Chapter Twenty #3
was achieved.
The
smile.
He
could remember every smile.
“Isaac!”
He
looked up at Zaria, yanked from memory. She was craning her head to the sky.
The
colossus was moving again.
Now
that he was free from the tangle of bones and metal ships, he received his
first proper look at the gigantic reptile. It stood on two legs, mostly
attaining a bipedal gait, though its posture was unusually crooked and bowed.
There was a field of spiky protrusions along its tail and vertebrae, like a
line of caltrops. Its pelvis was wide and seemingly backwards. Its arms were
pathetically small, grasping feebly at the air. Its ribs were so long that they
almost curved around to meet each other, like the curling limbs of a spider.
Isaac
saw now, more than ever, that the titan was a horrible amalgamation of body
parts. Its skull and pelvis were reptilian, or a close facsimile of such, but
it had far too many vertebrae, and the rest of its proportions were utterly
bizarre. Its neck was almost too long to properly support its head, its chest
was grotesquely wide, and its arms were so tiny as to be useless, like they
were merely a vestigial trait, a remnant of finer function.
If he
had to guess, it was likely the creature had never actually been
killed—instead, it had merely succumbed to the inadequacies of its own anatomy.
It did
not seem a creature made for this world.
It did
not seem a proper creature at all.
Now,
the creature reared itself back, its crooked posture rising toward the sky. A
thunderous growl pierced the air. Its body heaved and stretched until there
were visible gaps between the connection of the bones, held together only by
the energy of thousands of souls, like a cartilage that screamed for mercy and
death.
The
earth rumbled. It seemed to come from everywhere, all at once.
Berith
had taught this lesson very well. Killing the master of a thrall did not kill
the thrall itself. It would retain all the energy with which it had been
infused.
The
only thing that would be lost was control.
“Isaac!”
Zaria yelled. “Do something!”
The
reptile steadied its head, its empty eyes roaming over the rubble of the
cavern. The rumbling intensified. From the sides of the pyramid, glittering
shapes moved among the sea of ossein, like worms squirming beneath the web of a
spider. A few feet from where Isaac stood, the bank of metal devices remained
active, their panels alight with flashing letters.
Isaac
stumbled into a run. The movement was enough to catch the titan’s attention. He
grasped at the bank of machines, gripping through the hanging souls. He had no
idea how to work such a device. There were calibration knobs, measuring dials,
rusted buttons, levers whose function was only written in an ancient language.
His hand roamed over the different control mechanisms, lessons on necrotic
resurrection racing through his mind.
He looked
up towards the sky, and the sky was gone. There was only a skull peering down
at him, like the stark white moon of Solnova was tumbling from its orbit. Isaac
made eye contact with the colossus. It felt like staring into the face of a
god.
The
beast pointed its snout, giving a brief sniff.
The
suction of air was monstrous. Clouds of sand whipped into the air. Isaac had to
grip the metal device to stay where he was, and Zaria was outright lifted from
her feet, nearly flung from the edge of the pyramid. When Isaac regained his
balance, he gave up all pretense of a plan, immediately slapping as many of the
strange buttons as he could.
The
colossus opened its jaws, loosing a flurry of sand.
As it braced for a bite, the rumbling reached a crescendo.
Suddenly,
a sandwyrm leaped from the sea of ossein, its wings glittering in the sun, its
circular maw striking the titan right in the empty socket of its eye. The titan
whipped its face to the side, shocked and reeling. Isaac just barely noticed
Zaria sprinting in his direction before she tackled him to the ground, saving
him from the gusts of wind. For a long few moments, they braced together behind
the metal devices, enveloped by a cataclysm of earth and sound.
Isaac
risked a peek from cover. Above, the colossus had reared back to its full
height, and the limbless dragon was still squirming from the depths of the
creature’s eye, like the grotesque birth of a parasite. The colossus squirmed
its tiny arms, thrashing its head from side to side. At its feet, more
glittering wyrms erupted from the field of concrete,
leaping onto shins and knees and toes.
The
titan roared. The sound nearly split Isaac in half. With a great heave, it
began to kick its legs into the air, flinging the wyrms from its body like one
might shake a swarm of leeches. Any of the dragons who did not fly away were,
instead, splattered against the ground as the colossus resorted to vicious,
bony stomps. In seconds, the sea of ossein was drenched in a splattering storm
of blood.
