This story contains horrifying situations, graphic violence and gore, explicit language, descriptions of psychological and emotional trauma, sexual themes that might include violence and challenges to consent, and implications or even portrayals of outright abuse. And the story's characters aren't exactly good role models, either. You are responsible for the stories you choose to read. This tale can be a lot of fun if monster stories, body horror, and various kinds of trauma don't bother you. But please, do know yourself well enough to make that decision. By continuing to read, you are agreeing that you -- and only you -- are liable for any feelings and affects the story might prompt.
You have been warned.
In this part of the story I am the one who Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you, Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.
-Excerpted from Pablo Neruda
* * *
He stood just inside the boutique, a young alpin in scarred armor and a helm in the shape of a bird’s skull. He purported to be a Watch officer, but had shunned their colors. He was a liar, of course. This was a man who knew the Thousand Years War, who knew the weight of a millennium, who knew its impossibility, who knew that no age, no empire, no faith endures unchanging for so long. This was a man who had seen enough of the war to see through the war, yet so young in his voice and his strength. The man was impossible, unnatural. He flicked his tale with wise patience, body held fast with the restraint of age, and the deep creases and scars in his armor were stained with old iron stolen from the lifeblood of men recently slain.
Sethian Skin smiled at the man, charmed by the audacity of his existence. The Maniaque had already robbed the man of some portion of it, drinking the magic from his blood like a predator licking up the taste of its first bite at the heels of a fleeing quarry. Already there was a hungry shifting of languid limbs inside the walls, the groaning of the Maniaque’s stomachs high up in the darkness so much like thunder off in the sky.
“I can hear the wind,” said the man in the armor. “Hear lamps burning.”
“My, that’s impressive,” laughed Sethian Skin, foot sliding back, ready to pivot and lead this morsel into the depths.
* * *
Indirk watched the fitful beacon in front of her, how it burned against the old window. It was a small, open cauldron of flame, a basin fed with stinking oil from underneath. Indirk held Avie in her palm, the small creature curled up and easing toward sleep as Indirk slid gentle fingertips over her pained body. It made her forget her own pain. She focused deeply on Avie’s fur, her little limbs and tiny bones, her thready muscles and the tiny bundles of soft meat they contained. Like that heart, that little heart, that pulsing glob of wet, knotted string at the animal’s core. Indirk focused so much on that body, wanting to feel only that body, to not be her own.
As she did so often, as in her first memories of being a child and realizing that life was so full of things so much more alive than she was, Indirk wanted to stop being herself. Anything else. Be anything else.
Wood groaned in the hallway outside the room. Instinct surged in Indirk, a clash between animal panic and military discipline that screamed warning and threw her to her feet just as the bow sang. Fast as a lightning strike, a black arrow flew from the dark toward her neck. Her quick movement had it tearing across her chest instead, the point cutting through skin and meat on its way past her. It had enough force in it to knock her down, and she fell among the empty, weathered crates.
This time, she kept Avie in her hands, closing them around the fragile creature. Indirk snarled and cursed, rolling back among the crates as the wood of her attacker’s bow groaned once more. Indirk buried her claws in a crate and slung it upward, throwing it toward the hall where the arrow had come from. The crate struck the doorframe and burst into splinters.
She took a moment to lay Avie on the floor and put an upturned crate over the little animal. As the crate descended, Avie roiled and turned panicked animal eyes on Indirk, who hissed at her, “Stay put.”
Then came the scraping movement of a fast-coming rush and a huff of breath above her. Indirk, with no weapon but for her own claws, turned with a shout to find herself facing a dark, hooded figure with a black arrow nocked to a bow, an iron arrowhead pointed at her face.
Beneath the hood, Adishesk scowled, his hissing voice full of hate. “Hello, quiet-blood.”
* * *
The iron cage closed heavily, trapping Sethian Skin inside. The soldier in the bird-skull helmet spat, “You can stay here until I’ve toured the rest of your shop. Then me and a few friends will be back to talk to you about that mannequin in there.”
