Arc 9: Chapter 14: Pernicious |
In the moments before I was devoured, I caught something in the corner of my eye. In the water, a yellow glow had begun to creep through the murk. Something floated at the center of that light, a square object of wood and metal.
Narahn, I have perhaps been too harsh on you. With a surge of will, of purely demonic defiance, I broke free of the hag’s paralyzing hold and dove for the water. She let out a high screech and grabbed at me, her claws raking across the membrane of my left wing. She tore it and sent a ripping agony through my back, but I was no stranger to pain. I stretched my wings out, glided over the surface of the lake, and grasped Didikas’s puzzle box.
I’d given it to Narahn during our journey through the tombs. In my phantom shape I could not carry it, and had told the alchemist that we might need it to defeat the Well’s denizen. I had not explained why, and yet he’d heeded me. When he found he couldn’t cross over to this side, he’d instead thrown me a weapon.
He could have abandoned me down here, returned to the twins and escaped this place. I would dwell on it later, but in the moment my actions were driven by reflex.
The brass finishings burned my fiendish skin, but it was not so intolerable as cold iron or sacred gold. I’d already figured out how to solve the puzzle and still held the scrap of magic I’d stolen from its maker. All I needed to do was twist it once more.
I did. The object began to shudder in my hands and grew rapidly warmer even as I alighted on one of the smaller island’s of drowned masonry scattered about the lake. But of course, no amount of distance would save me from Zebulga in that place. She could be where she willed, and had all the ancient sorceries of her star-spurned kin at her disposal.
She emerged from the water even as I turned, enormous now and enraged. She was a thing of deep and lightless oceans, fanged maw wide enough to swallow me whole, eyes shifted to the sides of an oily, bloated head and staring with milky malice like a blind fish.
But before she could swallow me, there came the sound of rattling steel and a goliath in black armor stepped forward from the crackling fog that billowed from the puzzle box. I perceived a horned silhouette not unlike my own, broad shoulders made wider still by spiked pauldrons, the bones of nameless monsters clanging from meshes of rope about an iron-clad frame.
Fell let out a roar of rage and grief that made my whole being tremble — in pleasure, in sympathy — and swung forth with his hammer. He’d been lost in the throws of violent mourning since the moment he learned of Ekasne’s death, and I was glad I had not been the first one he saw upon being freed. His maul broke Zebulga’s scaled flesh, splattered acrid blood across the island, and she let out a roar of pain and recoiled.
I watched, transfixed, as Zebulga slammed down with one enormous limb. Fell sidestepped it and took a hook from his belt, one attached to a thin, strong chain. Almost negligently, he rammed it into the hag’s flesh, then produced another and caught her by the bottom lip. When she jerked back, she took Fell with her, and without hesitation he leapt onto the monster’s head, secured there now like a charioteer. His eyes glowed through the slits in his helm, and where the blue-black surface of his armor touched the demon, she burned.
She is effected by metal as well, I realized. I hadn’t been sure, not after she’d spoken the name of the God-Tyrant’s city aloud.
Zebulga tried to knock Fell from her back, but he yanked the chain he’d hooked her with and took her blow off course, causing her to smash one of the free-standing columns jutting from the water.
Yet blind strength wasn’t the only weapon at the Night Hag’s disposal. A reeking, oily fog billowed from her jaws, ballooning out to engulf her and the Eusite.
I thrust my left hand out to the side and made a whip of flame in it. The lash curled out and caught Fell just before he was fully consumed by that phantom brume, pulling him from the hag’s back so he went rolling over the gravel. I dismissed the whip before it could do much harm, but it still left a line of blistered metal on the outlander’s cuirass.
Fell was on his feet in a moment, smoldering with anger. I flinched as he advanced on me, his hammer lifted for a swing. He was berserk, mad. He would destroy me.
He was exposed. Raw. An open wound.
