“Where is it going?” Ambrose wondered.
“It better get there fast,” Milo grunted. “It’s not going to last much longer.”
Milo thought that was just as well because despite his fitness, he was struggling to catch his breath as they jogged along. The air seemed thicker, the chemical stench heavier, and something at the back of his throat tasted like metal.
“Maybe we should put it out,” Ambrose said, pulling ahead and tugging a long rag from his back as he ran. “Need to have something to show the creepies.”
The creature, if such a thing was possible, being so flammable made Milo doubtful, but before he could voice his thoughts, he saw something in the tunnel up ahead that turned his words into a cry of horror.
Ambrose’s eyes swung upwards and both men stood, rooted to the tunnel floor.
Seething forward like an undulating tide, Milo saw more of the gelatinous gunk surging down the tunnel toward them. In the vision granted him by the sight-salve, writhing layers of darkness filled the black frame of the tunnel, but as it neared the burning blob, Milo’s eyes saw it in the light of the tortured flames. It was gray and glistening, flecked with discolorations across its surfaces and darker shapes writhed in its murky folds. For all its liquid movement, there was a will to the advance, the leading tongue of the tide surging forward to lap up the burning blob.
The tunnel was so heavy with the scorched stench that Milo wondered if he could choke to death on stink.
There was a merciful hiss of flame extinguishing, as the blob was smothered by the mother jelly, but then, with more fury and contempt than anything so amorphous had a right to be, it turned upon Milo and Ambrose.
Rearing back, a pseudopod of slime arched and then flicked a tentacle, hurling gobbets at Ambrose. The big man freed himself from fear’s paralyzing grip and dove out of the way, but one blob splashed across the back of his trouser leg. There was a hiss, and Ambrose gave a snarl of pain as white wisps of vapor rose from the congealing slime.
Ambrose swore and kicked as he ran back toward Milo, flecks of goo flying free, along with bits of his trousers and the flesh beneath.
“Run!” the bodyguard shouted, his booming voice battering Milo back to himself. They ran side by side through the tunnel.
One terrified glance over his shoulder told him the huge, squirming horror was closing on them, and Milo knew there was no way they could outrun it. He felt the heavy cane in his hand, and for an instant, thought of throwing it aside but then the magic hummed against his soul as though begging him to remember.
If the smaller blob had burned…
Milo slowed and then spun around, forcing himself to remember the exercises he’d done with Imrah and the pillars. Only this time, he wanted the torrent of flames instead of bolts.
“BUR—” he began, piling a blunt wedge of essence through the skull, but then he saw an avalanche of slime about to descend and his focus crumbled. Time seemed to slow as he watched the arching wave rushing down on him. Through the quavering layers of muddy flesh, he saw the black shapes, limbs twisting and bodies writhing.
That’s about to be me, Milo realized numbly, just before a vice-like grip clamped over his shoulder and hauled him backward.
His feet leaving the tunnel floor, Milo flew several feet down the tunnel before skidding to a skin-peeling stop on his back. Looking between his outward splayed legs he saw the living tide slam down on Ambrose. Milo tried to scream, but he was winded, and his efforts to climb to his feet were drunkenly clumsy.
In mockery of Milo’s wheezing protests, the wrathful Mother Jelly lifted Ambrose in its smothering grip, twisting hard to the left and then to the right and smashing the big man against the walls of the tunnel. With each impact, there was a wet slap to accompany the bone-crunching thump, treating Ambrose like a slipper in a mutt’s jaws.
Milo was on his unsteady feet, cane thrust out before him like he wanted the skull to bear witness.
Will! he screamed internally. Bend it to your will!
“BURN!”
With a maniacal cackle, the skull’s jagged beak split to unleash a torrent of witchfire.
The emerald flames worked their terrible power instantly, and the slime burst into flames. It recoiled with shocking speed, letting Ambrose’s limp body drop to the floor as it slithered backward. Like burning filth sucked down a drain, the mother jelly retreated up the tunnel, vanishing in less time than it had taken for it to appear. Tendrils of caustic white vapor rose from the walls, and a thin sheen of slime smoldered before shriveling into nothing.
