Chapter 28 Sorrow
Sorrow
Talk about shitty ideas and shittier routes. Sorrow blows out a choppy breath, warning herself to calm down. Otherwise, this jagged tunnel will eat her alive. As she learned upon entering this tomb, the threat isn’t figurative.
Picking through the jagged terrain, the new boots she’d conjured splashes through a creek. Slender waterfalls echo down the cavities, the streams questing to unseen channels.
Stalagmites rise from the foundation like tusks, poised to chew on anyone stupid enough to venture down this route.
Envy had listed them as one of the many reasons not to pass through here.
Get too close, and these formations will sense an intruder and jolt upward, hungry to shear through flesh and bone.
So basically, the cave has a mouthful of teeth.
Sorrow wedges through the maze, yelping as her foot slips on a damp rock. With the speed of a fellow immortal, one of the spiked fuckers lifts. It catches her fall, punching a hole through her skirt and puncturing the flesh of Sorrow’s hip.
She yips, stumbling upright and scurrying away from the stalagmite, its razor tip dribbling blood.
Pressing a palm to the gash, Sorrow clenches her molars, nostrils flaring.
If her reflexes hadn’t kicked in, she would have belly-flopped onto the thing and been impaled like tonight’s rotisserie dinner.
Stuffing her skirt against the wound, Sorrow hisses until the crater in her hip stops hurting like fuck, the pain ebbing from a ten to a solid five. Then she keeps going, hobbling through the stalagmites, the injury compromising her balance.
Every step throws another stabbing lance through her hip.
She muffles her cry, because loud noises will shake the rafters, and the noise-sensitive stalactites affixed to the ceiling will plummet like torpedoes.
Yet another lovely feature of this cave, along with protrusions in the walls that explode on contact.
The vault drills under the cliff. After he made her come around his fingers, and then around his tongue, Envy took Sorrow on another tour, sailing them through the waterfall enclave. Enroute, he indicated this dangerous abutting passage leading to the Astral Sea.
Needless to say, it’s been a crooked and twisted journey. Between the enclave and her destination, this course is supposed to reduce travel time by half. It should take an hour compared with the two that passed while swimming to the lagoon.
More importantly, this shrouded route prevents detection, ideal compared to breaststroking through enemy territory with no cover, exposed to anyone’s direct line of sight. Sorrow and Envy had gotten lucky the first time. It’s unlikely she would be so fortunate the next.
Envy had classified this cave as unsafe.
In reality, that had been putting it mildly.
The path is a death trap, chiseled with clammy rocks and slimy indentations.
Every fatal hazard verifies why he’s never tried navigating it, especially when they fled the Astral Sea, swimming having been the lesser of two evils.
Regardless, time is of the essence. Sorrow can extricate their weapons and make a return trip before nightfall. At which point, she and Envy will set out to meet their crew.
The conduit veers, clouded in a thick blanket of mist. It sprays her clothes, glazing the skirt and vest, the sheen as fine as pixie dust.
Sorrow plants her foot on a bracket of rock and roars an obscenity when the motherfucker shifts as if propped on casters, tripping her and inflaming the hip wound. Though, she’s more prepared this time, stabbing her fingers into a chink in the nearest wall, stabilizing her balance.
After a few more turns, the cave teeth fall behind, but the artery narrows. A mantle of stone tears across her elbows and draws more trickles of blood. The sixth wound thus far, including a few on her forearms, another at the column of her neck, and the hole in her thigh. Well, it could be worse.
At last, the conduit expands. The falls dry up as she reaches a border tasseled in foliage. Over the ridge, a panorama greets Sorrow. The dominion of water homes on stilts, with its network of boardwalks and piers. Nighttime incites a slow crawl of activity, most of her kin scarcely active.
Earlier, Sorrow had been faced with three options. One, pull Envy from sleep and ride his cock into the ground. Two, shake Envy from sleep and force him to accompany her. Three, leave Envy sleeping and deal with his fury when she gets back.
By now, the pride god has probably stirred and discovered her absence. Sorrow pictures his face contorted in rage, those full lips swollen from their kiss.
Their first kiss.
Not her only lip-lock in history, but definitely the most toe curling, full-bodied one.
The second his tongue had snatched hers, Sorrow’s body had detonated like a star, her soul shattered into chips of ice, electricity sizzled through her veins, her pussy throbbed like a pulse, and about a thousand other sensations laid siege to her anatomy.
