by Mike Truk
“You’re about to fall on your face,” said Emma.
“And we’re all depleted,” said Imogen. “We’re in no condition to begin an extended assault on the Fulcrum.”
“Neveah?” I turned to the silent warrior. “You ready to rock and roll?”
“Of course,” she said quietly. “But there is wisdom in what the others say. You’re in no condition to fight, Noah.”
“Bah.” I released Brielle and hobbled about, looking for a chair, frustration and fear for Valeria rising within me. “Bah, you hear me? Fine. Twenty minutes.”
“Noah,” began Emma.
“Fine! Fine. However long we need. An hour, maybe two.”
“Six hours,” said Little Meow firmly. “I say this from experience. Enough time to get sleep and restore our reserves. Enough time for me to heal your various injuries.”
“And you’ve scraped yourself dry,” said Imogen, studying me with a sober stare. “You only get this loopy when you’re ready to drop. You won’t refill your reservoir until you truly rest.”
“If Valeria were here, we could just power-hug our reserves back up to full,” I muttered. “But then again, if she were… fine. C’toh. You got a safe place we could rest?”
“Of course,” said the Wight, linking his hands behind his back. “But it is not luxurious. You have been warned.”
“Fine, fine,” I said. “I’m done with pool rooms and the like. Just a place to lie down would be great.”
“Then follow me,” said C’toh. “The rest of you, my withered brethren, ward our holes and burrows. The enemy will press our defenses. Let us ensure the Savior has at least a half-dozen hours before they come pouring into our old warrens to slaughter us all.”
Mutters and grumbles ensued, and the Wights shuffled out of the room with surprising speed; in moments we were left standing alone in the hall.
“This way,” said C’toh, heading toward a tunnel entrance. “Of course, we are limited by distance, for the more commodious locations are too far to be reached in a practical span of time. But Weevil Hall is close by; it shall suffice.”
“Weevil Hall,” said Brielle with a shudder. “Where’s Valeria when you need her? I can practically hear her gloating over my discomfort.”
A pang of loss and fear shuddered through my chest; my mind shied away from trying to envision Valeria, what the enemy might be doing to her.
Hang on, I thought, desperately hoping she might somehow hear me. We’re coming for you.
* * *
Weevil Hall wasn’t half-bad, for a grotto that stank of moldy straw and damp stone. The ceiling was just beyond my reach, and a dozen smaller burrows were groined out of the wall, each looking like a rat’s nest - and in which we were supposed to sleep.
C’toh touched his pearlescent nails to a stump of wood, causing it to light with magical fire that didn’t seem to consume the source. The lavender hues rippled across the rough stone, his pale, milky eyes gleaming disturbingly in the light.
“Here you may rest,” he said, spreading his arms as if presenting us with a feast. “Here you may know a moment’s surcease from toil and fear. My brothers shall shortly bring food, though again, I warn you most severely, it will most likely not be pleasing to your refined palettes. But no matter. What you need is strength, not culinary delights, and our food shall give you plenty of that.”
“Thank you,” said Imogen, bowing at the waist. “We are in your debt, C’toh.”
“Yes, you are,” said the Wight, then waved the thought away. “But why speak of debts when we shall all soon be dead? Best to revel in the moment and enjoy this fleeting act we all insist on calling ‘living.’”
“Joy,” said Brielle, moving to a burrow entrance and pulling out a hank of rotting straw. “Double joy.”
“I shall return anon with a map. Until then.” C’toh sketched a low bow and retreated from the Hall.
“Fuck,” I said, casting around. “No chairs? Are they doing this deliberately?”
“Just sit against the wall,” said Emma, tone betraying impatience. “Let’s look at that ankle.”
Neveah flew up to a higher burrow and revolved, lowering herself to sit in its entrance; her legs dangled, Morghothilim resting across her knees. Brielle gave up trying to identify the contents of her own sleeping space and instead tossed her cloak over the lumpy mass to climb in - then immediately climb out.
