Etain manages to look derisive with her eyes closed. “If standing, laying, or hunching in the road, or felling trees or pushing boulders or summoning cattle worked,” she creaks out on one long breath, “I would have been saved by the laziest aspirant ages ago, and not the dumbest one now.”
“I thought no aspirant had ever been this far.”
Silence.
“Huh. I must have that village-idiot strength people always talk about. And why are your eyes closed?”
She opens them a second, blinding me. “Because you can see them from ten leagues, village idiot. He’ll know I’m here.”
“You’re right. My plan was dumb. It would be much wiser to set you out as bait.” I reach for her hair.
Etain’s teeth snap for my wrist but it’s hard to be really intimidated with her eyes squeezed shut. “I will drag whatever soul you have to the darkest ice-pits of Helheim!”
“Then I’ll go do the plan I came up with and we can agree it’s maybe not the dumbest plan in the history of aspirants.”
Her swears cut short at the clatter of bones. I fall to the forest floor and shimmy as close to the road as I dare. Everything rests on Finna now.
Air heats, and the wind becomes a steady howl. It stinks like sulphur and the sweet decay of old death and grave moss. The bàsachadh pounds the dirt and clacks like heathen music. I know what to expect and when it hurls from the horizon I still have the brief urge to flee.
Trees band the road, and a peculiar puddle glimmers in the moonlight. Everything seems ordinary– for a land of the dead.
Ewanach launches from one rise to the next. The bàsachadh’s speed flings bones into the air and dumps them down into the trench before its pieces coalesce again. It zips past, pulling air from my lungs. Pressure in my chest builds. I no longer doubt having a soul; it tears between my ribs, yearning to follow the cart.
Horse, rider, and wagon fly into the air and land in the stagnant puddle. Water splashes up long hooves and wheels, crests the whole assembly and runs out between the cart-bones like a sudden storm.
The thing flies past and down the road, setting green fire to the trees with its glow until it reaches the hollow and disappears.
I didn’t see Etain’s body at the crest and I don’t see it now. The water ripples once more in the rut.
Our plan didn’t work. I climb up the bank.
“Don’t!” hisses Etain behind me. “He’s fooled others before; demigods and realm hunters. If the villagers warned Ewanach, he’s well ahead of you.”
An answer dies on my lips. Finna flows from the trench, dragging over the dirt with a heft she doesn’t usually possess. Her body has a shape, but not a familiar one.
“I didn’t see you do more than splash!”
“Skill!” Her face forms, pooling into a frown. “I’ve rarely felt such deep taint on a creature.”
“You felt him?”
“No!” She hurls Etain’s body over the edge and down into the leaf litter. “This thing.”
It lurches up and runs.
“Grab it!” Etain cries. “You have no idea the chaos it’s capable of.”
I subdue the body, grip lashed tight around flailing arms and convulsing muscles. The skin is warm and damp, scented like musk oil and white flowers.
Finna brings Etain’s head. The body thrashes harder.
“How do I–”
“Just line up the parts! Ugh. I bet you’re awful in bed.”
Uncalled for, especially when I’m wrestling her rabid torso.
Finna presses one neck stump against the other. Fire glows through the seam and green flesh knits together, extinguishing the flames.
She’s complete, and still. Etain lays in a funeral pose, eyes closed, and arms folded over her chest, embracing a sword like a warrior.
Then she shoots into the air on a column of flame, eyes blazing, hair swirling in a demon wind that may or may not emanate from her banshee cry. Etain unsheathes her blade, slate metal and long as her body, cut with the jagged teeth of a wild beast.
She spins, and it cuts the air, and when her revolution finishes one of the ancient trees topples over, cleft.
“Fuck your mother, Ewanach, and fuck her once more for good measure!” she screeches, wreathed in flame. She cuts, thrusts, and swings at a speed I couldn’t follow before Kumiko. “It’s what she likes best!”
I guess we’re done with being inconspicuous.
