by Nazri Noor
The skeletons shambled as they turned inward, their empty sockets burning with hollow, dark malice. They were looking at us: at the members of the Boneyard, and the Lorica.
“Asher,” I called out. “Better get them back in line, buddy. This looks real bad.”
“It certainly does,” a woman’s voice said.
From out of the mobs of skeletons stepped a living corpse, its hair in stringy clumps, decaying flesh barely clinging to its bones. Izanami, the goddess of death, was wearing her true form.
“What have you done?” I said. “I thought we had a deal. I thought you were over it. We were supposed to be even.”
Izanami gave me her corpse grin, then extended one rotted hand, spreading her fingers. As if spurred by an unheard battlecry, the skeletons rattled forward, racing for our throats. When she spoke again, Izanami’s voice was guttural, thick, patronizing.
“Now, we’re even.”
Chapter 31
The goddess of death had wrested control of Asher’s undead army. As wicked as their skeletal talons were when Asher had commanded them, now the undead had grown more vicious, more bloodthirsty, raking their claws in terrible arcs at the Lorica.
Screams filled the air. The shrikes were down, and for all I hoped their birthing polyps had been incinerated too, but this was a brand new threat – one we definitely didn’t need.
Asher was on the ground, his palms pressed into the grass, retching. The mantle of power surrounding him had faded completely, his body drenched in sweat. I thought I saw a cleric attending to him, one of the Hands who specialized in healing. Good enough. We needed all the help we could get.
We were up against a goddess of the underworld herself, in addition to the growing danger of the Overthroat. And with our forces scattered, the Old One had more room to maneuver, more time to pick and place its attacks. Stray beams of brilliant, searing white fired from Shtuttasht’s horrible maw, scarring the ground, scattering mages in their wake.
More shouts sounded from around the graveyard. Had the Overthroat struck home and actually killed mages? I couldn’t bear to look. Where the Overthroat’s fetid breath touched the earth, more of the glistening black polyps rose to the surface, bringing with them yet more of the infernal shrikes.
“Dustin,” Herald cried. “Snap out of it!”
My gaze lingered on him as he fired sheets of frost out of his fingertips. Ice wouldn’t do much against the creaking bones of the risen dead, but at least it slowed them down. I watched as Bastion gritted his teeth and clenched his fingers, splintering and smashing skeletons with every gesture. He was running low on juice, like I was, and soon the rest of our team would burn through their arcane stocks as well.
“Dustin,” Herald said again. “Help us fight, or get out of the way.”
“There’s a third option,” I said, my hand on autopilot as it reached into my breast pocket. “This had better work.”
He eyed the crystal in my hand warily, unsure. “Whatever it is, Dust – just do it. Whatever helps.”
I hurled the crystal at the ground, barely dodging out of the way as a thin shaft of pure moonlight shot from the earth and rocketed into the sky. It pierced the clouds, then silently exploded into a pulse.
Nothing, for some moments. I thought that the gods had lied, and once again abandoned us. But the clouds parted. Out of the darkness the moon and stars themselves seemed to descend. Pinpoints and shafts of light blurred and refracted, until they arranged themselves into the shapes of men and women straight out of myth and legend. The Midnight Convocation had come to answer our call.
Apparitions of milky-white soldiers astride ghostly images of fierce warhorses raced from out of the clouds, charging the skeletal army, swords upraised as their forms turned corporeal and trampled the undead. Bones splintered and cracked under the rampage, and my spirit soared as the riders headed straight for the Overthroat’s portal. Each horseman burst into a pulse of pale light as it struck the Old One, and every blow caused it to recoil.
Rays of concentrated moonlight and gleaming black spears of pure shadow rained down from the sky, the Midnight Convocation confronting the Overthroat with their fullest fury. Artemis laughed as she plucked her bowstring like a harp, each arrow that she fired magically splitting into twenty, savaging both the undead and the Overthroat alike. Amorphous clouds of white-hot stars fell from Nyx’s fingers, colliding against the Overthroat’s skull, sticking there and burning like twinkling napalm.
