Cathedral of Bones

by A. J. Steiger

  Neeta unlocked the door and shoved Simon into the small, dark room. The door slammed shut. He faced the door, gripping the bars. “Neeta! Please!”

  She stared at him. Pain lanced across her face, and she looked away. “You should have taken my advice and given up on being an Animist. You would have made a fine tailor. You could have died an old man, safe and comfortable in your favorite chair, a cat purring in your lap.”

  “I’m allergic to cats.”

  She laughed, a choked sound. “Simon . . .” She put a hand over her face. Then she lowered her hand, stared at him for a long moment, leaned in, and whispered, “I can buy you an hour, perhaps. No more.”

  Before he could respond, she turned and walked away, footsteps echoing sharply through the hall. One hour. What could he do in that time?

  Simon’s head still ached and pounded. A wave of dizziness passed over him. He paused to lean against the wall then made his way toward the back of the room. Toward Alice. He fumbled in the darkness until his hand touched her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, Simon,” she rasped. He could hear the pain in each breath. “This is my fault. If you’d never gotten mixed up with me . . .”

  “I don’t regret anything,” he whispered. Gently—carefully—he touched her hair, felt the warm dampness of blood. It was everywhere.

  “I wish you hadn’t come here.” Her voice was thick and choked; the words trembled. “I wanted so badly for you to survive. I told myself that I could face this, if I just knew you were alive and safe. And now you’re going to die because of me.”

  “Neither one of us is going to die.” He groped through the near blackness, found her hand, and squeezed it. His other hand stroked her hair, fingers trembling. “I’m going to get us out of this. I swear.”

  Half-lidded, dim purple eyes stared at him through the shadows. She drew a slow, rattling breath. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “You don’t have to pretend for my sake.” Arms and tentacles wrapped around him, pulling him closer.

  He rested his cheek atop her head and hugged her back—carefully at first, afraid of hurting her, then tighter. He didn’t want to let go, but he knew they didn’t have much time. “There might be something I can do,” he whispered into her ear.

  She twitched. “What?”

  “Let me at least heal you, first—”

  Her fingers dug into his arms. “Don’t waste time,” she hissed. “My wounds aren’t fatal. If you’ve got a plan, then hurry.”

  Simon hesitated. Was he really going to do this? My power killed Olivia.

  His mother’s voice echoed in his head: Fire can kill, too, when it slips out of its master’s hands.

  Now the power was his only chance. He had to escape . . . not just for himself, not just for Alice, but for the truth. Thousands of lives depended on it. Of course, they would call him a madman. But he’d worry about that later.

  He reached, fumbling, for the power that had shaken the floor of Veera’s castle. But of course now that he truly needed it, he could feel nothing; Chaos only seemed to flow into him spontaneously, during moments of intense fury or blind panic. It wasn’t a pet dog, to come when he called on it. More like an unruly horse—a bucking, half-wild thing.

  But he had to harness it.

  “I’m going to meditate,” he said. “Give me a few minutes.”

  He couldn’t see Alice’s expression, but he could sense her confusion. Still, she nodded.

  He released her hand and sat, legs folded, arms hanging loose at his sides. He took a slow, deep breath and closed his eyes, centering himself, falling into the rhythm of his own breathing. He could feel the dim glow of meta in the center of his chest, strangely muted and distant; the collar Neeta had clamped around his neck seemed to be interfering, in some way.

  But it didn’t matter. He was drawing water from a different well.

  He allowed himself to sink deeper into the darkness of his own mind.

  Breathe. Be. Breathe.

  It was hard to be still, knowing that his life—that Alice’s life—was in danger. They were in the heart of an inescapable prison, surrounded by enemies, and they had less than an hour before those enemies came to kill them. How was he supposed to remain calm under these circumstances?

  His mind flashed to his training with Neeta, the increasingly strict and demanding exercises she’d put him through, her voice snapping, “Focus!” as cold water poured down on his head. He had done it then. He could do it now.

  The world faded, and he sat alone in the center of everything.