“Simon,” Milo gasped, limping forward in the wake of the horror’s retreat. “Ambrose!”
The big man didn’t respond or move as Milo forced his way through the gagging stink to kneel beside him.
Gently as he could with shaking hands, Milo rolled his bodyguard and friend over, only to fight back a sob as he beheld a face with features chewed down to the bone.
16
A Promise
Simon Ambrose lay on the ground in front of Milo, motionless, unbreathing, dead.
His limp body was pitted and gnawed, ragged holes dotting his flesh where the caustic grip of the gelatinous horror had found greater purchase. Even below the surface, his bones were splintered, forcing his body into odd, unnerving angles on the floor. His clothes were in tatters, hardly enough to cover the expanse of raw meat that glistened in the dark.
The face, though, was the greatest blow to Milo. It rent his heart, yet he was unable to look away. The soft tissue and facial hair were gone except for a few knots that only highlighted the damage. The revealed bone was scarred by the vitriolic touch as well, moldering and pocked by discolored rings. It was a vision of nightmares, but it was all that was left of the only man who might ever have been a true friend to Milo.
“Idiot,” Milo said half-heartedly, wishing he could muster the will for more. “Why did you do that?”
Through the hard, bitter years of his short life, Milo had become proficient at hardening his heart, first in the Waisenhaus in avoiding deprivation and abuse, then in Roland’s gang to achieve status and therefore protection, and finally as a penal conscript, just to stay alive and sane. Experience had educated him extensively on the virtues of emotional distance, objectification, and hate. He’d understood early on that tears meant nothing when no one was there to dry them, so such weakening sympathies were throttled inside him.
Or so he thought.
A string of the curses and imprecations of the dead bodyguard dripped from Milo’s lips.
“Damned fool,” he snarled, hoping anger could bludgeon the grief out. “Stupid, swollen, shuffling…”
His throat ached, and his vision began to blur.
“You-you fat moron,” he began again, forcing the words around the lump in his throat. “Now I’m alone with the monsters. Now...now…”
Something wet and burning slid from his eyes to roll down his cheeks.
“Idiot,” Milo bleated, batting his face before grinding the heel of his palm into his treacherous eyes. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”
He told himself he needed to stop blubbering over an empty pile of broken meat. He told himself he needed to report back to the others, who were even now creeping slowly up the tunnel. He even told himself the monstrous thing might return, but none of it seemed to matter.
You promised not to care anymore! his heart wailed at him between the quiet sobs. You promised to never feel this. Never again.
The tears fell, and Milo could not move until they had. He cursed himself, Ambrose, the ghuls, the German Empire, humanity, and God, but it didn’t matter.
He knelt in the dark and cried for a fallen friend.
Then light came to the dark.
Burning, glaring, and hot.
Milo, confused and revived by fresh terror, scrambled back, covering his eyes. Jerking to his feet, he pressed down the panic at the sudden heat and light and tried to get his bearings. Through his swimming senses, he realized the
blinding light was coming from Ambrose’s body, a living radiance that drove Milo back with its intensity.
It was red, but not the terrible crimson light that had crowned the guard in the tunnels days before. This was different—cleaner and brighter, yet no less terrifying than that previous alien glare.
Milo’s back was against the sour-smelling tunnel wall, and despite the stink, he turned his face away and hid it against the stone. The light pulsed and Milo felt the heat of it cut through him. He screamed.
Then the light left, passing beyond the gulfs between spheres, and Milo was in the dark tunnel once more.
Shivering and swearing, he turned back toward Ambrose’s body and beheld a new horror.
The corpse was sitting up, mangled face turned toward Milo, red stars glowing from its hollow sockets.
“ויאמר יהוה לא־ידון רוחי באדם לעולם בשגם הוא בשר” came the declaration from a ruined throat.
