Tome of the Undergates

Twenty-Six

It wasn’t until after Gariath pulled himself up out of the water and into Irontide’s gaping wound that he felt his breath stop. Ear-frills spread, eyes wide open, he was terrified to blink for fear that he might miss a single moment of what unfurled before him.

He had begun to think he’d never see it. He had begun to think he was doomed to die a miserable, peaceful death, slipping away in his sleep or being laid low by a particularly noisome cough. He had begun to think that he would never see what all Rhega yearned to see before they left this world for the spirits.

Beautiful.

It occurred to him that others might think him morbid for describing the carnage blossoming before him in such a way. But then again, he reasoned, that was why they were stupid and dead and he was Rhega, soon to die.

Carnage, a symphony of metal and screaming, permeated the vast hall, pain and glory bled out of the gaping hole in Irontide’s hide on saltwater tides.

That he had missed the beginning of it all bothered him little. The fight was still unfolding when he arrived, a humble child well on its way to becoming a furious adult of slaughter. And Gariath could see that it grew amidst the great mass of purple and white in the centre of the vast and sprawling chamber.

That the longfaces held the advantage was obvious enough. They moved in tight, concentrated packs, bristling with their iron spikes and circular shields. Frogmen descended upon them with wailing fervour, undeterred as one after another were impaled and tossed into growing piles of humanoid litter.

But the creatures did not falter, compensating for their lack of skill and weapons with their sheer press of flesh. The passages and archways of the hall were choked with rivers of them, pouring out in ever-greater numbers to fight the violet invaders.

One of the muscular women went down, skewered by a press of five bone-tipped spears. Magnificent, Gariath thought.

A jagged throwing blade was hurled, bouncing off the stone floor to catch a charging frogman in the groin. Incredible.

A white-haired female at the centre cut down throngs like great hedges, shearing through bone with a massive blade. Beautiful.

And all through it, the shrieks of battle filled the air, striving to be heard over the din of agony.

‘Ulbecetonth!’ the frogmen screamed, rattling spears. ‘These ones shall be rewarded!’

‘Qai zhoth!’ the females roared in their guttural language, banging iron to iron. ‘Akh zekh lakh!’

‘Let all defilers know Her mercy!’ the pale creatures shrieked.

‘Chew them alive, netherlings!’ the white-haired female howled, the human tongue delightfully harsh on her tongue. ‘Akh zekh lakh!’ Her roar sent the tiny pale creatures scurrying into the water, sent her purple fellows shrieking with collective fury. ‘EVISCERATE! DECAPITATE! ANNIHILATE!’

At that moment, Gariath decided he liked her best. She would be the last, he told himself, the one to give him his beautiful death.

It was only out of a fleeting sense of fading loyalty that he scanned the melee for any signs of pink flesh. Amongst the fluids and metals exchanged, the humans were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they had fled, or perhaps they were already dead.

Perhaps, he told himself, is a good enough reason for vengeance.

The thrum of bowstrings was an insult to the glory of personal combat, and its sound annoyed Gariath. Quickly spying its source, a trio of the longfaces loosing jagged-headed arrows into the throng, he narrowed his eyes.

Cowards would serve as decent preludes.

They did not deserve to be made aware of his presence, he knew, but for this death to be true, they would have to. His chest expanded, his roar was a flash of thunder, coursing over the melee and lost in the sound of battle. The rearmost archer turned to regard him curiously, no trace of fear in her white eyes.

He smiled at that; he had forgotten what such a thing looked like.

Honour was satisfied. His presence was announced. Whether the females realised it or not, the time for fighting had come.

He lowered his head and rushed towards them, salt kicking up behind him, eyes alight with fury. His intent was unmistakable; a cry of warning went up, a clumsy arrow flew over his head. He fell to all fours, another pair of arrows shrieked towards him, one sinking into his shoulder.

He did not feel it. He did not hear their threats. There would be time for pain later. There was time for fear never. His horns went low, glittering menacingly. More arrows flew, nicking his flesh, kissing the stones.

By the time they were throwing their bows down to draw swords, he was already laughing.