  He was stillness and silence, a mere vessel. He was empty.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “You keep coming back.” The shadow-thing stared at Simon with its round, unblinking eyes. Its form wavered and flickered, a person-shaped hole in the air.

  The desert wasteland remained unchanged, a sprawling, flat nothingness under a jeweled sky.

  “I need power,” Simon said.

  “Oh. How much?”

  “Enough to save Alice.”

  The shadow leaned toward him, head tilted, its body lengthening and twisting like a snake’s. “Alice belongs to the Queen now. If you want to save her, you will have to kill the Queen.”

  He thought about what Neeta had said—about how the Queen guarded humanity from worse things. What if she was right? What if, in destroying one evil, he unleashed a thousand others? What if this thing was one of them?

  But what if Neeta was wrong?

  If things continued as they were, then the Queen would destroy half of humanity, and the cycle would repeat itself again and again over thousands of years. Countless innocent lives lost, devoured by those monstrous jaws. Was he prepared to let that happen, because of some unknown, uncertain danger that might not even exist?

  So much hung in the balance. A decision like this shouldn’t be made by one person, he thought. But the choice was his whether he wanted it or not.

  “I’ll kill the Queen,” Simon said.

  The shadow chuckled softly. “I was hoping that would be your answer. Are you willing to pay?”

  Simon took a breath. Here in this space between worlds, his head felt clearer. The fear and confusion and aching had vanished, wiped away like chalk from a board. He thought about Alice—her fierce will to live, burning hot and bright. More than anything, he wanted to protect her. He knew that the life of one person shouldn’t matter in a choice this big, but how could it not? She had given him the courage to question everything he’d been raised to believe, to seek out the truth. She made him want to believe that a better world was possible, that humanity could shape its own future. That no one was an Abomination.

  Still, there was one question he had to ask. “Who are you? Are you a demon? Something from the Eldritch?”

  “I belong to no realm.”

  “Give me your name.”

  “Names.” It let out a little sigh. “Humans are so very obsessed with words. You believe that naming things gives you power over reality, allows you to comprehend the universe. But that’s not how it works. Words are only labels stuck to the surface of things, don’t you see? The boundaries you draw are no more than lines in the sand, to be washed away by the next wave. Everything is everything. Which means, of course, that nothing is anything.”

  “There must be something people call you.”

  “Very well. If you must name me, call me Azathoth.”

  A needle of cold slid through him. “That Azathoth? The same one the Chaos-worshippers talk about? The strongest of the Elder Gods?”

  “I am no god. I am the darkness between worlds, and between elementary particles, and inside your own mind. I am the emptiness before birth and after death, the ancient indifference of the stars, and of what lies beyond the stars—”

  “I get it. You’re nothing, but you’re very important.”

  “It’s rude to interrupt someone, you know.” The blank circles of the shadow’s eyes remained fixed on him.

  An unexpected, hot rush of a
nger filled Simon. “You killed Olivia.”

  “Well, you killed her, technically. But I can see why you might blame me.” Azathoth gave a little shrug. “Power, the power you ask for, killed her. Do you still want it?”

  Too late to go back. He pushed his anger aside. “Yes.”

  The shadow reached out and touched a long black finger to the center of his chest. It stroked him once, lightly—then the finger plunged into his heart like any icy knife. Simon gasped. The shadow’s eyes narrowed, and a jagged grin appeared like a sickle in its face. Simon stood rigid, mouth open as the finger pushed deeper. He couldn’t even scream. The shadow was reaching into him, casually peeling back the layers of his mind like the leaves of a cabbage, seeking some bright center.

  Simon felt something being pulled out of him from deep within. The shadow yanked its finger out of his chest, taking with it a string of delicate, luminous white. The string snapped, coiled itself into a ball, and floated above the shadow’s palm.

  Dazed, Simon stared into the sparkling white sphere. The light was warm and clear and pure. He felt as if he could gaze at it forever. “That was inside me?”

