Chapter Six #2
empire fell,” Isaac continued, kicking another chip of bone, “the last
necromancers took steps to protect their cities. They casted hexes, constructed
traps, animated their machines, all in service of killing the would-be
graverobbers that would come to rob them of their riches.”
“Well,”
Zaria said. “Fuck.”
“I
agree.”
She
took a hand from her poleaxe, waving away the smoke.
“As it
happens,” Isaac said, “I could dispel this hex quite easily. It’s an old
design. I have memorized several incantations, just for the purpose.”
Zaria
took a sweeping glance around the skull, searching for another entrance.
“You
would just have to untie me.”
“Nah,”
she said, waving a hand. “We’re goin’ this way. Come on.”
She
roamed toward the front of the skull. As he followed, Isaac spared a glance at
the entryway. A dim green sigil seemed to linger in the shadows, throbbing like
sunlight on a wind-blown pond. The smell of sublimated bone wafted across the
sand. He had read about certain necrotic spells, the ones that had sucked so
much life and energy from the air that they remained, indefinitely, as a
permanent scar upon the world.
How
many other traps had the necromancers devised?
How
many souls had fed their machines?
He
shook his head, trying to catch up with Zaria. She was walking along the slopes
of sand piled below the titan’s jaw, eyeing the cracks and divots like a
vulture trying to break through a rib cage. Her gaze settled on a missing tooth
toward the front of the snout. A few vines dangled from the edge.
“I’m
thinkin’ this way,” she said, barely out of breath. “You see any of them soul
suckers, by the tooth there?”
Isaac
struggled up the steep slopes of sand. He couldn’t believe how easily she had
made the climb. When he reached the top, he wiped sweat onto the sleeve of his
robes, already wanting to rest for the day.
“Squire?”
she asked.
“I
don’t think so.”
“Best
you be sure.”
“It’s
not likely. The missing tooth is recent, and this sand we’re on has only piled
up over the centuries. I doubt they’d think to trap it.”
“Good,”
she said. “I was figurin’ the same.” She judged the distance from their perch
of sand to the bottom lip of the creature’s jaw. After a moment, she grabbed
one of the vines, tugging hard. “Thank you kindly, by the by.”
“For
what? It’s a simple deduction.”
She
raised a brow. Her gaze flickered over to the hinge of the creature’s jaw,
where she had nearly walked straight into a necrotic hex. She made a popping
noise with her lip.
“Oh,”
Isaac said, suddenly blushing. “Yes. I suppose I did . . . save your life.” He
cleared his throat. “Well, you’re welcome, but please be more mindful. In the
future. These ruins will be very dangerous.”
She
continued to stare. He fidgeted. After a moment, she laughed, sheathing her polearm.
“What?”
he asked, defensive. “What’s funny?”
She
shook her head, focusing on the vines. “Gonna climb up. Once I’m on the ledge,
I’ll pull you along. In the meantime, don’t stare at my arse.”
“Did
you have one? I hadn’t noticed.”
She
kicked sand at him.
“Hey!”
Zaria
leaped into the air, gripping a tangle of vines with the wrapped cloth of her
hands. The vines held. After pressing her feet into a dentary fissure, she
began to climb. He could see the muscles working on her arms and shoulders. Her
leather plackart flexed with effort. Soon, he received an all-encompassing view
of her ass, which swayed with the pumping of her legs. Her knee-length trousers
left little to the imagination. If he looked carefully between her thighs. . .
.
He tore
his gaze away.
Out in
the desert, the sand was smooth and flowing. The only sign of activity was the
two sets of footprints cutting a path to the skull, which the wind was already
steadily erasing outside the dead zone of the colossus. If Zaria’s captain
decided to investigate, it would be very obvious where they had gone.
Zaria.
He
realized, suddenly, that he had indeed saved her life. He had stopped her from
walking straight into a hex. If not for him, she would have been ash. She would
have been dead and gone and no longer a threat to his mission.
He
could have said nothing. He could have let her die.
Why hadn’t he?
A
whistle caught his attention. Zaria was lying flat on the chipped remnant of
the titan’s tooth, holding out a paw between the threads of vine. “Up and at
‘em, love. Catch my hand.”
He
frowned. “You want me to jump?”
“If it
wouldn’t tax the young lord.”
He
sighed, bracing himself. With a brief muster of strength, he tried leaping into
the air, missing her hand by more than a foot. He tried again, getting closer.
She scooted further over the edge. On the third attempt, his finger brushed her
palm, and she latched onto his wrist with an iron grip, pulling him into the
mouth of the colossus like a fisherman dredging up a net. He collapsed onto the
circle of a broken tooth.
