over the sandy field. His club hung limp in his hands. “You are alive.”

“Shalake,” Gariath grunted, “are you. .”

“No, Rhega. I am not.” He slowly turned around. His skull headdress was gone but for a single shard lodged into his right eye. “I am dead.”

“You aren’t,” Gariath replied, stalking forward. “You’re wounded. The rest of the Shen are scattered. The longfaces are moving up the stairs. You need to-”

“I can’t. I can’t hear my people. I can’t see my ancestors. I am somewhere else, Rhega. My body is down there, in the blood and dirt. My soul is here, talking to you.” He blinked. His eyelid trembled, flickering over the bone shard. “Are you dead, too?”

“No.”

Gariath’s fist shot out, caught Shalake across the chin. The Shen staggered, spat out blood.

“Neither are you,” the dragonman grunted. “Now, get down there. Rally the warriors. We have to-”

“We can’t, Rhega.”

“We can, we just have to-”

“We can’t.”

Shalake raised a claw to the coral-splintered horizon and the crown of storms swirling atop it. Thunder crashed, banished the war cries and the screams and the rattle of iron and left the ring in an echoing silence. A great flash of lightning lit the sky and cast in shadow a mountain. A mountain that bled red in great weeping streaks across its body. A mountain that grew steadily bigger.

A mountain that walked.

“They’re already here.”

From the forest, out of the silence, a voice emerged. A distant wail, a bestial gurgle, the echoing reveberation of a bell, a hush of whispers and the flutter of wings and over it all, blending it into a single sound, the beating of a heart.

A cry went out from the netherlings, only barely heard, even echoed amongst the warriors. Their line began to move as they shifted to change their face toward the edge of the ring and the creature emerging from it.

The sheets of kelp parted, trembling as it came forth, a tall and skeletal shadow. On long, thin limbs wrapped in glistening ebon flesh, it strode onto the sand. Through great white eyes, empty as the void between its gaping, fishlike jaws, it surveyed the carnage. Thunder muttered overhead. A drop of crimson rain fell from the sky to splash and leave a weeping red streak across the white of its eye.

Its ribcage buckled. Its webbed claws tightened into fists. The Abysmyth threw its head back and howled to heaven and hell.

And the world exploded behind it.

They came streaming over the horizon in sheets and tides. The Omens flocked in great, sweeping streams, their withered faces alight with an echoing chorus. The frogmen surged out from the forest in a sea of pale flesh and glistening spears, flooding onto the battlefield and rushing toward the center of the ring. The Abysmyths strode amidst the hairless flood, leisurely strolling toward the impending slaughter.

The netherlings were not so patient.

“QAI ZHOTH!” they roared in their iron voices, challenging the storm and its demonic chorus.

“ULBECETONTH!” the tide shrieked back.

“AKH ZEKH LAKH!”

“THE KRAKEN QUEEN!”

“ZAN QAI-”

“ULBEC-”

All of it lost in a crash of metal and flesh as they collided in the middle of the ring in a great spattering, screaming agony.

Gariath’s breath was lost somewhere in it all. He had seen carnage. He had caused carnage. But this was. .

“The end, Rhega.”

Shalake had a rather good way of putting it. The Shen held his hands out helplessly, the club hanging limp and impotent from his claws.

“This is everything we fought for. The chance to watch it all end and go with our ancestors.”

“I’m not ready,” Gariath snarled.

The Shen’s good eye flickered, dispelling a fog that settled over his pupil. “No, not ready. We can’t go. . we. . we need to help the others.”

“They’re down there somewhere,” Gariath muttered. “Dreadaeleon is. . somewhere. I have to find him.”

“Him? No, no. Them. The Shen. There are survivors, lead them to. . to. .” He stared at Gariath. The shard lodged in his eye wept a thick substance. “We can’t go looking for-”

“There is no ‘we,’” Gariath snarled suddenly. “I am not Shen. I am not ready to die. I am Rhega. I am the only Rhega. I will do what I have always done.” He reached out and tore the club from Shalake’s grasp. “And I need this.”

