Tome of the Undergates

Seventeen

‘Is it working?’

Asper could feel Lenk’s eyes with such intensity they threatened to crack her skull. His stare darted between the priestess, sweating and pumping knotted hands over her patient’s chest, and the shict, who lay breathless upon the ground.

Asper kept her actual thoughts to herself; it just seemed in poor taste to tell him his concern over his dying companion was slightly irritating.

‘I don’t know yet.’ She pressed a pair of fingers against Kataria’s throat. ‘This sort of thing works on drowning victims, but only if we get to them quickly.’ No pulse; she kept her head low to conceal her frown. ‘Really, I just have no idea if it works on drowning by demons.’

‘Well, try-’

‘Oh, is that what I’m supposed to be doing?’ she snarled over her shoulder at him. ‘I’m not putting hands on her chest for your enjoyment, you know. Back away, moron!’

He nodded weakly, backing away. Such readiness to obey distressed her. It was exceedingly unlike the young man to so willingly bow out of such a situation. Then again, she considered, it was exceedingly unlike him to express any interest in death. Yet he seemed to be dying with the shict, moping about her soon-to-be-corpse like a dog around its dying master.

Asper forbore to tell him this.

She was sorely tempted to tell him to stop staring at her, though. His eyes bored into the back of her skull, drilling into two well-worn spots in her head where other, weary stares had rested. Gazes from mothers with fevered children, fathers with raped daughters had left the first scratches upon her scalp. Soldiers with wounded comrades and sons with ailing elders had bored even deeper.

Lenk’s stare, however, went well beyond her skin. He peered past hair, flesh, blood and bone into the deepest recesses of her mind. He saw her, she felt, and all the workings of her brain.

He knew she couldn’t save this one.

NO! she shrieked at herself inside her own head. Don’t think like that. You can do this. These hands have healed before, countless people. These hands. .

Her gaze was drawn to her left hand, resting limply upon the shict’s abdomen. It twitched suddenly, temptingly. You could end it all, you know, her thoughts drifted, just a bit of pressure, like you did to the frogman. Then, poof! All over! She won’t have to suffer any more. .

‘No, no, no, NO!’

She ignored the concerned stares cast her way, ignored her hand, ignored everything but the placid expression upon Kataria’s face and the stillness of her heart.

‘I can do this,’ she muttered, beginning chest compressions anew, ‘I can do this, I can do this.’ She found solace in the repetition, so much that she barely noticed the tear forming at the corner of her eye. ‘Please, Talanas, let me do this. .’

Lenk stared at Asper’s back, watching the sweat stain grow longer down her robe.

It was a hard battle to resist the urge to rush up beside the priestess, to see if he could help, if he could do something. He was used to fixing things: fixing the fights between his companions, fixing the agreements between him and his employers, fixing to jam hard bits of steel into soft flesh.

That’s how it should be.

He should have been able to fix this.

The sound of metal gently scraping against skin was loud, unbearable. He cast a resentful, sidelong scowl at his companion. Denaos, however, paid no heed to the young man, gingerly working at his fingernails with a tiny blade. Eventually, it seemed Lenk’s stare became a tad more unbearable and Denaos glanced back at him.

‘Sweet Silf, fine,’ he hissed, ‘I’ll do yours, if you’re so damn envious.’

‘Kataria,’ Lenk replied sharply, ‘is dying.’

‘To be more precise, Kataria may already be dead.’

Lenk blinked at him. Somewhere in the distance, a gull cried.

‘What?’ Denaos hardly looked at him as he plucked up a waterskin from the ground and took a drink.

‘This doesn’t bother you?’ Lenk all but shrieked at the tall man, snatching the skin away. ‘You can’t even keep yourself from drinking her water?’

‘It’s our water, you milksop. She’ll have her drink if and when she wakes up. Have at least an ounce of faith in Asper, would you?’ Denaos glanced over to the priestess. ‘She’s doing her best. She’ll do what’s right.’

