Spires and Bones #3
“Let me go!” Euphemia snarls, words muffled.
Gone is the docile, abiding woman Euphemia has been told to be her entire life.
In its place, a wild and feral creature is unleashed.
Euphemia thrashes. She bucks the full weight of her body against her assailant. He nearly loses his footing judging by the way they rock to one side—but it’s then she remembers the large pools of venom splattered around the room. She can’t risk being melted alive.
Instead, Euphemia digs her nails into the man’s forearms. Still he does not relent. His grasp around her is as solid as iron. He pulls her all the way to the other side of the corridor, where the ceiling is still only bones and the floor is mostly intact.
Finally, he leans over her. A skeletal face and eyes of flame stare down at her. “What did I tell you about coming here, wretched creature?”
“You!” she says into his hand. Euphemia glares. This time when she wriggles, he releases her, arms raised in surrender.
“I thought I warned you about coming in here—” But as Ash steps back to give her space, he puts himself under the direct path of one of the dripping stalactites.
Bare flesh sizzles. The man hisses, jerking his arm away and staggering even farther away.
Euphemia has no room for empathy for him at this moment.
All she thinks of is her father and how she can no longer hear him.
With Ash staring down at his sizzling arm, Euphemia seizes the opportunity presented. She dashes back across the corridor.
“Euphemia, stop!” His shouts ricochet after her like arrows fired haphazardly.
But Euphemia is already halfway down the hall, having dodged them all.
She leaps over the pools of venom.
Dodges rubble and bones.
And bounds around the corner, across the threshold, and toward the salvation awaiting her.
Only, salvation is far from what she finds.
If the twisting halls behind her were the bone palace, this must be the chamber of slaughter.
Death permeates the walls here, acrid and thick. Like it’s all this vacuous room has ever known.
Corpses litter the ground. Not just emaciated bones like the previous halls, but bodies of flesh and blood so torn apart that it is difficult to tell where one ends and another begins.
Euphemia stops.
Her stomach twists.
She locks up.
Heaps of the dead are piled along every wall, stacked nearly to the vaulted, cathedral ceilings. They tower around her like sentinels of judgment. Skewed jaws. Cracked ribcages. Limbs twisted at impossible angles.
This is not a room of peaceful death.
It is one of torment.
She can no longer lie to herself that this is only a dream.
This is Hell—or some place like it.
And she gets the distinct feeling that no one leaves here alive.
Despite the churning of her stomach, Euphemia’s neck snaps around the yawning chamber, searching for signs of her father.
She climbs over bodies, her nose shielded from the sour smell. She doesn’t want to look. Doesn’t want these faces, twisted in terror, forged in her mind. Doesn’t want to witness the aftermath of every disembowelment. But she has to find him. Has to know he’s alright.
By the time Ash staggers into the room behind her, Euphemia is already a decent way in.
Not quite to the other side—this chamber seems endless.
The piles of bodies amassed around the room fade into shadows and then into utter darkness.
But she’s far enough away that it takes him a quick scan of his surroundings before he spots her.
Euphemia turns her back to him, preparing to drown out what she anticipates will be his commands. Stop. Come back. We have to leave at once.
They do not come.
Only in his silence does she finally hear it.
A rattling sound of death.
Something sliding over bones and viscera.
The hairs on her arms stand on end. Slowly, Euphemia turns.
Mounds of bodies block much of her view, but she still can see him across the way, standing near the entrance.
Ash reaches a hand up to his lips, one finger pressing upon them.
Dread has never sunk into her belly more swiftly.
A soft crunch echoes nearby, muted by something heavy. But always that sliding, gliding sound, like something moving without limbs. Like—
In a burst of clarity, Euphemia suddenly remembers every strange detail about this place. The bones. The venom. The snakes on the ceilings.
A soft crunch echoes nearby.
Euphemia freezes.
Something moves across the bones. Not a footstep. Something sliding. Something without feet.
Slowly, Euphemia turns.
Cresting over the corpse mountains beside her, the head of a giant serpent appears. Fangs as large as her entire body. Scales covered in dried and fresh blood. Golden eyes searching for its next meal.
Slowly, so as not to catch its eye, Euphemia takes one step toward the entrance.
But when she does, her heels find purchase in the hollowed cavity in someone’s thigh. The unexpected sensation would be disorienting enough. But startling her more is the cry that wrenches from them. She hadn’t known anyone else was alive.
