Chapter Six
Chapter
Six
Eyes
& Teeth
It took
nearly an hour to close the distance to the skull.
The
longer Isaac stared at the colossus, the more its massive size seemed to
distort all sense of perspective. At a distance, its head nearly resembled a
cliff. Halfway through their approach, the contour of the teeth and plates
started to give the impression of a military fortress, the same sort of leering
threat as palisades and ramparts. By the time they stood in the shadow of the
fallen titan, the ancient skull resembled nothing less than a glacier, the bone
bleached as white as snow, the sockets and joints curving out like the peaks of
mountains. This creature was large enough to change the landscape. It was
a landscape, unto itself. Even now, its corpse was cratering the sand.
Isaac
had read about the glaciers formed in the Scorch, when elemental wizards had
sought to block the mountain passes between the nine kingdoms. Entire
topographies had changed. Rivers had flown. Stone eroded. Forests bloomed.
Before
now, he had not truly understood the size of such a creation.
His
neck ached from craning his head.
At the
moment, he could see cracks and divots working through the creature’s snout,
pieces of the outer shell which had chipped away over the centuries. Flocks of
birds circled the cavern of an eye. Around the cranial plate, colonies of vines
hung limply from sockets in the bone, giving the appearance of scraggly hair.
At its open mouth, the teeth of its lower jaw jutted from the sand like giant
calvary spikes.
“Incredible,”
Isaac said, gazing up in wonder.
Zaria
gave a wordless grunt.
“I
think it’s a reptile.” He pointed with both his hands. “The jaw is clearly made
of several bones. There’s the dentary—the teeth—there’s the angular, the surangular, maybe even the splenial plate. You see how they
articulate together?”
Zaria
hummed, glancing around the dunes.
“I
can’t tell,” Isaac said, “if it’s a diapsid or synapsid. You see the
fenestrae?”
“The
what?”
“The
holes.”
“I see
a lotta fuckin’ holes.”
Isaac
squinted his eyes at the postorbital bones, trying to see if any of them were
fused. A dry layer of bird droppings caked the ridges and sockets. “I want to
say it’s a diapsid.”
Zaria
grunted again.
“Though,”
he said, “I’m not sure if that’s a second temporal gap or a breaking of the postorbital.
It’s hard to tell. I can’t imagine how long this creature has been exposed—”
“Isaac,
shut a moment.”
He
turned. Zaria was still scanning the horizon, her ears cocked, her short
whiskers dancing with the sniff of her nose. Isaac noted an agitated whip of
her tail.
“What
is it?” he asked.
“Wind’s
stopped.”
“Has
it? I hadn’t. . . .”
He
paused. She was right—the wind had stopped. Just like the heat of the sun, the
wind was always a constant presence in the dunes, either by forming spouts,
shimmering the sand, or actively shaving through the slopes. Throughout his
journey, Isaac had never once felt it stop.
Right
now, the air was as still as a corpse.
“Isaac,”
Zaria said. “Can one of them necromancers control the weather?”
He
stared up at the colossus, blinking. The vines on its head were not swaying.
The sand around it was covered in a graveyard of bone chips and osseous fibers,
which the centuries had utterly failed to scatter. Even the sand itself had
failed to bury the skull. If it had truly lain here for millennia, the sand
should have consumed the titan beneath its shifting mounds, never to be seen
again.
But it hadn’t.
The
colossus remained, like a stain upon the land.
“Isaac!”
she hissed.
“Yes!”
Isaac replied, trying not to stammer. “Y-yes, a powerful one, yes. All magic
requires energy. Necromancy involves . . . . taking. Taking energy. Taking
life.”
“Well,
fuck me,” Zaria said. “I nearly took a shit.”
“You’ll
steal anything, I suppose.”
She
glanced around, ears and tail swishing. “I’m really knowin’ why my fellows
steered clear of this place.”
“They
should,” Isaac said, regaining himself. “Necromancy involves destruction. It
has to feast on life. A person’s soul, a copse of trees, the very essence of
the soil. There are sections of land so desolate that no life can ever take
root again. These dunes are the same. They did not exist before the
necromancers.”
Zaria
craned her neck, staring up at the skull.
“Do you
know,” Isaac continued, “what scholars of the Diet now call these dunes, after
discovering all the many tombs and cities within its depths?” He paused for
effect. “The Charnel Waste.”
She
grunted.
“Your
friends,” Isaac said, “had the right idea, avoiding this place. The legacy of
the necromancers still seeps into the land.”
“They
ain’t my friends,” Zaria replied, still peering up.
“You
should avoid it, too.”
She
lowered her gaze to him.
“Zaria,”
Isaac began. “Please, listen to me—”
She
curled her lip, yanking her poleaxe from the sheath on her back. The wooden
haft whispered against the leather. Steel reflected
the dunes.
