Chapter Sixteen
Chapter
Sixteen
Inheritance
Isaac
found himself on the outskirts of an industrious facility, one composed of
utterly massive proportion. The Extraction Chamber was vast enough to encompass
the entire pelvic cavity, each of the wings rising in peaks and troughs, the
thick curtains of bone rimming the expansive room like the caldera of a
volcano. From the entrance, it was almost impossible to see to the other side.
Isaac
blinked through the gloom of cartilage light. For a moment, he could not
believe what he was seeing.
This
was a factory of death.
It
became obvious, almost immediately, that the entire facility had been constructed
as an automated apparatus. There was a sorting area shortly in front of him,
filled with a rotten pile of jewelry and what had once been clothes. There was
a conveyor belt. There were buckets full of teeth. There was another conveyor
connecting to the first, stretching up to the ceiling. Above his head, there
were endless rows of coffins, hanging like the chrysalis of a caterpillar. Each
of these coffins was doored with glass. There were skeletons inside of them,
most of their forms broken beyond recognition.
Once
above the floor, there were tracks for the coffins to slide. Along these
tracks, there were articulating automatons, metal poles composed into the
imitation of limbs, forming a snarled webbing of metal and wires and joints.
Each of these limbs were tipped with strange devices. There were pincers,
scythes, and needles. There were tools for injection, threshing, mastication,
filtration, dilution. There were cauldrons for the emulsification of flesh.
There were scoops for organs. There was a vat of jellied eyes.
There
were many of these patterns, these woven machines. There were other sorting
pens, other conveyors, other automations. They filled the room. They webbed the
sky. There were so many other sites for the procession of bodies that Isaac
struggled to humanize the number, to not lose the arithmetic in all the horror
and gore.
The
machines repeated, on and on and on.
Slowly,
he noticed that every automated line was connected to a complex lattice of
pipework, conjoining itself with the tangle of piercing limbs in the same way
that nerves, in the flesh, will creep along the pathway of veins. The pipes
were not a separate system—instead, they were clearly fed by each step of the
extraction process, pumping whatever excretions came from the mutilated bodies
down into a snarl of valves, junctions, and shafts. From there, the souls would
feed deeper into the earth, irrigating the rock and stone.
Isaac
remembered the obelisk, teeming with the light of souls.
He
nearly gagged.
Despite
its age, the air still reeked of mortality. The death of thousands had left an
indelible stain. Blood and viscera caked the metal extractors, like a grisly
layer of rock. There were metal drainage gates at regular intervals, their
grills stained black with rot and pulp, their shafts littered so heavily with
bone that the sewers briefly resembled the straw matting of a barn.
He
chose to focus on what was in front of him.
In the
outskirts of the extraction chamber, before the sorting of the corpses, a large
standard of the stripes and stars hung limply in the cartilage light, displayed
above a stage. Below the standard was the puppeteer and his army of thralls.
He was
human. He wore flowing black robes, the material so utterly dark that it almost
seemed to devour the light, to make him a flowing
form, a void between the stars. He was standing in the center of the stage,
working at a bank of metallic devices. His back was turned, and wisps of purple
light coiled around his body, obscuring his features in haze.
At the
sorcerer’s back, a ring of thralls surrounded the stage. Their bodies were
still, their expressions limp. In the distance, through the dust and metal, he
could see more of the robed thralls moving along the drainage shafts and
retention tanks. Zaria’s hand came to Isaac’s shoulder, pushing him down. The
entrance to the chamber had a tiny foyer that was shielded from the cartilage
light. None of the thralls seemed to notice them. Their attention was plainly
focused on the pipes and drains, places where the bones might return to life.
“Isaac,”
Zaria whispered, grabbing the flat of her axeblade. It took him a moment to
realize she was preventing the steel from glinting. “Do it. Now.”
“What?”
She
pointed at his hand, mimed a mnemonic cast, and flung it toward the puppeteer.
The
black-robed man had not noticed their entrance. His back remained turned,
crawling with purple fog, his attention focused on the metal devices upon the
stage. Isaac thought he saw lights blinking over the panels.
“No,”
Isaac said. “The thralls are in the way.”
Zaria
looked at the ring of humans surrounding the puppeteer. “They’re already dead,
aren’t they?”
“No.
They’re alive. That’s the point. He uses them as reservoirs for energy.”
“Cuttin’ them down’s a mercy, then.”
“If I
can kill the sorcerer,” Isaac said, “they could be saved.”
“Could
be?”
“There’s
no guarantee.”