In Milo’s mind the words thundered, carried by the magic of the elixir Imrah had taught him to fashion to reveal all tongues to him.
And the Lord hath not spoken of a man in everlasting flesh!
Then the dead man rose and moved toward Milo, ruined hands outstretched.
Instinct took over, and Milo, gripping the heavy cane in both hands, swung out with a crushing blow.
One ravaged hand caught the shaft of the cane and stopped it dead. The shock of the sudden stop jolted Milo’s arms, and he staggered forward and lost his grip on the cane.
Off-balance, he stumbled into the corpse, rebounding off one sloped shoulder before sliding awkwardly to the ground. His former bodyguard and friend loomed over him, and Milo was certain the end had come. The hands descended toward him slowly, and as he watched them, Milo had time to curse himself.
This is what you get for caring, you damn fool.
The fingers closed around the front of his jacket, and Milo could feel the living heat coursing through them. That was strange. He would have laughed—his last thoughts were concerned with the temperature of an animated body before it murdered him. He’d heard that people’s lives were supposed to flash before their eyes, but since no such thing happened, Milo assumed his wretched life was simply not worth the trouble to remember.
As the hands, still possessed of that terrible strength their former owner had in life, dragged him upward like a rag doll, Milo remembered the tarot card in his pocket. Suddenly desperate to see it one last time, he snaked his arm around to rummage in his breast pocket.
His fingers had just brushed its worn surface when the grip on his jacket tightened, trapping his hand inside his coat.
Hope is for the disappointed fool, Milo chided himself with what he was certain was his last thought.
Whatever gripped him easily bore his weight as it reached for his throat.
Milo thought about fighting, part of his mind telling him not to surrender, but black despair and powerlessness had sapped his strength. He would stare into the hellish glimmering sockets that had once belonged to his only friend and let the end come. In a perverse way, the cold certainty of it was a comfort, or at least an anesthetic.
The fingers slid under his jaw.
Then along the jawline to his ears.
Then across his cheek, gliding to his nose, where forefinger and thumb traced the shape of it before moving to brush across his eyes and brow.
The grip holding him upright was as hard as steel, but the fingers mapping the contours of his face were as gentle as any human hand that had ever touched him. Milo, whether in fear or surrender, had let his eyes slide out of focus as he waited for death, but in the face of such odd behavior, he looked at Ambrose’s ruined face in confusion.
Raw, bloody lips twisted into something like a smile over pitted pink-smeared teeth.
Milo gawked, but not at the horror of such a smile. Seconds before, there had been nothing to smile with.
He stared for a few seconds longer as flesh filled the mutilated visage. It was like watching some gory flower bloom. Fractured bones set, sinews reattached, and after almost a minute, skin began to appear in bald pink patches.
“Ambrose,” Milo said tentatively. “Ambrose, can you hear me?”
The big man’s head bobbed, though he cocked his head to the side as though he struggled to hear. Milo could see why: even as they repaired themselves, Milo could see that where the man’s ears had been were ragged pits in the sides of his head. That he could hear anything was a miracle.
And the miracle wasn’t done.
The man was regenerating before his eyes, and not just his face. Looking down, Milo saw bones lurching back into alignment and the body straightening. Beneath his tattered clothes, the wounds in his flesh filled with fresh meat before sheathing themselves in bright new skin.
Inch by inch, Ambrose was being made whole.
Less than three minutes from when he’d laid hands upon Milo, Ambrose was restored. His iron grip transformed into a crushing hug.
“Ho-ho, it’s good to see you, boy!” he chortled as he squeezed Milo until he saw spots. “I knew you could do it! Knew down to my boots and back!”
Milo frantically slapped his free hand on the big man’s back as the other hand, trapped between their bodies, gave a wet pop.
Ambrose grunted and released his grip, and the two separated.
Milo heaved in a deep breath and shook his head to try to dispel the bleary fireworks going off behind his eyes.