‘Really?’ Lenk permitted a squeal of relief to tinge his voice. ‘You’ve seen this sort of thing before?’

‘Once, aye.’ He nodded appraisingly as Asper pressed her lips against Kataria’s once more. ‘But the spectacle cost me a pouch of silver.’ He became aware of Lenk’s angry stare after another moment. ‘What?’

‘What is wrong with you?’ The young man forced an angry snarl between clenched teeth. ‘I almost suspect Gariath would be more sympathetic in this than you are.’

‘He’s further up the beach,’ Denaos gestured, ‘far more curious about dead demons than he is about Kataria.’ He cast a smug smile at Lenk. ‘Besides, it’s not like he’d do anything more than I am save urinate on her corpse.’ He coughed. ‘Out of respect, of course.’

‘Then maybe you should go and linger with him,’ Lenk snorted. ‘If we’re lucky, I’ll only have to come back to see one of you still alive.’

‘Unsurprising as it might be, I find the near-dead to be rather more pleasant company than that lizard.’

‘Then do me,’ Lenk paused, ‘and her the respect of showing proper manners and worrying a little.’ He grunted. ‘Or by seeing how many daggers you can fit in your mouth. Whichever.’

‘Worry?’ Denaos made a scoffing sound. ‘Would that I could.’

The wind between them died. Lenk turned a scowl upon the rogue.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Frankly, I’d rather not say.’

‘Then you shouldn’t have said it in the first place,’ Lenk snarled. ‘What do you mean by that?’

The rogue’s shoulders sank as his head went low to hide the rolling of his eyes.

‘Really, you don’t want me to continue. If I do, you’ll get all upset and pouty, then violent. You’ll do something you’ll later regret, then come crawling back like a worm to tell me I was right and, honestly, I’m not sure if I can stand such a sight.’

‘Whatever I do, I’m guaranteed to regret it less if you don’t have the testicular-borne valor to finish your thought.’

Denaos half-sighed, half-growled.

‘Fine. Allow me to slide a shiv of reality into your kidneys. ’ He shrugged. ‘If she dies, it’ll be a tragedy, to be certain. She was a fine shot with that bow of hers and a finer sight for eyes used to far too much ugly, I’ll tell you. But it’s not like we’re losing anyone. .’ He paused, tilting his head, wincing as though struck. ‘I mean. . in the end, she’s not one of us. She’s just a shict. No shortage of them.’

Lenk blinked once. When his eyelids rose, it was not through his own stare that he saw his hands reach out and seize the tall man by his collar. It was not his arms that trembled with barely restrained fury. It was not his voice that uttered a frigid threat to the rogue.

‘The only regret here,’ he whispered, ‘is that my sword is stuck in a corpse that isn’t yours.’

This is it.

The thought rang through Asper’s head solemnly, like a dirge bell.

It had to happen eventually.

Her breath was short, sporadic.

You did your best. .

Kataria’s face was almost part of the scenery, so unchanged was it. As much as Asper searched, as much as she prayed for a twitch of lips or flutter of eyelids, she found nothing. The shict seemed more in a deep dream than a breathless coma, more at peace than in pain.

That might be a sign, her thoughts flooded her head like a deluge, that’s Talanas’s mercy to you. What do you know about this, anyway? You can tie up scratches and kiss scraped knees, but you can’t heal a damn thing without bandages.

She pressed her fingers against Kataria’s throat; no pulse. . still.

It’s not so bad. You can’t save them all. Remember the last one? She was in so much pain, but you managed to take that away. Her left hand twitched involuntarily. You can do the same for your friend, can’t you?

‘Shut up,’ she snarled, ‘shut up!’

She forced her mind dark, silenced the voices in the rhythm of chest compressions and the futile monotony of breathing. There was solace in monotony, she knew, comfort in not seeing ahead. She forced her gaze away from the future, focused on the now, the lifeless shict and the quiet muttering.

