Corvus Rex

by J K Ishaya

  Howard looks down, his mouth forming a soft, “Oh.” Then. “Right, I see.” His mouth remains drawn inward with bitterness. The boy takes a moment to cool his own head and then nods a prompt that his questions and comments are contained anew. “Would you please continue, Mr. Corvinus?”

  I nod, sensing Kvasir’s great relief. “We docked in the city of Baharna, but just when I thought I would be allowed to go ashore to feed, I was commanded by Nyarlathotep to remain on board while some of the crew attended some business that I was not privy to. I argued that I had the hunger and needed to leave even if I only kept to the wharves and shanties like before.

  “‘I am certain that you can hold it another night,’ Nyarlathotep said as if telling a toddler to hold his piss. ‘Baharna is not like Dylath-Leen. You will not as easily find the kind of criminal prey that you prefer here.’ He said this with some level of distain and turned to go back into the cabin, tossing an additional order over his shoulder for me not to disturb him. I know now that, had I paid more attention and noticed that his attitudes were gradually changing, I might have made some attempt to bolt from the ship. In his absence, the servant women tended to appear and attend me more scrupulously, once going so far as to attempt to pleasure me within the shade of the forecastle. Still perturbed by their quiet, eldritch qualities, their mirrored pupils, and my lingering grief over Bendis, I pushed them away and fled across the deck to the chortles of the crew.”

  “How were his attitudes changing?” Howard asks, squirming a little now that sex has come up again.

  “He was becoming more focused. There was a shift from teaching me and playing tour guide to something else, an additional agenda that I failed to discern. I’d gotten too comfortable with him to notice.” I take a moment to look steadily at Howard, wondering if he will see the irony here, that he is growing too relaxed in my presence as well. Even Kvasir, given access to this thought, doesn’t send any argument.

  “So I watched the lights of Baharna from the ship, listened with my keen ears to the clusters of different sounds rising from within the city. A billow of cheers marked a celebration of some sort on an upper tier. A small band played flutes and drums in a tavern closer to the docks. I lifted my nose to the air and smelled smoke and meat from the cookeries near the wharves, enough to briefly drive away the revolting miasma that surrounded the Phantasm.

  “My gaze followed the side of the mountain, on whose base Baharna was situated, up to its summit. It was hazy and gray from this distance, but I could make out not a peak but a jagged plateau against the night sky. Then a voice startled me. It was gruff and graveled, but not completely unfriendly, and it came from one of the remaining crew who had stayed aboard. He was crossing the deck with a platter of food brought from the hold to feed his fellows who were gathered to sup.

  “‘Is mouth of volcano,’ he said, and I was astonished that he was speaking Dacian, albeit broken. ‘Not spewed in million years.’ He grinned wide and unpleasant and then went about his business delivering the food.

  “I only frowned at this morsel of information since I did not know much about volcanos other than what I’d heard from afar of Vesuvius and the explosion over Pompeii, and that had affected a Roman city when I was but a child. What I noticed was that the hatch from which he had emerged with the food was left open. The odor that haunted the ship wafted more thickly from that hold and now my curiosity began to get the better of me. I had never seen enough of the strange crew come out of the hold to indicate that they were, in fact, the ones rowing it. Where before the stink down there kept me out, now I was bored. Bored and hungry and prone to fidget if I did not find something to do besides stare at Baharna and its inviting terraces.

  “With a sly glance at the crew, who were now circled around their meal, tearing off pieces of meat and chuckling to each other as they now discussed something in their usual language, I took a deep breath, held it, and started to creep down the steps. Instantly a hand touched my arm and I turned to look at one of the servant woman. She shook her head tightly and vigorously, and her delicate brow knitted with an unbecoming frown. At that moment, I lost all caring. With a sneer toward her, I turned and descended the steps.

