Chapter Eighteen #5
the spell was complete, the flame that came from his hand was no more than a
weak sputter, something that would’ve earned a reprimand at any self-respecting
Diet college. Here and now, it was still more than enough to burn Soren’s face.
She missed her slash, stumbling. Her head became wrapped in fire. She flinched,
slapping her cheek, gasping for air, nearly losing her footing on the pipes,
beginning to flail wildly as the flame quickly spread to the skin below her
fur.
“You
cheating cunt!” she yelled.
Slowly,
the souls descended upon her. When they touched the flame eating through her
face, they turned Isaac’s weak spell into a great spout of fire, their essence
fueling the conflagration until the entirety of the captain’s body was subsumed
in the blaze, becoming a formless mass of heat and light. The only thing louder
than the flame was the sound of Soren’s agonized scream.
She
flailed and tossed, slamming into the machinery. She lurched. She fell. She
rose again, the flames eating into her muscle. With a final cry, the bunny
flung herself forward, blinded by fire, attempting to gut Isaac with a slash of
her sword.
He did
not move.
The
Black Eye missed.
She
lurched again, lost her footing, and fell bodily over the edge.
Soren
fell to the earth like a comet of fire, her raspy scream echoing the entire way
down the obelisk. When the screaming stopped, Isaac could still see a speck of
orange at the dark bottom of the obelisk, shining like a star in the sky.
It did
not move again.
All at
once, the souls receded from his skin, exhaling from his body like mist before
the dawn. As they left, the pain returned, and Isaac gasped with its arrival,
barely managing not to teeter over the edge. He fell heavily onto his rear.
“Isaac.”
Zaria
was dragging herself up the edge of the pipework. He saw, for the first time,
that one of her hands had nearly been cleaved apart, the flesh seeming to flex
in different directions, like rips in a fabric. He stumbled her way as she
managed to fling herself back to safety. When they met, she pushed him roughly
to the floor.
“Hold
still.”
“Z, are
you—”
“Shut
up!”
She
checked his injuries, prodding at the knives in his arm and chest. Isaac could
only stare dumbly at the knife sticking from her eye. He could see vitreous
fluid leaking down her furry cheek, mingling with the blood. He had never seen
the translucent fluid anywhere but a dissected corpse.
“You
coughing blood?” she asked.
“Are
you okay?” he replied.
“Isaac!
Are you coughing blood?”
“No!”
He coughed, just to make sure. “No, I’m not.”
“Good.”
She dug through her pack, ripping apart a white shawl with her teeth. “Gotta put
a tourniquet on. My hand’s fucked, so you need to hold some parts for me.
You’ll need a sling, as well, so you don’t open it no fuckin’ wider.”
“I have
to be able to cast—”
“You’re
bleedin’ half to death, you stupid cunt!”
It was
only now, when the immediate danger had passed, that he noticed how wet and
heavy his robes had grown. Blood flowed all the way down his arm, dripping into
thick streams at his wrist. As the rush of combat faded away, the pain suddenly
rose to new heights, smothering all his thoughts.
Zaria
retrieved a torch from her pack, smashing it to splinters on her knee. She
stuck the largest piece between her teeth, beginning to wrap the ripped cloth
around his upper arm. “Help me tie the knot.”
He did
his best to aid her in applying the tourniquet. She slipped the splinter of
torch into the cloth, tied the improvised windlass down, warned him that it was
going to hurt, and twisted the wood in circles. He yelled until his throat was
hoarse. When the tourniquet was viciously tight around his arm, she fashioned a
sling from another ripped section of fabric, cradling his arm close to his
chest.
“Don’t
move it,” she said, “and don’t take the blades out, neither. You’ll be dead in
minutes if you do.”
“Are
you okay?” he asked again.
She
raised her cleaved-open hand. The sight of it seemed to hurt her even more.
“Better than most who’ve crossed the Black Eye.” She took a strained breath.
“Still, I could dearly use more of that magic poultice. Gonna be laid out, at
this rate.”
“I
can’t make anymore.”
“What?”
“I used
most of my reagents the last time I healed you. I can’t make anymore.”
She let
out a sharp breath. “You shoulda said so. I woulda told you not to waste it. If
you had kept it, just for this. . . .”
He
looked sheepish.
“Godsdamnit,
Isaac.”
“I’m
sorry.”
“I lost
my fucking eye!”
“I just
. . . wanted to help.”
