“What,” Lenk gasped as he tossed his sword onto the stone and pulled himself up after it, “and you didn’t think to come back after me?”
“No, Lenk, I didn’t jump into a bottomless pit of shadow teeming with demons rather than fight off the frogmen trying to kill me.” She bared bloodied teeth. “Why the hell do I have to be the one that saves you all the damned time? I killed a longface for you. I shot my brother for you!”
“So you admit there’s precedent.”
“You stupid son of a—”
Her ears pricked up, her body tensed. By the time he heard the high-pitched whine, by the time he saw the air tense as she did, by the time he thought to look behind him, it was too late.
He saw the Deepshriek’s gaping jaws a moment before he felt the air erupt. The creature’s wail cut through the air, flayed moss from stone, cast frogmen into the shadows, slammed netherlings from their feet, and struck him squarely in the chest. He felt the earth leave his feet, the wind leave his lungs, the stone meet his back as he was smashed against the wall.
An airless, echoing silence followed, all voice and terror rendered mute by the distant ringing in his ears. And in that silence, he could hear her. So closely.
“I am close to you, my children.” It came from the deep, rising like a bubble. “So close. I can hear your sorrow. I can feel your pain. Let me see you. Let me hold you.”
At the center of the great pool, between the two pillars, he could see the shadows boiling. A shape stirred beneath the water, rising. Pale, thin fingers reached out from the darkness. They would have been delicate, had they not been the size of spears, each joint topped with a cluster of barnacles and coral. They wrapped around a pillar rising from the darkness, a slender arm, monstrous and beautiful, tensed as it pulled the shape closer.
“She comes.”
In the echo of the Deepshriek’s fury, in the resonance of Ulbecetonth’s whisper, he could hear it. Louder. Clearer. Reaching into him.
“But she is weak, still. She is not all the way through. Strike her now. Kill her now.”
“Kataria,” Lenk muttered, pulling himself to feet that felt like someone else’s. He swayed, no breath or thought to guide him. “I need to find her.”
“You need to save her.”
“I can’t see her.” His vision was darkening at the edges. His skeleton shook inside his body. The world blurred into dimming colors and bleeding lights. “I can’t see . . . anything.”
The question came without breath.
“Am I dying?”
And the answer came in the drip of blood down his back and in the scent of decay and rot weeping from his shoulder.
“I can’t die.” He drew in a breath and found none. “I have to save everyone.” He took a step forward and fell. “I have to save Kat.” He looked to the ceiling and saw only darkness. “I wanted to run.” He tasted blood in his mouth. “I don’t want to die.”
And in the darkness, in the absence of breath, in the weakness of his body, the answer came on a cold voice.
“Then let me in.”
A moment’s lapse in concentration, a reflex, a thought about what would happen if he bled out on the floor here and all hell came to pass. Whatever it was, he didn’t know. Because when his vision returned, the world was painted in cold, muted color.
He couldn’t feel the blood weeping from his shoulder. He couldn’t feel the decay in his skin. He couldn’t feel the sword in his hand or the stone under his feet. He couldn’t feel anything.
Not even fear for what he was doing.
He surrendered to the familiarity. To the feel of nothing. To the steel in his hands and the air under his feet as he rushed toward the edge of the walkway and leapt.
The Deepshriek’s auburn-haired head swept toward him and opened its mouth moments before he landed upon the gray fish’s hide. He fought to keep his footing as his hand shot out and caught the fleshy stalk of the beast’s throat, choking its scream. Its mouth gaped open, its head flailed wildly in silent screaming as he hefted his sword and aimed for the thickest part.
He couldn’t feel the agony of his shoulder. Not even when the Deepshriek’s other head swept down and sank its teeth into his skin.
He was aware of it, of course. Of the fangs clenching in his flesh, of the pus bursting in its mouth, of the violent thrashing of its stalk as it pulled something from his shoulder. He was aware that the creature’s smile was curling up over something wet and sopping in its mouth. He was aware of the blood and the fact that he should be screaming.
But screaming was for men with voices to call their own. He was a man with a sword and a voice in his head that told him how to use it.