Pulling the brim of his hat down, Setihan Skin hid his laughter and face-splitting smile. “Oh, my. Well, you’ve gotten one over on me. Congratulations, sir.”
“Both the dancer Norgash and our agent,” the man was saying, unaware of how eagerly the Maniaque waited for him to exit the stoney hall that even in this moment protected him. The Maniaque’s beastly hunger radiated like a heat inside of Sethian Skin’s mind, focused on the gaps in the man’s iron armor, an animal longing to break the man out of his shell and suck up such a fragile, wet, warm body. “That’s just to give you something to think about while you’re waiting for me.”
“Don’t worry about me, sir. I’ll play a counting game with my friend here. Take your time, oh dutiful guardian of the people. And, if you can?” Sethian Skin indulged. He let his head tilt, his hat lean, his black teeth shine happily at the man. Sethian Skin looked forward to the feeling of satisfaction that he knew was coming, the meal that so teasingly inched toward its feast. “Have fun.”
* * *
Indirk found herself staring past the arrow at a man who looked to have been cut from the shadows of the Laines, the magic of the Voice almost audible upon his body. She glowered at him. “Did Nymir send you?”
“I don’t think he cares,” Adishesk answered, his voice low with loathing. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you since I got here. Plenty of time to make up my own mind about you.”
“Don’t waste time. Kill me if that’s your plan. I’m not going to give you a lot of chances.”
“Pathetic creature like you. Malformed little- Dammit! Let go!”
Indirk grabbed the bow and shoved it to a side, the arrow flying and hitting the ground beside her with a loud crack of metal, stone, and wood. The strength of two carnivates pulled against one another and ripped the dark wood of the bow to splinters, the string singing as its tension released. Indirk tried to lunge at Adishesk, but his tail swung up and its spikes struck at her face, small cuts that had her recoiling on instinct. He struck her with his forearms and threw her away from him.
Hitting the floor and rolling, Indirk got herself up with a pained groan and stumbled against the wall. It was a small room. There wouldn’t be any running away here, so she kept her claws ready and bared her teeth.
Adishesk sneered at her. “Look at you. What even are you?” He circled away and then back, a low, smooth animal movement that had him clambering atop one of the larger crates so he could glare down at Indirk. His horns held his hood off his head like a shadow hanging over him. He lifted one hand, showing off claws like curved blades. “Am I really supposed to buy that you’re from the Laines? No horns. Teeth almost blunt. Barely any claws at all. Flat-footed like a sollin. Weak.”
“This going to be some racial purity bullshit?” Indirk growled. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Worse is that you put the Laines behind you.”
“As soon as I could. Hope I never see the place again.” She wished desperately that she hadn’t been taken from there, even now that she could take back what she’d lost. “I hope the League burns the Deepwood down.”
“The Voice. The Green Voice in your blood. You silenced it, quiet-blood.”
“Oh, that.” Indirk shook her head and forced a bitter chuckle. “A warmongering echo from a thousand years ago. Yeah, I silenced it.”
Adishesk snarled his disgust. “What are you trying to be?”
* * *
Phaeduin stepped into the red hall. Behind him, he heard that low, earthy voice grating, 15 and 7, 22 and un-10, 2 and 93, 95 and 3 to 3, 104 and un-7, 97. Grumbling, Phaeduin took his helm by its beak and wrenched it from his head, letting it clatter free from his horns. His thin hair fell over his eyes, which reminded him of Myrel, which was why he was here. Myrel, Myrel, precious Myrel, what have these fuckers done with our child? Oh, Ayel, they've taken your baby out of my hands, but they don't know what these hands can do. They’ll find out.
Behind the red cloth, Phaeduin heard the movement of air, as though from the exhaling of concealed vents. The cloth on the walls shivered. The wind sounded far away. Phaeduin paced down the hall, some animal aggression pulling a deep growl out of his chest at the sound of that wind. He paused to tear some of the cloth off the wall, revealing wooden panels behind it. The wall was unassuming enough, but he could feel wind seeping from between the panels. He dug the figners of his gauntlet behind a panel and tore part of it off, but there was just the raw, hard wood of the structure behind it.