‘I can do this,’ she whispered, ‘I can do this,’ she told herself as she had for so long, ‘please, I can do this. .’

She drew in her forty-third breath and leaned closer to the shict’s lips. She hesitated, hearing a sound so faint as to be a shade more silent than a whisper: a choked, gurgling whisper.

‘Please,’ she whispered again.

The lifeless muscles in Kataria’s body twitched. Asper forced herself to continue, biting back hope.

‘Please.’

The gurgle came again, a little louder. Kataria’s body jerked, a little livelier.

‘Kat. .’ She was terrified to raise her voice. ‘Please. .’

A smile wormed its way onto Asper’s face. The shict’s pale lips parted, only slightly, and drew in the most meagre, pathetic of breaths.

‘Yes,’ her giggle was restrained hysteria, ‘yes, yes, yes!’

Her eyes widened with a sudden dread as she saw something bubble in the shadows of her companion’s mouth.

‘Oh, no! No, no, WAIT!’

As though possessed, the shict’s body shuddered violently, her mouth stretching so wide as to make her jaw creak threateningly. A torrent of translucent bile came flooding out of her, arcing like a geyser as her lungs were brutally evacuated.

Groaning, Kataria rolled onto her side and expelled the last traces of the muck with a hack. Body trembling, she had barely the strength to fall upon her back. The sun seemed bright and harsh above her, her breath foreign and stagnant on her lips.

Through fluttering eyes, she became aware of a shadow falling over her. She tensed, her voice forgotten, a scream bursting from her lips as only a faint, ooze-tinged squeal.

Two wicked blue moons stared down upon her. Her heart raced, head glutted with fragmented imagery: grey flesh, silver hair, two blue eyes burning like cold pyres, pupilless.

She opened her mouth to scream again, but caught herself. Or rather, a pair of strong hands caught her by her arms, pulling her closer. She writhed in the grip, unwilling to stare into the eyes that shifted before her. As dizziness and half-blindness faded, she beheld a gaze that was dominated by two big, hound-like pupils.

‘Calm down,’ Lenk whimpered, ‘just calm down. You’re fine.’

‘Fine,’ she repeated as she took in his face, his pink skin and blinking eyes. ‘I’m fine.’ She paused to cough, forcing a weak smile on her face. ‘I mean, as far as nearly dying goes.’

‘Fine.’ He nodded. ‘Just don’t strain yourself. Take breaths as they come.’ He raised her to a sitting position as he eased a waterskin into her hands. ‘Drink. You’re sure you’re well?’

‘A damn sight better than some of us,’ someone snarled from behind.

Asper’s scowl burned two holes in the mask of viscous sludge covering her face. Her lips quivered from behind the vomit, as though she sought to scream but thought better of it. Fuming so fiercely as to make the bile steam, she resigned herself to grumbling indignantly and mop-ping the substance with her sleeve.

‘Oh, you messy little sow.’ Denaos giggled as he joined his companions. ‘Gone and eaten your pudding like a fat little baby, have you?’

Artfully dodging the glob of vomit she hurled at him, he approached Lenk and Kataria with all the candour of someone who had not just recently dismissed a looming death as an unfortunate inconvenience.

‘And how are we today?’ he asked with a broad smile. ‘I was slightly worried we’d have to cut your body into six pieces so that you wouldn’t come back.’ He added a knowing nod. ‘That’s what happens when shicts die, you know. They’ll come crawling right out of the grave to rip your eyes out and eat them.’

‘One would hope she’d have the sense to rip out your tongue first.’ Lenk hurled his voice like a spear at the rogue, though Denaos seemed to dodge that just as gracefully as he had the vomit. ‘Maybe she’d like to hear what you-’

‘Well, that’s all fine, fine and dandy.’ Denaos interrupted the young man with a timely spear of his own. ‘Good to know we all emerged from another near-death experience with only one of us nearly dying. A fine score, if I may say so.’

