Chapter Nineteen #5
You could have walked into the hinterlands with all your supplies and
disappeared, right off the map. I would have been powerless to stop you.”
There was a pause. Isaac thought it was ironic that, now,
Berith kept waiting for him to respond, when he had never once done so before.
It felt like a poor effort, a token effort at reprieve.
Isaac waited for his father to provide a distraction.
“But you never did,” Berith continued, growing irritated.
“Even after you survived the dragons, you refused to stop. You kept marching
through the desert. You had no water, no scrolls. No hope at all.”
He remembered the terror, the sand, the thirst, the gnashing
maws.
“Why?” Berith yelled. “To rescue a man you’ve never met? To
fight a necromancer you had no chance of defeating? I know you, boy. I know
what you wanted. I could see it in every idle moment, every training, every
book, every chore. There was sullenness. Disobedience!
You never wanted this! You only wanted your freedom!”
The sights he had seen. Rivers, hills, towns. Boundless
skies.
“What is driving you, Isaac? What could you possibly want
now, of all things?”
Father.
Uncle.
A dead mother.
Family.
“I had assassins shadowing my every move!” Berith shouted,
his voice drifting, as if he was twirling his head, gazing in every direction
over the sea of bone. “Do you understand? I had no choice! There was nothing I
could do!”
His voice echoed down the cavern. When it fell, only silence
remained.
He was waiting for a reply.
Isaac waited.
“Isaac,” Berith said. His tone had softened. “You can still
come home. I promise you. I will make the Archons pay for what they’ve done.
You will be safe.”
Isaac had memorized every creak of the stairs. He feared the
swing of every door.
He never felt safe.
“Come home, Isaac.”
There was a pause.
“Please.”
An explosion came to his right, the shockwave ripping
through the ossein canopy, gushing a cloud of bone and metal into the afternoon
sun. Immediately, a colossal shadow passed overhead, swooping to investigate.
Zaria pulled him forward. For just a moment, Isaac looked back through the
canopy of bone, and he saw a skull the size of a cloud, hissing with a
creaked-open jaw.
They moved deeper into the boneyard. By now, the ossein was
continuously forming into solid bone in several spots, cracking open the hulls
of the butchered ships in much the same way that roots and vines would grow
through stone. Zaria didn’t dare cut through the ossein, lest the noise reveal
their position, so, instead, the two were forced to crouch and crawl, weaving
through the bony brambles and scattered sections of hull.
Another shadow rushed overhead, going from sky to ground.
When it landed, the earth seemed to heave, the shock of air pressure nearly
slapping the metal ships from their grave. Sunlight hit Isaac’s back, filled
with a raining of bone.
“I’m through playing games!” Berith shouted. “If you do not
show yourself right now, I will flatten this entire cavern!”
“Here’s good, I think,” Zaria said.
They were in a burrow of bone. To their left, there was a
long, thick cylinder that ended in an open pathway of concrete, which slashed
perpendicularly to either side. To their right, the ossein narrowed into a flat
crevice, one that could only be traversed by crawling.
“So,” she said, facing him, “we feelin’ good about this?”
Isaac didn’t answer. He was watching the hole at the end of
the metal cylinder. There was nothing but concrete and open air. Once he
emerged, he would be completely exposed.
“I’ll be quick, love,” Zaria said.
“I hope so.”
“Come now.” She put a hand to her chest. “I’m still the
dashin’ rogue you’ve fallen madly for.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Oh, you’re not denying it, then?”
“Z,” Isaac said. “I. . . .” He swallowed. His throat was
dry. “I’m trusting you.” He looked into her eye. “I’m really trusting you.”
Her grin was smeared with blood. “Have I given you cause for
concern before?”
He kept looking at her.
“Right,” Zaria said. “Don’t answer that. Just. . . .” She
glanced at the path he would have to take. “You sure about this?”
He could imagine his uncle, out there in the sun. There were
bones on his robes. There was parasite magic in his eyes. There was a ring of
thralls surrounding him, a cloud of necromancy in the air, and a bank of metal
devices at his hands, controlling a titan that rivaled the size of gods.
“I’m not sure of anything anymore.”
His arm remained useless in the sling. Every breath was
short and wanting.
“Go,” he said.
Zaria nodded, slapped him on the back, and began to crawl
through the tunnel of ossein, holding Soren’s cutlass tightly in hand.
Isaac stooped to a low crouch, slowly walking through the
metal cylinder. His boots scraped over the residue of some long-evaporated
fluid, as well as a noticeable series of carbon scores. The metal smelled
faintly of chemicals. He could not say what it might’ve been.
At the end of the tunnel, the sunlight grew painfully
bright. He stood on the edge, trying to adjust his vision.
“Isaac!”
He straightened his back, adjusting his robes, wiping his
hair from his eyes. Every morning, he would follow the same routine.
Here, now, there was a quiet in the metal, broken only by
the squalls of air overhead. He remembered camping in the shadow of a slot
canyon, sometime during his first night in the desert. He had rested in the
shade, listening to the wind, imagining all the perils he would face in the
tomb.
He had imagined facing an ancient necromancer.
A being of pure evil.
He had been alone, then. Same as he was now. He always knew
that he would embark on his journey alone. Now, it seemed as if this was the
way it would end.
He stepped into the light.