Her
eyes moved to the patrols roaming through the dust and machinery. “Gotta be
prudent, here.”
“Not if
I can help it.”
She
gave him a stern look. He shook his head.
With a
restrained sigh, Zaria examined the room, checking angles and lines of sight.
Isaac glanced behind them. The bronze doors had closed. On the other side, he could still hear a tide of scraping bone, like the
hissing of innumerable beasts. The necromancer would be spying on their
confrontation. Just like the parlay with Soren, she would be waiting for a
chance to strike.
Isaac
watched the puppeteer, considering his options.
“Right,”
Zaria said. “Here’s the plan. I’ll scamper along the side, close to the pipes.
On my signal, hit them glass coffins above their head. I want loudness. A spray
of glass. I’ll rush in towards the robed cunt there, and—”
The man
turned, looking silently at a knot of thralls beside him. The sigils on their
heads burned a little brighter, and they marched to the edge of the stage,
their brains so numbed with magic that most of them tripped stolidly over the
edge, not even bothering to brace for the fall. Once recovered, they fanned out
to opposite ends of the sorting area, a ball of flame held in each of their
palms.
As the
puppeteer returned to his work, Isaac caught a glimpse of the man’s face.
His
heart skipped in his chest.
It
couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. He didn’t have the specialty—how had he
managed—where had he found—
No.
No.
Zaria
squeezed his shoulder. “Hurry now, love, before they’re too entrenched. You
gotta—”
Isaac
stood up, barely aware of his surroundings. He hardly felt able to breathe.
“Isaac!”
Zaria hissed. “Get down! What’re you—”
“Uncle!”
Isaac shouted.
Ahead,
below the tattered stripes and stars, the puppeteer froze in place. The purple
clouds shimmered away, like a dying gasp. Beside him, the other thralls seemed
to thaw back to life.
Isaac
marched forward. “Uncle!”
The man
flinched, as if he’d been struck.
“Berith!”
Slowly,
the puppeteer turned to face him.
Berith
the Bone Hunter was a tall, imposing man. Even in his stark black robes, he
cast a long figure, like a stretching shadow. His shaved head reflected the
golden light, the bare skin still pink and peeling from sunburn. His complexion
was ruddy, his jaw square, his cheeks flecked with withered skin, places where
splashes of necrotic magic had scarred the flesh. He had been handsome, once,
before the years had taken a toll.
Right
now, Berith’s eyes were open wide. They looked very blue, here in the light of
cartilage. Isaac’s eye was the same color. He had always felt, in a way, that
when he looked at his uncle, he was looking back at himself, because their blue
eyes were something that no other member of their family had shared, including
Isaac’s father. When Isaac was a child, his uncle had told him it meant that
they, alone, were the only family who saw eye to eye.
When he
saw his nephew now, emerging out into the grisly floor of the necromancer
factory, Berith’s jaw dropped in horror.
“What
are you doing here?” Isaac yelled.
Berith
pressed himself into the powered device. All at once, the hanging coffins on
the ceiling began to shake. Their glass lids shattered, and bones flew through
the air in fits and swarms, wrapping around his sun-eating robes until they
formed an armor of limbs and ribs. His uncle adopted a low mnemonic stance, a
wreath of sickly green energy pouring from his palm.
Isaac
stopped. He became aware of the thralls around his uncle.
His
heart was quivering.
“What
is this?” he asked. “How are you—you are the parasite? You’ve been here,
all this time? Before me? Why didn’t you tell—”
“Silence!”
Berith shouted.
Isaac
flinched. In an instant, he had resumed the standard posture—his head bowed,
his shoulders hunched, his hands open and limp. It came easily.
It was
like he had never left.
Berith
walked to the edge of the platform. Around him, dozens of thralls returned from
their patrols, marching into rigid columns, their sigils
bright and alarmed. Amidst the black robes, their hands churned with the
preparation of elemental spells.
“Isaac,”
Berith said, slowly, his voice thick and heavy. “How did you—” He breathed out,
staring down at his nephew. “How did you get here?”
Isaac
dared to make eye contact. “What—what do you mean? You taught me—”
“Isaac!”
Berith’s
roar echoed down the extraction chamber, over the metal tanks, through the
glass coffins, bouncing up and across the wings of colossal bone. The acoustics
were just like the tower.
Isaac
thought he was about to faint.
“Answer
me!” his uncle shouted. “How did you get here?”
“I—I—”
He swallowed. “I’m sorry. You said—I just followed—th-the
map, the seal on the letter, the—the—”
“Did