  “Yes. Pretty little bauble, isn’t it? Everyone has one. The grain of sand in the center of the pearl. You might call it your soul.” The shadow’s jagged black fingers curled around it. “And now it’s mine.” The huge jaws stretched open, revealing a glowing red interior. The ball of white light disappeared inside, and the jaws closed.

  The ground rumbled. The shadow’s body swelled. The massive head tipped back, and a triumphant roar split the air. A spiderweb of cracks spread across the desert beneath Simon’s feet.

  The doors split open, and green light poured out. Simon walked into the cathedral of bones. The floor trembled. Bone-dust rained from the ceiling. Everything was falling apart. But he kept walking. He felt strange—heavy and light at the same time. He had given up his soul. Was he just an empty shell now? Was he still human?

  He’d worry about that later.

  The well of green light was still there. The winged skeleton above it crumbled and fell. The chalice rolled toward his feet. Simon ignored it. He climbed over the edge of the well and plunged in.

  When Simon’s vision cleared, he was looking down at his own body, lying unconscious on the floor of the cell. Alice was shaking his shoulder, calling his name, but her voice sounded small and distant.

  He zoomed out, through the door—his consciousness passed through the thick, knotty wood as though it were smoke—and down the corridor.

  He could see two white-robed forms walking toward his cell. Guards. One carried a hypodermic filled with black liquid. A quick glance at the liquid’s cellular structure told him it was deadly poison. So, here were the executioners, coming to end him and Alice.

  He should be afraid. Shouldn’t he? Yet there was no fear, no emotion at all, save the faintest echo of amusement. The guards were like beetles coming to slay a dragon.

  With a thought, he unmade them.

  In reality, it took only an instant, but his perception of time had shifted, and he watched it all happen in exquisite detail. He unraveled their skin and muscles and dissolved their bones, breaking them apart into their atoms. He watched them crumble into dust, then into smoke, which dissipated into the atmosphere.

  He felt nothing. He was nothing.

  And yet he was aware of everything around him—the texture of the walls, the shape of the wooden boards supporting them, the cool, dusty smell of the air. He could break it all into nothingness with a thought, if he wished.

  So. This was what absolute power was like. This was pure existence.

  It felt like being awake for the first time.

  It felt cold.

  And then the burning started. He snapped back into his physical form with a jolt as invisible fire swept down from the crown of his head, engulfing his entire body. He gasped, his back arching off the floor. His father’s words rushed back to him: Humans can’t control that energy. It slowly eats away at their minds, drives them mad, transforms them into something unspeakable.

  “Simon!” Alice was reaching out to him, eyes wide.

  “Alice,” he whispered. “Get away from me.”

  “What—”

  “Get away!”

  He thrust out a hand, and the door to the cell crumpled and flew off its hinges. Then he picked up Alice with his mind and flung her out into the hallway, away from him. He shouted into her mind: RUN.

  A high ringing filled Simon’s head. Power flowed through him. It wasn’t meta—meta was warm. This tingled through his veins like ice. Simon looked at his own outstretched hand and saw something writhing around it. Shadow bubbled from his pores. The world began to shake. Cracks ran through the walls and floor, splitting them open. Broken bits of tile floated into the air, buoyed up by some unseen force.

  The shadow poured out of his body, wrapped around him, cradled him. He breathed it in, swallowed it, felt it pool in his belly and spread through his veins. He had no choice.

  The dissonant warble of flutes filled his head. He was breaking open, turning inside out.

  There was a moment of mad joy, purer and stronger than any feeling he’d ever experienced. Then all feeling vanished.

  Alice ran and ran. Her wounded back seemed to be splitting open with each step, but she kept going. The world was tearing itself apart around her; there were flashes of light, dull rumbles, deafening cracks. Dust and debris flew through the air. Screams echoed down the tunnels.

  The ceiling ruptured, and light poured in. A gust of wind seized her and flung her into the air. She plummeted, sea and sky flashing past her vision, and struck icy water with enough force to jar her bones. She sank beneath the surface and floated there in darkness, stunned.

