CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
C HAPTER T WENTY- F IVE
In his youth, Ryon had been beaten often enough to warrant days of bed rest. He recalls the sensation of minced insides – so battered and sore that he was surely nothing more than pulp beneath the skin.
He feels as such now, ambling along the path. So pitifully tender that he cannot separate the aches.
Tasheem and Rivdan walk ahead of him somewhere. He can hear their low grunts, their tormented breaths. He wonders how much they regret the decision to join him all those months before. Ryon imagines most fates now look more attractive than this.
Esra and Salem stay close by him. They drag their feet as unwillingly as he does, and they fall often. Abertha and Hector help to prop them up when needed. Their bodies are more intimate with the pains of exertion and starvation, and they seem to bear the journey with more grit. But when Ryon catches sight of their faces in the torchlight, he is struck by how gaunt they have become.
Another day and their bodies will begin to fail them completely.
Another day and no amount of determination will help them stand. They will simply wither away in this basin with their useless wings, along with Dawsyn and her expended magic, all of them unable to climb out of the hole they have sunk themselves in.
“Ahead,” Dawsyn’s voice calls, croaky and frail. “Just ahead.”
She says it often, though Ryon is not sure to whom she speaks. Perhaps to herself. She seems convinced that this unknowable end is near. It is likely a shield she holds between herself and the possibility of no end at all. The possibility of failure. After all, rage can only propel a person so far, Ryon knows.
He worries. He worries for what will become of her, what she will have left, if this end should not appear.
Then again, the torment will be short-lived. This Chasm has hovered and bided its time. It will soon swallow them whole.
He hears Dawsyn, but he cannot see her. Her pained breaths are closer than they were before. Perhaps she has slowed, or he has lengthened his strides. It is difficult to tell in the haze of hunger and weakness. The trails of thought run together.
“Ryon?” she says. He has never successfully snuck up on her.
“I’m here.”
He reaches out until his fingers glance off her shoulder, to keep from colliding with her.
“Walk with me,” Ryon says. And he takes her hand in his, feeling the sharp edges of her broken fingernails and the grit caked onto her palm. His hands are no different. “Have you had water?”
“Yes,” she says. Her fingers intertwining with his. “Though the stream runs thin here. Did you notice?”
Ryon nods, forgetting she cannot see him.
“We’re almost at the end and those fools turned their backs the moment they were about to stumble upon it.” That same bitterness colours her words, turns them vicious. Her hand tightens in Ryon’s.
“I think it’s time to prepare for the possibility of no end, malishka,” Ryon says now, too tired to pretend for her, though he wants to. He does not want her to feel the weight of this failure as well, not when she has fought so hard.
“No. It is ahead.”
“We grow weaker each hour,” Ryon says. “If there is an end, I fear we will not live long enough to reach it.”
She pauses in her speech but not her stride. She pulls him onward. “If I must be the one to haul us all to its end, then I will. I am not surrendering.”
And this is where they differ, for if Ryon must die in this Chasm, he is prepared to do so, solaced by the consolation that Dawsyn might be by his side. That he will see her in that other realm, both whole and repaired, and they will be together.
But Dawsyn will walk in her anger until death thwarts her. She will not grant herself the small mercy of taking those last breaths against his chest. She would rather face death wrapped in her rage.
“Malishka–”
But Dawsyn has suddenly halted in place. Ryon’s shoulder glances off hers as he passes. “Dawsyn?”
“Do you feel that?”
He stills. Each hair on his neck rises to the disquiet in her voice. His senses awaken, reaching to detect whatever foul thing Dawsyn has already grown wise to. But he hears only the harsh breathing of their comrades, sees only the faint outline of Dawsyn’s figure. Feels the pounding of his blood and little else. “I–”
“It is warmer here,” she says firmly. It is not a question. “Do you feel it?”
Ryon tries to feel what she does and fails. His body, over-exerted, has run hot since they entered the Chasm and seldom has he rested long enough to cool. Even so, his blood is allied with the cold. He does not feel the cruelty in its touch. The air feels no warmer to him here.
He wonders if Dawsyn has become addled in fatigue. She walks on, her stride determined, leaving Ryon no room to question her. “Come on,” she says, her voice inexplicably stronger, though she should be sapped of any strength.
“Dawsyn, go slow!” Ryon calls. “You’ll fall.”
“Watch the others,” she says over her shoulder. “Be sure they don’t fall behind.”
“Dawsyn!” But she has disappeared from his sight. His eyes reach desperately to find that faded outline again, but he can’t see. “Fuck,” he grunts. He hears the others behind him, remaining close to Hector’s torchlight. They will be safe enough together, walking their achingly slow trail.