I threw myself forward just as he swung and went into him. Our agony joined together, became one whirling force, a storm of torment. He tried to push me out, but he may as well have tried to vomit up a deluge. We turned together as Zebulga came on again, an avalanche of teeth and gray fog and rage. She’d seen us fighting and taken her chance to devour us both. Something bright sparked in the depths of her throat.
Fell and I threw ourselves to the side — no telling who’d made the decision — as the hag breathed fire. The flame was bile yellow and detonated against the island with the sound of the wailing dead, and where it spilled over the ancient masonry it boiled and expanded to the point of eruption, a devouring cancer that bloated the statues so they resembled drowned corpses.
I let Fell take over our actions then. He advanced implacably even as my presence caused his muscles to spasm inside his skin. If I remained in him much longer, he would become Woed.
Fell grabbed onto one of the chains still dangling from Zebulga’s face. As she reared up for another blast of that cancer-fire, he jerked hard and threw her off balance. He climbed atop her head, avoided being bucked by slamming the sharp back-end of his maul into her brow before managing to clamor up so he stood straight. Then, with one last mighty swing and a roar like a furnace fire, he slammed his hammer directly down into the center of the hag’s weakened, brittle skull.
She fell onto her stomach, her chin slamming against the island’s shore hard enough to make the whole thing shudder. The monster scraped and clawed for a moment, but the strength had all gone out of her. Her head was a bloody, shapeless mess from countless hammer blows, one eye nothing more than a swollen wound, her fangs broken inside her mouth. Much of her mass remained in the water, so I only saw her fish-like head, the long arms and humped back.
Still, she lived. She was primeval, after all, immortal. But that was only her spirit, and like me her vessel could be slain. Already it had taken incredible damage.
We slid down to the island, then I left Fell and reformed. The Eusite collapsed, exhausted and used up as I stepped close to Zebulga. I beat my wings once so the wounded one sprayed an arc of blood across her sagging visage.
“Who warned you that I was coming here?” I demanded.
The hag’s one remaining eye, milk-white and seemingly blind, rolled towards me. An exhausted, wheezing laugh escaped her maw, and I saw many shadowy limbs reaching out through the remnants of her teeth. The souls she’d devoured trying to escape.
“No one… warned me.” Her voice was barely more than a hollow whisper, the sound emerging from deep within that cavernous throat. “I just… knew. All children return… to their mothers.”
“I have no mother,” I snapped. “I merely am.”
“Ask… your… elders. The oldest demons know… the truth. Those who can… think… know what they are.”
“And what is that?” I asked.
That one remaining eye gleamed. “Ruined. You have no hope… only endless torment. Until all things are… dark. Until all gods… are eaten and all worlds… dust.”
I scoffed and turned my back on her, my gaze drifting down to the puzzle box. I considered trapping her in it, but dismissed the idea. She would escape eventually. She'd once been truly mighty, I felt certain, but all this time down here, cut off from the dimensions from which she drew power, she had withered.
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I closed my eyes and considered what to do next even as I savored my victory over this elder evil. Some of her words did linger in my thoughts, however, including one phrase she had insisted on repeating. The Urrson had said something very similar. He had called me his sibling as well.
“Tormentsister, is it?” A smile touched my lips. “I like it.”
Zebulga’s remaining eye gleamed. “You may come to regret your conceit.”
I did, and thoroughly, but the me of that time only sneered at the beaten witch. “I am weary of sore losers. But if what you made us for was to devour gods, then perhaps I can start here? After all, if what you say is true, then you are one yourself.”
She did not laugh then.
There is little to say of our exit from the Tombs, or of the days that followed. Fell would say nothing, and when we finally felt sunlight, he stumbled off into the city to be swallowed by the crowds and the dust. Both harrowed and hardened by his trial, Narahn was more susceptible to suggestion and I managed to convince him to take credit for slaying the Old Woman in the Well. His name spread across the city, and eventually found its way to the ears of the Exalted.
It would not be the young alchemist’s last battle, but those stories are not mine and better left for another to tell.