  A dull roar filled her ears. She didn’t know if it was wind or water or her own blood roaring in her skull. Light glimmered above her, and she felt herself drifting upward.

  Her head broke through the waves. Wind screamed, and she felt herself pulled by a powerful current; she paddled frantically, fighting in vain against the ocean, until it swept her past a jutting black rock. She seized the rock and hauled herself out of the water, panting and trembling, clinging with hands and tentacles.

  Grunewick loomed against the night sky, a castle-like shadow blotting out the stars. Dark clouds massed over its peaks. The entire building was crumbling, breaking into smaller and smaller fragments.

  A dull chime sounded, coming from nowhere and everywhere, vibrating through the sea and Earth—the sound of some unfathomably great bell ringing. Another dissonant blast of sound, like a thousand trumpets, split the air.

  Jade-tinted lightning flickered in the sky. Then the clouds split open and a shaft of green light shot through, bathing the entire island. Ripples spread outward from its shores, trembling through the ocean.

  Darkness spilled out of the ruins, forming a mass of shadow that expanded, solidifying into an unthinkably vast shape in the sky. It was hard to say what it resembled, because it was impossible to look at directly. One could focus on details—a lashing tendril of darkness, an open mouth, a bulging, unseeing eye. It was a storm with teeth; it seemed to be made, at once, of clouds, of shadow and flesh. But the mind was not designed to take it all in at once. To do so would be to go mad.

  Something floated up out of the whirling maelstrom of debris. It was a dull grayish-green, with flailing limbs and bulging yellow eyes, its mouth a mass of writhing tentacles. The thing was larger than a mansion, yet tiny compared to the vast, chaotic darkness surrounding it—a bloated toad, impossibly ugly. It squealed, a harsh, grating sound. Batlike wings—tiny, useless, absurd—protruded from its shoulders.

  A pair of amorphous, foggy hands formed themselves in the air, lifting the hideous creature, and squashed it like a grape. A spurt of black and green innards flew through the air, then vanished, whisked away by the storm.

  A wild, earth-splitting roar filled the air. Within that sound were thousands, millions o
f voices laughing and screaming and howling and babbling. The voice of Chaos.

  “Dear Spirit,” Alice whispered. “What’s happening?”

  “The fabric of reality has ruptured.”

  She turned her head to see a slender, middle-aged woman hovering a few feet above the ocean’s surface. Her cloak billowed in the wind; her shoulder-length, graying blond hair streamed behind her.

  “Who are you?”

  The woman met her gaze calmly. “His mother. I came to see my son one last time.”

  A rock the size of a house hurtled toward her. The woman raised both hands, and the air shimmered. The rock smashed against an invisible barrier, disintegrating into tiny pieces that rained into the ocean. The shadowy maelstrom in the sky screamed.

  “You—you’re saying that thing is Simon?” Alice asked.

  “It’s him. But it’s also Azathoth . . . or rather, a tiny fraction of his energy.” She turned her attention back to the churning mass of darkness. The muscles in her face tightened. “I feared this would happen. We’re fortunate that it happened here, far from the mainland. The damage will be contained. But everyone who was inside Grunewick will die. In the case of the prisoners, that’s probably a mercy.”

  Alice’s fingers tightened, her nails—now claws—scratching lines into the rock. Simon had done this to save her. Guilt hit her like a punch to the chest. She shoved it away. No time for that. “How do we save him?”

  “We can’t.” A spasm of pain crossed her face. “This was his choice.”

  She forced back panic. “No. He’s still in there somewhere. Inside that . . . thing.”

  “He sacrificed himself to save you. If you throw yourself into that maelstrom, you’ll have wasted his efforts.”

  “Then help me! Help me rescue him!”

  Her jaw tightened. “Don’t you think I would if I could?” A tremor crept into her voice. Her shoulders crumpled. “I should never have let him do this. I—I should have stopped him. Now it’s too late.”

  Alice gritted her teeth. “You’re wrong.” She didn’t have the strength to transform, but she had no choice. Burning pain ignited her muscles as her skin stretched and her body rearranged itself.