And he listened.
He swung without a word. It clove through the beast’s neck before it could even drop his shoulder. The creature’s head went flying, his flesh still lodged in its mouth. Blood wept from his shoulder.
“Not much time,” the voice said. “We have to strike soon.”
“Before there’s no blood left,” Lenk replied as he hefted his sword.
The Deepshriek was flailing, face twisted up in rage as it tried to find breath to curse him. Its scream welled up in a bulge beneath his grip, threatening to burst. He swung, the head flew, his grip faltered. And the Deepshriek’s fury was voiced in a wordless, quavering wail on a shower of black blood. The gray stalk flailed wildly for a moment, spraying the blood across the water, before going limp.
The shark beneath his feet ceased to struggle, ceased even to move. It bobbed lazily in the water, responding not even to the sword Lenk jabbed into it to keep his balance.
“Good,” the voice said. “We are free to strike now. She is coming.”
He looked to the pillars. Another arm snaked out, caught the other pillar and began to pull. A great mass of hair, tangled like kelp, wretched little fish and eels weaving between the massive strands, rose from the depths. Lenk caught a single glimpse of an eye, bright and yellow and beaming with hatred as it looked upon him, bathed in the blood of the Deepshriek.
“Through the eye. A solid blow, before she can pull herself out of the gate. It will end her.”
“She will die.”
“Our duty will be fulfilled.”
“And everyone will be all right . . .”
The voice said nothing.
Not until he looked over his shoulder.
“NO!”
He was aware of her voice, aware of her backing away, her bloody hands and bone knife a poor match for the netherling’s jagged spear and the bodies left in her wake.
“No, no, NO. Remember your duty. Remember, this is to save her. Turn away now and she dies, regardless, and so do you.”
He was aware of the chill in his body subsiding, of the pain returning. But still, he stared and watched as Kataria made a desperate lunge at the longface. Her knife found the gap in the female’s armor, bit deeply. The longface accepted it, like a fact of life, and lashed back with her shield, knocking Kataria to the earth.
“Listen to me. LISTEN. Reject me now and you will never again know me. You’ll die without me! The world dies without you! Without us! We will stop her, together.”
A black boot went to Kataria’s belly, pinning her to the earth.
“We can save the world.”
A spear was raised and aimed over her chest.
“We can save her if you—”
He was aware of the darkness.
And then, he could feel everything.
The wound in his shoulder, the blood, the pain, the cold of the water, the fear, the wailing inside his head, the great emptiness beneath him slowly filling as something reached up from the darkness to seize him.
These were problems for men with perspective, men with nobler causes, men who had gone so far into the light they couldn’t see the filth they stepped in anymore.
Lenk had simpler problems. And a sword.
It wasn’t reflex. It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t easy to pull himself from the water and rush toward the netherling. It was bloody. It was painful.
He struck the netherling with his good shoulder. It still hurt. They tumbled to the ground in an unpleasant mess of metal. His sword found her armor, grinded against the metal. The tip found something softer and bit. Then, he pushed until they were both bleeding and lying upon the floor.
Only one of them moved. And then only with Kataria’s help.
“I came back for you,” he groaned.
“You want a kiss or something?” she all but spat at him as she tore her belt free.
“Well . . .”
“No.”
“Oh.” He winced as she tightened her belt around his shoulder as a makeshift tourniquete. “I don’t think that’s going to help.”
“Better ideas?”
“No, it’s a good one. But I was talking about—”
“AKH ZEKH LAKH!”
The longface came charging toward them, leaping over the body of a venom-doused Abysmyth. Her feet never struck the floor. A tentacle the size of a tree trunk swept out of the darkness, snatching her into the air and twisting her warcry to a desperate scream as it dragged her beneath the waves.
From the shadows the tentacles came, snatching the longfaces from the stone. Dragging them screaming into the air, crushing them in fleshy grips, pulling them from darkness to darker.
And all pain was drowned, all agonies rendered moot as the water erupted and Ulbecetonth rose.
“Yeah, that,” Lenk grunted.