Zaria
yanked Isaac to his feet, pointing at the metal devices. “Do something!”
He
stared at the instruments, barely able to focus.
“Do
something!”
Isaac
began to randomly slap buttons.
The
titan lurched back, letting the sun return. Its body seemed to spasm. Entire
forests of ossein were swept away as it took a stumbling step backwards, its
bones trembling like the reeds of a chime. Slowly, the colossus caught its
balance, shredding earth and concrete with the flexing of its toes. Isaac was
sure he had just interrupted the flow of energy within the creature’s bones, if
only for a moment. He would just have to figure out how to do it again.
There
was a growl. The colossus snapped its jaw, growing frenzied in rage. The
sandwyrm in its eye finally lost attachment, spilling from the socket, its
bulging body tumbling end over end as it fell the great distance back to the
pavement. Once it struck the floor, the colossus immediately swooped down,
crushing the dragon within its mountainous jaws.
“Isaac,”
Zaria said.
“I
know!”
“Isaac!”
“I
know!”
The
colossus rose back to a hunched posture, green blood oozing down its chin.
Chunks of a freshly-skewered wyrm rained from the sky. For miles, the concrete
was bathed in the meat of a dozen shredded dragons, which was far more than any
kingdom of the Nine had managed to vanquish in centuries.
Slowly,
the colossus returned its attention to the pyramid.
Even
without flesh, Isaac could see the anger on its face. Its empty sockets found
them again. It snarled, its voice booming like a thousand storms, its jaw
slathering with blood as it rushed in for a strike.
In pure
desperation, Isaac grabbed a rusted lever, wrenching
it all the way down.
There
was an apocalypse in the sky. The colossus roared past the pyramid, somewhere
between lunging and falling. It looked, for a moment, like all the clouds of
the desert had been shot from a cannon. Ossein flew, the earth shuddered in
pain, and Isaac fell to the floor of the pyramid, barely noticing the scraping
of the knives against the cataclysm at his feet. When he managed to regain his
senses, he saw the beast leaning against the opposite wall of the cavern, its
body so tall that the massive escarpment only barely reached the center of its
chest. It gave a trembling moan of pain.
Below,
in a great furrow of concrete, one of the titan’s legs had cleanly detached
from the pelvis. Bones lay scattered across the ground, in much the same way
that a city might be scattered across a field—there was the cap of a knee, and
a river of a thigh, and an avalanche of toes still rolling across the pavement.
The
beast roared, trying to hobble towards them, its speed and balance now heavily
crippled. Isaac scrambled to his feet and pulled every lever he could see. As
the reptile came, entire sections of its body began to twist and fall. There
were lances of ribs, meteors of vertebrae, an elbow popping loose, teeth and
fingers raining down like the missiles of a trebuchet.
Before
the colossus could hop another step, much of its torso was scattered upon the
earth, leaving only the barest connection of bone. Purple light faded and
popped. When Isaac forced down a particularly important lever, the beast
collapsed to its side, erupting a cloud of dust and sand. It moaned again.
Its
voice was pleading.
Bones
scattered and heaved.
At his
hands, Isaac felt the metal device begin to rumble, the ancient plates groaning
with a new surge of power. The souls were returning to their source. He looked
at the colossus, which was staring back in a heap of its own body, the socket
of its eye looking cracked and worn. He became very aware, all of a sudden,
that he was killing an animal, as well as a god.
“I’m
sorry,” Isaac said, wrenching the final lever.
All at once,
the skull of the colossus popped from the top of the vertebrae, rolling forward
like the sun would roll across the sky. Its face rested against the growing
dunes of sand. It was upside down. Teeth loosed and clattered. The colossus
gave one last wrenching gasp, burying its mouth in dirt and sand and bone, as
if, in its final moments, it sought the comfort of the earth that caressed its
corpse for so many years. A moment later, it returned to death.
For a
time, Isaac was only aware of the sun on his back, the falling sand on his
face. The death of the colossus seemed to have stilled the world.
Slowly,
he realized the device at his hands was still rumbling. The vibrations were
growing erratic. Souls erupted from the metal. He stepped back just as the
welding began to sunder and break, shaking violently on its frame. He took
another step, and his burned leg screamed in pain, sending him collapsing to
the floor. Just when he was about to start crawling, Zaria grabbed him from
behind.
The
metal device exploded. Isaac and Zaria hit the floor, barely dodging a cloud of