Chapter Seventeen #3
the arms pointed at Isaac again. To the side, two of the arms pressed their
hands together and quickly spread apart, as if demonstrating a fearsome length.
Next, the arms bent up at the elbow, forming a ninety-degree angle. They were
trying to flex a bicep.
YOU NOW
TALL
STRONG
The arm
pointed again, as if emphasizing the point.
YOU
MY SON
Isaac
could not even begin to respond. Below, the bones were sliding quickly, trying
to form words with a flooding of motion.
REGRET
THIS
REGRET
YOU
REGRET REGRET REGRET
“Isaac,”
the skull rasped.
Isaac
had to turn and wipe his eye.
“That’s
enough,” Zaria said. “I can’t read whatever the fuck you’re sayin’, but you
better tell us, right now—did you sacrifice your son?”
For a
long moment, the skull did not move.
“Yes or
no?”
Slowly,
the skull nodded.
“Did
you hold whatever horrors are buried here hostage, just to get that sacrifice?”
It
nodded again.
“Did
you kill your wife to sell the lie?”
Immediately,
the skull shook from side to side.
“Sure,”
Zaria said. “Twenty odd years of settin’ this plan in motion, and it’s only
now, when you got stabbed in the back, that you’ve come to be sorry.”
The
skull looked between them. Two of the arms pressed their hands together,
holding the fingers straight and the palms flat. It was a universal sign for
begging.
“Oh,
fuck off. Isaac, we’re done here. Let’s go.” She stepped over towards the door.
“Get outta my face!”
The
central mass squirmed away from the doors, all the limbs and pelvises moving
like a spilling pile of tinder. The pathway grew clear. Isaac didn’t move.
After a few moments of waiting, the stalk of the skull bent into a C as it
looked back at him.
“You’ll
just let me leave?” Isaac asked.
The
skull looked away. A moment later, it nodded.
“You
won’t try to stop me?”
It
shook from side to side, still avoiding his gaze.
“Squire,”
Zaria said, gesturing to the exit with her axe. “Don’t make me drag you.”
He
didn’t move. He stared at the skull until it finally looked his way. The bone
was hollow and cracked, its nasal cavity shadowed, the teeth squirming against
its jaw.
“Why
did you attack us in the catacombs?” Isaac asked.
The
skull glanced at Zaria, then back at him. One of the arms raised two of its
fingers. The skull clacked its jaws together, making a dry, hollow sound.
“What
is that supposed to mean?”
The
skull hesitated, looking down at its arms. A moment later, the bones on the
floor began to squirm.
EXPECTED
ONE
NOT TWO
“Expected
one,” Isaac repeated. He felt a moment of clarity. “Oh. You expected me to be
alone. When you saw Zaria with me. . . .”
The
skull nodded.
CONFUSION
ANGER
“Oh,
what,” Zaria asked, “it were just ‘cause I was here, gracin’
my furry visage? That ain’t an excuse. You didn’t recognize your son?”
The
skull looked at Isaac, shaking its head.
HOW
COULD I
“What’s
that say?” Zaria asked.
“He
asked how he could’ve recognized me.”
Zaria
glared at the skull. “I’m gonna fuckin’ smack you, honest to gods.”
The
bones moved quickly.
NO
RECOGNITION
NO
MIRROR
FORGET
TIME
BERITH
YOU
DEAD
“Hold
on,” Isaac said. “Slow down. What about Berith? You thought him and I were
dead?”
The
skull shook its head. Below, bones whirled and flew.
HE TOLD
ME YOU WERE DEAD
“He
told you?” Isaac asked.
The
skull looked at him, nodding. The jaw clattered against the upper palate, as if
mimicking speech. Below, the bones were forming words at a more measured pace.
SOUL
CAPTURE
WE
SPOKE TWICE
“I knew
that,” Isaac replied. “The Diet used the soul capture to speak with you, to
arrange this deal. It was right before I was born, and right before I left.”
When he considered this, he felt a moment of dawning horror. “You couldn’t stop
this deal after it was made. They had to contact you first, and they didn’t.
There was no way to take it back.”
The
skull looked at him, silent.
REGRET
“So,”
Isaac said, piecing it together, “when you spoke to your brother the second
time, he . . . told you I was dead. He told you he was going to kill me,
that the Diet was reneging on the deal. In fact, he had spent all this time
preparing to kill you.”
On the
pelvic wall, the entire mass of bones began to shudder, like a breath of wind
through a tree. The skull seemed to hiss in pain. For a moment, Isaac could
only imagine how it must have felt for his father, waiting in the dark, waiting
for his son, waiting so long that he’d forgotten the appearance of his former
body, only to be told by his own brother that his son was soon to die in the
desert, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
The
bones on the floor began to squirm.
REGRET REGRET REGRET REGRET
REGRET
“I’m
sorry,” Isaac said.