Zaria
took a deep breath, growled around the pain, and looked down through the pipes,
eyeing the small fire still burning at the bottom of the obelisk. “No.
Nevermind. I ain’t mad. Your meaning was there. Just . . . gods.”
“I
know.”
They
spent a few moments hissing in pain.
“I
can’t cast anymore,” Isaac said. “You’ll need to lead the way. I think your
poleaxe fell to the bottom. If you can—”
“You
think I can swing a polearm with my hand like a butcher’s shop?”
She
raised her hand. Through the jagged valley of flesh, he could almost see the
bones of her palm. He lightly swung his arm, testing the motion of the sling,
and received a sharp stab of pain in response.
“What
can we do?” he asked.
She
looked at him, silent.
Behind
them, the glass pillar began to shake. The souls rushed beneath the prison,
their screams rising in pitch, the surrounding pipes bending and flexing, the
surviving machinery churning and groaning and spinning into motion. All at
once, the souls were sucked downward through the glass pillar, rushing by in
streams of light and spectral limbs. The entire power grid shook on its frames
as it was brought gruesomely back to life, struggling against its age, trying
to perform its task thousands of years after its creators had died.
Berith
had reached the bottom of the tomb.
He was
resurrecting the skeleton.
The souls
had been the only source of illumination in the obelisk. Now, as the last of
them drained away, a wall of darkness rushed downwards from the top of the
tower, like water filling a tunnel. Blackness washed over the stone. By the
end, only a few errant souls remained above their heads, glowing like stars in
a night sky. The machines fell silent.
All the
energy and light had been drained.
The
screaming had finally stopped.
“Father!”
Isaac shouted. “Father!”
Only
his voice returned. The only thing he could see was a faint spot of fire where
Soren had fallen, which could only be the bottom of the tower. Isaac knew, in
some way, that Caine might’ve still been pursuing Berith, out into the cavern
that surrounded the obelisk. There might still be a fight. All the same, there
was no sign of it now.
The
weight of the earth laid down a heavy silence.
Sparks
came out of the darkness. Zaria was striking her flint. Slowly, the sparks
caught the torch, and Zaria raised the burgeoning flame above her head. It was
pitifully small compared to the darkness around them.
“Isaac,”
she said. “We’re fucked now, aren’t we?”
A
rumble began to be felt through the stone and metal, coming from somewhere
above. Outside, through the cracks in the obelisk, the darkness seemed to
churn. There was an unimaginably large cavern surrounding the body of the
colossus. Out there, through miles of blackened air, the first twitches would
be echoing through the bone. The toes would curl. The knee would flex. Soon,
the entire creature would be ready to stand.
If it
ever rose to its full height again, its head would pierce the clouds.
“I’ll
bandage your hand,” he said, digging some vials from his pack. All that
remained was a few tinctures of chamomile and boiled elderberry. They would not
do much.
“Hey,”
she said.
He
looked at her.
She
pointed at the powdered plants. “You givin’ me
flowers?”
“What?”
“Oh,
that’s sweet of you, squire. I go weak for flowers.”
He
looked at her in silence, the rumbling growing louder. Finally, he made a sound
that might’ve been a laugh.
“There’s
a smile,” Zaria said. “I’ll take it.”
“Be
honest,” Isaac said, pulling her wounded hand towards him. “Have you annoyed
everyone you’ve ever met?”
“If I
haven’t, it weren’t through lack of tryin’.”
When he
packed the chamomile and elderberry into her wound, she hissed. When he wrapped
the bandage, she snarled. When she flexed the hand, the cloth already stained a
glistening red, she let out a shuddering breath. Slowly, both of them trembling
in pain, they made their way over to the edge of the pipes. The winding
staircase barely caught the edge of the torch.
“Can
you jump?” she asked.
He
shook his head.
For a
moment, the rumbling intensified, groaning the metal, cracking the stone walls.
There was a deepening thrum of an avalanche.
Zaria
bent down, scooped him up, held him like a bundle beneath her arm, and leaped
into the darkness. They crashed into the stairs. Slowly, he was let back down
to his feet. She handed him the torch. Her arm wrapped around his shoulder,
fingers squeezing between the knife in his chest.
“Pressure,”
she said.
He
nodded. She pushed. It hurt enough to make him gasp. He could not tell if the
bleeding had slowed. He hoped it would be enough.
Carefully,
never letting go of each other, they descended the stairs of the obelisk,
heading into the darkness below.
Around
them, the earth began to shake and roar.