It wasn’t until he launched himself off the statue and into the ring that he bothered to wonder what he needed the club for exactly. It wasn’t just a fight that was raging, it was a massacre undiscerning.

The frogmen continued to stream out, the netherlings did not give a single footstep before drowning it in the frogmen’s blood. The Abysmyths swung their great limbs, seizing warriors, strangling them as the Carnassials and their great blades rushed forward, heedless of their breathless comrades as they brought their metal to bear.

Against that, he wondered what good a hunk of wood full of sharp teeth was going to do.

“QAI ZHOTH!”

She came leaping over a drift of corpses, pulling free from the great spreading stain of flesh and blood of the melee. Her sword was above her head, her shield was hanging off her arm. Blood covered her purple flesh as she charged toward him. The netherling’s mouth opened in a roar, jagged teeth bared.

Without realizing it, he swung.

A satisfactory crunch. Enough that he could barely feel the agony of his wound. The netherling’s teeth lay on the ground. The club lodged somewhere between her jaw and her left temple. Her eyes stared with a thick chunk of wood between them.

Ah, right, he thought, watching a bit of gray porridge slide down the wood. That is good.

His earfrills twitched with the sound. Not screaming. They were screaming, of course, but all that was drowned out in the sound of embers crackling and smoke belching. The frogmen fled as bipedal pyres, scattering like cinders on the wind before the gouts of flame pouring from the netherling’s hands. Not the netherling everyone was worried about; this one was smaller, weaker.

As weak as anything spewing fire from its palms could be, anyway.

But neither the netherling nor the creatures scattering before him were Gariath’s concern. Just one of them.

Dreadaeleon stumbled, scrambling on whatever limbs happened to be on the ground at the time in an effort to get away from the male and the great, laughing beast he spurred after the boy. The male seemed in no hurry. He possessed a burning serenity, leisurely sweeping great reins of fire through the crowds to sear blackened roads across the sand to leisurely follow after his quarry.

Gariath drew in a deep breath. The air was full of blood and dust and smoke. And for the first time in a long time, it tasted sweet. The scent was full of life, fading fast. It was a scent he wanted to cling to.

He didn’t want to die.

Which made it hard to justify what he was doing.

Running. Charging. Roaring. Swinging. A hairless head split apart, black eyes drowned in a spray of red. It fell, was replaced by another, purple one. Iron lashed out, his arm bled, a jaw splintered apart. More came, one after the other, blends of purple and white and red. It was hard to tell them apart. Color didn’t matter. Sight didn’t matter. The scent of life was growing stronger as it painted his face and stained his hands. The club hung to him. It belonged in his hands.

The longface with her head split apart didn’t really belong there, but he found her body in his hands all the same. He drove the body forward with a roar, a limp, leaking ram that smashed through the knots of combatants across the field, taking spears and swords and arrows meant for him as he bowled over frogmen and longfaces alike.

It was a disjointed and ligamented mess that he tossed aside when he emerged. The scent of life brimmed, in plumes of smoke from the scorched sand and in the hot breath of the sikkhun beast. The beast’s ears were fanned out, its rubbery lips peeled back in an eager smile as it advanced upon Dreadaeleon, stumbled and scrambling backward as the male rider looked on with contemptuous eagerness for the impending evisceration.

Gariath was slightly more enthusiastic.

The beast’s ears quivered at his roar, turning its sightless gaze upon him. It matched his howl with an eerie cackle as it turned about to face this new, more interesting quarry. Gariath matched it, tooth for tooth, noise for noise, as he closed the distance and raised his club above his head.

Roughly about the time he felt an invisible force tighten around his throat did he remember the male.

He felt his feet leave the sand as he was lifted helplessly into the air, snarling and clawing wildly at an unseen grip. That became slightly harder when he felt the sand meet his face as the male brought an arm down swiftly, slamming him into the earth and pinning him breathlessly beneath the magic. He swept his burning scowl between the dragonman and the boy.

“And you,” the male said, “were you there, too? Which one of you was the scum that killed her?”