I engaged in no more dramatics over the weeks following our battle against the hag. I sat in my tower room and digested everything Zebulga had told me even as I digested her. Deacon came to call on me, as I knew he would, stepping out of the shadows exactly as he’d done the night I destroyed my alliance with Didikas.
“Vicar is pleased,” he told me. “Already, word of Zebulga’s death is spreading in Orkael.”
I shrugged with one shoulder, not taking my attention from my work. My finger traced the fine scratches on a fragment of clay. My room was much transformed in recent days, the walls piled with tablets and scrolls, the generously sized bed pushed aside to make room for desks and shelves. It resembled Narahn’s study, though I had more room and more time to dedicate to organizing. Some pieces in my nascent collection were borrowed, or stolen, from the librarian cults, others bartered for from traveling scholars. A good number had been pilfered from the Tombs, the most recent batch brought to me by Tej that very same day.
“You have your favor,” Deacon said after a moment waiting for me to reply that I disappointed. “What will you do with it?”
“Save it for a cold day in Hell, I expect.” I glanced at him. “Or did you think I’d changed my mind?”
He didn’t need to say that he’d hoped it. Like all damned souls, the creature who had been Meshann was lonely.
But I was possessed. The end of the Lodge of the Wurm and the revelations in the Tombs had put a new fire in me. I no longer cared about the Exalted or his puppet court. I did not know if he was a player or a pawn in Heavenswar, but either way it would place me further in bed with the Zosite to get near him.
Of course, I was not above playing the mercenary even then. I would need to be in bed with someone in order to continue indulging in my new hobby.
“You have become a scholar,” Deacon said as he paced through my study.
I squinted at a depression in the tablet, unsure if it was part of the weathered script or just a scratch. “Before Heavenswar began, I was a scribe of the Red Bloom. Much of my time there was spent doing work much like this, when I wasn’t acting as a proxy between her and her warlocks. I was also regularly summoned and interviewed by the priests of Nekhral to expand their knowledge of dimensional geometry. I am no illiterate, Meshann.” Glancing back at him I added, “Or do you believe all Abgrûdai are dumb animals?”
It was a common sentiment amongst gods and devils alike. Deacon's expression was unreadable behind his mask of human skin, though I knew he was angry at my continued use of his old name. After a moment, he lifted a hand in surrender. “I’m just not used to seeing this side of you. It surprised me.”
I scoffed and returned to my transcription. “Long before your Iron Hell was built, the ruins of empires fell into our domain. There are hoards of lost knowledge in the Abyss that could fill the vaults beneath this city a million times over, with room to spare.”
“I offended you,” Deacon said quietly. “I did not mean to.”
I paused, and realized with a moment’s consideration that he had. How often had I been compared to an animal, or called a thoughtless harlot? No matter that I’d been advising priests and emperors since the grunting denizens of this continent were still learning how to cast bronze. In the eyes of most every other immortal, I was and would always be merely a succubus, a peon of the Adversary.
Of course, if what Zebulga said was true, then…
I refocused on my work. “Your message is delivered, crowfriar. Was there anything else?”
In the periphery of my vision, Deacon inclined his head. “The Vicar wants that mortal of yours. The physik in the Nails.”
“You cannot have him,” I said coldly. “Attempt to claim his soul, coerce him into a contract, or make any sort of bargain or pact with him, and I will fight you for it.”
“Why?” Deacon asked. “What is he to you?”
“Why do you care?” I shot back. “As you said last time we spoke, you and I were never anything.”
“Vicar believes this soul will be important in events to come,” Deacon told me in a reasonable tone. “If he is merely one of your playthings, then…”
“Get out,” I said in a low, cold voice.
He knew me better than Didikas, and did not argue. When I finally looked up from my tablets, the devil had gone.
What is he to you?
Narahn and I hadn’t spoken in days, not since shortly after our hunt for Zebulga. He’d asked me if I would kill him, now that he’d played out his use.
I have your true name, you know. I could bind you. Banish you.