The sound of wind moved down the hall. Phaeduin followed it, stepping into a room that shone brightly of yellow and purple cloth and orange fire from the brazier hanging in its center.
* * *
Headless mannequins encircled Phaeduin. The ceiling was a whorl of yellow and purple cloth spiraling out from a burning lamp. On the tables between the mannequins were stacks of pages under paperweights and inkwells. Phaeduin took up a paperweight in his hand, the thing a heavily stitched pouch of cloth and leather in the shape of a bramble, or maybe a cluster of roots, much like all the others strewn about. They were dyed in red and purple and blue. Beneath it were sketches of clothing designs, but Phaeduin couldn't make sense of them. The shirts and tunics, dresses and pants, looked too much like the figures they were meant to envelope.
The drawings looked like people layered in the skins of other people, perfectly form-fitting, or maybe people peeled open to reveal an endless series of slightly smaller people inside. There was a disconcerting heaviness to the black ink on the pages.
Phaeduin curled his nostrils in disgust. He put his dagger through the pile of pages and then scattered them, torn, to the floor, watching the shreds of ink and paper spin around him, swinging his tail to scatter them further. He watched how they drifted. He listened for magic.
He heard the song. It was low and sad, echoing, less like a dirge and more like a melancholy chant. It reminded him of some mournful wail in the far-off, an old man's last howl stolen by a jealous wind.
The shreds of paper floated in the air. The cloth draped over the ceiling and the walls subtly shifted, pulling in and out. Why would these pages need paperweights? Why was there a wind this deep inside the building? It felt cavernous. It felt deep.
Phaeduin followed the song. There were racks hung with clothes and draped with fabric behind the tables, and Phaeduin scattered a number of half-finished garments to reveal stacked crates against the cloth-covered walls. The crates were long and wide and shallow. Dress boxes. Maybe trapped mannequins. The boxes sang with that deep, deep wail.
Over the boxes, the purple and yellow sheets of cloth that concealed the walls continued to shiver. It sucked in and out. Phaeduin watched this movement a few times before a sudden, panicked instinct rushed through him. Like a rodent with only the barbs on its back to defend itself, Phaeduin felt suddenly small and trapped and lashed out with his sword, stabbing the cloth viciously. The blade tore a hole and impacted on a wood panel behind the cloth. Dark wood. Nothing but wood.
Just a wall.
But why was there a wind? Phaeduin could almost hear the suck of air in the hole he'd made, smell the stink leaking out of it. Was there some hollow beyond? Some alley? Some secret hall? An abandoned shaft to some dungeon? Phaeduin listened for any other magic, but there was no song except for the two: the nightmare song that permeated this place and the howl of the crates before him.
He fixed his dagger in the lid of the topmost crate and prised it open.
759 and 17, Counted the earthy voice down the hall. 776 and un-15 to 7. 671? Don’t ask! Be confident! Are you right or wrong?
* * *
Indirk had never felt a pain quite like that pain, a deep shock of fire that seemed to burst from every bone in her body all at once only to roil impotently beneath her skin. She did not breathe. Her heart did not beat. Her body ached for movement and her chest burned for air, but there was no air to breathe. Where once a world had been, there was nothing but Avie’s small, bloodied body hanging from those claws, and with a shaking jaw Indirk could scarcely whisper, “Don’t you fucking dare.”
Adishesk wordlessly turned his claws up, showing Indirk his hand as he crushed Avie against his palm. The movement was simple. Blood burst like juice from fruit. Avie convulsed for an instant, let out one loud shriek, and then Adishesk threw Avie into the basin of fire by the window.
Indirk didn’t make any sound. She moved as though pulled by a chain. Adishesk jumped aside and watched her with detached fascination. Indirk charged in a straight line, throwing aside crates and debris, stumbling heedless until she reached the basin and shoved her hands into the fire. The basin spilled to one side, throwing burning oil across the floor and dappling the wall. In her hands, Indirk held a narrow, burning form, and it would not stop burning. Oil burned over her hands and she didn’t feel it. She clasped the bundle of flame to her chest and bent low over it, and the burning did not stop. She tried to smother it with her body, but it burned on.