Gariath grunted, looked to Dreadaeleon and mouthed “who?” The boy offered a hapless shrug before the air about his throat rippled. They were lifted as one, a hand outstretched to either of them as the male’s eyes burned like fire. The sikkhun beneath him giggled, pawing at the ground in anticipation of fresh meat.

“I wanted to spare ourselves this.”

The words came slowly, the concentration needed to hold onto the spell an endeavor even as the red stone burned brightly at the male’s throat. Gariath could feel something groaning, threatening to break as the trembling air closed around him like a vise.

“And look where that got us,” he hissed. “Sheraptus was right. Sheraptus always has to be right. That’s fine. That’s entirely fine. We can end this-”

A sound filled the air.

Something long, something loud, something from a very deep hole filling up with stale water from a storm that had gone on for centuries. It rendered the din of iron and death in the ring a pitiful background noise, something easily ignored. It had to be such a sound that made the male’s concentration snap and sent the boy and dragonman tumbling to the earth. It had to be such a sound that made eyes look up to the thundering skies above in awe and fear and joy and panic.

In thick, sticky drops, red tears fell from the sky. A shadow of a mountain with a white peak appeared at the edge of the ring. A roar rose from it, the sound of existence groaning under a great weight.

“Tremble, heathens.”

A man from atop the mountain spoke. A tiny, pale figure made significant, a voice made loud by virtue of from where it spoke.

“The long march of the inevitable has led us here.”

“Daga-Mer. . Daga-Mer. .” a chant began to rise from the crowd of onlookers.

“The sky bleeds for him. The storms are his crown!”

“Daga-Mer! Daga-Mer!”

“The faithless are crushed beneath him! The blasphemers tremble before him!”

“DAGA-MER! DAGA-MER! DAGA-MER!”

“FATHER!” an Abysmyth howled from below, echoed by many more. The mountain stirred at the word, rose as a living thing.

“HE COMES!”

Life came to the mountain in an eruption of hellish red light. It veined the limbs that spread out from it, it pulsed with the beat of a heart that thundered in time with the storm, it burst from a pair of eyes, sweeping out over the penitent and the damned assembled in the ring.

The earth trembled as Daga-Mer raised a colossal foot and stepped onto the field.

Before the sound of him, there could be no words. Before the sight of him, there could be no blinking. He stood as an Abysmyth, tall and thin. But his head scraped the bleeding skies above, his thin hands were bigger than even his demonic children, and his jaws gaped open, void seeping out from between jagged teeth. Crude, rusted plates of metal had been hammered into his black flesh, a horned helmet to his skull from which the pale man spoke, rays of red light seeping out from between thin slits carved in the metal.

He said nothing. He made no movement. Circles of light cast from his stare swept slowly over the battle below and not a soul moved, none wishing to draw his attention.

The frightened whine of the sikkhun could have been heard for miles.

Gariath, however, was left with no miles. The sikkhun’s squeak, the shuffling of its claws as it backpedaled, the panicked whispers of its rider as he tried to calm the beast were agonizingly loud.

As was the sudden sound of his heart stopping as a halo of red light fell upon them.

A crack of lightning above illuminated Daga-Mer’s hand rising into the sky. The plates on his body ground and groaned against each other as his hand clenched into a fist. The sky, the earth and hundreds of small, insignficant bodies screamed in unison as it came down.

A sharp, terrified whine, the name “Qaine” screamed out, bones snapping, skin exploding, the earth breaking beneath a fist the size of a boulder. Everything was lost in the eruption that sent the earth rising up and sending Gariath flying, carried on a wave of dust and gore.

He landed somewhere, he didn’t know where. Cries rose up around him, fear and panic and calls to arms. He was without Shen, without humans, without anything but the colossus of light and shadow that rose above the dust and insects.

As Daga-Mer threw back his head.

And roared.

Denaos looked up and over his shoulder, back toward the ring.

“That’s funny,” he said, “I could have sworn I just heard the sound of us about to be horribly murdered.”