But her heart…
Sorrow can’t comprehend what her wrecked heart had done. The breaking sensation had torn her to bits. Yet at the same time, the clamp of Envy’s mouth had stitched those pieces back together.
From this vantage point, she scans the vicinity. The water’s surface reflects billions of stars and a cluster of moons. Fronds brush her limbs as she creeps down the slope, to where the sea meets the pebbled shoreline, wafting with ethereal scents including pure silver and fresh white.
Removing her boots and lowering onto all fours, Sorrow crawls like a crab and submerges herself, paddling with her head above water. She pumps her arms, the pool rippling as she quests beneath the walkways.
Palpitations pound at her wrists. Her lungs seize up. But at least the water clots her wounds and alleviates the pain.
Avoiding beams of starlight, she navigates beneath the planks, passing several footfalls and murmured conversations. Someone plays a flute. Another polishes a longbow.
The tension increases tenfold as Sorrow reaches a designated pier. She knows its location well, waxed in moonlight and isolated on its perch. The round edifice has a single story, but rather than candles or draperies, a dusty lamp stands in each window.
Sorrow grasps one of the stilts bracing her house. If her theory is correct, and that group of deities have salvaged Love’s iron archery, they might be holding Sorrow’s or Envy’s weapons hostage as well.
In fact, they might have stashed those weapons as bait. Maybe they’re expecting her friends to come searching for the lost archery.
On second thought, when Sorrow and Envy had surveyed his house, they hadn’t found a single set of arms, because that group had ransacked everything. So maybe hunting for Envy’s glass weapons will amount to zero.
Or maybe Envy hadn’t looked hard enough. Or maybe lots of logistical things.
Sorrow presses her ear to the planks. There’s no sound of a guard or intruder.
Hooking her fingers over the pier, she hauls herself upward, heedful not to slosh about.
Casting the community another glance, she scurries to the door, creeps inside, and snatches the only alternate weapon in reaching distance.
A honed letter opener sitting on an entry console, the object a previous gift from Wonder.
Gripping the item like a dagger, Sorrow freezes.
No moving shadows. No silhouettes charging her way.
After checking the vicinity, she lowers the makeshift blade and pauses in the shadows.
For a blessed moment, she consumes the details as if she hasn’t been here in a millennium, as if everything has changed that much.
The lamps. The fleece linens. The table where she routinely shared currant nectar with her Guide.
The bed where Sorrow used to cry herself to sleep.
The floor where she pricked herself with her stitching needle after torturing Wonder.
And out the window, the pier’s edge where she sat beside Envy, their legs bobbing in the water as he inquired whether she would miss him, once they set off for the human realm.
Back when she couldn’t wait to be away from that god. Back when she had known her purpose. Back when she believed in it.
A lump buds in Sorrow’s throat. She rushes through the house, auditing the cupboards and closets and chests, rummaging for the welcome sight of archery.
Nothing. Not a forsaken thing.
The subsequent trip to Love’s home elevates Sorrow’s pulse.
Crafted of a dozen mullioned windows, the house stands vacant.
Nonetheless, she repeats the process of swimming, sneaking inside, and grasping a fire poker from a decorative hearth to defend herself.
After surveying the premises, she lowers the shaft and inspects every room.
Under her friend’s bed, someone has strapped a familiar set of iron arms to the bottom of the mattress. At the discovery, Sorrow puffs out a relieved breath. Fuck yeah.
But then she halts, suspicion creeping up her spine.
This is too easy. The location of the weapon alone is circumspect, mounted in the most amateurish hiding spot, as if a child had done it.
Although Sorrow had to go through the motions of searching Love’s home, she’d expected to find the archery in the possession of whoever had confiscated it in the first place.
“It’s a trap,” she hisses.
Lurching to her feet and wielding the poker, Sorrow wheels toward the windows, the doors, the corridors. Tapering her eyes, she waits but nothing happens.
Well, she’s not going to stick around for the cavalry. Hunkering, Sorrow examines the archery, checking for signs of stardusted rigging. After what happened in The Archives with that bobby-trapped book, Wonder and Malice had taken no chances and advised the crew on how to detect such deceptions.
With cautious motions, Sorrow gently detaches the archery. Then she lunges upright again, lest some triggered alarm should sound.