The archer at the fore was met in a violent burst of crimson. His horns found a hard, purple belly and dug in. His laughter grew to be heard over her howling as his head jerked upwards, his horns grating against her ribcage. He rose to his full height, the female kicking and shrieking like some macabre living hat.

With a great snap backwards, he sent her flying, then skidding, leaving a smear of red upon the stones.

His remaining foes were painted red in his eyes. Their horror was momentary, replaced by expressions that seemed to vaguely resemble jagged smiles. With eager glee, they kicked their bows aside and drew hard iron.

Gariath had to fight the urge to shed joyful tears.

The more eager of the pair rushed him; no shriek determined to intimidate him, no scowl to mask her fear. There was nothing on her face but a hard smile to match her iron. There was no sound from her but the thunder of her boots and two words tearing themselves from her lips.

‘QAI ZHOTH!’

He caught her chop in his hand, feeling the metal bite into his palm. His grasp had tasted blades before; he did not flinch. Snarling, he tore it away from her as a stern parent takes a toy from a petulant child. Tossing it aside, he snapped both hands out to wrap around her throat.

It was almost disappointing to feel the weakness with which this one fought back: not quite as firmly as the one on the beach, but equally as fierce. There was no confusion in her milk-white eyes as he had seen in the eyes of humans, no unspoken plea, no desperate murmur to a God suspected to be merciful. Instead, she spat into his eyes as he hoisted her from her feet. Her hatred was unabashed, her fury pure, her fate sealed.

Refreshing.

With another snap of his arms, he brought her crashing down to the stones. Bones shattered, salt water sprayed, and the longface still twitched. He did not laugh as he seized her by the hair and forced her to kiss the rock once more; he owed her that much. And in return, she did not scream, did not beg, did not put up a pathetic struggle.

When he rose, he did not see a wretched corpse, a dead coward. He had taken that from her, leaving only a good death.

A beautiful death.

Even if she wasn’t quite as strong as the one on the beach, hers would be a death better than most. The same could not be said of her companion. He glared over his surroundings; nothing but the clash of battle and the sound of carnage. Wherever the third one had gone, she apparently had found a better way to die than at his hands.

‘Coward,’ he snorted. Just as well, her death would have given no satisfaction.

His ear-frills pricked up. The sound of whirling metal was faint, but distinctive enough to be recognised between the sound of someone grunting behind him and something sinking into his back.

He jerked forwards, his own growl more angry than painful. Something gnawed at his flesh, worming its way in deeper on jagged metal legs with every twitch of his body. Far too concerned with who had thrown it, he ignored the sensation of warm liquid trailing down to his tail and turned with anger flashing in his eyes.

This one’s smile was not eager, but haughty. It was the breed of grin reserved for a weakling who believed themselves to have struck a decisive blow through cowardice. A human grin.

Gariath could not help but grin back; he had always enjoyed the mess of teeth and gum such grins inevitability became. If the longface saw her fate in his teeth, however, she did not show it. Instead, she slammed her spike against her breastplate in a challenge.

‘You pinks should pay more attention,’ she spat through her teeth. ‘Bites hard, doesn’t it?’

Gariath had no reply that could be voiced with words. He merely stalked forwards, his grin broadening as she took a cautious step backwards. In two quick strides, his claws were outstretched and he opened his jaws wide to offer his answer.

There was little about Gariath that surprised Asper any more. That hardly made him any less pleasant to be around, but while she might never grow used to his style of solving problems, she wasn’t prone to go running and screaming from him any more.

Though, she had to admit, when she pulled herself into Irontide to find him standing over a trio of corpses, a leather-bound handle jutting from his back, chewing what vaguely resembled a piece of jerked meat well, well past its intended consumption date, the urge was hard to resist.

In light of that, the concerned pair of words she uttered was a reasonable response, she thought.

‘You’re hurt.’

‘Good eyes, stupid.’ He spat something red and glistening onto the floor, licked his chops. ‘Better hope they don’t get cut out, otherwise your only use will be as food.’

Asper looked past him, to the thundering melee. Her first thought was not for the chaos raging in the hall, the bodies falling, the metal flashing, but rather for the pulsating sacs that hung from the pillars, the ceiling, that bobbed in the swiftly draining water. Amidst the bloodshed, they seemed disturbingly placid, like fleshy, throbbing flowers in a red-stained garden.