  “There were a few dim lanterns hanging from the ceiling of the lower deck, their light flickering over stacks of crates, barrels, and chests that ran the course of the deck. The sides of the deck were railed and dropped off into the rowing galleys. I paused there, listened to boards settle and creek, to the lap of small waves against the hull from the outside. The place was utterly quiet, no sign of more crew, so I eased my way over to one of the railings for a look down, freezing when my foot encountered a particularly creaky board. I winced and looked up to find the same servant woman, who had seen me go down into the hold, standing on the other end of the deck having slunk there via the shadows and manifested as she and her sisters had back in the tower at Dylath-Leen. The next thing I noticed was that her face was an ugly glare of disapproval. The veins framing her temples and cheek bones grew, and her eyes rimmed with black oiliness and in an instant, I understood that I had been right all along about where she and her kind came from.

  “Noises issued from the galley nearest me, a sort of squishing and scratching, noises that you would think at odds with each other. I tore my eyes from the girl and leaned over to look down and there I saw them, the things in the galley and they were not more turbaned crewmen or anything remotely human. White skin glistened in the diffusion of lantern light and at first, I thought I was looking at the things that guarded my cell in the waking world, but no, these bodies were more bloated, toad-like in posture, and resting over the oars. I made out a few clawed hands or feet, the source of the scratching sounds, and then a head raised toward me. It had no eyes that I could make out, but a thick cluster of slick pink tentacles curled out from where a face should have been and undulated in the air in my direction, scenting me, perhaps. Then another one raised from elsewhere in the cluster.

  “Startled, I incidentally gasped and gulped down the most revolting concentration of foul air imaginable, nearly causing me to gag as I stumbled back. The deeper galley tilted out of view, but I heard them down there at the same time I looked to find the girl had vanished. Slippery bodies were moving among each other, claws were gripping the wood, and a stir of strange and strained shrieks rose, accosting my ears so that I clamped my hands over the sides of my head. I felt the red warmth in my eyes, gritted my teeth and felt my fangs budding. It was a defensive reaction, but in my focus on the things in the galleys, and the density of their stench, I lost awareness of the rest of my surroundings.

  “Something powerful grabbed my hair from behind and jerked me over on my back with a jarring thud against the deck. My gaze streaked over the underside of the top deck at the joists and then, closing in over me, something dark and undulating towered and parted down the middle to reveal two rows of jagged teeth. I had seen this vision before in the waking world, when caught in Nyarlathotep’s psychic grip. I heard an angry voice echo in my head in a harsh, inhuman language, and then something rigid speared down through me from the top of my head, through my neck and into my upper torso before complete blackness fell upon me.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “What happened?” Howard asks with a confused look on his face.

  I finger my chin, looking at Kvasir, who hasn’t heard of this before either. His liquid-green eyes narrow but his mind remains quiet again.

  “Nyarlathotep, of course.

  “When consciousness began to creep back in, I felt something distantly moving through my body, inching upward from inside my chest cavity and following my spine up through my crown. An attempt to simply turn my head resulted in a lance of bizarre pain and then dullness, and my vocals were frozen again. It was similar to when I’d been beheaded, only my extremities were still perfectly together. I sensed my limbs, felt polished wood under my fingertips, though with each inching sensation, my body gave the slightest convulsion. I experienced mo
re tiny moments of black out, and then finally I came around to full consciousness with the sound of a hollow clank on the floor.

  “It was his sword that I found there, just above my head, smeared slightly with black ichor. My body had, apparently, served as a sheath but then expelled the foreign object on its own.

  “I lay sprawled on the cabin floor beside my bunk, while three of the shadowy servant women surrounded, simply watching. The one who had tried to stop me from going into the hold stood near the door as if waiting to show me the way out. The next thing I sensed was that the ship was moving though not at full speed. My host was nowhere in sight, so I staggered to my feet and stared down at the instrument that had now twice incapacitated me. In an unlit ship’s cabin, it had no sheen to it, just the gray of steel with that streak of my black blood on it. I wanted to be angry, but I was still in something of a state of shock as I stumbled to the door where I hesitated, got my bearings. The girl opened it onto the main deck then she and her sisters followed me out. All of this time, the hunger was building in me again, aching in my middle, spurred on by yet another use of my energies to heal.