Flames die, and she lands on her boots, panting with something like pleasure.
Her long body trembles, still trying to escape. Etain breathes deep, subduing its will and bending it to her own. She shrugs beneath the weight of her armor, massive dark metal pauldrons like the open jaw of a demonic dragon. They band her back, and buckle in long talons over her collarbone, straining against athletic breasts mounded above supple bat leather. The space reveals a line of stitches at the base of her throat and above her heart.
Etain bends, crouches, asserting herself and reacquainting with her shape. Long, lean thighs strain the bat leather of her leggings, knee length and laced along the outsides to show diamonds of her green skin. Her boots are high, thick-furred, with wicked soles made for kicking and heels for grinding. I wonder how many armies considered surrender at the sight of her. She turns to me and licks her full lips.
I wonder how many generals contemplated letting themselves be conquered.
“Your village-idiot strength has some value,” Etain admits, sheathing her sword across her back. “And I’m sorry I called you puddle,” she tells Finna. “You deserve more praise and credit. Certainly more than the meat sack.”
“It was only my idea that got your body back. You’re welcome.”
She smiles as she passes, brushing my cheek and mashing my foot all at once. “Time to move. Ewanach has reached Teme Hollow and begun to load the wagon. If he didn’t know I was missing before, he does now.”
“Worried what will happen when he comes for you?” I ask, following.
“Yes. I’m worried what will happen to you.”
-The Boneyards Bowery-
I have a really bad feeling about this.
Eirenè rises in the distance, its impossibly tall spires and skywalks like webbing against the dark green light of the sky. It seems so close, a short walk.
That is, if we didn’t have to cross the graveyard.
Crooked paths cobbled with uneven stones weave between copses of the same gnarled trees that line the road. Their fingers reach down, grasping for whoever might pass by.
Spider web so dense it could catch birds stretches between the branches, drooped like a net for slow prey. Jutting weeds clog every route.
And there aren’t many now, not between the headstones.
There are thousands here, in the oldest part. Under the trees, along the path, so tightly packed they become a solid mass.
“So many,” I breathe, in awe.
“So many,” Etain says, and there’s no imperious tone to her voice, no command. She sounds broken. “My people.”
It’s staggering. This is only a small section of a graveyard that spans miles. I rest a hand on Etain’s shoulder, and she doesn’t shrug it off. “I’m sorry.”
“Let’s just...let’s see this done.”
“Agreed.” I draw my blades, and lead them in. “Anything I should know?”
“I have no idea what defenses might be in place, what Ewanach might have sent to protect the city. Be ready for anything.”
“Anything,” I repeat, unsurprised.
“Business as usual,” Finna says.
She’s right. Before I came here, the thought would have set my teeth on edge, but now, it doesn’t scare me. Be ready for anything is my new motto.
The blaze of Etain’s eyes intensifies, and she holds up a hand, igniting the air above her palm. The fiery glow chases away the darkness, creating shadows of the gravestones that loom around us like ghosts. We tread carefully down the path, quiet, our only words murmured whispers warning e
ach other of hanging branches or broken cobbles. To pollute this place with sound feels obscene, and so we’re quiet, not just because we’re afraid of what might lurk amongst the graves.
We reach a small break in the path where a tree has fallen, shattering the road and splintering headstones into shards of rock. Its trunk is massive, taller than I am, even laying on its side.
I motion to Finna, who understands without words what I want. She flows up the wood, her head appearing at the top, and looks around. She forms, standing, above us. “Looks clear.”
I put my hands together and crouch at the base of the tree.
Etain’s brow furrows, her blazing eyes banked. “Strange place to take a break. Unsurprising, I suppose. You mortals tire so easy.”
I sigh. “I’m giving you a boost.”
“A boost?” She says like it’s a foreign language.
“Put your foot in my hand, and I’ll help you over.”
“Mortal make help talk for death girl,” she grunts, mouth slack.
