The Ravens of Death (Tsun-Tsun TzimTzum Book 4)

by Mike Truk

  I thought of Brielle’s mockery the first time I’d met her. That acidic voice emerging from the crowd to mock me, to cut me down and highlight the humiliating fact that I’d wet myself during my first trial, driven to terror by near-death at the hands of those goblins. How she’d stood in her form-fitting leather armor, supercilious and disdainful, superior in every way.

  Imogen in that vast and ruined library, wearing her slave’s collar, working at the behest of the librarians, sarcastic and subversive. How she’d thought me little more than an idiot at first, asking impossible questions, only to realize who I was and trying to help me in a manner that had changed… everything.

  Neveah, chained in her dungeon, prisoner to the sadist Taniel, unbroken even after months of abuse and torture. Holding onto the kernel of hatred that kept her alive, unaware of the evil that lurked in her core, the pain and horror that hid in her past.

  And Valeria.

  Valeria, who believed in me first, who had stood by my side and made my passing the first trial possible. Stoic, strong, resolute. Without whom I would never have made it out of Bastion.

  But in whose heart had been planted a seed of self-doubt, a history of self-loathing, a horror she’d hidden so well that nobody had been able to see it, not even herself. Not till Shalarra’s tarot cards had revealed her past and future, showing just how precarious her grip on reality was.

  I looked on down the tunnel. She was out there, this very second. Mutilated, alone; no doubt being warped and twisted by the Morathi.

  I ground my teeth together. The thought drove me nearly crazy. I needed to get to her. I needed to explain what had happened. To dispel the lies that had been poured into her ear, to burn away the shadows with the strength of my love.

  Hold on, I thought, willing the words to cross space and time and reach her, wherever she was. Hold on, Valeria. We’re coming.

  * * *

  The Chasm was a terrible rent in the heart of this world. When we finally turned the last corner and saw it yawning before us, a primal part of me - somewhere deep within my lizard-brain - sought to recoil.

  It looked like some titan had taken the labyrinth with both hands and simply torn the rock apart, creating a Grand Canyon whose far side was lost to darkness.

  Chasm didn’t do it justice. The Wights should have called it “The End of the World” because that’s what it looked like. Some medieval envisioning of the final rim of existence, beyond which was nothing but the void.

  Yet in the center of that ocean of darkness floated an island. No causeways connected the edge of the Chasm to its rocky shore - no bridges, no means of reaching it other than flight. Several hundred yards from where we stood, the sole star in the Chasm’s vast night sky, the lead-colored island floated.

  Distance made its size deceiving, but I quickly realized just how large it was. A jagged circle some several hundred yards in diameter, rising steeply in the center to a perilous peak, whose summit was crowned with the ruins of an amphitheater. Every aspect of that building’s appearance spoke of great age, from the empty alcoves where statues might once have stood to the great tears in its curving walls. Here and there, spires still arose, hinting at what it might once have looked like; but now it was a hoary testament to time, to the inevitability of decay.

  On some level I’d expected the last stretch to be defended by the endless legions I’d glimpsed in Gravehall, to have to fight inch by bloody inch to reach the Fulcrum. But the island appeared abandoned. Only lurid torches of purple fire affixed to that high coliseum’s outer walls hinted that anybody had once been there at all.

  A cruel, cutting wind scythed along the Chasm, stirring our cloaks and hair. I hitched Emma higher up my chest and studied the length of the ledge onto which we’d stepped. It extended in both directions, in some places flaring out to a width of a dozen yards, in others narrowing to a perilous fingernail of rock along which we’d have to hug the cliff walls to traverse.

  And finally, I saw the enemy. Bands of them, scattered up and down the length of that ledge. Positioned, perhaps, outside other tunnel mouths, gathered in groups ranging from a dozen to scores.

  Warriors from the various realms. Some in plate armor, others clad in desert robes; some sporting white furs and heavy cloaks, others near naked, their bodies scrawled with inky tattoos.

  All staring at us with hatred and fascination.

  “Why aren’t they attacking us?” asked Brielle, shifting her weight as she cast nervous glances up and down our side of the Chasm.