* * *
Phaeduin threw the crate's lid down. Amo lay within, naked and at rest, deathly pale. Their arms at their sides were unnaturally still. Amo did not seem to breathe. Phaeduin thought Amo was dead for a moment, but then he noticed the twitching of Amo's eyes beneath their sunken, purple eyelids. Dreaming? Awake but paralyzed? Phaeduin lifted one armored hand toward Amo, and heard the magic change. As the iron of Phaeduin’s gauntlet set down against Amo’s chest, there was an audible hiss that interrupted the song, making its notes deeper, driving it to chaos.
When Phaeduin pulled his hand away, he left a subtle red burn on Amo’s skin where the iron had touched. Amo stirred fitfully now, head swaying, breath shaking their shoulders. They whispered under their breath, Beneath the world, beneath the world forever. Briefly, Phaeduin remembered the sight of poor Myrel in the alleyway, the fire of the Sickle-Sough Festival burning overhead, Myrel’s panicked, pained voice hissing, It burns it burns it burns it burns.
The purple and yellow cloth pulled in and out. An unpleasantly warm breeze moved through the room, the sigh of some patient thing. Yes, that was it, Phaeduin was sure. He had no explanation for his certainty except for an instinct that told him that he was very small, that some great and hungry eyes were set upon him.
It burns it burns, Myrel had said. Where was Myrel now? Did it burn now?
Phaeduin lifted his palm over Amo’s chest. “I’m sorry, Amo, but I don’t have time to be gentle.” Like so much magic in Gray Watch, this spell abhorred iron, so Phaeduin pressed his gauntlet firmly down upon Amo’s chest. The music of the containment spell erupted into madness, its failing power echoing all around them. Heat rose up around Phaeduin’s hand, black smoke pouring from Amo’s chest with the sound and stink of searing meat. “Amo!” Phaeduin bellowed. “Amo, Wake up!”
With a tormented bellow, Amo surged upright, arms flailing in fear. As Phaeduin stepped away, he felt a wind rush over him. He glanced up at the cloth overhead, seeing nothing right away, but there was a strange tension in the cloth as wind pushed it outward. Something moved behind it.
Something large moved above the ceiling.
* * *
Half-Face Mirian stood on the muddy road beneath the tower where he’d earlier left Indirk. The black arrow in Mirian’s hand, a weight which he shifted back and forth in thought, should have belonged to a Ranger of the Laines. Even if one had penetrated this far into the city, they would not have abandoned the arrow so easily. In a hurry? Lost it somehow? It didn’t make sense.
Of course, he already had his theory. The suspicion had settled in his gut as soon as he’d seen Indirk light up the lamp to call her comrades. He wondered if they were going to take her back, or if they were going to kill her. Mirian could not afford to let Indirk die, but he also could not openly interfere and ruin her chances. She’d turn on him if he did that.
As he stood, pondering, there came a clattering sound in the air. It reminded him of the jars of sand that people made for the Sickle-Sough Festival, but no. This was sharper. It moved. Turning slowly, Mirian’s one-eyed gaze followed the rattling sound, but did not see its source. Something in the dark. Taking careful, quiet steps in the mud, Mirian approached the side of the tower.
The rattling sound ascended into the night, invisible and swift.
Where had he heard that sound before?
* * *
Crouched on her knees, forehead to the floor, Indirk held a small, sinewy, blackened thread of matter that had once been Avie. It wasn’t Avie anymore. The fire had gone out, but smoke still billowed horribly from the burned thing, from Indirk’s hands, from her chest where she’d held it. There still wasn’t any pain. She felt herself screaming. She didn’t know why she was screaming. The feeling inside of her was neither pain nor terror. It wasn’t any kind of emotion at all.
It was the feeling of dirt on a child’s hands, who had been working for two weeks, only pausing to collapse from exhaustion and then rise again, as she used the small claws on her little hands to dig up the earth for dozens of graves and drag adult bodies into them. At the time, it had made sense to leave her parents for last, because they’d said she could only explore outside while they watched her, so their empty, soulless gazes should to be on her while she buried everyone else.