Occasionally, a longface broke free from the melee to dig a sharp implement into one of them. The frogmen shrieked in response, turning attentions away from other opponents to descend upon the assailant in a hail of spears and daggers.

The longfaces fought with equal vigour, welcoming the attacks with an upraised shield and a cruel smile, warding off their web-footed foes as their fellow females hacked into backs with spikes and jagged blades. The fight seemed scarcely even to Asper, with only five longface corpses on the ground and many more standing, against the quickly piling heaps and shrinking throngs of frogmen.

It was just as she had turned her attention back to Gariath and his new, metallic growth that the stones shook.

Heralded by a great, choked roar, they came pouring out of the fortress’s orifices: great, white serpents of salt and spray, churning the waters ivory in their wake and kicking up bubbling clouds as they swept towards the battle.

As titanic dead trees, their bodies glistening onyx, their eyes vacant and expressionless even in fury, the Abysmyths exploded from the water. With gangly, ungainly grace, they swept towards the throng, heedless of the cheering fervour from their smaller, paler companions. Claws lashed as they waded into the purple, rending flesh under talons, snapping bones in great webbed hands, tossing bodies aside with contemptuous disinterest.

The longfaces scurried backwards, closing against each other. In the span of a few screams, the three demons had diverted the tide, crushing and scarring without the slightest thought for the iron sinking into their hides.

Asper fought the urge to look away as an abominable claw seized a longface by her throat. Her struggling, snarling and kicking were nothing to the creature. Her companions, like so many gnats, were swept away by its free claw. In one blink of her white eye, the creature’s hand brimmed with glistening mucus.

In another breath, she hung like a limp, lamentable trophy in its grasp.

A silver blur cut the air. With an angry popping sound, the demon’s emaciated arm twitched, then fell from its shoulder. It looked to the stump with momentary confusion for the pulsing green ichor that gnawed at its flesh. It could scarcely form a surprised gurgle before metal flashed once more and a great, single-edged blade burst through its ribcage.

The sound of the creature’s agony was not a pleasant one. Asper threw hands to ears at the wail that burst from its jaws, winced as it collapsed to knees. In a spray of emerald, the blade was out and painting a silver moon at the thing’s neck. When she blinked, the fish-like head sank into the water with a plop.

‘QAI ZHOTH!’ the longfaces howled.

‘ULBECETONTH!’ the frogmen shrieked.

The Abysmyths remained silent, looking up from their slaughter as a hard, purple figure rose atop the fallen fiend’s corpse.

Asper immediately recognised the stark-white hair of the leader, her heavy iron wedge slick with green and black as she held it aloft and loosed a cry to her underlings. The shout was taken up, the throng was pushed forwards, and the killing began anew.

‘Ha,’ Gariath chuckled blackly. ‘Now it’s a fight.’

Asper was hard pressed to disagree as the female leapt from the demon’s body and hacked a swathe through frogmen, wading deeper into the battle. With purpose, the priestess realised, noting the shadowy archway at the farthest corner towards which she was cleaving.

Gariath, apparently, noted it too, taking a step forwards before she cleared her throat.

‘You’re aware there’s a knife jutting from your back, aren’t you?’ She took a step towards him, reaching for the handle. ‘Here, just hold on for a moment and I’ll-’

‘NO!’

He whirled on her with eyes flashing and the back of his hand colliding with her jaw. She collapsed to the floor, more shocked than pained. The dragonman loomed over her, blood pooling in the furrows of his scowling face, and levelled a single accusatory claw at her.

‘You will not ruin this for me.’

‘Ruin. .’ There was not nearly enough room on Asper’s face to express her incredulousness. ‘Are you demented?’

‘This is a beautiful fight,’ he said, sweeping a trembling arm over the melee. ‘You don’t belong here.’

That wasn’t entirely untrue, she realised as she clambered shakily to her feet. There was no reason to be here, trying to convince a murderous reptile to let her pull a chunk of metal out of his back. There was no reason to be here, in the midst of a battle between two breeds of creatures that should not be. There was no reason to be here, chasing friends who would kill each other in a heartbeat and undoubtedly deserved to die on their own merits.