“Must’ve gotten a little carried away,” the bodyguard muttered sheepishly, then reached out again. “Didn’t hurt your arm, did I?”
Milo’s hand was still in his breast pocket, and with a start, he drew it out.
The tarot card somehow caught on his retreating fingertips and sprang from his coat of its own accord. Milo lurched after it, but Ambrose’s reflexes were quicker. Sausage-thick fingers snagged the card on its fluttering path and held it up before his freshly regrown eyes. They had been one of the last things to regrow, and Milo could not say he was sad to be free of the red glow that had come from the sockets.
“Damn you, Ambrose,” Milo snarled, an old fear driving away the warmth of the moment. “That’s mine, give it to me!”
Ambrose looked up at Milo, hurt and confusion plainly written across his broad features.
“Sure enough, Magus,” he said softly, holding up the folded card for Milo to snatch. “I was only keeping it from touching the filthy floor.”
Milo swore and shoved the card back inside his coat, unable to meet the big man’s searching gaze.
“So, when were you going to tell me you were immortal?” Milo asked as he straightened his coat, the question coming out sharper than he’d intended.
Ambrose took a step back, looked around the dark tunnel, then shrugged.
“Not sure immortal is the right word for it,” he said, letting his arms fall to his sides as he realized there wasn’t enough of his pants left for pockets. “I’m fairly certain I die every time.”
“Every time?” Milo asked as he stepped around the big man to retrieve his cane.
He still couldn’t meet Ambrose’s wounded stare.
“I don’t make a habit of it,” he said, shrugging again. “But life is dangerous, especially in the environments I seem to find myself in. By my count, it’s happened four times, including this incident of course.”
“Of course,” Milo remarked drily as he examined his cane.
It seemed undamaged by its time on the tunnel floor, for which he was thankful as he straightened and looked up the tunnel the way the horror had gone.
“So you knew,” Milo said, forcing himself to look at Ambrose. “You knew when you threw me back and stood in the way of that...thing. You knew you’d come back.”
Ambrose's face scrunched, the expression odd without his mustache. Stubble and a few longer scraggles of hair dotted his face, but it seemed the healing powers the demi-human possessed did not include complete facial hair reconstruction.
“Well, I’m not sure I even thought about that,” Ambrose said slowly, chewing things over as he spoke. “But I suppose on some level I might have known. Why?”
It means I wasn’t worth dying for, not really.
Anger, hot and bitter, shot through Milo’s mind like bile, but he choked it back. He hated himself for the realization as much as he hated himself for thinking it. The thought felt petty and low, but he couldn’t shake its hold on him even as he forced a small, disingenuous smile onto his face.
“I’m a wizard, or at least one in training, right?” he replied with a hollow chuckle. “It’s my business to be curious about supernatural occurrences.”
“I suppose so.” Ambrose nodded, though a quick glance confirmed that he wasn’t convinced. “But you can stop with all that ‘in training’ business if you ask me. Driving off that monster qualifies you for professional wizard chops in my utterly amateur opinion.”
Down the tunnel they heard a commotion, the clear, perfect voices of the fey mingling with rougher human tones. The rest of the party was coming toward them, and from the sound of their feet and the words exchanged, they were coming quickly because of the sounds of the past several minutes.
The thought of retelling everything sucked the life from Milo, and his shoulders slumped just before a big mitt slapped down on them.
“Please, Magus,” Ambrose whispered hoarsely, stealing a quick glance down the tunnel. “Please don’t tell them about me dying and coming back.”
“Why?” was all Milo could manage as he stared into his bodyguard’s pleading face.
“Loads of reasons,” Ambrose said. “But most of all, because I am asking you.”
Milo scowled, while down the length of the tunnel, he thought he saw the glimmer of the fey’s glowing skin reflecting off the stone walls.
“Fine,” he hissed. “But you’re going to explain yourself when we get to Bamyan.”
“Sure, sure.” Ambrose nodded vigorously as he stepped back and tried to rearrange his tatters to something a little more modest.
Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) Page 19