“Isaac,”
Zaria warned.
“No, Z.
I do feel sorry.” He gazed up at the skull. “That must have been . . .
shattering, to hear, after all that time. I can’t even imagine the anguish.”
The
skull gave a single, trembling nod.
“So,”
Isaac said, collecting himself, “you were expecting me to be dead, which is why
you attacked us initially. For that, at least, I believe you. I’m assuming, as
well, you only recognized me afterward, by listening to our conversations.”
The
skull nodded again, managing to raise its eyeless gaze.
“Then
what about the wyrm? What were you doing there?”
Below
the skull, two of the protruding arms began to whack their forearms against
each other, like swords clashing.
“Soren,”
Isaac said. “The duel. You were trying to stop it.”
The
skull nodded, swaying on the stalk.
“Alright.
That’s . . . believable. For now, I can only think of one more question.” He
glanced behind him, through the ruined metal of the extraction chamber. “What
does the Diet want? Is it the treasure? The technology? The souls?”
The
skull shook its head.
“Then
what? Berith—uncle—” He released an angry breath. “Your brother said
that whatever was in this tomb was more important than a single life.”
The
skull gave a deep nod.
“What
is it?”
One of
the arms shifted up the bone wall, sliding along the nest of connections until
it was perched at the summit. It pointed a bony finger towards the wall of the
chamber. At first, Isaac thought it was gesturing through the wall, at the
complex behind them, where the necromancers had studied and experimented with
the depths of magical craft. There were lessons there that should not be
repeated.
It took
him a moment to realize the truth.
“The
giant skeleton?” he asked. “The colossus itself?”
The
skull nodded. One of the other arms pointed toward the center of the chamber,
at the device Berith had been working on. Isaac remembered, suddenly, that
souls had been leaking from the metal. After catching his attention again, a
third arm pointed diagonally into the floor, down towards the obelisk, where
the souls appeared to consolidate.
He
could still feel the rumbling in the floor, the distant sound of screams.
The
realization struck him like a bomb.
“He’s
going to resurrect the skeleton,” Isaac said. “The Diet doesn’t care about the
treasure. It’s the corpse, this giant creature. The one the tomb is built from.
This is the largest repository of soul energy in the world, and it’s enough to
bring the colossus back to life. That is why the necromancers were
sacrificing so many people.”
He
couldn’t imagine the scale of such a beast, were it ever to rise again. It had
taken him the better part of three days just to travel halfway down its body.
It was so spectacularly massive that a city had been built in its chest. It had
once been the cradle of an entire empire.
If his
uncle succeeded. . . .
Nothing
would be able to stop it. The man who controlled such a colossal mountain of
bone would be the terror of every army and kingdom in the Nine. The mere shadow
of the creature emerging over the horizon would cause entire cities to flee in
fear. They could hold every government hostage with only the threat of its
deployment. With enough planning, resources, and ambition, they might even
deign to conquer the world.
That
would certainly be worth a little murder.
“We
need to stop him,” Isaac said. “Him and the Archons. No one should have that
kind of power.”
The
skull gave a firm nod.
“Hold
on,” Zaria said, moving back to his side. “You sayin’ that, if your brother
wins, this titan’s gonna walk again?”
Another
nod from the skull.
Her
eyes roamed over the vast curve of the pelvis, as if it was the first time she
had truly appreciated its size. It took an entire turn of her body just to
follow a single wing. “Fuck me. That’d be the end of the world.”
Isaac
and his father nodded together.
“Well,”
she said, “my greed’s looking rather paltry now. Gods above.”
Isaac
stared into the eye holes of the skull. Behind it, the wall-covering mass
expanded outwards, coming forward from the pelvis. The movement was slow and
cautious, like the approach of a stray dog.
A
silent question hung in the air.
“I
trust him,” Isaac said.
“What?”
Zaria took a step forward, shifting her axe toward the bone wall. “How the fuck
you swinging that?”
“Watch.”
He stepped forward. The skull stalk coiled back. “If I don’t interfere, Berith
will kill you. He will win. Yes?”
The
skull took a moment to nod.
“In
that case,” Isaac said, “why did you tell me to leave? You’re going to die
without me. You need my help.”
Bones
danced across the metal floor.
I LOVE
YOU
BE SAFE
ALL I
WANT
“You’d
seal your own fate,” Isaac said, “let the Diet get their giant monster, just so
I’d have the chance to escape?”
The
skull gave a single, firm nod.
“There
you go,” Isaac said, turning to Zaria. “That’s why.”
“Have
you gone daft in the head?” the hyena replied. “All I’m hearin’ from this
puppet show is the ways he’s almost killed you.”
“I
trust him.”
“Well,
I’d sooner suck a wyrm through my cunt. You’re the only noble exception in the