Lenk opened his mouth to retort, but a hacking cough from Kataria shredded that before it reached his lips. Settling for an icy stare at Denaos’s nonchalant expression, he raised the waterskin to her lips, pulling his hand back as she swatted at it.

‘I’m not an invalid, round-ear,’ she growled, shaking his arm off from around her. After a few frenzied gulps, she wiped her mouth. ‘What happened, anyway?’

‘We were hoping you might tell us,’ Asper piped up. ‘Denaos and I came at the sound of screaming.’

‘Late,’ Lenk muttered.

‘Cautiously late,’ Denaos shot back.

‘At any rate,’ Asper continued, ‘we found you unconscious and the whole beach scorched halfway to heaven.’

‘Hell,’ Denaos corrected.

‘What about Lenk?’ Kataria asked.

‘What about Lenk?’

‘He was here. He saw what happened.’

‘I don’t recall.’ The young man offered a helpless shrug. ‘We were hit pretty hard.’

Kataria’s breath caught; she levelled a hard gaze at him.

‘We. .’

‘Yeah,’ he nodded, ‘you and me.’

‘The demon bashed him good,’ Asper added. ‘He was just coming out of it when we arrived.’

He wasn’t out, Kataria thought.

The visions bloomed in her mind: the onyx sheen of the Abysmyth’s black blood, the surgical silver of Lenk’s sword. They flooded through her with grotesque vividness, matched only by the horrifying sounds that replayed in her mind.

‘MOMMY! MOMMY! IT HURTS!’ She recalled the demon’s wailing voice. ‘MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!’

Lenk had said nothing.

Someone else had.

‘Stay,’ it had uttered through his mouth, ‘we kill.’

Whoever had spoken had leaned over her, stood with flesh grey as stone and eyes blue as winter.

Someone not Lenk. .

‘Whichever of you did whatever,’ Denaos added with a grimace, ‘someone seems to have hit the demon back. . rather hard.’

‘The demon.’ Kataria’s head snapped up. ‘What happened to it?’

The Omen hopped across the sand, sweeping bulbous eyes over the chaos. Despite the smoke seeping into the two gourd-like organs, the thing did not so much as blink. It recalled, vaguely, in what served as its mind, that there had been more of it just a moment ago.

Then there was noise, noise that hurt its ears. It didn’t care for that noise, so it stayed away. Now, there were none of it left. It turned about, faced the sea and tilted its head. There was one of it there moments ago, it believed. It chattered its teeth, calling to the other.

All that answered it was the sound of wind and a great, black shadow quickly falling over it.

‘Disgusting,’ Gariath muttered, wiping thick, black fluid off the sole of his foot.

It wasn’t so much the texture of the thing’s blood, reminiscent of a large beetle’s, that irritated him as it was the smell. He cast a dark scowl over the beach: sand still pumping acrid smoke into the air, fighting the stinging salty reek for dominance, as the stinking panoply of electricity, blood and fear congealed into a fine, vile perfume.

With a growl, he gave the Omen’s corpse a kick, sending it spiralling through the air like a feathery, blood-dripping ball to plop at the top of a heap of similar misshapen amalgamations. Gathering them in one spot did nothing for the odour.

With a sigh, Gariath thrust his snout into the air once more, testing it. Nothing but the stink of carnage and fire reached his nostrils. He found his fists tightening of their own volition, his skin threatening to burst under his claws. Every whiff of the air only brought him more of the same stinks, denying him any other scents.

So close, he snarled internally, I was so close. I was right on top of it. . then THIS!

The beach’s odour had struck him like a wave, drowning all other aromas. It was only because of its sheer overwhelming stench that he had come to it and found two worthless humans agonising over two other worthless humans.