The Old One’s claws raked at the earth as it backed up. It was working. Shtuttasht was retreating. The army that Izanami had stolen from Asher was all but destroyed, and we were getting so close to victory that I could taste it.
Then the Overthroat opened its mouth and bellowed, a horrible, bone-shaking sound, like a bomb siren, an omen. The flaps of decayed alabaster skin and flesh at the thing’s neck unfolded, like the petals of a flower in bloom, and where each hole had been lingered a glowing, spinning orb of brilliant white light. The sweat on my forehead went cold. The Overthroat had only been firing out of one barrel. Now it had seven, and the night filled with the Old One’s horrible end-song as they charged to fire.
“Scatter,” I shouted, amid the panicked cries of the other mages, the gasps of shock coming from the gods themselves.
But no one anticipated the strike. With a blast that shattered the air, the Overthroat fired a humongous beam of ivory light not towards the graveyard, but at the sky, its immense magical force screeching as the lance of power carved an arc through the clouds. It was attacking the Midnight Convocation directly.
A bloodcurdling cry pierced the night. Someone was hit.
From the darkness above us Chernobog roared his fury. I followed his gaze, finding the last traces of Metzli’s body suspended in midair, her face frozen in pain and terror, her limbs and torso torn and ragged. She wasn’t bleeding, but her body was disintegrating into tiny motes of fading light. Stardust.
My heart clenched. One of the gods had passed. There were exceptions, sure, but an entity that died outside of the protection of its domicile was well and truly dead. Of all the entities, I hadn’t expected Chernobog to mourn the hardest, his furious wails echoing through the night. For all his pomp and arrogance, the god of darkness truly did care for his siblings.
The assault of magic from the Convocation, the rain of supernatural power that assailed the Overthroat like a hail of bombs came to a sudden stop.
Chernobog’s voice boomed over us all. “You called and we answered, mortal whelp. But now one of us has fallen in battle. This was not within the terms of our contract.” His eyes smoldered as they met mine. “Pray that you do not perish the way our sister did, for we will find you once more. The Midnight Convocation will remember.”
It was as if a hand had reached into my chest and pressed tight. If we survived the night, the entities of darkness would still want to kick my ass. I clenched my fists. We needed a win. I looked on as the gods faded into the sky. I couldn’t read Artemis’s expression, but she shook her head at me as she vanished in a beam of moonlight. Nyx’s emotions were clear, though. Tears like starlight dripped down the indigo of her skin.
“I’m sorry, too,” I muttered. “For everything.”
This was up to us, now. At the end of the day, humanity’s fate was still up to humanity after all. The Overthroat was making its move, clambering into our reality again, any ground the Midnight Convocation might have gained for us cleared in three of its mighty steps.
“This can’t be it,” Herald mumbled. “So many dead, and they keep dying. If the gods can’t help us, who can?”
We had one last shot, but I didn’t even know if it would work. The chamber I discovered the other night, deep inside of the Dark Room. I could go there, see how I could put an end to things.
Herald must have seen the intent in my eyes, the way my body began to waver as I attempted to shadowstep, because his face hardened, his hand whipping out to clasp around my wrist.
“You
’ve got something stupid planned,” he said. “I’m not letting you do it.”
“We don’t have a choice,” I said.
“But you’re not doing it alone. If you’re going – wherever you’re going, I’m coming too.”
“It’s not going to be fun. And I don’t even know if it’s going to work.” I sighed. “Herald? I’m scared. I’m trying my fucking best to do the right thing, but all I am is scared.”
“Good,” Herald said, his jaw clenched, his fingers threading through mine. “Then we’ll be scared together. I don’t see how anyone’s expected to go up against the primal forces of chaos and keep their shit together.”
We were leaving Carver and the others to defend the grounds. I wasn’t going to bother any of the rest of them with this, not with a plan that might not even work. If they could hold the Overthroat at bay for a little while, just a little longer, then maybe I could figure something out. Improvise.