  “They know it’s too late,” said Neveah, voice filled with certainty. “They cannot match us, cannot stop us. To attack would mean their certain death.”

  “Fine with me,” said Little Meow.

  “Or they’re waiting for some trap to spring,” said Brielle. “And to then rush in and finish the job.”

  “Possible,” allowed Neveah, “but I don’t sense any immediate dangers where we stand.”

  “They look scared,” I said, and felt the first prickling of wonder. “Perhaps they know whom we had to defeat to get here. Asmodeus. That Hexenmagus by the Black Obelisk.”

  “Um, perhaps we should get moving before they work up the courage,” said Little Meow. “You know? Cross over to that island.”

  “Agreed,” said Neveah.

  “That’s probably where the trap is,” said Brielle. “A trap called the Nithing-Lord. Maybe they’re all here to watch.”

  “Front row seats,” I said. “Well, they’ll get a first-hand view of our victory. Neveah? Ready?”

  “Always.” She lifted, Imogen still over one shoulder, and extended her other hand to Little Meow, who stepped onto her foot and held on tight.

  “Here we go,” I whispered, more to myself than anyone else, and wrapped an arm around Brielle before lifting into the air as well.

  A murmur went up and down the assembled ranks of distant foes, trailing behind us as we flew out over that vasty void. The wind was sharp, gusting and tearing at us, chilling me as it sank its frigid fingers into my flesh. I ignored the chill and focused on the distant coliseum, that ruined wreck where, no doubt, the Nithing-Lord and the Fulcrum awaited us.

  We flew in silence. A weird gravitational pull sucked at me as I crossed over the Chasm, as if the sheer size of the drop below us was seeking to inhale us into the depths. But my reservoir was near full, my focus total; I cut through that cold expanse of emptiness until at last we flew over the edge of the island, and the pull abated.

  I slowed my approach, wariness increasing as I scanned the barren rocks below for some sign of opposition.

  Nothing. Up close, I saw how the island was fragmenting, its shoreline deeply fissured. The ground was little more than extensive badlands, furrowed by gulley’s and rising to sharp ridges, a morass of barren rock riven by endless crevasses. Crossing it on foot would be hell.

  Neveah pulled ahead of me, rising toward the coliseum, and I put on a little speed, closing the gap.

  If there wasn’t to be any defense on the perimeter, I’d not complain.

  Up we flew, our small group silent, drawing ever closer to that ring of burning purple torches high up on the circular walls. Their flickering flames set shadows to dancing, their shapes fanciful and diabolic, at times seeming to cast horrific faces or forms across the rocky ground.

  The air was growing colder. Our breaths plumed out in clouds of condensation as we drew closer to those ancient walls, and what little warmth I’d retained after crossing the Chasm was stolen from me. I felt Brielle hug me closer, held Emma tighter to my chest, until at last we crested the high walls and were vouchsafed a vision of the interior.

  Ruined stadium seating of badly eroded stone descended to a high retaining wall that encircled a pitted arena floor. Everything was dour and worn, battered and broken. Entire segments had collapsed into what might have once been an underground complex running beneath the coliseum itself.

  Neveah stopped short, and I did the same, our attention fixed on the so
le figure that floated a yard above the cracked arena floor.

  I got an immediate impression of stylized bone and funerary rags, broad ribbons of the deepest black wrapped around a tall and patrician frame. Bare gray-skinned arms emerged from the robes to cross over the chest in the manner of a corpse laid to rest.

  A corona of bone surrounded its head, emerging from its shoulders to sweep up about its face like twin horns. Their tips nearly touched at the apex, segmented in the manner of spinal columns, thick as my arms, and from their exterior curvature extended delicate protrusions, like ossified rays of the sun.

  The whole of it was complex and delicate, imparting upon that still figure a dark majesty. The sight made me think of ancient paintings depicting saints whose sanctity was marked by golden discs.

  The creature below, however, was their dark opposite. I felt revulsion and horror upon seeing it, my skin crawling as a metallic tang filled my mouth.