At that moment, he had excused himself to hunt down the remaining Omens that had been hopping aimlessly around the sands. He needed something to vent his rage upon and crushing the tiny parasites seemed only slightly more appropriate than crushing his companions; besides, one of them was already dead.

The Omens, of course, had provided no sport whatsoever. They merely stood there, idle, waiting to die. They didn’t even make a sound when he stepped on them, save for one final chatter of teeth.

‘Barely worth killing,’ he muttered.

‘Well, thanks for doing it, anyway,’ someone spoke up.

He found his mood further soured with the appearance of his companions trudging up the beach, the pointy-eared one barely standing. He snorted contemptuously at her.

‘Don’t look so weary,’ he growled, ‘it’s not as though being killed is some vast ordeal.’ He spat on the ground. ‘If it was so hard, not everyone would do it.’

‘Well, thanks for that,’ she replied, blinking at the large pile of lifeless Omens. ‘So. . been busy?’

‘Hardly,’ he grunted. ‘Whatever was here before you did all the work.’

‘Before?’ Asper cocked a brow. ‘I didn’t see anyone else.’

‘Well, you didn’t think those two imbeciles could have done all this, did you?’ He swept a hand out over the beach, levelling a finger at the frogmen, still frozen even as the sun scattered the last of the smoke. ‘There were others here. You could smell them, if you were me.’ He snorted. ‘But you’re not.’

‘A shame I live with every waking moment,’ Denaos muttered. ‘Who else was here, then?’

‘Longfaces,’ Lenk replied curtly. ‘The Abysmyth said as much before it died.’

‘It did,’ Kataria agreed. ‘I found tracks to support it, too.’

‘You can tell how long someone’s face is by their tracks?’

‘I can tell how many people were fighting, idiot,’ she snarled back. ‘Not that I needed tracks to tell me there was a fight around here.’

‘Regardless,’ Lenk continued, ‘whoever these people were and however long their faces are, they didn’t leave anything behind to let us know what they’re up to.’

‘What they’re up to?’ Asper sounded incredulous as she gestured to a nearby tree, split apart by whatever magic had rent it. ‘How could anyone that does this be up to anything we want to be a part of?’

‘Leave it to a zealot to leap to conclusions,’ Denaos countered snidely. ‘What our dear floor-kisser is missing is the fact that these longfaces not only did this, but they also did that.’

He didn’t even have to gesture to draw everyone’s attention to the hanging Abysmyth.

A particularly fierce gust of wind kicked up, causing the creature’s lanky legs to rattle against each other, flecks of charred skin peeling off. The icicle spike that kept it impaled in the air showed no signs of thawing in the sun, shining ominously as its scorched captive continued to stare up at the sky through empty eye sockets.

‘How is this even a matter for debate?’ Denaos held his hands out helplessly. ‘We want Abysmyths dead. Longfaces kill Abysmyths. We should, obviously, find them and kiss whichever part of their anatomy will make them die instead of us.’

‘Afraid of a little death, are we?’ Gariath mused grimly.

‘Yes, I am afraid of death,’ the rogue responded curtly, ‘that’s a brilliant observation.’ He turned to Lenk. ‘Listen, you, of all people, must see the wisdom in this. These aren’t pirates we’re fighting. Whatever help we can get, we need.’

‘I didn’t think you would want to share the reward,’ the young man replied.

‘I’m wagering our yet-unseen friends don’t do this for mere gold.’

‘Mere gold now?’ Asper feigned shock. ‘Have you found a higher calling, Denaos?’ She held up a hand to ward off his retort, turning to Lenk instead. ‘It’s not necessarily a bad idea to seek out aid, but whoever did this to the beach clearly didn’t have any notion of restraint. Given the circumstances, it’d seem a mite smarter to make sure they won’t incinerate us before we throw ourselves upon their mercy.’

‘The point is moot for the moment,’ Lenk shot at both of them at once. ‘The longfaces aren’t here. We are.’ He cast a glance towards Gariath. ‘You’ve been poking around up here for a while. Found out anything?’