“Fuck,” he says again. He can no longer hear the clatter of her footsteps ahead. They have disappeared as quickly as she. Damn it, girl. Ryon moves ahead, cursing the boulders that his shins bounce off, the slanted rock his feet slide over. He plunges on, his eyes squinting out of sheer habit. “ Dawsyn! ” he calls, and his voice is fed back to him like a taunt. “Dawsyn?”
He hits a wall and feels along its jagged edge. It curves toward him – a corner. He follows it, feeling his swords clatter against the stone. The walls taper in dramatically, leaving little room to pass through. He turns sideways to keep his shoulders from glancing against the sharp edge of rock. This corner is severe. Ryon has the strange sensation of being turned in a circle. It collapses further inward until Ryon’s breaths shorten, panic beginning to seize him. And then his hands find open space. The walls disappear on either side.
And then he sees her.
Not just her outline, nor the shadows that dart as she moves. He sees Dawsyn in full.
Ryon sees her as he would before first light, when the night loses its lustre and turns an anaemic grey – hazy and diluted. But even dimly lit, it is a clearer picture than he has seen in days.
She stands in the middle of the basin, looking down at her feet. The walls of the Chasm have opened to create a wider path here, and she looks around at the lifting gloom, as he does.
He steps out toward her, his eyes rising up the Chasm walls, finding that the light does not extend to its heights. The sky is no closer to them. They do not owe the lift of darkness to the sun.
Ryon wanders slowly to Dawsyn’s side, his mouth agape.
Dawsyn’s, however, is not. She studies, of all things, the ground. Her toe disturbs the fragmented rock there. “It is dry,” she says, her eyes rising to his.
Ryon peers down. When had the stream run dry?
Dawsyn crouches, a strike of pain flashing across her expression, and places her hand to the ground. “And warm.”
Ryon frowns, but when he kneels and places his fingers beside hers, they absorb the heat quickly, as though he’d laid a hand on a sun-soaked boulder.
He lifts his eyes to hers, and for the first time in an eternity, he can see the colour of her irises – an impossibly deep brown. They are not marred by the reflection of flames. He can see the dip in her cheek as her lips lift, he can see the fan of her eyelashes, the slope of her nose.
“We’re almost at the end,” she says, and a single tear catches in those eyelashes.
Ryon exhales in a gust, his chest releasing its dread and relenting to hope. He holds Dawsyn’s face in his hands and lays his forehead to hers.
The warmth, the light. Surely, that is what it all leads to. An end.
“Almost there,” he says, his smile matching hers.
Salem, Esra and Hector come first, squeezing themselves through the gap between walls and falling out into this opening. Like Ryon, it takes a moment for them to comprehend the changes in the Chasm, but soon their eyes grow wide. They look around for the source of light and fail to find it.
“Ry,” Esra says. “Have we died?”
Tasheem and Rivdan break through the curve next, then Abertha behind them, clattering clumsily in outward.
“Fuck,” Tash utters, her sword loosening in her palm.
They all look wretched. Ryon has never seen Salem look so gaunt. Even his rotund belly seems less inflated, his face ashen.
Esra, Hector and Abertha are no better. Hector casts a worried look at Esra, who leans heavily against his shoulder. Hector grasps the man’s waist firmly to keep him from falling.
Tasheem and Rivdan are waning. He fears they are closer to death than they allude. Even if their wings were whole and unharmed, he doubts they could now garner the strength to summon them.
Even so, each of their faces change upon sight of this new Chasm – illuminated dimly by something unknown.
“Come,” Dawsyn says. She grins over her shoulder at them through cracked lips and sunken cheeks. “Let us set eyes on the other side.”
Tasheem laughs, eyes glistening. “This is it,” she mutters. “It must be.”
“Thank the Chasm,” Hector exhales, wobbling under Esra’s weight.
“Fuck the Chasm,” Esra hisses. “Let’s get out of here.”
Dawsyn laughs hoarsely, her head turning up to the sky, eyes closed. Even smeared in black dust and leeched of any vibrancy, she still appears to Ryon a perfect creature. Surely the Mother never conspired to rid the world of her, when she took such precise care to sculpt her in the first place. Of course she would find her way out. Of course.
“Make haste,” Ryon says. “I could use a solid meal.”
Rivdan crows his assent, and they continue forward. Following Dawsyn’s footsteps down the dry trail, and as they go the Chasm brightens and brightens. The dark finally chased back by the promise of escape.