The soldiers from Pharaul had found her like that, hesitating over the bodies of her parents, and there had been Cassia Claston, white-haired and white-skinned like a woman cut out of Pharaul’s hoary ice, in an airy blue coat pinned close to her by the rifles slung over her shoulders and the bandolier hung with black pistols. Cassia had picked the little girl from the dirt like something to be collected, ignoring the child’s protested screams of, “I’m not done yet! I’m not done yet! Let me finish!” until much later, when the child’s continuing voice was hoarse from shouting, and Cassia had promised, I’ve sent someone back to bury them for you.
And then, a decade later, when Indirk had pushed through the overgrowth that had reclaimed the fallen tower, the brambles and weeds that had overtaken the graves the child once buried, slowly realizing that nobody had ever come here after its destruction. And there, tearing up the roots of undergrowth to reveal the place where her parents had fallen, ignoring the pained screams of the Green Voice around and inside of her, Indirk had found their unburied bones.
Yes, this was that feeling, that same emotion that had taken her all the way back to Pharaul to strike at the Warmaker in futility, to shout, “You lied! You lied to a child, you witch!” and Cassia Claston, who somehow didn’t seem to have aged a day, had looked up from the Seat she’d made a throne and in those eyes was a horrible, callous understanding. Cassia knew right away, intuitively, what Indirk meant. She knew the lie, the first lie, the primordial lie from which all the others had spilled. She knew and did not care.
This. This, right now. This death was that lie, as if that moment had never ended, that childlike betrayal still hot behind her eyes. This was the sharp, endlessly cutting edges of a broken world.
This knot of burned meat that had been Avie was at once the bones, the dirt, the graves, the rifle that Cassia had put in a child’s hands. It was everything that had led to this. The butchery of Landed Bardis. Little hands prying apart warm bones. A rifle’s recoil on a thin, adolescent shoulder. Training with Vont’s Navy and watching a fleet sink in the Starlost Expanse. Early missions. Assassinations. Killing on reflex. Shooting Hado. Betraying Pharaul. Dreaming about Norgash’s body and waking up to fuck Mardo. Watching him fall to his knees in front of her to ask her if there had been love.
And this was Indirk telling him he was nothing. Nothing.
Nothing.
This was nothing. It was the nothing that lay at the end of everything she’d ever done, which had haunted her since the beginning. All this time, she’d seen only glimpses of it, and in her heart she’d feared the truth of it, but it had always been there.
“You’ve set the fucking tower on fire,” Adishesk muttered, his shadowy form pacing above Indirk, watching her shriek and shake. He was a dark silhouette moving in flickering red light, as the blaze from the oil began to crawl up the wall near where the lamp had been. The crackling sound of the growing blaze was so much like that warehouse in the Sickle-Sough Festival, so much so that there was even a rattling sound beneath the breath of the fire. Of course, Adishesk hadn’t been there for that.
Maybe if he had been, he would’ve suspected something, but he didn’t. He just stood over Indirk with his flexing claws, his snarling voice, “I was going to drag this out more, you know.”
Indirk fell quiet. She listened to the rattling sound. She did not have any thoughts about it, much how one does not think about the sound of the wind. It just made sense: in all this shit, the sound of the rattling just made sense. Like the sound of Adishesk suddenly crying out in shock and pain just made sense, like the rush of hot blood splashing over Indirk’s shoulders just made sense.
And when she looked up at the rattling sound, it was not Adishesk she looked at. He was gone. Instead, there was the firelight shining on scales, boney plates shivering to illicit that horrible clatter. There were fangs dripping red, a sanguine wetness over a gathering of many black eyes. Half of its face torn open where she’d once shot it in the mouth, the huge serpent Anbash held its head high above the coil of its body. In this small space, it was so large, and its teeth were right in front of Indirk’s eyes.
* * *
Wooden panels clattered. Stagnant air stirred cloth and paper throughout the room. Phaeduin felt the breath slide through his fur like a gust through grass, a shiver-inducing ripple from the base of his horns to the tops of his hooves and the tip of his tail. He heard the sighing song of some abysmal magic, the living emanation of some ensorcelled being.