  “The crew were bustling about as if nothing were out of the ordinary. There was a fading sunset on one horizon with the volcano island silhouetted against it and Baharna nowhere in sight, so we had gone around the side of the landmass. Nyarlathotep was standing at the opposite railing looking out to open sea and toward the coming night. He was unnervingly cool as I approached, not so much as glancing at me. I ventured to speak first and tossed a hapless gesture at the girl and her companions.

  “‘They are literally your external eyes, aren’t they?’ I said, meaning the women. ‘But there is no they, really, is there? They are you: your creations, constructed whenever you want, extensions of your mind.’

  “In the uncomfortable silence that followed, he did not look at me, but with a hush of air, the female figures all turned to black ash. Their forms held together for a matter of seconds and fell away in trailing wisps, the opposite of how they had appeared to form when I first saw them in the apartment.

  “‘They were meant to put you more at ease even as I continued to watch you from rooms away or further if necessary,’ he said then, ‘but given that has failed now, know this, that if you disobey any order, you will be punished. I can entrap you in a circle and leave you blind and helpless for the day on this deck, or I can sever every one of your limbs and head and let you regenerate over and over again. I told you before that you can neither die here nor in the waking world. At this time your earthly body is suspended in deep sleep, so I can keep you here in the Dreamlands for as long as I desire, and I can do anything to you that I wish if you do not cooperate. Understood?’

  “With each of his words, I felt colder inside, and my middle churned with the hunger. ‘Yes,’ I rasped out. There was still a dull ache in my head and instinct told me that only feeding would end it.

  “‘Good,’ he said, and looked at me, straight faced and still composed. ‘You will never approach the hold again.’

  “‘But what is down there?’ I all but pleaded to at least have a name for the things I’d seen, the things that apparently propelled the ship when oars were necessary. Their bloated forms, the glossy pink tentacular protrusions where a face should be, all reminded me of a mass of larva, rendering them far more bizarre to me than the n’gai.

  “‘You. Will. Not. Go. Down. There. Again.’ He was not going to tell me anything more. ‘It is none of your concern.’ He gave me a moment to accept this, and after I nodded helplessly, just like that, his face turned from stern to that familiar sardonic smile. ‘Now, I can imagine that your hunger has escalated in the last day, hm? Look, I have something for you.’

  “He made a gesture that was followed by the clip-clopping of the crew as one group hurried across the deck toward the same hatch that was off limits to me. Another came forward with a huge, dirty bucket. As they approached the side of the ship near where I stood, I caught a tangy whiff of fishy blood and guts and maybe something more terrestrial like goat or venison. This chum they threw over the side to the sound of sloppy splashes below. They put the bucket down and waited with demented grins on their faces for something else hungry to come along.

  “I frowned, overcome with a sense of dread even as my body hummed and begged. From the hold I heard disturbed murmurs, a clatter of steps and stumbling, and I turned to see the other group drag some poor human soul onto the deck. He was a middle-aged man, spindle armed and legged but with an ample belly that pushed out the front of his tunic which was smeared with a combination of soot and some kind of powder. Sweat plastered his thinning hair to his forehead and his brown eyes, branched with age, widened to saucers as they darted around in fear and confusion. He was also rather green, likely from smelling the rotten air all day down there.

  “‘What do you want?’ he whimpered to his captors as they dragged him by the arms to the middle of the deck. ‘I am a free man of Baharna. I’ve done nothing wrong.’ They forced him down on his knees, and that was when he saw Nyarlathotep. He clearly recognized our captor from the way his body stiffened, and his lower lip began to tremble. His eyes fixed on the ghastly scarab in Nyarlathotep’s circlet. Basic fear evanesced into holy terror. Tears welled up in his eyes and spilled over, snot ran from his nose unchecked by the slightest sniffle.

  “‘You?’ he whispered. ‘I do not understand. What does the Black Pharaoh want with me?’

  “Nyarlathotep didn’t acknowledge this. He gave a nod toward the poor fellow as he looked at me. ‘There, dinner is served.’ His attitude was so trite.

  “‘Who is he?’ I asked quietly.