A child torn from the womb of hell, she came into the world pale and screaming. The shadows slid off her body in tears, as vast and cold as any of her statues, reluctant to leave her as she loomed over the waves. Barnacles and shells grew in clusters upon skin so pale as to be translucent. Coral sprouted in pristine, rainbow-colored rashes across her body. Creatures of many legs and many eyes crawled across her, into the shadow of her navel, across the slope of her breast, into and out of a mouth gaping wide and lined with bone-white sawblades.
Lenk felt his eyes fleeting across her in unblinking flashes, unable to look at any part of her for long, unable to turn away. His gaze was fixed upon the bright gold of a single eye not by his own choice. It burned with such hatred that it commanded his attention, demanded he look at it until he could see how he was going to die reflected in its gaze.
Her mouth grew wide, her shriek the sound of a thousand drowning maidens that sent the tears of shadow and the many skittering fiends falling from her body.
And Lenk felt himself moving.
“Come on, come on.” Kataria had both arms around him, equal parts propping him up and hauling him away. “We have to go.”
“We can’t.” Reflex. His voice, even if it shouldn’t have been. “We can’t run from this.”
“I said it and I meant it,” she snarled, “but I thought we were going to get the tome before it happened. Now we run.”
“We can’t. She’s limitless,” Lenk said. “Down in the chasm, I saw her. She’s under the island. She’s the blood of the land. We can’t outrun her.” He looked into Kataria’s eyes. “Not both of us.”
“That’s not what we’re going to do,” she said, pointing to a nearby archway. “We’re going to run to that. We’re going to keep running. We’re going to go somewhere else and hide there until we can figure out something else.”
“We can’t do that,” he said. “Neither of us makes it out unless . . .”
“Don’t use that word if you’re going to do something stupid.”
“Too damn late for that.”
He tore free from her grasp, took off running before she could grab him again, threw himself into the water and disappeared beneath the darkness before she could scream at him and make him think just what the hell it was he was doing.
He had no room for thought, though. That was not what duty was about.
Because he certainly had no idea. Not beyond giving Ulbecetonth something to focus on, something she couldn’t resist attacking. How effective that would be with just a sword on his back was another problem best left to men who weren’t incredibly stupid.
Men with simpler problems had simpler goals. Both of his were bobbing in the water. The severed heads of the Deepshriek floated, brushing against each other as though they couldn’t bear to be separated in death.
He could feel the great emptiness below him again, the vast yawn of space and silence that came before the moment of calamity. His shoulder seared with the agony. The water boiled with Ulbecetonth’s anger. He made a single desperate grab and caught the auburn and ebon hair of the two heads a mere moment before the water erupted and something seized him.
He struggled to keep ahold of sword and heads alike as the tentacle wrenched him from the water and pulled him into the air. The world spun around him as he hauled up to face a coral-scarred visage and a single burning eye.
“You came back,” Ulbecetonth murmured, voices echoing off of each other. “You hateful, vile little thing. You came back.”
Her voice robbed him of any sort of reply he might have had. It drank the breath from his throat.
“I could have given you anything, I would have given you anything, just to leave my children alone.”
“Can’t,” he replied, straining as the tentacle tightened around him.
“I wanted to believe.”
The world shifted, the tentacle raised him. The ceiling loomed closer, the mossy stalactites shimmering against the green firelight. For a moment, he thought he might be crushed against the tremendous stone teeth. The Kraken Queen didn’t like him nearly enough to be that gentle with him, though.
He looked down. In the shadows of the waves, he saw the thousand eyes staring up at him like a thousand hateful stars. Her mouth gaped open beneath him, baring row upon row of jagged saw-teeth that stretched down her gullet. And from the darkness of her mouth, eyes stared back at him.
They came lashing out of her gullet, eels snapping and screeching and smiling wildly as they reached out to snatch and chew and wail for his blood. His sword slashed wildly, beating back each eager maw, each wild eye. Heads were bloodied, the eels fell back, but rose again and again. His arm seared, his shoulder bled and Ulbecetonth’s teeth loomed ever closer as the tentacle lowered him like a writhing worm.