“Need
to eat more,” she said, patting his back. “All skin and bone.”
He rose
to standing. The bone beneath his feet was brittle and aged, the fibers flexing
like rotten wood. Around him, the mouth of the skull was a gloomy basin, edged
with a forest of teeth.
“Well,”
Zaria said, her voice echoing. “Lovely place. Smells like bird shit and death.
I suppose there’s no accountin’ for—”
She
paused. Her words withered in the gloom.
“Zaria?”
he asked.
“Xotra’s
cunt.”
“What?”
She
pointed deeper into the skull, her eyes widening enough that he saw the whites.
When Isaac tried to look, he saw nothing but a faint glinting light, poking out
from the dark of the throat. The shadows were thick and jagged.
“I
can’t see,” he said, squinting.
“You don’t
spy that?” she asked, pointing at the light. “All the grisliness?”
“The
sun’s too bright. My eyes need to adjust.”
She
made a humorless snort. “Humans.” She stepped forward, keeping a wary eye on
whatever was glinting further beyond, and looked over the edge of their perch.
“Sand’s piled here, too. We can jump.”
“Should
we?” he asked.
She
glanced over his head, spying the tracks they had left
in the sand. Her face hardened. “Aye. No going back.”
She
jumped. An instant later, there was a dull thump, followed by a gentle hissing
of sediment. When Isaac peered over the edge, Zaria was only a short distance
below, carefully sliding her way down a virgin embankment of sand. He sat on
the edge of the tooth, dangled his legs, slipped into the void, and tumbled
heavily into the sand, which resulted in an equally graceless slide down the
embankment. By now, Zaria was standing guard at a level clearing in the center
of the mouth, where the titan’s tongue once connected. When he stumbled over to
her side, she stopped him with a hand.
“Hold a
moment,” she said. “You tell me what the fuck that thing is.”
He
squinted again. The glint of light seemed slightly
brighter. He realized, slowly, there were multiple points of light, arranged
like a constellation of stars. It seemed to form a pyramid.
“I
still can’t see,” Isaac said, quietly. “Is that glass?”
“Eyes,”
Zaria replied.
“Eyes?”
“It’s
watchin’ me.”
He
peered again. Around him, the sun was gridded against the cell bars of the
titan’s teeth, providing a band of illumination. Dust trickled from the nasal
cavity. Somewhere, a bird flapped its wings.
Soon,
he saw the bodies.
It was
a scene of carnage. The ground was littered with the dead. With his unadjusted
eyes, all he could see were hills and mounds, vague shapes, slumped figures,
some of it occasionally solidifying into slivers of bone and pieces of cloth
and a litany of rusted steel. Most of the corpses seemed to be concentrated
toward the back half of the mouth, as if ready to be swallowed. A few were
clustered in groups. Many sagged against the teeth.
Isaac
felt, for a moment, as if he’d stumbled upon the site of an ancient
battlefield. The air smelled of dust and decay.
At the
back of the mouth, a wall of granite had been erected around the ring of the
throat, the edges smoothed into a seamless connection with the flowing of bone.
By now, the granite was porous and rough, cracked through with the roots of
vines. Reliefs were carved into the stone. With his eyes slowly adapting to the
dark, he saw figures and battles and what seemed like deities falling from the
sky. The details were hard to discern.
Between
it all, a passage lay open in the stone, which seemed to lead into a stairway.
The stairs descended into the earth, ribbed with the colossal vertebrae of the
creature’s spine. Perched above this doorway, on a raised dais of slate and
bronze, a four-legged statue sat on its haunches, like a dog standing guard.
There
were human faces on the head of this creature. They were fusing together. There
was a single mouth between them. There was a vortex of teeth. There was a
shared look of agony.
Six
eyes glinted from the dark.
“Isaac,”
Zaria said, quietly.
He had
to force himself to remain calm. He recognized the statue. It was a shibboleth,
a stone automaton that was often used by the necromancers to guard places of
importance—palaces, ziggurats, the catacombs of the nobility. With little
exception, the statues were designed to fend off both invaders and grave
robbers alike. They were nearly always imbued with powerful magics.
Isaac
had read stories of archaeologists stumbling across these machines during an
expedition into a necromancer tomb. The encounter often came without warning.
There were reports of flaming lances, comets of raw entropy, fogs made of
caustic acid, the sound of stone limbs grinding together as the statue returned
to life and hunted the intruders through darkened halls. There was even, in one
case, claims of banishment to alternate planes of reality.
The
number of bodies at the feet of this statue suggested it had stopped many
explorers before. The glinting of its eyes suggested that it could still do so