“The mortal is being polite,” I manage between clenched teeth.
“How quaint,” she laughs. “No need. If the puddle will stand clear, I’ll take care of this, my way.”
“Puddle!” we cry together.
“I heard,” Finna snaps at me from the other side of the tree. “All clear.”
Etain flexes her fingers, cracking knuckles, and then holds her hands in front of her. The flame she’s carried moves with her palms, then grows. Her beautiful face scrunches in concentration as the ball of liquid fire expands, dripping bits onto the stones below.
“Ah, this might not be a good–”
Without warning, the fire turns into a bar of molten energy, lancing ahead of her like a fist. It punches through the tree, burning it so fast that it turns to charcoal as it explodes from the far side. She raises her hands, aiming upward, and it cuts through the top of the trunk before firing into the night sky, dissipating far above.
Etain steps back, closing her fists, gives me a dark grin. “You may proceed.”
Shite.
I step through charred wood. It’s wide enough that I don’t have to turn sideways, and it hisses and pops as I pass.
Finna stands at the side of the path as I emerge, quivering with outrage. Her eyes stab daggers at Etain. “You almost killed me!”
Etain looks bored. “I told you to stand aside.”
“Stand...You….” Finna looks ready to do violence.
I put a hand between them. “Maybe next time clue us in, so we can prepare for your...ah…” I look to her hand, where the ball of rolling flame still hovers, to the sword that juts above her shoulder, “...strategy.”
“Can we go?” She looks around, once again somewhat haunted. “I’d like to get out of here as soon as possible.”
We start out, Finna still grumbling. “If there’s anything here, we just told it exactly where we are.”
Etain’s laugh is dark. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Whatever it is, it knew the moment we arrived.”
This place is hell.
We round a corner, and her words are prophecy.
Corpses stand, hundreds deep, shuffling toward us. They move slowly, inexorably, arms outstretched. Some fell force has preserved them, somehow, and despite being hundreds of years old, I can see the people they used to be in their faces. Women, men, even children make their way toward us, mouths stretched open in silent screams, eyes white and blank.
Etain closes her eyes a moment. “My people,” she repeats.
I trade glances with Finna, draw my blades. “What do we do?”
When Etain’s eyes open, the fires in them are tiny stars. “We go through them. Their spirits were harvested for Ewanach by the undertakers long ago. He’s stolen their souls and commands their bodies with a taint not even the Boneyards can resist. This…” Etain exhales, “is just offal. Doesn’t make things simpler, though.”
And with that, her hand lances out, and another bar of liquid gold evaporates the corpses in the front row. She rakes it back and forth, and it carves through them, shredding vast swaths with each pass.
I raise my arm, shield my face from the furnace heat of her blast. She’s doing incredible damage, but there are so many. “How long can you keep that up?”
She lowers her hand, the fire banking. “Not long. I’d hoped that the group was small, but…”
I see what she means. For every one of the hundred corpses she burned, two have already taken their place. I spin, and more are behind us, converging.
Below, a hand rips from the earth, swipes at Finna. It passes through her, and she shudders. “What do we do?”
Etain’s blade sings from her back, lighting with golden fire. “We go through.” She gestures toward me, and my blades light, incandescent in the night.
Fuck yes.
I throw one to Finna. She snaps it out of the air, and we run, into the ranks of the undead, three bars of flame ripping furrows in the night.
And then, we are among them.
With Kumiko’s gift, I outdistance the others, swinging my blazing sword in a long arc as I hit the first ranks. It carves through reaching arms, bodies, heads, and I feel almost no resistance as it passes through. Etain’s flame cuts flesh like a hot knife in butter, and they’re so slow that I’ve taken down dozens within seconds.
I glance back just as Finna engages. She runs, directly into the mass of bodies, and as her legs move forward, her torso spins in place. She’s a whirling cyclone of fire and death, and she slices a hole through the crowd, cutting deep into their ranks.
