Chapter Six #5
shards.
At the
trapdoor, Zaria stopped shouting. A silence fell over the skull.
Isaac
found a bronze sword underneath the body of what was likely a cleric. The human
had been clutching it in their hands when they died—her hands, he thought, the
shape of the pelvis was feminine—and her forearm detached from the skeleton
when Isaac relieved the weapon from her grasp. The blade was in remarkably good
condition, though it had turned entirely blue and was chipped through in
places. As Isaac sat on the sandy floor of the titan’s mouth, trying to angle
the weapon between his wrists, he thought of afternoons in his uncle’s library,
studying metal alloys and the economics of smithing.
He
began to saw the blade. Progress was slow. Even if bronze did not rust like
steel, it could still become dull. The way his wrists were tied prevented him
from gaining much leverage. Still, he could feel the blade gradually work
through the rope. He would be free in minutes.
Something
caught his eye.
There
was a frock of hair poking out from a set of robes. The color is what caught
his attention. It was the same shade of dirty blond as Isaac’s own. He bent
over, ignoring the metal groans coming from the trapdoor behind him.
There
was a human corpse slumped between a pile of turbaned bodies. It was very, very
recent. The skin was still intact. There were no visible maggots. The man was
lying on his side, facing away, and the sickly purple blotches of lividity were
beginning to pool on his head and neck. Isaac gripped his shoulder, finding the
muscle stiff and uncompliant. He remembered anatomy lessons on the
decomposition process as he flipped the body onto its back. It was no more than
a day old.
The
face was young, the boy’s eyes open and blue. His throat had been slit, and his
head listed slightly back as Isaac studied the injury, like the hinge of an
opening door. He did not look shocked or angry or afraid. He had no expression
whatsoever.
That
was not what caught Isaac’s attention.
A sigil
had been carved into his forehead. By the jagged lines and clear markers of infection,
the symbol had been cut into the boy with something no more sophisticated than
a knife. Isaac recognized it immediately, and a chill went up his spine.
Parasite
magic.
In some
schools of thought, it was often referred to as a charm enchantment, though
this ignored the true relationship the spellcaster had with the victim. The
sigil turned the bearer into an unwitting thrall, their higher functioning
overridden, their body’s energy leeched directly into the caster. Often, this
would continue until the victim was withered into little more than a husk. In
the Scorching, several armies had used captured soldiers in this manner,
forcing their body and soul into the equivalent of ammunition for a wizard’s
spells. From then on, the Diet of Nine had declared parasitism to be very, very
illegal.
Isaac
gazed towards the tomb entrance. The tunnel was dark, a bed of stairs barely
visible as they led deep into the earth. As he looked back, he examined the
body of the young man further, discovering that he had also twisted his ankle.
Isaac
imagined a sequence of events. A sorcerer had been leading a thralled entourage
into the mouth of the skull. From the lack of other bodies, they must have
gained safe passage from the shibboleth. One of the thralls had tripped over a
skeleton because he lacked the sense to watch his step. The young man had
twisted his ankle. The sorcerer, considering the matter no more deeply than a
horse with a broken leg, ordered his thrall to be executed. And now here the
body lay—a young human, presumably one with family and friends, lying dead in
the sand for a mistake he did not have the presence of mind to avoid.
The boy
had not died more than a day ago. Whoever had carved the sigil
into his head could not have been far. This deep into the Charnel Waste, there
was only one place the puppeteer could have gone.
Isaac
looked at the tomb again.
Had
another sorcerer arrived before him?
Was the
necromancer in this tomb capable of enslaving those on the surface?
Neither
of these options was good. Furthermore, they did not explain the lack of tracks
outside the skull. There was no wind. If an army of thralls had marched into
the skull, they should have left a very wide trail. Could someone have cast the
wind themselves?
Isaac
watched the shadowy tomb a moment longer. Slowly, he reached over and closed
the young man’s eyes. He sighed, looking away.
A loud
crash echoed behind him.
When he
looked, he saw the ground before the trapdoor begin to splinter and shake.
Underneath a cacophony of falling earth, he heard a barbaric groan of effort.
He
dropped the bronze sword, running fast. Down in the grave robber’s pit, Zaria
had started to yank the metal bars free with her bare hands, and the cave-in
was now spilling into her cell. With her foot braced and her teeth gritted, she
ripped another pair of bars directly from their rusty foundations. Beneath him,
the ground continued to tremble as the long-dormant cave-in was now free to
continue spilling, triggering cascades of load-bearing failures.
She
looked up at him. With a snarl, she wrenched a boulder free from the growing
stack of rock, accelerating the collapse.
The
ground beneath Isaac gave a sickening lurch. He tried to run.
Moments
later, a semi-circle of earth collapsed beneath him, and he didn’t quite make
the jump. His chest slammed into the edge of solid ground, his body draped
along a new slope of cracked rock and dry, spilling sand. Clouds of dust kicked
fiercely into the air. Isaac fought for purchase, his feet kicking uselessly
beneath him, trying to pull his way to safety.
“Isaac!”
Zaria
climbed from the wreckage of spilled earth. Her mohawk was wild, there was
blood leaking down her face, and her poleaxe was clenched viciously in hand,
held out to a killing point. She climbed free of the boulders and sprinted up
the collapsed bed of rock. Isaac scrambled back to solid ground, crawling
desperately on his hands and knees. He fell nearly face-first into the ancient
skeletons, gripping rotted cloth for purchase as he struggled back to his feet.
Zaria
emerged from the crater of the cave-in, animal eyes focused and sharp.
“Stop!”
Isaac shouted. “Stop!”
She
stood in place, breathing heavily. Above, he heard the shibboleth shunt its
heads to her. There was a grinding saw of stone. Magical fire illuminated the
dark.
“Don’t
come any closer,” Isaac said, holding out his still-tied hands. He really
wished he had focused on cutting them first. “The shibboleth will kill you.”
Her
pink tongue threaded over teeth.
“Please,”
Isaac said. “Listen. Listen to me. This is foolish. You need to think about
this—”
She
took one hand off her poleaxe and tossed it upwards, catching it in an overhand
grip. With a cock of her arm, she twisted her body back and shot it forward
with a shot-putter’s grace, throwing her entire weight behind the swing. Her
polearm flew like a javelin.
Isaac
heard the crunch of magically-treated glass a moment before the shards rained
down over his shoulder. The top head of the shibboleth had been pierced clean
through with the spear tip of her poleaxe, cleaving the brittle face in twain.
The statue reeled back, the old stone of its dog body cracking apart, spewing a
wreath of fire from the open stump. After a moment, the heads tilted forward,
still swirled together as a neckless sludge. They tumbled to the ground,
shattering to pieces. A circular band of teeth rolled like a wagon’s wheel
across the floor. Fire flickered and died.
Zaria
clenched her fists. A growl echoed amongst the bone and sand.
“Oh,
fuck,” Isaac said, and ran into the tomb.