“Nope,” she said, “not going to sleep head-in. Oh no.” She saw a ridge of stone above the entrance; with clean athleticism, she grasped it, hoisted her knees up, and speared her legs into the burrow. She then wiggled in until only the top of her head was visible.
“This is atrocious,” she said.
Little Meow and Emma crouched before me as I lowered myself awkwardly to the floor, and together they eased my boot off.
I grimaced against the pain but made no sound.
“Noah.” Emma’s voice was emotionless. “You’ve been standing on… this all this time?”
I stared at my ankle. The joint had been… smooshed, I guess; the bones were pinched and crushed, swollen up like an angry red balloon, and the sharp ridges were all smoothed away. The skin was horribly discolored, my toenails already darkening.
Little Meow hesitated, then touched my skin with her fingertips, each of which felt like a chip of ice. “How are you… this should be utter agony…?”
“It doesn’t feel great, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Recall my warning?” Little Meow sat back on her heels. “About losing your connection to your body? This level of pain tolerance isn’t good, Noah.”
“Well, I don’t mind it too much right now,” I said, leaning my head back and closing my eyes. “Better to keep going than to fall over crying for my mother. Right?”
Silence.
I opened my eyes. “Right?”
“I suppose,” said Emma. “I’m sorry, Noah. I’m just… this is really freaky.”
“Perhaps you had best discuss it after healing him,” said Imogen, who was leaning against the wall close by.
“Yes,” said Emma, and Little Meow nodded before both placed hands on my foot.
Together they made short work of the wound. My ankle flared into real pain as if a dagger had been stabbed into the joint then worked back and forth to pry it apart; my nails turned black, fell out, and regrew.
Within moments the swelling decreased, the angry colors washed away, and the pain subsided.
I relaxed, realizing I’d been clenching my jaw so tightly against a scream that I’d nearly cracked a tooth.
“There,” said Little Meow, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. “What else have you got?”
“Acid burns,” I said. “Though Emma helped me with that.”
“Shirt,” said Emma. “Off.”
“Now,” said Little Meow.
“ER threesomes,” I said, then frowned. “Kinky nurses? Sorry. The joke’s just not coming out right.”
“Enough babbling, more undressing,” said Little Meow.
I struggled out of my tunic, which was mostly just rags at that point, and turned around so they could work on the burns. My skin boiled as if scalding water had been poured on it anew, but was followed by a cooling sense of relief that left me incredibly drowsy.
“There.” Little Meow sounded at once pleased and dissatisfied. “Now you need to sleep.”
“Mmm, sleep,” I said, climbing to my feet. Imogen stepped in to give me a hand, leading me to the closest burrow. Unlike Brielle, I didn’t give a rat’s ass for what shape the straw was in and climbed in leadenly. The hole was coffin-shaped; normally that might have given me the heebie-jeebies, but right now I couldn’t care less.
My mind was shutting down. I fell face-first into the straw and passed out.
* * *
I awoke. My body was itching fiercely, which more than anything caused me to wriggle and squirm my way out of the burrow, spilling rotting straw and no doubt countless insects out o
nto the floor.
“Gah,” I muttered to myself, crooking my fingers into claws as I resisted the urge to scratch at the countless burning nodes scattered across my body.
Instead, I inhaled deeply, embraced the Vam, and allowed the itching to fall away as a distraction.
I looked around. Brielle, Emma, Neveah, and Little Meow were all asleep, ensconced within their burrows, no doubt being eaten alive by the bedbugs.
Imogen, however, was seated cross-legged against the Hall’s far wall, hands resting lightly on her knees, eyes closed, breathing slowly as she worked through meditation.
I hesitated to go over, then decided instead to do something about my parched throat. I saw several trays that had been set down by the Hall’s entrance, and padded over silently, appreciating the complete lack of pain in my ankle.
Crouching by the wooden trays, I saw they were crowded with little covered cups and bowls, along with a stone carafe which held, I quickly determined, chilled water with a deeply mineral taste.