Tactics that did not range from stupid to desperate had never been plentiful. Now seemed a poor time to shun them. He hurled his blade and watched it lodge in Ulbecetonth’s cheek, the demon not even flinching.
Right, he thought. That’ll do it for stupid. He hefted the twin heads, aimed them as best he could. Now for desperate.
“Scream.”
They obliged as their sister had. The sharp whine amplified to a wail as they opened their mouths and made the air quake. They erupted, swallowing both his screams and Ulbecetonth’s as the great demon was sent reeling. Her tentacle flailed, weakening, as it shot up toward the ceiling.
Lenk seized the moss purely by chance, slammed against the stalactite as the tentacle tossed him, the screams of the Deepshriek having left him barely any wit to know what was happening. He held on purely by grit, clinging to the moss as he watched Ulbecetonth trying to shake the shrieks loose from her skull. She turned her scowl upward and, slowly, every tentacle joined in purpose as they slithered up from the deep and reached toward his precarious perch.
Desperate, stupid, everything.
He tied the heads to his belt, pried a patch of the moss from the stalactite, jammed it into his ears.
Sorry, Kataria. Sorry I couldn’t do it the right way.
He felt a tentacle brush against his boot, straining to reach him.
But it’s you I’m going to think of when I die. With my own thoughts, no one else’s.
He tore the heads free, lifed them, aimed them toward a sizable stalactite hanging overhead.
Hope that’s enough.
“Scream.”
They did.
The air and earth shook, their wails joining the Deepshriek’s agonized harmony. The air was flensed, the stone was cracked, Lenk felt blood pooling behind the moss in his ears. His shoulder bled. His arm felt too dead to hold the heads.
But the stone cracked. The stalactite quivered at its ancient root. Lesser spears broke, fell to dig into Ulbecetonth’s arms, face, ignored by the demon. The great old stone groaned ominously, its pain rivaling even that of the Deepshriek. Lenk felt something coil around his ankle, tug appraisingly. He could feel Ulbecetonth’s mouth yawning beneath him. He could feel her whisper to him from the dark.
“It was always going to end this way.”
And then, nothing. No more sound. Everything went silent as the stone cracked, quaked, broke.
And fell.
A spear sent from above, it plunged into her, making her two as it drove down into her chest. It split her squarely down the middle, dividing her, spilling darkness into darkness. Her scream matched the stone’s, the air’s, the water’s, sending the waves trembling and the rocks falling from above.
And still she reached. Still she pulled.
“I SHOWED YOU MERCY!” she howled. “I GAVE YOU THE CHANCE TO RUN! WHY? WHY DO YOU HATE ME SO MUCH?”
In every part of him, every drop of blood, every dying limb, every thought that was his own, there was no answer to that question.
The earth met her scream with another of its own. The ceiling cracked, the great wound left by the stalactite’s plummet widening. They came at first as small drops of silver, splattering upon her flesh to blacken the translucence. Then, they came as rivulets, seeping into her eyes.
Then, it came as a flood.
A great column of water descending from on high, drowning her in silver and steam and shrieks, with no end in sight.
The blood of the mountain.
The water that carried her to hell.
She remembered it.
The ceiling cracked further. His own perch twitched, quaked, collapsed. He plummeted into the water below. In the darkness, he drifted and watched her die. Her teeth gnashed down there, screaming out in water that wouldn’t obey her anymore. And Lenk watched her, breathlessly and bloodlessly, as her countless eyes winked out, one by one, until only one remained.
And it remained, fixed not upon him, but on the vast, dark emptiness surrounding it. Until it, too, disappeared.
Lenk closed his eyes and told himself he did the right thing. Ulbecetonth was dead. He was content to follow her.
Someone else, apparently, was not.
He felt himself dragged awkwardly through the water, Kataria’s violent thrashing pulling him away from the walkway vanishing beneath a rising tide and through a veil of steam.
Ulbecetonth’s skin crunched beneath him as he was dragged up onto her back. He stared up at the silvery water raining from above, falling through clouds of steam rising on sighs glutted by suffering.