  And its face.

  I couldn’t tell if it was a mask or the real visage of this being. Human, or inspired by humanity’s features, but smooth like porcelain; marked by clean incisions that ran in geometrical lines across its brow, connecting to the corners of its lips. Its eyes were pitch-black holes without depth, over whose lower lids ran ink in the manner of tears, staining its cheeks.

  Bony rays extended from its temples, cheeks, and down the sides of its neck, obscuring its ears altogether and giving it the air of a sepulchral ornament. It was at once classically beautiful and chilling in its dark inhumanity.

  And by the Source, the power it radiated.

  Even from where Neveah and I hovered, high above the far wall, I could sense it. A pressure against my very soul. Cold, mineral, and oh, so dark.

  Its stillness made it all the more terrifying - how it hovered alone down on the arena floor, arms crossed, eyes dark, seemingly unaware of us.

  Waiting.

  “The Nithing-Lord,” said Neveah.

  My mouth was bone-dry, my whole body shivering in reaction to the cold. “Not what I expected.”

  “This creature exists on a different plane of power.” Neveah was studying the funereal figure below with narrowed eyes. “I don’t think we can defeat it in direct combat.”

  “Not encouraging,” said Brielle. “Not what I wanted to hear. Like, at all.”

  “We have to get past it,” I said. “If we all attack at once?”

  Movement.

  A slender figure emerged from a dark archway embedded in the arena’s retaining wall, through which gladiators or the Source-knew-what might have stepped in ages past.

  I felt a dull pang of shock, like a gong being struck deep within my soul.

  Alusz Iphigenia.

  Perilously young, undeniably attractive, her black hair hung past her shoulders without adornment, hair so utterly dark that it might have been a waterfall of ink. She wore the same black frock in which I’d first seen her, so many lifetimes ago, and on her brow, a black diadem glittered as if wrought from living oil.

  The Nithing-Lord didn’t react to her presence.

  For the briefest moment I dared hope Alusz might be here to help us, hoped she had broken free of some prison, that she might help tilt the odds in our favor.

  But no. She strode forward with preternatural confidence, unprepossessing, hands linked behind her back. She looked for all the world like an art student moving through a museum gallery.

  We watched in silence as the Morathi queen walked across the pitted stone floor and came to a stop beside the Nithing-Lord. Alusz seemed all the younger and more vulnerable in contrast to that dread being, but she stood beside it without concern, gazing up at me, with what might have been the beginnings of a smile.

  “Hello, Noah.”

  I lowered a few feet to the top of the coliseum wall and carefully set Emma down upon the broad stone blocks. Brielle stepped down to crouch beside her, and I flew forward a few yards, heart pounding, thoughts spinning against each other as realizations crashed into place.

  “You played me,” I said.

  She raised an elegant eyebrow, as if surprised that I’d object over so trifling or obvious a matter. “Yes, I suppose I did. I prefer to think of it as misdirection.”

  Anger now, sparking to life in my gut and quickly growing in fury. “It was all an act. Morgana being in control. You’re being a victim.”

  Alusz’s sole response was to purse her lips thoughtfully and nod.

  “That night in your bedchamber. You… you helped me.” My rage was besieged by waves of confusion. “You didn’t want to… you found a way for us to strike against Lilith.”

  “Oh, Noah.” Alusz’s expression took on a pitying, almost sorrowful air. “Did I though? You’re smarter than that. Think it through.”

  She’d wanted to avoid having sex – had offered to lie to Morgana. To suffer the consequences.

  That had all been lies?

  She’d manipulated me the whole time?

  To what end? I desperately replayed our encounter, how she’d explained after we’d fucked that she could help us strike against Morgana and Lilith in some small but important way.

  She had encouraged me to take Neveah home, to reconcile herself with her inner demon.

  My blood ran cold. Had that been a trap? But the solution had worked. Neveah had mastered herself, had -

  “For what it’s worth, I am sorry to have played you so perfectly,” said Alusz. “I didn’t lie when I said that in another world, another time, shorn of our responsibilities, I could envision us… getting along, Noah. But we are stuck in this world, and in this time. We are indeed both symbols of greater forces, with responsibilities to execute that cannot be shirked.”