  “‘Oh, nobody. Granted, not the most sullied soul as you would prefer, but I am sure his innards will be just as tasty to you.’

  “‘I cannot do this,’ I half argued.

  “‘Then he will be thrown into the sea and that death, I assure you, could go far worse than the one you give him. Either way, he will meet the final void, for he is no Dreamer but a lifelong resident of Baharna.’

  “The smell of the man’s fear alone was enticing me. I scanned his thoughts, looking for some element of corruption, but there was none. The soot and powder on his tunic were from working around a wood fire oven and the powder was nothing but flour. He was merely a businessmen, a baker, whose belly was swollen from tasting his own goods well and often on a daily basis. He had a daughter and grandchildren, and his thoughts were caught in a loop concerning how they would fare without him.

  “‘Spare him now,’ Nyarlathotep insisted. ‘It’s the only way you can further meet your potential.’ There was that word again after all these days—potential. How I began to hate hearing it from him. ‘You cannot uphold your standards, Zyr,’ he said more gently. ‘It is not practical. You chose this, remember?’

  “After I paused too long and developed a quiver through my skin and my gut swam with yearning, Nyarlathotep issued a mock sigh and gave a swiping gesture toward the railing. ‘Oh well, so it goes. Toss him.’

  “One of the crewmen, who had dumped the bucket, chuckled and moved across the deck to aid his crew mates in hauling the prisoner to his feet. This resulted in an outburst of screaming and pleading that made me wince. The man struggled, leaned back hard and steep, attempting to dig in his heels. I stepped to the ship’s side and looked over, saw that below, the chum had attracted something.

  “Slivers of gleaming movement breached the surface, wriggling and bubbling, and hundreds of mouths with sharp teeth rose and fell, tearing at the pieces of flesh, thrashing, descending, and then coming up again. They were not large mouths that would tear a man apart in one or two bites and kill him quickly, but small enough that there would be agonizing pain as bite after bite tore apart skin and muscle first before reaching more vital organs. I imagined them gnawing their way inside, like the rat-things in the forest, until at last their victim lost consciousness from bleeding out before dying. As Nyarlathotep had said, it would be a far wors
e death than I could deal.

  “‘Wait,’ I said. The crew halted pushing and shoving their captive toward the railing, and for a long moment all eyes were on me. I took off my belt, along with the ruby pouch, stripped off my jerkin and tunic and handed them to one of the nearest men, and then strode over to the poor old baker. He looked up at me with those pleading eyes which would haunt me for ages.

  “‘What’s happening?’ he asked. ‘What do they want?’

  “I saw no sense in telling him. His was not a fear I wished to savor. Raising a finger to my lips, I gave a gentle, ‘Shhhhh,’ and a nod that he be released. The turbaned men shoved him toward me and so I caught him before he came down too hard on those old knees of his. My eyes were warm, indicating a shift was happening, and my nail beds sore as my claws began to push out against my will. His roaring blood thrummed in my ears. ‘Shhhhhhh,’ I said again, and then I swiftly reached up and broke his neck before he could see it coming. His body went limp and my instincts took over. I dropped to the deck with him cradled against me and closed my fanged mouth over his throat, tore into the veins and sucked the blood out while it was still warm. My hand found the juncture of his ribs under his tunic and tore straight through the cloth and up into the cavity to find his heart. That is what I remember most of that feast, that I ended it as quickly for him as possible and once that was over, my savage nature and appetite governed me.

  “When I was finished and came to my senses, I looked down upon nothing short of a pulpy mess with the front of his body torn open from throat to pelvis, ripped intestines strewn on the deck, liver and heart gone along with one eye and a chunk out of his face, exposing the jut of a cheekbone. Patches of flesh were already rotting from the venom. My hands and chest were drenched, and oozing red trails spilled from the corners of my mouth and matted my beard.

  “Numb, I looked up at Nyarlathotep and could not find words. The hunger was gone, yes, but in its place formed the greatest despair to grip me since my transformation. I had never wanted to do anything this brutal to an innocent. Clearly, I was getting worse, losing myself in the monster.