Then why am I here? she wondered as she rubbed at her left arm. It still burned, seared her from the inside. She grimaced; the pain was coming in sharper now. It wasn’t supposed to come so soon, she thought, not after what had happened on the Riptide. But it still throbbed, still seared, still was angry.

Perhaps that was why she was here. For as she looked out over the melee, filled with people who wanted to kill her, to kill her companions, she knew of only one way to make it stop hurting.

No, no, no. She shook her head. Bite through it. You know you can. You don’t have to-

‘GNAW! BITE! GNASH!’

The war cry shattered her thoughts. She looked up as Gariath whirled about, both spying simultaneously the frenzied longface charging with shield and spike held high. Shrieking, the female lunged into the air, her weapon slick and whetted, her eyes crazed and bulging.

There was little time to appreciate the howl, however, for the echoing word of power that resounded behind her drowned out all other noise. There was the crack of thunder as a jagged bolt of electricity split the air to pierce the longface, reaching through her breastplate, through her breast, and leaping out of her back.

She landed, a smoking hole in her chest, muscles twitching with involuntarily convulsions, teeth forever locked in a sudden rigor. They both turned to regard the scrawny boy lurching forwards, Asper with shock, Gariath with ire. Dreadaeleon seemed rather unconcerned with either them or the woman he had just struck from the sky.

‘That one,’ the dragonman growled, ‘was mine.’

‘If I had thought you were capable of killing her in a timely manner, I would gladly have let you trade blows until one of you wet yourselves.’ The boy blew on his smoking fingertip. ‘I didn’t think I had time for that, though.’

Asper noted the tremble in the boy, the limp that was swiftly developing in one of his legs. He made no effort to hide it, nor his heavy breathing or the sudden bags that hung like purple fruits under his eyes.

‘You should probably sit back for a while,’ she suggested. ‘You. . don’t look so good.’

‘How about that,’ Dreadaeleon muttered, ‘I wasn’t actually lying when I said magic drains me. Thus, forming a raft made out of ice using only my brain actually might leave me looking not so good.’

‘There’s no need to get all smarmy about it.’

‘He gets smarmy over everything. The little runt could pull a gerbil out of his pants and he’d somehow manage to end up in a coma and complain about it.’ Gariath snorted, prodding the boy in the chest. ‘I’ve got a knife in my back, but I don’t go crying about it. You don’t get hugs for doing things right.’

‘What do I get for killing that last longface?’

‘Punched in your ugly face.’

‘The fact that you’re decidedly unbothered about a knife in your back and the troubling questions it raises does not concern me now.’ The wizard swept a glare about the carnage. ‘Where is the heretic?’

‘The what?’

‘The renegade,’ Dreadaeleon hissed. ‘The defiler of law. The male. Where is he?’

Answer came in the form of a sudden pyre that cast the room into a glowing orange hell. A vast circle formed within the battle, charred black figures collapsing around its centre. The male longface, however, seemed to pay these no mind as he turned the plume of flame that leapt from his palm upon the pulsating sacs infesting the hall.

With methodical patience, he reduced them to ash. With contemptuous casualness, he flitted a hand at any frogman that rushed towards him, sending them spiralling against the stones.

‘Ah,’ the dragonman replied, ‘there he is.’

‘Incredible.’

The male, having torched one cluster of the fleshy sacs, strode across the water upon stepping stones of ice, smirking slightly as he drew back curtains of frogmen to make a path for himself towards the next.

‘Simply incredible,’ the boy repeated, narrowing his eyes.

‘How so?’ Asper asked. ‘You can do the same thing, can’t you?’

‘Not like that,’ the boy muttered. ‘I made a boat out of ice and almost lost consciousness.’ He pointed a trembling finger. ‘He’s channelling three schools of magic at once after doing what he did to the Omens and he’s not even sweating.’

‘So. . he’s better than you.’

‘It’s simply not possible!’ His protest came as a wheeze. ‘Spells can’t just be hurled about without regard! There are laws! There must be pause, there must be rest, there-’ He stiffened suddenly, turning the expression of a scolded puppy upon Asper. ‘Wait, you think he’s better than me?’

‘Well. . I mean, you said he was.’