  “What did we do?” whispered Neveah, voice little more than a croak. “Noah, what did we do?”

  “But here we are,” continued Alusz. “You have brought your fifth companion with you as I’d hoped. But perhaps most importantly, you weren’t there when your first companion needed you most. You weren’t there when I took her away. A fact, I may add, that has proven pivotal in the conversations I’ve had with her since.”

  “Where is she?” I growled. Rage, frustration, self-disgust, hatred - all these emotions battered me, sought to drown my resolve in panic and horror. But I forced them aside, focused on what mattered most. “Where is Valeria?”

  “Below.” Alusz glanced at her feet, as if able to peer through the rock. “With the Fulcrum itself. Awaiting you. Where I shall await you as well. If, of course, you can defeat the Nithing-Lord.”

  She glanced up at that glory of black rags and segmented bone, at its porcelain mask and inhuman grace.

  “Let me amend that. If you can defeat the Nithing-Lord and Neveah, both.”

  My blood ran cold. Neveah’s expression was stricken, beyond horror, the blood drained from her face.

  "Karesh vulgradim aktar melos,” said Alusz, her words distorting the very air with their foul potency.

  “No!” Neveah’s scream split the air. Dropping Little Meow and Imogen upon the wall, she threw herself into a dive, flying down as fast as thought toward where Alusz stood, hands yet linked behind her back.

  I knew those words. She had heard them once before, back in Tagimron, within the manifold.

  “Karesh vulgradim aktar variye.”

  I knew I had to act, to strike at Alusz, to stop her from completing the summoning - the dread incantation that had been scarred into the very fabric of Neveah’s soul during that blasphemous rite that had broken her.

  But I hovered there, frozen, overwhelmed. By Alusz’s betrayal, by how badly I’d misjudged, by the events that were unfolding before my eyes.

  Neveah fell upon Alusz like a levenbolt, Morghothilim trailing behind her, moving faster than I’d ever seen her. My heart lifted. She was going to reach the Morathi queen in time. There was no way Alusz was going to have time to say the final fragment.

  Then the Nithing-Lord stirred.

  It lifted its perfect, porcelain f
ace, and though its eyes remained black, soulless pits devoid of expression, I sensed a vast and inchoate might come into focus. It was as if it had drawn its spirit from across distant expanses into this moment, this very second, and locked its attention at last on what was taking place.

  A sphere of bone-white light sprang into being, pearlescent and perfect.

  Neveah hit the sphere at full velocity, crashing into it like a bird of prey smashing into the side of a skyscraper. The impact was terrible, and she ricocheted off, Morghothilim falling from her hand.

  “Karesh -” continued Alusz, beginning the very last phrase.

  I screamed, galvanized to life as if someone had jammed a live current into my flesh. Hurling myself down after Neveah, I swept arc after ineffective arc of golden light from Shard’s blade at that expanding ward.

  Neveah corrected her fall, caught herself mid-spin, and somehow managed to keep her wits about her, extending her hand.

  Morghothilim appeared in her grasp, summoned from where it had spun out of sight.

  “- vulgradim -”

  With a cry of absolute horror and negation, she swept her demon blade down upon that perfect ward, the blow double-handed, a concussive wave of power blasting out from the point of impact.

  The ward trembled not at all.

  I cried my fury as I flew down beside her and swung Shard at the same spot. I put my fury, my love, my devotion to Neveah, and my absolute refusal to allow this moment to continue, into that attack.

  Swinging with everything I had, I felt Shard jar off that bone-white ward as though I’d struck steel.

  “ - nethantos.” Alusz finished the phrase, and with the utterance of those last dread syllables, Neveah jerked back as if struck.

  “No,” I whispered, turning toward her, reaching out with my free hand. “We healed you. You overcame the demon. This can’t happen.”

  “Oh, Noah,” I heard Alusz say from below. “Do you think I’d have really helped you negate such a wonderful weapon in Lilith’s arsenal?”