I drank the whole thing, quaffing it with long pulls, and finally set it aside with a satisfied sigh only to glance back guiltily at my sleeping companions. Shit, I’d drank the whole thing. Ah, well. No doubt C’toh had more coming.
I then set to exploring the small black bowls. Under one, I saw what looked like dark, oleaginous seaweed. Under another, a gray mush, like oatmeal tinted with charcoal. A third showed little weird tubes in a red sauce that might have been calamari? But we weren’t in Aegeria, so I guessed it wasn’t squid. Another bowl held little blackberries, while a fifth held hair-thin vermicelli noodles, covered in finely chopped green herbs.
Given what I’d seen thus far, I was pretty damn sure all of them were made from heinous ingredients. No doubt stuff like mold, rock insects, and who knew what else.
But my stomach growled as it did its best to turn itself inside out, so I sat and set to work, using little stone forks to shovel the food into my maw without overthinking what I was doing or eating.
It wasn’t half-bad. Some of them were spicy, while others had a slimy, metallic taste that made me retch once or twice before wrestling them down. For the most part, I defeated the spread by simply eating as quickly as I could.
When I was done with my tray, I sat still and waited, letting my stomach decide whether it was glad for the new company. A few oily burps almost had me heading toward the corner of the Hall, but after a moment, I decided it was all going to stay down.
Wiping the back of my mouth on my sleeve, I rose, stretched, then regretted it. The movement caused my mouth to flood with slick spit, and the edges of my tongue trembled as my body considered upchucking again.
I dove deep into the Vam, and the nausea passed; after a moment I was able to breathe deeply through my nose again, and turned to see Imogen watching me with wry amusement.
“What?” I whispered.
“You are a true warrior,” she said, voice warm with affection. “I didn’t dare eat that stuff after C’toh told me what it was.”
My stomach gurgled. “Oh, god. Should I ask?”
“No,” said Imogen with absolute certainty. “I can say with complete confidence that you do not want to know what you just ate.”
I placed my hand over my stomach and inhaled carefully through my nose. “I trust your judgment. How are you doing?”
“I’m worried,” said Imogen in a voice completely calm and clear of all emotion. “What we’re about to face. I’ve been unable to stop thinking about it.”
“How so?” I asked, moving over to sit across from her.
“We did right by skipping the realms to come straight to Tantaghrast,” she said, speaking slowly as if figuring out her statements as she made them. “We took control of our destinies, and the Source was pleased. But Lilith is an active agent in our opposition, and I can’t help but imagine she’d furious.”
Hands on knees, I rotated my spine into a deep stretch. “That’s fine with me.”
“Yes, in theory, but I’m thinking of the consequences. Of what doesn’t add up.”
“Such as?”
“First, we were meant to destroy ourselves in an endless trek across these perilous realms. After all, is that not Gharab’s nature?”
“Remind me again? It’s all starting to flow together.”
Imogen frowned at me. “Are you being flippant?”
“No, seriously. Walk me through it. Tagimron, Ghogiel, Gharab - all of it is kind of blending under an endless veneer of pain and loss and bloodshed, you know? Hard to keep clinical and detached when I just want to rush to Valeria’s side.”
She blew a lock of hair out of her face. “Fine. The brief, brief version. Gharab is the opposite of Chesed, which is - was - the sphere of victory and triumph. Gharab, therefore, is the sphere of endless ordeal, devoid of wisdom and understanding, where life is endlessly destroyed in pursuit of an ever-retreating victory.”
I turned to twist the other way, feeling a deep tension in the base of my spine slowly evanesce. “So, sending us across all those realms…”
“Would have been perfectly in line with Gharab’s purpose. We’d have fought battle after battle, killed endless enemies, raced against Morgana’s clock, and in doing so destroyed ourselves, burned out as the injuries mounted up, as we lost companions, and never managing to reach the Fulcrum.”
I straightened. “Then my plan to hijack the Contessa was the exact right move. What’s the problem?”