‘About what?’ the dragonman asked.

‘Well, for starters,’ the young man pointed behind them, ‘how about that?’

The corpse of the second Abysmyth, face-down in a pool of its own black humours, was not exactly difficult to miss. If it were even possible, the thing seemed far fouler in death than it had in life, with its emaciated limbs twisted about its hacked and hewn body, arrow shafts jutting from its black skin, one stump of an arm reaching for the shore as though it still sought to crawl to the safety of the sea.

It was not what was leaking out of the demon that caused Kataria’s breath to go short, but rather what was jammed into it.

Jutting from the creature’s back, the cross of its hilt shining triumphantly in the sunlight, Lenk’s sword glittered with a menace it had never showed her. Whereas before it was merely one weapon amongst many, now the blade seemed alive, smiling morbidly in its steel, remembering well what it had done to the beast.

When the others started stalking towards it, she found herself hard pressed to follow.

‘So,’ Lenk began, placing his hands on his hips and staring at the corpse, ‘what have you found out?’

The dragonman merely rolled his shoulders. ‘It’s dead.’

‘Well, hell.’ Denaos sighed dramatically. ‘Are the rest of us even needed here? It sounds like the lizard’s become so good at this necropsy business as to render Asper obsolete.’ He sneered. ‘Though, frankly, it’s tricky to decide which one’s nicer to look at.’

‘Keep squeaking, rat,’ Gariath snarled in reply, ‘and we’ll have two corpses to admire.’

From seemingly nowhere, he produced something long and black and waved it menacingly at the rogue. It was only after a moment and a sudden wave of nausea that the other companions recognised the Abysmyth’s severed arm.

‘And one of them will have this,’ he paused to pluck a stray Omen corpse up from the ground, ‘and this crammed into it.’ He smiled unpleasantly. ‘Your choice as to what gets stuffed into which end.’

‘It’s far too late in the day for this.’ Lenk sighed. ‘You can kill each other once I don’t have need of either of you.’

‘Kill,’ the dragonman snorted contemptuously, ‘each other?’

‘Fine.’ The young man rolled his eyes. ‘You can kill Denaos once I don’t need him any more.’

‘I rather take offence at that,’ the rogue snapped.

‘That was likely why I said it.’ Lenk waved the tall man’s concerns away and returned to the corpse. ‘Now, we know it’s dead. We just need to know what killed it.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Kataria said hotly, ‘isn’t it obvious?’

Myriad glances cast her way as though she were a mad-woman indicated that it was not. With a snarl, she swept up to the corpse and all but seized Lenk’s sword and throttled it, so fervently did she gesture.

‘The damn thing has a sword in its back! That’s quite typically fatal, you know.’

‘True,’ Denaos replied, ‘but if you can point out anything typical about a giant fish-man-demon-thing, I’d love to hear it.’

‘They can’t be harmed by mortal weapons.’ Asper nodded. ‘We’ve seen it. Whatever killed the Abysmyth, it wasn’t Lenk.’

‘But I saw-’ Kataria’s protest was slain in her mouth at the sight of Lenk’s stare, hard and flashing, levelled at her like a weapon itself. Instead, she looked away and muttered, ‘I saw it die.’

‘You didn’t see Lenk kill it, though.’ Denaos pushed his way past her and knelt beside the body. As he extended a hand, stopping just short of its leathery hide, he glanced over his shoulder concernedly. ‘We’re sure this thing is dead, right?’

‘Sure.’ Gariath scratched at his chin with the demon’s dismembered claws. ‘If it isn’t, though, the worst that can happen is we lose you.’

‘Acceptable losses,’ Asper agreed.

‘Oh, you two are just a pair of merry little jesters,’ he hissed. Without sparing another moment for them, he began to trace his fingers down the creature’s hide, no small amount of disgust visible on his face. ‘As I was saying, Lenk didn’t kill it. Poison did.’