Will you? I’d asked.
…I don’t know. You deserve it, but…
But what? I had wanted to know, genuinely. Part of me was almost childishly eager for him to validate the existence Zebulga had thrown her mud at.
You helped a lot of people. Maybe it’s for some evil end, but if anything good can come out of Urizen’s arrogance, then… I don’t know.
When I’d turned to leave, he’d stopped me.
I’ve been seeing you in my dreams. Keep out of them.
I’d just smiled. I’ve been in your dreams? I’m glad.
My nails dug into Fell’s back hard enough to draw blood. He sweated and grunted, muttering words in his outworlder tongue I felt certain must be curses. When he suddenly stopped, I thought he was spent and tried to kiss him. He pressed me back down to the bed with one hand, let out a low sound that mixed frustration and loathing, though whether it was for me or himself I was not sure.
“Be her,” he pleaded after a minute of panting quiet. “You told me I would never know. Prove it.”
I looked into his face. His red eyes glowed dimly in the darkness, just as mine did, and his heavy frame looked somehow hollow. He dripped beads of sweat onto my naked body, and what might have been more of the same onto my cheek.
I was in human shape and also had to catch my breath. “I thought you would kill me if I did?”
He bared stained teeth. “I don’t care anymore. I just… I just want to tell her…”
Not long ago, I would have done it gladly. Gleefully. But in the moment, lying beneath him and seeing the agony in his face, I balked.
He saw my reluctance and his expression darkened. “You cannot do this thing for me?”
I tried to put a hand on his cheek, but he flinched away. Pulling back I said, “She’s gone, Fell.”
His anger twisted into desperation. “She doesn’t have to be. You can make me forget. I know you can. Make me forget, demon! Eat my pain!”
“That isn’t how it works, Fell. I don’t take away pain, I just…”
Replaced it with a different kind. But he wasn’t giving up that easily.
“I can still feel you.” He pressed his forehead to mine so our eyes locked from a space of mere inches, but it was not a lover’s closeness. His weathered features were a rough-cut effigy of pain and resentment. “I’ve felt it ever since you went into me that day. You itch under my skin. When I think of her… When I try to think of her, I keep seeing your face. You did something to me.”
It was a side-effect of the brief possession, and not one I’d intended, at least not consciously. I opened my mouth to say as much, but closed it. There didn’t seem a point, and it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
“Every curse on you, smádreki!” His voice was so full of anguish it was barely a whisper. “If I have to be your plaything, at least don’t let me forget what she looks like.”
I wanted to do as he asked. I wanted to know what it felt like to be her. Fell did not bother with gentleness with me, but with her, I might know what the tender awe I’d spied on in the Candrian’s House felt like. Even as I felt the hunger for that experience, the strands of my hair were already beginning to thicken into scaly tendrils, my limbs lengthening into Ekasne’s athletic tallness.
I could be her, and convincingly. I’d watched her long enough. Fell watched me with a self-loathing hope.
But before the change could fully take hold, I closed my eyes and stopped it. Fell let out a long breath like I’d punched him in the gut.
“You did this,” he said in a hollow voice. “You slithered into our lives and cursed us.”
I crawled out of the bed, gathered my clothes, and moved to the door. When I looked back, the outworlder — once so strong and self-assured — lay on his side with his back to me. I was caught between jealous anger and an almost overpowering desire to take advantage of his wounded state. He would be so easy to eat. There was practically nothing left.
“I miss her too,” I said, and was shocked to find that I meant it.
Fell turned his head, and said his next words in a voice that I will never forget. His quiet words were carried by a cold weight of unmasked scorn. “She was terrified of you. She asked me to kill you, just so she could be free of her fear. I told her that the worlds are full of demons, that they’re better off ignored, like roaches. Fearing you only gives you power.” His shoulders slumped, and the hellish glow in his eyes seemed to dim. “You’re a bad dream, Shyora. In the morning, I will wake up from you.”
I turned from that look on his face and fled.