I tightened my grip around Herald’s hand, then nodded. “Right. Here we go.”
I engaged the Dark Room’s power, and together we sank into the shadows at our feet. Herald’s face was frozen with determination, even though I knew that traces of fear lurked beneath the surface.
My heart was trembling on the inside, too, but I forced myself to give him my best smile. I offered one last dumb joke to help quell our panic.
“Do you trust in Dustin?” I asked softly.
Herald’s answer came so quietly, in a puff of breath.
“Always.”
Chapter 32
Together we ran through the misted gloom of the Dark Room. The air was thin, and in my excursions I was always so grateful to end my sprints, to fall out of the darkness and reenter our reality for huge gulps of air. But this time, all I wanted was to find that same chamber from before, the one with the pillars and the spinning, shimmering portals.
It didn’t take us long, for once. Ask, I thought, and the Dark Room would provide. It was learning to be more obedient, I figured, allowing me to pinpoint parts of its shifting terrain to explore. More importantly, it was following the silent, repeated command that I chanted in the back of my head, the one that told the shadows to stay still. Not to harm Herald. Never to harm Herald. And for the moment, they were content to obey.
“This is it,” I said. My shoes scuffed against the leathery, reptilian pattern of the ground as we stopped running. Herald was panting, but still found the time to groan at the sight of the portals.
They were unchanged, mostly, from the last time I’d seen them. And truthfully I still didn’t understand whether these portals served as a thoroughfare between our worlds – hell, whether the Eldest themselves used the inside of my heart as a bridge between the realities. Did shrikes run and stumble between these rifts when I was asleep, when I wasn’t looking?
Yet on an instinctual level I knew that this was what connected me to the Eldest. I was their tether, the beacon they used to find their way back to earth, and severing this connection would take that away from them. Keep them blind.
The rituals and prayers their worshippers and cultists executed sent up temporary flares for them to see, but those were nothing compared to how my own spirit burned like a constant, towering pyre. “Here,” my soul said. “Come here and kill us.” The answer was to douse that flame – by turning out its source, or smothering it completely. I didn’t like that option. But one way or another, we had to shut the light off.
But how? And at what cost?
Herald had the right idea. He hurled a handful of frost at one of the portals, and I watched as little motes of snow built in size and velocity as they sped, turning into icicles.
By the time they’d reached the portals, each icicle had grown to the size of a sword. They smashed on impact, some striking the pillars flanking the portals, some hitting the rifts themselves – but nothing. The icicles fell into shattered shards and mounds of useless slush. Herald fell to his knees, groaning.
“No more of that,” I said, stroking his back. “You’re overexerting. I guess we can’t destroy these things. Not by conventional means, anyhow.”
Herald grabbed my hand and pulled himself to his feet, still panting from the strain. “Then what are you suggesting? Why did you come here in the first place?”
“Well. To try and smash the rifts. That was one option. The other was to snuff the connection to the Eldest out at its source.” My gaze fell on a particularly cruel shard of ice, shaped like a spike, sitting on the ground nearby. “It wouldn’t take much work, either.”
Herald followed my gaze, scowled, then kicked away the shard. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to let you do that. I’m not going to stand by and watch you kill yourself.”
I looked at my hands, wondering how many more the Overthroat might have killed in all the time we’d already wasted, how many more of the Old Ones we would have to fight off if we somehow survived.
“I can’t do this. Not anymore. I have to end it.”
“What are you saying?” Herald’s voice cracked as he spoke. “This isn’t happening, Dust. Not if I have any say in it. There has to be another way.”
“Oh,” said a woman’s voice. “But there is.”
Somehow I knew we would see her there. Izanami stepped out of the shadows, returned to her human form. I stumbled back, holding my arm across Herald’s chest.
“No more tricks,” I spat. “No more of your betrayal.”