He heard it beneath Amo’s pained screams, the helpless sollin grasping at their black-scorched chest.
From beneath squares of yellow and purple cloth overhead, Phaeduin glimpsed the first movement, the slow exploratory reach of some long, narrow, thready limb, sparsely furred. Like some behemoth spider hid behind the cloth all around. Phaeduin drew his dagger and his sword as he watched the thin limb slowly emerge, meter by meter, one rickety, knotted elbow at a time.
The limb ended in a pointed feeler like the tip of a spear ready to thrust. It moved from side to side, taunting Phaeduin, like one hunter holding an animal’s attention while its fellow hunters snuck around…
Phaeduin turned too late to the many spidery limbs reaching hungrily for his back.
* * *
Beyond Anbash, where fire grew up the walls of the room, someone crouched in feathery robes like a gray moth among fresh ashes. The gems on her ivory mask—cracked down the middle, stitched with a line of gold where it had been broken by a pistol shot—shone in the firelight.
Norgash was here.
Indirk did not care. With Avie dead in her hands and Anbash looming above her, Indirk found herself thinking about Mardo’s Guardian Lion. Was that where things had gone so wrong? If Indirk hadn’t killed Hado, would Mardo have…?
No, don’t do that. Don’t make it about him. Mardo had betrayed her long before that. This, whatever this was—this unshakable destiny, this guilt and punishment—was a thing far older. All of her hate, all of the death and the torment she’d lived, all went all the way back to that forest: the Deepwood of the Laines, the cool and safe shadows that should have been her birthright, the home that she’d been denied. The home she’d turned her back on.
I want you to call it up, Cassia Claston had said to the little girl, barely eight, when she’d begun her early training in marksmanship and combat. That ancient anger inside you. You feel it, right? The Green Voice. It wants you to live violently. I want you to call it up. I want you to use it.
I don’t want that anger, Indirk had said, so small, even then just wanting peace. I don’t want to feel an anger that big.
That anger has power you’ll need.
I don’t want it.
Well, Indirk fucking wanted it now. She wanted to turn it against Cassia Claston and Pharaul, against the spiteful Rangers of the Laines, against Mardo and Norgash and this damned Serpent. She wanted to turn it against everything. She wanted to gather as much anger as she could and tear down as much as she could, as long as she could, even if that was the only thing she ever felt again. Even if it lasted a thousand years.
You’ve been touched by the voice of that which is elder to me, the Writhewife Sjeze had said to her, I can feel the Green’s word in your blood.
That’s not what I wanted, Indirk had said.
Then what did you want?
Anbash rattled, the sound of its hunger, lowering its head, opening its mouth.
“I guess you want justice for your face,” Indirk said quietly. “Justice for Hado, too, maybe?”
Norgash made a small, confused sound near the wall. Her mask tilted in question, eye-like gems flickering with firelight.
“I get it.” Indirk laid Avie’s charred remains on the floor and set a gentle hand against them, as though to soothe the resting creature. “This little love was the only love in my life, and now it’s dead.”
With a rattling hiss, Anbash rushed down at Indirk, its razor fangs snapping closed around her.
* * *
One thousand and nine hundred to ten, said the earth voice down the hall.
“Come, monster!” Phaeduin bellowed as spidery limbs thrust at him. He couldn’t count them. The air had come alive. He swept his sword in front of him, the iron-lined blade chopping through arms like a blunt scythe through weeds. Black fluid flew and the air hissed as though with heat, pungent ink bubbling and fuming on his armor. Sharp, arachnid feelers punched at his arm, blows that pushed Phaeduin across the floor. But he didn’t fall, even as a well-aimed strike hit his thumb and sent his sword clattering to the floor.
Ten thousand and nine hundred to a hundred.
