Chapter Eight #2
grew louder, building up into a wave of shuffling cracks, like dry reeds
scraping across stone.
“Zaria!”
She
placed a hand on his chest, nudging him behind her. “Keep the torch steady.”
The
pirate stepped forward, poleaxe grazing the edge of the darkness. The growing
cacophony reacted, churning around them like a shifting swarm of flies. A
rattling gasp echoed down the halls.
Zaria
growled from deep in her chest.
All at
once, a skeletal arm emerged from the darkness, missing most of its fingers.
Soon, another arm joined it, far above at the ceiling, angled down, lurching
unsteadily. A third arm came above the first, pointed the wrong way, the ball
of its elbow rolling toward the wrist. From there, several more limbs came
through in rapid succession, each of their bones sliding unobstructed between
the other, and now there were dozens of arms, grasping and bending and waving
like the limbs of a centipede.
Below
the arms, a writhing mass of bone shuffled into the torchlight, blocking the
narrow hall. There were rib bones connected to femurs, arms jutting from
pelvises, skulls braced into knees, vertebrae studding the rims of shoulder
blades, and all of it was encased in a porcupine shell of arms, all the bones
sliding and crackling against each other, as if seeking some undefined
structure. He saw human bones, canine bones, feline and bird and reptile,
binding together with no more thought of unity than one would chop down a
forest, saw the different trees into planks, and use them to build a house.
Atop
this swirling mound of bodies, there sat a skull, the head of a rhino with two
overlapping jaws, one inside the other, moaning with a chorus of voices.
Zaria
raised her weapon overhead, scraping the spear tip along the ceiling, and
smashed the axe blade down into the rhino skull. It split in half, the two jaws
still biting as they separated from their joints, and the mass below surged
forward in two parallel waves, forming a pseudopod of bones. She stepped back,
tried to swing, clanged her axeblade against the tight stone walls, took
another frightened step, and decided to stab with the spear again, reaching
right for the belly. The impact scattered arms and ribs like leaves from a
tree. She yanked the blade back, the cavalry hook ripping out an entire
skeleton’s worth of bones, and began an awkward series of chops, half of her
swings abated by the confines of the hall.
When
nothing was standing higher than her ankles, she stopped, leaning on her weapon
and breathing heavily. At her feet, the bones were still moving, still
shuffling and sliding, already forming connections again. Around them, the
sounds of chittering only grew louder.
Something
fell on Isaac’s shoulder. When he looked, he saw a human finger wriggling like
a maggot. He jerked back into the wall of loculi, flailing it off, and the
rapid wave of his torch illuminated the area behind him. A sea of bones now
crawled in his direction, scapulas and jaws and kneecaps scuttling along dirt
and stone, covering every surface like writhing films of moss. They rained from
the ceiling and leaped at him from the floor, flinging themselves in bouncing
arcs. He stumbled back, shielding himself with his arms, feeling sharpened bone
slice through his skin.
“Run!”
he shouted.
They sprinted
ahead, leaping over the rattling pool of bone already reforming itself into
knots and limbs. Another conjoined mass of skeletons leered at them from the
darkness, but Zaria lowered her polearm forward, spearing the tangle of bone
through its center frame and dragging it along as she ran. More piles of bodies
came, wriggling and jerking. Bone splintered into chunks as the hyena kept
charging. Soon, the bones formed a quivering mass on the steel of her weapon,
like the burnt head of a match, and the smaller bones began to snake their way
up the wooden haft, squirming towards her hands. With a snarl, she smacked the
weapon into the wall, like she was ridding a broom of
dust.
“Isaac,
what the fuck—”
“Keep
running!”
They
sprinted through corridors and burial chambers, dodging pockets of bone,
leaping over swarms, the masses sloughing into each other like droplets of
water. There was no way to see ahead. The torchlight did not go far. All they
could do was run forward into darkness, reacting to whatever came ahead,
whether it was a curve in the hall or a shambling ball of corpses.
All at
once, he saw the giant vertebrae. It continued on through an intersecting
corridor, the great sockets of bone sagging down like a pale nimbus of cloud,
and the sight came so suddenly that Isaac almost ran straight through the
intersection without spotting it. He stopped, stumbled, grabbed Zaria by the
tail, eliciting from her a girlish shriek of surprise, and yelled: “This way!”