Etain is just behind her, massive sword weightless in her hands. Everywhere it moves, things die, bodies ripped in half with such violence that arms, torsos, heads go sailing across the crowd, trailing dark lines of smoke through the night.
I keep cutting, moving, dodging, but there are so many. Hands rise from the ground as I pass, and only Callista’s gift keeps me from being pulled down by them. I tear upward as they grasp me, sheer strength ripping them from the arms that still rest belowground. My blade is everywhere, and still, they reach me, grasping my armor, my arms, the bottomless bag. I cut, and cut, and cut, but they’re endless.
I can’t see the others, anymore. They’re hidden by rows of corpses, hundreds of shuffling bodies that threaten to crush me.
I can’t keep this up. Even with my new gifts, my arms are tiring, and the bodies keep coming. I don’t even know where I am, anymore.
I need the lay of the land.
I spin, mimicking Finna’s move, and when there’s a small clearing of falling dead around me, I jump.
Kumiko and Callista’s gifts flow through me, mix into a cocktail of speed and strength, and my leap carries me straight up, over the ocean of dead, and higher, at least fifteen feet in the air.
I reach the apex of my leap, and hang a moment, eyes everywhere, trying to remember.
A surprisingly short distance away is Etain. The flame of her blade marks her. She’s a blinding spark in the midst of thousands, her blade whirling, slicing, as she pushes inexorably forward.
Beyond her, Finna flows through the crowd. She’s unstoppable, pushing through the dead, her sword shredding them as she goes. Anytime one gets a hand on her, it merely flows through, and they can’t catch her, stop her.
I twist my head as I begin to fall, and there. Not even fifteen feet away is the back end of the crowd, thicker as they bunch against each other, trying to force their way forward.
I land, blade ripping through a dozen heads as I fall, then raise it into the air. A signal. “To me!” I shout. “Follow my voice!”
I hear shouts of assent, their words lost in the tumult. I carve my way forward, turning, cutting, separating hundreds of limbs, heads, as I go. It’s ridiculous, mindless, and the only danger they pose is strength of numbers.
But there are so many, and still, they come.
With a last mighty cut, I stumble into open air, finally beyond the dead. “Over here!”
“Where’s Etain?” I shout, and then jump again, not as high this time. I swing my blade in a blazing arc as I go, a signal for her, but what I see sinks my heart.
Etain falls, buried in a landslide of flesh, as more and more dead pile over here.
“Etain!” I shout, so loud it shreds my lungs. “I’m coming!”
I start forward, but from out in the crowd, I hear something, muted, distant, but confident. It stops me in my tracks.
No. Stay back.
I cast a wild glance at Finna. She looks panicked but doesn’t start forward. I remember the bar of molten gold Etain fired at the tree and decide to trust her.
Waiting is the most agonizing stress of my life, but it doesn’t take long. After only moments, I hear something, a buzz in the air, a wind rushing past us toward the pile that covers Etain. Even through the press of bodies, I can feel it, heat, and see a soft orange glow.
And then, the pile erupts. Faster than an eyeblink, in a circle two-score feet across, the air turns to fire, a miniature supernova on the surface of the earth. It blinds me, sears my eyes so powerfully that Freya’s gift begins healing them, and I stumble back, trying to escape from the heat.
Through my half vision, I see Finna pool on the ground with a cry of fear, dropping my sword. She flees backward, losing some cohesion as she goes, the heat sapping her of form. But she flows, backward, starts to coalesce, and my panic subsides.
There’s a long moment as we stand side by side, just watching. The crowd still froths, but they hang back now, and if the undead can be afraid, I swear they almost look it.
There. The shimmer of heat parts, and Etain strides forward, unmarked, and angel of death, beautiful and terrifying, flaming sword held low. She marches up to us, dark armor smoking, and the lights in her eyes cast away the darkness.
She stops in front of us. “What?”
Finna reaches over and shuts my mouth with an audible click. I shake my head. “Ah...Nothing.”
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