Glancing down, Euphemia realizes they might not be. For no one could survive the injuries the body at her feet has sustained. Puncture wounds that ooze. Venom coursing through every vein.
And yet, the man’s chest rises. His emaciated eyes meet hers. His decaying mouth foams, as he cries, “Help me,” over his engorged tongue.
Euphemia wants to slam her hand over his mouth.
But one glance back to the serpent tells her it’s too late.
The slits of its eyes narrow. “Ah, fresssh meat.”
Tears well in the back of her throat as Euphemia comes to terms with the understanding that she can’t save this stranger. She may not even be able to save herself.
“Father?” she yells weakly, hoping that maybe he is nearby. That maybe he’ll hear her, and they’ll share one final moment together, as grim as it may be.
If he is near though, his voice does not find her. For it is at that same instant that the serpent throws its scaly body down on the mountain of corpses.
Its enormous body carries it down the mountainside with a velocity that should not belong to any creature so immense. Far faster than Euphemia will be able to run.
Her legs carry her anyway.
Heart hammering.
Her feet trample into bodies that feel more like mulch and wet sand than anything solid.
“Sssatiate. Hunger,” the voice hisses behind her.
Euphemia runs like her life depends on it, locking eyes with Ash across the room.
He’s bounding toward her, sword at the ready. Though she is not sure he’ll make it in time. One glance behind her and she finds the head of the serpent has already reached the ground.
Something catches Euphemia’s ankle, her body sent sprawling.
Euphemia crashes into a heap of writhing corpses.
They moan in agony and rage.
Fingers grasp at her—some plump, others picked clean to the bone. One claws at her stomach. Another grabs her arm. Hands tangle in her hair. Pulling. Kneading. As if one fistful of something real will restore them to life.
All the while, Euphemia is screaming. Kicking. Trying to break free. While the rumbling in the ground grows louder.
She doesn’t know which will be worse: death by being devoured or ripped to pieces. All she knows is she doesn’t want to find out.
A corpse near her feet grabs hold of her legs.
It starts pulling itself up the length of her.
Tongue lolling through the empty place where its lower jaw is missing.
Euphemia presses a hand to its forehead, keeping it at bay.
But other bodies press in harder. Pulling at her hair. Her clothes. Her flesh—
When a sword stabs through the corpse at her feet.
Relief barrels into her at the sight of Ash standing over her.
He pulls the blade out with ease and strikes again, this time landing purchase on the creature pinning one of her arms beneath it.
Ash makes quick work of the rest of the bodies, severing limbs and heads.
Then he offers her his hand, covered in gore. Euphemia looks down at her own hands, slick with fluids she’d rather not decipher.
Euphemia fits her hand into his and he hoists her to her feet.
“Go!” Ash bellows, shoving her behind him, closer to the entrance. He readies his sword again. “I’ve got Níehoggr. You get yourself out of here.”
Panic sinks its teeth into her as the ground trembles. “I can’t leave. My father—he’s in here somewhere.”
The flames of Ash’s eyes flick to her. Briefly.
But the serpent advances quickly. Recognizing that Euphemia is unmoving, Ash instead shields her between his body. And when the serpent slithers near enough that a wicked grin starts to crack its face open, Euphemia’s protector charges forward.
He slides through viscera, sword swinging in one clean arc across the serpent’s neck.
The head falls with an earthquaking thud. The impact sends a shockwave through the castle. Bones clatter and snakes fall from their perches.
Before triumph and relief can even begin to wash over Euphemia, she notices the serpent’s body twitching. The place where the head had been throbs. Something thin and papery weaves across the wound.
“What’s happening?”
Ash sheathes his bloodied sword. “The head will grow back. We don’t want to be here when it does.”
He grabs her hand with the fervor of someone who knows imminent danger.
Euphemia knows it too. She knows the last thing she wants is to face such a creature ever again. But the agonizing temptation of what if still lingering in her chest.
She rips her hand from his grasp, lips quivering. “I am not leaving until I’ve found my father.”
Something like a sigh grumbles in his throat.
Ash stops.
Twin flame eyes assess her.
Then the serpent.
Then without warning, the beast of a man grabs her by the waist and hoists her over his shoulder.
“Unhand me, you beastly thing!” She hammers against his spine as the words slip from her mouth, unburdened. If he wants to act like a beast, then she refuses to feel guilty about calling him one.
But his grasp is ironclad as he carries her from the chamber. And she swears she hears a hint of a smirk in his tone as he says, “You will be the death of me yet, wretched creature.”