Now,
following the bone, the tilt of the floor was obvious. They had been descending
the entire time, feeding themselves deeper and deeper into the earth, and the
corridor they found themselves in now was almost a ramp leading into an open
pit of darkness, mimicking the bend of the titan’s spine. His momentum built to
an almost uncontrollable pace. Zaria stayed in the front, swatting away
clusters of bone whenever possible, ignoring the fingers and toes that leaped
like bugs.
He
swatted away a leering arm, dodged around the blade of a shoulder, keeping his
torch waving squarely at the shadows behind them, only to bring it out forward
and suddenly see a churning wall of bone in front of him, so thickly woven it
might’ve been a quarry of stone. With his downward momentum, he couldn’t stop
in time. Zaria braced her shoulder and smashed through the thick layer of
slithering remains. Isaac barely missed the wide gap she made, slamming half
his body into the broken membrane of arms and legs.
He
dropped the torch and stumbled to the floor. A giant slug-like mass of
skeletons fell from the ceiling, crushing him into the dirt.
“Isaac!”
Zaria
tried to turn, but an avalanche of bone poured from the loculi around her.
Masses shambled in from the dark, full of bending ribs and chattering skulls.
She swung, bashed, and stomped, lost in a swirling shower of bone.
On the
floor, Isaac wrenched his arms and legs, trying to break free, but the bones
were a sliding cocoon around him, squeezing tighter and tighter. They pressed
into his skin like beds of needles. All his training failed him, and he flailed
desperately, overwhelmed with terror. When he managed to free his arms, he
flung them overhead. They got stuck.
He
looked up.
Just
above his head, there was an old, rusted sconce. It held no torch in its base.
The centuries of darkness had reduced it to little more than a rusty blade of
metal. When Isaac tugged, his restraints began to tear on the jagged edge.
Screaming,
he pulled his arms with all his strength, sawing through the tangle of ropes on
his wrist. The mass of bones continued to stab and constrict around him,
slithering up towards his neck. For a horrible moment, the sconce seemed ready
to break from the wall, and the bones were nearly at his mouth, rattling
against each other in an overwhelming crescendo.
An
instant later, his bindings tore through, and his hands were freed.
Quickly,
with the ease and grace of training, he performed the mnemonics for wind,
balling two hurricanes into the palms of his hands. He slapped his right hand
into the ground, bouncing the wind off the floor, creating an upward geyser
that broke the cocoon around him. When a constellation of bone appeared above,
he used his left hand to slash a lance of wind in a sweeping arc, flinging the
swarm of bone like a volley of arrows.
He
jumped to his feet, already casting another spell. Ahead, Zaria caught her
balance on the edge of a loculi. She looked at him, surprised, and an
expression of fear crawled across her face. She watched with wide eyes as a
churning ball of fire grew between his hands. She took a step back, trying to
speak. Her whisper was lost beneath the crackling flame.
“Get
down!”
She
dropped to the floor, and Isaac shot the fireball over her head. It roared down
the narrow hall, shadows racing across stone, twirling masses of bone flailing
like the collapse of a bonfire. Moments later, the fireball ended in a dying
light, swallowed by the darkness beyond. Flames sputtered on marrowless bone.
Things slid together. Slowly, a new mass undulated in their direction, its
limbs and faces smoldering with ember.
At his
back, the chittering became overwhelming, and Isaac turned to see a triangular
wall of bone lurch towards him like a wave in the ocean, buoyed by a river of
arms and legs. He stumbled back, trying to create space, but the tide of bodies
gushed forward like a liquid, surging over the torch he had dropped. The flame
was sucked away.
Suddenly,
there was no light.
Darkness
reigned.
There
was only the chittering of bone, the sliding of corpses, the rasping cries and
hissing screams, the overwhelming rush of limbs and heads and bodies.
Isaac
felt something massive looming above him.
Mnemonics.
Now.
Now.
Now—
He wrenched
his arm, and white light burned from his hand. The tide of bones above him
lurched back, screaming in rage and fear. A hissing jet of steam erupted from
its dozen-skulled face, the old bone melting on its frame, dripping away like
pus. Isaac poured more energy into the casting, intensifying the anti-necrotic
spell until it was blazing as bright as a lighthouse in the palm of his hand.
When he stepped forward, the wave fell apart around him, the tide of bone
scurrying away like a swarm of insects, all the pieces bubbling and steaming
and bursting into flame.
“Get
behind me!” Isaac yelled.
Zaria
stepped around him as he marched on. Ahead, the wriggling slugs of bodies
slithered away, their cries of fear echoing down the long, empty tunnels, and