“What was that?” Asper craned to see over the heads of the Shen warriors who had accompanied them to the top of the stairs. “What is that?”

“We should go back,” Kataria grunted, arrow drawn and at the ready. “We left Gariath and Dread behind to die.”

“There is nothing back there but death,” Mahalar growled. His attentions were focused on the great slab of stone at the end of the walkway running over the pond, his skeletal hands searching its smooth face. “Shalake failed. You failed. We all failed and now-”

Somewhere below, a roar shook the stones and the sky.

“That,” the elder Shen muttered. “We have no other options now. We go forward or we die.”

“We go forward and Gariath and Dread die,” Kataria said. “The rest of us will follow a little later.”

“Not ‘we,’” Mahalar snapped. “We. You. Me. Jaga. Everything. Can’t you hear it? Can’t you hear her?” He stomped his feet upon the bridge. “She’s stirring. Her beloved is close. Her children are close. She is coming.”

Kataria narrowed her eyes at the Shen before turning to Lenk. “We can’t just leave them, Lenk.”

Lenk grunted in reply. Lenk was listening to something else. Lenk could hear it. Lenk could hear her.

Somewhere deep. Somewhere far. In the chasm. In the earth. In the utter darkness. Something scratched against the floor of the world. Something pounded against the door. Someone heard the screaming in the ring. Someone screamed back.

And in the dark place of his head, something awoke.

He shook his head, tried to ignore it, tried to dismiss it as anxiety and paranoia. That was what it was, he told himself. He left that part of himself back in the darkness, back in the chasm. He touched his shoulder, it seared. He felt flesh as liquid beneath it.

He was still dying.

Good.

Wait, no.

And yet, as he tried to fight it, tried to ignore it, the voice came to him anyway, came out of his mouth.

“She comes.”

“Not yet,” Mahalar said. “She’s close, she’s trying hard, but she can’t come unless called.” His fingers found a piece of slate, thin and barely recognizable from the rest of the stone. He pulled it back, revealing a jagged indentation in the rock. “We take that away from her, from the longfaces, from everything.”

“By doing what?” Denaos asked. “There’s nowhere to go but back down.” He glanced over the edges of the walkway. “Or, you know, in there. I mean, either way it’s going to be messy.”

“There is another way.”

Mahalar pulled from his shabby robe the sigil of the House of the Vanquishing Trinity, the gauntlet clenching arrows. Tearing it from its chain, he pressed it into the indentation and slid the slate back over. Something shifted within the stone, it began to rumble. It began to rise.

Albeit painfully slowly.

Lenk looked down as a sudden, familiar weight was thrust against him. The tome whispered to him, muttered a voice onto another voice, beckoning, begging, whispering, whining. Mahalar’s eyes were dire, his voice darker.

“Take it there. Take it below. Keep it out of their hands and we can plan. Flee now. Save us now.”

Lenk glanced at Kataria. She shot him an urgent look. He sighed, turning to Mahalar and nodding.

“Why?” she demanded.

“It’s what Gariath and Dread would want,” he said. “For us to not run away.”

“Gariath, maybe,” Denaos replied. “Dread, I think, would have a problem with us leaving him to be eaten alive. . or stabbed. . or otherwise dying horribly.”

“Well, we don’t have a lot of choice, do we?” Asper asked hotly, backing up as she reached for her sword.

“Oh, what? Because if we don’t, the world is doomed?”

“Because of that, you idiot!” she replied, thrusting the blade at the top of the stairs.

And that came barreling up the steps. Cresting up over the stairs, atop the back of her sikkhun, eyes wide and white and mouth full of a roar, Semnein Xhai came.

“QAI ZHOTH!”

“Stop her! Hold her back!” Mahalar howled to the Shen. “The door isn’t open yet!” He thrust a finger at Lenk. “You stay here! We can’t let the book get away!”

The door was rising too slowly. And Xhai was not deterred.

She hacked wildly into the cluster of Shen that rose up to stop her. The great wedge of metal split turtle shell shields, cleaved through spears, ate of green flesh and drank of red blood. Those warriors that strayed too close to the sikkhun were snatched up in its jaws, shaken wildly like toys.