‘I said he did something different. That doesn’t make him better than me.’

‘I’m sure you’re very talented in other respects, but. .’ She scowled suddenly. ‘Does it really matter now?’

‘No,’ Dreadaeleon muttered. He studied the male through a scrutinising squint, his lip crawling further up his face with every spell cast. ‘If his magic were just stronger, I’d sense it. I’d know it.’ With cognitive suddenness, he slammed a fist into a palm. ‘He’s cheating.’

‘Cheating.’ Asper raised a brow.

‘Well, he is!’ Dreadaeleon stamped a foot. ‘Even in the most skilled hands, magic is a controlled burn. It strains the body, but not his. He’s not even breathing hard. He’s … I don’t know. . using something.’

‘Search him when he’s dead,’ Gariath growled.

With a low snarl, he reached behind him. His body jerked, spasmed, then relaxed at the sound of particularly thick paper being torn. Asper cringed as dark rivers poured down his back, then fought violently against the rising bile as he thoughtfully flicked a glistening fragment of red from one of the blade’s sharp prongs.

‘For now,’ the dragonman grunted, ‘there’s plenty to kill. If you’re smart, you’ll sit back and wait for a real warrior to finish it.’ He looked over the pair contemptuously. ‘Being that you’re human, though-’

‘Naturally.’ Dreadaeleon’s fingers tensed, beads of crimson glowing at their tips. ‘I don’t care who kills him. The laws of the Venarium must be upheld.’

With grim nods exchanged, the dragonman and not-yet man turned and stalked grimly towards the melee, ready to rend, to freeze, to bite and to burn. The battle raged with a yet-unseen fury, tides of pink and purple flesh colliding as the Abysmyths waded through to leisurely pluck opponents up and dismember them with disinterest.

Beautiful, Gariath thought.

The dragonman snorted. The wound felt good in his back. He would not be walking away from this fight, he knew. All that remained was to make certain that he got there before nothing was left to kill.

‘Wait!’

His eyelid twitched at the shrill protest. He scowled at Asper over his shoulder, meeting her objecting befuddlement with abject annoyance.

‘What about the others? Lenk, Kataria, Denaos-’

‘Dead, dead, dead quickly,’ he replied. ‘Honour them. Give them company in the afterlife.’

‘But I. .’ she whimpered, ‘I can’t fight.’

‘So die.’

‘I left my staff behind.’ Her excuse was as meek and sheepish as her smile. ‘I’m not much use. I. . could remain here and tend to you, though. You are bleeding quite badly and I-’

‘Moron!’ he roared, turning on her. ‘There will be nothing for you to tend to here. Nothing will survive if I can help it.’ He stomped towards her, scowling through his mask of gore. ‘You cried about wanting to fight.’ He thrust the jagged blade into her hands, staining her robes red. ‘Now prove if you’re worthy of life.’

‘I. . no, it’s not that.’ She tried to return the blade, her grasp trembling. ‘I don’t want to. . I mean, I can’t. My arm, you see, it-’

‘I don’t care,’ he snarled in reply. ‘No one will ever care what you did while you’re still alive.’ He snorted, spraying a cloud of red into her face. ‘Your life will be nowhere near as great as your death, if you manage to do it right.’

Her eyes were those of an animal: frightened, weak, quivering. But she held on to the blade, he thought, and more importantly, she stopped talking. For the moment, that was enough for him; if she managed to do something worthwhile in the time she still breathed, it would be a pleasant surprise.

She disappeared from his thoughts and his sight as he turned his back to her, stalking towards the throng. He ignored her cries of protest, ignored the boy who had already disappeared into the battle, ignored the thought of the other dead humans. He would mourn for Lenk later, laugh at the rest of them with his last breath.

The wound in his back felt good, the chill that filled him refreshing. The sound of his life spattering onto the ground was a macabre reassurance that he would not be walking away from this fight, that he would be seeing his ancestors before the day was done.

And he would not be going alone, he resolved.

When the first of the longfaces looked up at him, pulling her spike out of a pale corpse and loosing a war cry, it was not death that he smelled, nor sea, nor salt, nor fear. There was only the scent of rivers as she charged him.

Rivers and rocks.