“It was the right play. Absolutely. But Gharab and Lilith won’t be cheated out of their game. You saw the portals opened to the other realms in Gravehall. Since we wouldn’t trek endlessly across those realms and fight their armies one by one, she’s brought them here to fight us all at once.”
I pursed my lips as I considered her words. “Sounds like a toddler tantrum.”
Imogen snorted. “If you can call the Queen of Darkness’ plan to destroy us utterly as such, then yes. A fit of pique, perhaps. But I don’t think it was Lilith herself that opened the portals.”
“Why not? Morgana’s dead. Unless you think Morgana opened them first before coming here?”
“It’s possible, but the timing doesn’t seem to line up. Recall that the forces from the other realms were in the process of marching through, indicating that the portals had been but recently opened. So, if it wasn’t Morgana, whom I think had remained in Ur-Gharab and was thus on hand to oppose us, it must have been someone else.”
“Why not Lilith? You said yourself she’s mad.”
“She hasn’t interfered directly in our journey before. Of course, it doesn’t mean she can’t, but the nature of these trials, these spheres, is such that we must overcome the local residents before reaching Malkuth. Intuition more than anything else tells me she’s reserving confrontation and interference for when we reach Malkuth. No; somebody local is opposing us. With Morgana dead, that leaves only one other figure with enough power.”
“This Nithing Dude.” I chewed the inside corner of my lips. “Serious question, why doesn’t he call himself the Nothing Lord? What’s ‘Nithing’ mean, anyway?”
“A question for C’toh, I imagine,” said Imogen. “I don’t know the etymology of that word, though I hate to admit it.”
“Do you know how much it turns me on when you nerd out like that?” I grinned at her. “Honestly. I’d never understood the librarian fetish till I met you.”
Imogen flushed and smoothed her black skirt over her knees. “Noah, focus, please.”
“Sure, if you stop making it hard.”
“I’m not making it hard; I’m speaking to you in the parlance of our times, and you’re -” She cut herself off, took a deep breath, and gave me a tight smile. “No. I won’t fall for your games. Focus. And if you find yourself unexpectedly aroused by my usage of common terms, then please keep such information to yourself.”
“Aw,” I said, pretending to slump in disappointment. “I was hoping this would lead to dictionary sex.”
I saw her st
ruggle with her curiosity, jaw tightening, before losing the battle. “Oh, very well. What by the Source is ‘dictionary sex’?”
“It’s where I bang you from behind while you say the biggest words you know,” I said, grinning again. “Like…” I paused, trying to think up a big word.
She raised an eyebrow and waited.
One occurred to me, and I grinned victoriously. “Like ‘defenestration.’”
“You want to fuck me while I talk about being thrown out of windows?”
“See? That was so hot. Yes. And… I don’t know. What are some other big words you know?”
I saw a glimmer of humor under her mask of disapproval. “What, words like ‘chthonic,’ or ‘salpinx,’ or ‘tribadist’?”
I clutched at my heart and fell over to my side. “Oh! If I’d known you could talk dirty to me like this before, why…”
She leaned forward to thwap my leg, but I could hear the laughter in her voice. “Noah! Enough. We were discussing something of the utmost importance, though I can barely recall what.”
I pushed myself upright and laughed. “Very well. Fine. Though next time, mark my words, I’m going to demand you bust out your biggest words. Deal?”
Imogen rolled her eyes. “If it allows you to focus on the matter at hand? Yes, very well. I’ll lambast you with the most esoteric elements of my vocabulary.”
“Deal. Now. What were we talking about?”
“The Nithing-Lord,” said Imogen, putting the lie to having been distracted. “I believe he’s opened the portals to the far realms, which might make him the true power in Gharab instead of Morgana.”
“Well, with her dead, he sure is now.”
“Even before. For him to defeat the Servitors, for him to be in the final realm, it all points to his being our true foe. Morgana, if anything, was a gatekeeper.”
I recalled Neveah’s and my struggle to take her out, then winced. “Some gatekeeper.”