“Zaria,”
he said.
“Ain’t
hearing it,” she said, marching through the sand. “On we go, squire. Time to
meet the black.”
“Zaria!”
Isaac shouted, loud enough for his voice to echo through the skull. Birds
erupted from the titan’s eye. “Don’t go in there. I’m begging you.”
“Isaac—”
“No.
Listen to me.” He stepped in front of her, pointing north. “Walk away.”
She did
not answer.
“Walk
away,” he repeated. “Forget about the treasure. Take your chances elsewhere.
Escape to the hinterlands, sail the ocean, ask a bailiff for clemency. Whatever
it is you need to do to protect yourself, please, do it somewhere else.”
She
peered down at him. There was rage, irritation, the
determination of a soldier charging into battle. He became very aware of her
height and strength.
“I’m
prepared to die for my mission,” he said. “I’m willing to give my life. This
sorceress is older than the land she destroyed. She has survived the fall of an
empire. I don’t think I need to tell you that the odds of survival are slim. If
we fail, she will yank our souls from their tether and grind them down to
fuel.”
She
gazed up at the skull. From their perspective, it nearly eclipsed the sky.
“When
we met,” he continued, “you told me not to throw away my life. I’m telling you
not to do the same.”
She
looked at him. Her scars were long and cruel.
“Walk
away. Please.”
She
blinked, breathing slowly through her nose. For a moment, a hint of grim
resignation crossed her face. When it was gone, the anger remained, and she
pressed the haft of her poleaxe into his chest,
pushing him toward the skull.
Isaac
kicked up sand as he fought for balance. “Are you even listening to me?”
“Aye,”
Zaria replied. “I hear ya.”
“Clearly,
you don’t understand—”
“No,
Isaac, it’s you who ain’t gettin’ me.” She closed the gap between them,
standing so tall he had to crane his neck to meet her eye. “I told you, once
before. I ain’t goin’ back.”
“Yes,
but—”
She
jabbed a finger into his chest. Her breath was hot and sharp. “I ain’t goin’
back.”
He said
nothing.
The
finger in his chest turned into a hand, pushing him ahead. When he caught his
balance, her poleaxe was lowered in front of him, the spear tip jutting toward
his belly. “On you go, squire.”
Isaac
pulled himself straight. He looked at the weapon raised against him. After a
moment, he turned, reluctantly, to march the last remaining distance into the
skull. The walk was silent. No breeze crossed their path. With his hands still
tied in front of him, and the hyena prowling closely behind, he felt like a
prisoner being led to execution.
Fine,
he thought.
I gave
you a chance.
If you
won’t listen to reason. . . .
Ahead,
the mouth of the skull was shaded and dark. Vines dangled from notches above
the teeth, their bodies dry and desiccated. Sand piled against the U-shaped
line of the creature’s jaw. Considering how widely the creature’s mouth
remained open, Isaac was sure there was some internal support system keeping
the top of the snout from shutting against the teeth, though he couldn’t see
well enough into the mouth to identify whatever it was.
He
imagined, once again, that the creature was trying to scream.
He
shook his head.
“Look
there,” Zaria said, pointing.
Toward
the back of the skull, right at the hinge of the jaw, there was a small gap
leading into the creature’s mouth, free of the teeth that spired out from the mounds
of sand. The entrance was so narrow and smooth that it almost resembled a
doorway.
“Don’t,”
Isaac said. “It’s trapped.”
“What?”
She peered again, confused. “How’d you know?”
“It’s
the path they’d want you to take.”
The
hyena blew a raspberry. “Oh, don’t you start with this babble of demons and
monsters and soul spewin’ cocks or whatever the fuck.
You ain’t scarin’ me off.”
Isaac
stepped forward, gave her a side eye, and roamed through a small debris field
of fallen bone chips, trying to find a suitable candidate. Most of the pieces
were large enough to roof a house. Eventually, he decided to kick one of the
fallen chips with the heel of his boot. The ancient, brittle bone immediately
snapped into chunks.
He
grabbed a panel of bone, took a running step, and heaved it toward the
entrance.
A
twisted sigil of light appeared at the edge of the jaw. It was attached to
nothing, floating in the air, burning a bright, sickly green. Once the chip of
bone touched the barrier, it burst into flames, distorting, twisting, buckling
like a piece of chewed leather, disintegrating into a meager puff of ash.
Nothing landed on the floor. The sigil glowed a moment longer, thrumming with
malevolent energy, before vanishing from sight.
A
silence filled the air.
“That
was a hex,” Isaac said, dusting his hands.
Zaria
blinked, staring wide-eyed at the shadowy mouth. Smoke drifted from the
creature’s jaw.
“As the