“We should do something,” Asper said. “They’re dying.”

“Right, do something,” Denaos said, edging behind her. “Maybe we can throw ourselves at the monster and hope it chokes on us.”

“Or maybe we can let Kataria do everything again,” the shict snarled.

She drew an arrow back and let it fly. Its song was short and ended in a meaty thunk as it bit into the netherling’s leg. The longface looked up, spared a glare for Kataria, as though she were simply being obnoxious. It wasn’t until she looked over the shict and caught sight of Denaos that her face twisted up like a fist.

“YOU!” she roared. She clove through a Shen in a single blow, sent two parts of him flying into the water.

“What did you do?” Asper asked, backing away breathlessly. “What did you do?”

“Yes, blame me,” Denaos said, backing even farther. A small gap, barely larger than a child, had appeared beneath the door. “What the hell is taking so long?”

“The earth moves slowly, human,” Mahalar muttered, “it feels nothing for mortal-”

“No, Gods damn it! You had plenty of time to be poetic down there! Now we need results!”

“Then it’s just old as hell! I don’t even know if it will open all the way,” Mahalar snarled. “As soon as there’s enough space, move!”

There was not enough space to move yet. More concerningly, there was not nearly enough space between Xhai and the companions. Lenk watched as the last three Shen hurled themselves at her. Lenk watched as the last three of them fell in pieces.

Black shadows crested up behind her. The black-armored warriors, spears shining, came marching up to join a battle already finished. Lenk wasn’t concerned with them. Xhai wasn’t, either. The longface’s eyes caught a glimpse of the black book in Lenk’s hands. She snarled, spurred her beast forward. It cackled wildly, bits of flesh bursting from its mouth as it scrabbled across the stones and charged.

A snap behind him. A sharp shriek of metal. The arrow flew, caught the beast in its nostril. Its cackle became a shrieking whine. Its charge ended as it flew onto its hind legs, scratching wildly at its snout with its claws. Lenk blinked, felt an arm seize him.

“Move, idiot!” Kataria snarled, shoving him toward the door.

Denaos’s boots were just disappearing beneath the stone slab, Asper already gone in. Kataria tossed her bow under and slithered on her belly after them.

“Come on, come on!” she barked at Lenk.

“Mahalar! We’re moving!” he cried as he threw himself to the ground.

The elder Shen nodded, turned to hobble after them as Lenk tumbled the gap. He could see that the stone was just a cover to a wooden door, a series of groaning gears and chains slowly raising it.

“It’s just going to keep opening!” Asper shouted in the darkness beyond the stone. “Find a switch or something!”

“What makes you think there’s a switch?” Denaos asked.

“I don’t know, just find something!”

Lenk watched the desperation in Mahalar’s eyes, watched the dust fly from his mouth like spittle. He watched the Shen drag his body across the stones. He watched a brief smile flit across his face at the thought of his plan coming to fruition.

He watched the obsidian spearhead burst out the Shen’s chest.

Xhai appeared from behind, hoisting the weapon by a pale, ivory-colored shaft. She looked at the impaled Shen contemptuously, irritated that she hadn’t used it on something a little more impressive. Contempt turned to a wicked delight in an instant, though, as the spear’s head glowed an ominous blue.

The Shen’s flesh blackened as he writhed helplessly upon the shaft. The moisture and warmth left him, sucked into the spear by a great inhale. Even the dust left him as the spear swallowed it all.

He watched Xhai shake the weapon and dislodge a blackened, frozen husk from the shaft.

He watched Mahalar fall to the ground.

He watched Mahalar’s lightless, dark eyes stare back at him.

“Here! Here’s something!” Denaos called. “Quick, help me pull it!”

A clicking sound. The stone groaned as more black-clad warriors came up on the stairs, carrying something thick and heavy between them. The door slid shut as Xhai shouldered the spear and walked back to her mount.

And Lenk was left staring at the darkness.