Spinning, thrashing, shouting, Phaeduin grabbed spidery limbs and struck them with his dagger, listening to the bestial whine from above the ceiling. “I have stolen the power of the Everliving! I cannot die!” Phaeduin snarled, embedding his dagger in one thick limb and leaving it there. Instead, he worked his arms and his legs, tearing arms apart at the elbows, crushing them under his hooves. There were too many to really defend against, and they scratched at his armor, seeking vulnerable gaps. They worked through the buckles and under his arms, stabbing him in the sides and the ribs. Phaeduin tore the limbs out of his body and struggled on.
A hundred thousand and un-ninety to a thousand.
Ducking his horns close to his collar, Phaeduin managed to keep the limbs away from his neck for a time. But only for a time. One broke through, scratching past his windpipe and stabbing down behind his chestplate, piercing the meaty hollow of his lungs. Phaeduin didn’t hesitate to grab this limb by its nearest joint, breaking it apart, ripping the stabbing arm out of his body. As black fluid fell over him, Phaeduin choked and vomited a meal’s worth of blood. “Cow to me, death,” he choked wearily, sagging. “I’ll not die. Can’t die until…”
Ten thousand and un-nine to a thousand.
The limbs retreated for just a moment, then rushed back all at once. Through the sides, through the shoulders, through the neck, they pierced Phaeduin like spears from every side. They lifted him from the floor, carrying him toward the burning lamp in the center of the ceiling. “I’ll not die…” Phaeduin pushed against the arms, but lacked the strength now to break them. “Not until…” He kicked his hooves, swung his tail, and it changed nothing. Reaching beneath his chestplate, he withdrew the heavy pistol from within, pointing it toward the ceiling.
A thousand and un-two to four hundred and ninety-nine.
Above Phaeduin, the lamp shifted to one side. The cloth on the ceiling folded away. Wooden panels turned and opened. Above the ceiling there was darkness, and there was movement in the darkness. It seemed to open and reach toward him, some concealed jaw, some circle of night-wrought teeth. At the sight, Phaeduin took one more breath into his shivering chest and let out a wordless roar as he fired the pistol into the dark. The weapon’s power shook him, its sound echoing in the dark above. Each iron slug struck something, and dark fluid spilled over Phaeduin’s face.
Two un-one.
The pistol was empty. It clicked uselessly with each pull of the trigger. Still, Phaeduin rose into descending darkness, until the teeth eclipsed his sight and he felt the mass of the night closing around him. Breathlessly, Phaeduin muttered to nothing, Myrel, Myrel, our treasured Myrel, who will…?
Teeth closed tight around Phaeduin’s neck and pulled. The limbs withdrew, letting his body hang, and the beast slung him around by his neck until it broke free. Phaeduin’s headless body fell, heavy in its armor, against one of the half-clothed mannequins below. They fell together, fine, elegant cloth draped over the black-stained armor.
One, un-one, and therefore, nothing.
* * *
Indirk roared and rose against the serpent, grabbing its fangs with her hands. As the great jaw slammed her into the stone floor, she tore a fang from its mouth, lifting it like a knife to stab at the serpent’s eyes. Anbash bit, then recoiled, flailing in confusion at the sudden pain. The sheer power of the enormous beast threw Indirk back. She trailed blood where it had ripped into her side, and she hit the brick wall so hard that she should’ve lost consciousness.
But in the darkness that swept over her vision, she saw green. In the shriek that tore out of her mouth, she felt some deeper voice rising to replace her own. It kept her awake. As her broken body sagged and bled, her eyes opened to see a confused serpent writhing as blood shot from its face in spurts. In the fire, she saw something she hated and wanted: Norgash.
The masked woman was on her feet now, stepping back to give the writhing serpent room. Light flared beneath the woman’s robes, behind her mask. Norgash’ magic was a clattering song, much like the sound that Anbash made as it coiled around itself, lifted its head, and surged once more toward Indirk.
Finally, Indirk felt what she’d wanted: a bestial need to feel meat around her claws and living heat in her mouth. There was a place deep inside of herself that she could to sink into, something she thought she’d put away long ago, but it never left. It never could have. Since the beginning it had been part of her.
With a snarl that was deeper than her own throat, with a voice that was not her own, Indirk roared, “Come get fucked!” as she threw herself at the oncoming fangs.