‘That can’t be right,’ Lenk muttered, coming up beside the rogue. ‘I didn’t see any poison on it.’

‘What the hell did you think this stuff was?’

The rogue ran a finger down the edge of one of the creature’s wounds, pinching off a few flakes of green ichor, now dried and dusty. He rubbed it between his fingers, brought it to his nose and blanched.

‘Granted, it’s long past its bottle life, but this is potent stuff.’ He brushed his hands off. ‘Someone was carving our dear friend up with an envenomed weapon long before you ever hacked at it.’ He flicked one of the more prominent tears in the creature’s flesh. ‘Have a glimpse. These wounds are fresh, even though the venom is old. You remember what happened when Mossud harpooned the thing, right?’

‘It healed instantly.’ Lenk nodded as he rubbed his shoulder in memory of the thrashing the creature had given him. ‘The damn thing didn’t even flinch.’

‘From your attacks, maybe,’ Gariath snorted.

‘So why haven’t these lacerations healed?’ Denaos winked knowingly. ‘The wounds were trying to close, but the poison kept them from doing so. Rather potent stuff, actually. I haven’t seen anything this vigorous before.’

‘These wounds, though, are tremendous.’ In emphasis, Lenk reached out and flicked an arrow shaft that Kataria had sent into the thing’s heart through a tear the size of two fists side by side. ‘I’ve seen some big swords in my time, but nothing so big as to make such a mess.’

‘The wounds didn’t start that way.’ Asper elbowed herself into the huddle, pointing to some of the larger rips. ‘See, the edges of the skin are frayed. The poison ate at the flesh, probably continued to do so up until the thing was dead.’ She raised her eyebrows in appreciation. ‘Not unlike a parasite.’

‘I remember.’ Lenk nodded. ‘The green stuff was pulsating. ’ He looked over his shoulder to Kataria. ‘You saw, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah.’ She nodded weakly. ‘Like it was breathing.’

‘So,’ Denaos bit his lower lip, ‘these longfaces are in possession of a. . living poison?’

‘And you wanted to kiss their rumps,’ Asper shot at him smugly. ‘Dip your lips in iron, you smelly little sycophant. ’

‘Well, if you’re such a genius,’ he snapped, ‘maybe you can tell us what did,’ he paused to gesture over the scorched beach, ‘this?’

‘Isn’t it clear?’ She paused, held up a hand in apology. ‘Pardon me. Isn’t it clear to everyone who isn’t a colossal moron?’ She nearly decapitated him with the sharpness of her smirk. ‘Think. What else do you know that can turn sand black and make ice that doesn’t melt in the sun?’

‘Magic,’ the rogue replied, ‘but-’

‘Precisely,’ she interrupted, ‘and who do we know who knows something about magic?’

‘Dreadaeleon,’ he answered, ‘however-’

‘See? Even you can solve these tricky little issues with the miracle of thinking.’ She rose, dusting her hands off with an air of self-satisfaction so thick as to choke even the smoke. She set hands on hips and glanced about the beach. ‘Now, if Dread would just come up and tell us a little bit about. . uh. .’

It occurred to her, at that moment, that they had mentioned the subject of magic and had been able to go three breaths without a familiarly shrill voice chiming in with some incessant trivia. She was not alone in her realisation, as Lenk nearly collapsed under the weight of his sigh.

‘Right, then,’ he muttered, ‘who lost the wizard?’

‘He was with the lizard last I saw,’ Denaos replied. ‘Maybe he stopped to sniff a tree or something.’

‘Where is he, then?’ Asper immediately turned a scowl upon the dragonman. ‘What’d you do with him?’

‘What makes you think I did something to him?’ Gariath replied, raising an eyeridge. ‘Isn’t it possible that he got lost on his own?’

‘Well. .’ Her face screwed up momentarily. ‘I suppose that’s possible. I’m sorry.’ She sighed and offered him an apologetic smile. ‘So, where was he when you last saw him?’