Izanami scoffed. “You call that betrayal? No, mortal. That was only a matter of balancing what you took from my children. No more tricks, now. I only wish to help – but the problem is that you already know the answer.”
Herald strained against my arm. “Dust,” he said. “What’s she talking about?”
Izanami smiled. “The breath of the dying. Without that crucial, final reagent, the amulet’s enchantment is woefully incomplete. It cannot perform the sealing.” She extended a finger, lazily gesturing between the two of us. “One must die to save the day. It is the only way you will defeat the Overthroat. The question, of course – which of you will be the sacrifice?”
“Not Herald.” I muscled him out of the way so harshly that he stumbled. “Never Herald.”
“Killing yourself isn’t the way either,” he snarled. “What guarantee do we have that it’ll even work? You die, then we achieve nothing.” His hands dropped to his sides, the anger streaming out of him in one long, shuddering breath. “Then I have nothing.”
“What selfishness,” Izanami said. “To believe that your puny lives are worth those of the millions that would be extinguished if the Old Ones were to enter our realm.”
“I’m not killing Herald.”
“And I’m not letting Dustin kill himself, either.”
The wicked tips of Izanami’s fingernails grazed her bottom lip as she regarded us thoughtfully, her head cocked to one side. “Whoever said that either of you had to die? I am here to make a proposition. I am a goddess of death, after all.” She waved her fingers, trails of faint, green light following the tips of her nails as she gestured. “I can bend the rules, just a little.”
“Enough with the puzzles,” I said. “If it’s not us, then who do you want for your sacrifice?”
I froze just as soon as I finished speaking. Silently I willed Izanami to say anything else, but voicelessly she answered, extending her finger towards my neck.
“No,” I said. “Not her. Please.”
“It is a concession,” Izanami hissed. “Do you understand, mortal? This is not even a life that I am claiming. Not truly. Your mother is dead. This is only a simulacrum. Outside, your friends and colleagues are dying, their bodies torn apart by the children of the Eldest, their very spirits ravaged by the Overthroat’s horrible song. All I ask is for you to surrender the image of your mother. The memory. You’ve lived perfectly fine all this time without her in your life. Do you truly need her at your side after all? Is it not crueler to hang on to her like a keepsake?”
My
knees gave way beneath me as I crumpled to the floor. I looked up at Herald, waiting for him to say something, anything. But it wasn’t fair to ask that of him. This wasn’t his choice to make, and whatever he said would have just made him the bad guy. He watched me sadly, his lips pressed tightly together. He offered me his hand, and I took it. I guess that was all I needed.
“We only just found each other again,” I said. “We were going to hang out together. Talk about our lives. I was going to get to know her, finally. And Dad, he was so happy.” I looked around myself, lost. “Dad. He’s going to be crushed.”
“Yes,” Izanami said. “Crushed. Now weigh your parental sorrows against the mourning of a world pulverized by the might of the Eldest. The answer is clear.”
The amulet at my throat warmed, its garnet eye glimmering with crimson light. Without prompting, the enchantment had activated itself. Beside me, Herald gasped softly as the amulet rewrote the specter of Diana Graves into existence, right there in the Dark Room, starting with her feet, moving upward like an image revealed on a ghostly projector.
Mom appeared with her hands clasped, her hair somehow longer, or looser than how I’d only just seen it, hanging low and drooped, like her shoulders. A strange smile lingered on her lips.
“So, I guess this is goodbye,” she sighed. “Funny. I always thought I’d have something a lot cooler prepared for something like this, but I guess not.”
My heart clenched when I thought that her shade was already blurring out of reality, but I realized it was only my tears. One slipped down my cheek, grazing the cut that Vanitas had left there. It stung, but knowing of my family’s impending loss hurt so much more. This was like having her die all over again.
“Am I doing the right thing, Mom?” I wiped my sleeve against my face, embarrassed to be seen blubbering, to be such a kid. But who else could you do this with? Who else would let you break apart, and hold you, and put you back together?