‘Writhing on the ground and not breathing.’

‘Oh.’ She blinked. ‘Wait, what?’

‘I resent you assuming that I beat the stupid out of him until he was lying in a pool of it.’ He folded his arms over his chest. ‘But, as it stands, I did.’

Asper’s jaw dropped. Whether it was from the shock of the dragonman’s actions or the sheer casualness with which he reported them, all she could do was turn to Lenk with a look that demanded he do something.

The young man, however, merely blinked; he suspected he ought to do something about it, if he had been at all surprised that such a thing had happened. Instead, he sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose and cast a glance around his companions.

‘Well, you know the routine,’ he said. ‘Fan out, find him or his body and so forth and so on.’

‘Searching for someone we’re supposed to care about who was possibly murdered by someone else we’re supposed to care about is not supposed to be routine,’ Asper shrieked, stomping her foot.

‘And yet. .’ Lenk let that thought dangle as he reached out to retrieve his sword. ‘Anyway, split up.’ He cast a fleeting glance over his shoulder. ‘Kat, you’re with me.’

‘What?’ She did not mean for her voice to sound as shocked as it did. ‘Why?’

‘What do you mean, “why”?’ Lenk shot her a confused look. ‘That’s how we always do it.’

‘Selfish,’ Denaos muttered under his breath.

‘Well, yeah, but. .’ Her eyes darted about the beach like a cornered beast’s. ‘It’s just that-’

‘If you don’t want to go with me, fine,’ Lenk snapped back, possibly more harshly than he intended. ‘Go with Gariath or whoever else you feel you’d prefer to claw, stab or insult you in the back.’ He seized the handle of his sword and gave a sharp jerk. ‘All I’m doing is trying to keep people from getting killed.’

No sooner had the steel left the Abysmyth’s corpse than the sky split apart with the force of a scream.

Lenk staggered backwards, falling to his rear and scrambling like a drunken crab as the beast, as though possessed, spasmed back into waking life.

Eyes as vacant as they had been in life were turned to the sky as the fish-like head threw itself backwards, jaws agape and streaming rivers of black bile from the corners of its mouth. Heralded by a spray of glistening ebon, it loosed a howl unlike any sound it had made while alive. The noise stretched for an eternity, forcing the companions to choose between gripping weapons and shielding their ears as the shriek echoed off every charred leaf and ashen grain.

Bile streaming from its mouth turned to black blood streaming from every gaping wound in the creature’s flesh. Liquid poured with such intensity as to make the creature’s entire body seem like a great half-melted candle. As the thing continued to scream, it became clear that it was not just bile that wept from its body.

There was a grunt of surprise from Gariath and all eyes turned to see the severed arm begin to jerk and spasm with a life of its own. The dragonman growled once, then hurled the appendage at the corpse, as though such an act would stop it.

Instead, both member and dismembered began to react as one. Black flesh turned to wax, wax turned to ooze, ooze turned to blood. The creature’s flesh began to peel from it, exposing greying bones and settling in a puddle around the thing’s knees. The scream intensified with every inch of skin sloughing off and the flesh only crept more quickly with every moment the Abysmyth shrieked.

Only when the last traces of the creature’s face dripped off, leaving a fish-like skull gaping at the sun, did the creature finally fall silent.

Leaving no time to curse or pray to various Gods, the pool of black sludge that had been the Abysmyth began to move. It twitched once, rippled like tainted water, then began to creep across the shore like an ink stain, moving slowly towards the sea. A gust of wind kissed the beach; the grey skeleton fell forwards and clattered into a pile of bones.

The tension lasted for as long as it took for the screaming echoes to silence themselves. It was only when everything was silent, save for the waves taking the molten flesh back into the water, that Lenk spoke.

‘Spread out,’ he whispered, ‘find Dread. Kat, you’re with me.’