by Scott Hale
Crouching low, Elizabeth and Miranda slipped and slid down the snowdrift.
“We’re not Night Terrors,” Miranda said, throwing the hood of her coat over her head. “If our c-cover is blown, they’ll k-kill all of us.”
Elizabeth joined Miranda at the bottom of the drift. Tightening her gloves and chewing on her lip piercing, she said, “We’re Corrupted, yeah?”
R’lyeh nodded.
“I know you d-don’t see it because we’re so badass—”
R’lyeh smiled behind her mask.
“But—” Elizabeth rolled up her sleeve and showed her arm, “—we are Corrupted. They w-won’t show us kindness—fuck it’s cold—and if they f-find out you did, what do you think they’ll do?”
“I don’t know,” R’lyeh said with a shrug.
“You do, you know.” Miranda smiled. “If we come, you have to choose. Sometimes, it’s best not to have any other options.”
R’lyeh reached under her mask, wiped her dripping nose, and watched Elizabeth and Miranda head southward, one plunging lunge at a time, through the soft snow and layers of ice, toward the cave thirty minutes back—their hideout, and redoubt. She started after them and then stopped. They weren’t abandoning her. The Skeleton didn’t send them into the outskirts of Gelid territory to get rid of her. This was just a mission. This was just a mission, and she was the best person for the job. She had been through worse, and probably had worse to come.
R’lyeh shoved her shaking hand into a pocket and pulled out the last of the gloom caps she had brought from the Divide. Her jaw was too tight to chew, so she just swallowed the mushrooms whole. All the ice in her belly melted. The anxiety in her heart thawed. She had sworn off poisons to make Elizabeth and Miranda happy, but she needed them now more than ever. Because if she stayed in the shadow of Death, she would be invisible to It. The same had been true in Geharra, so what could possibly make Rime any different?
R'lyeh pulled the faerie silk cloak tight, stuffed the collar of it under her mouth, and bit into the fabric to stop her teeth from chattering. The plains were frozen over to the point that everything looked as if it had been caught in an eruption of ice. The rime, which was also the village’s namesake, was thick, spindly, and grew off the rocks, bushes, and snowpack like wild, white hairs. It crunched beneath R’lyeh’s feet like glass, and like glass, it made it impossible to sneak. She could feel the gazes of four nearby Eels tightening on her, sizing her up to decide if she was worth a sword point or an arrow shaft.
Thirty feet from Rime, the wind howling in her ear like a wraith, the gloom caps went to work in her gut. As the Eels in the plains started to converge on her location, she stopped, dropped Vrana’s ax in the snow, and held her stomach. Now wasn’t the time for weakness; she needed confidence and courage; and yet the best she could manage was a warm trickle of piss and hot diarrhea down her leg.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” R’lyeh said, the steam coming out of her pants. “I’m from Caldera,” she recited, the Eels, looking absolutely feral in their furs, drawing closer. “I’m from Caldera and I’m here to—”
She groaned, bent over, lifted up her mask, and vomited into the snow. The pale splat of breakfast etched itself into the top layer of ice. Glancing up, she saw that the four Eels were only a few feet away. They stood next to one another, their spears at their sides, mumbling. They weren’t threatened by her, but she sure was by them.
The Calderans were known for their savagery, but these people of Rime, with their heavy furs, thick leathers, and weatherworn masks, literally looked like animals themselves. Of all the Night Terrors R’lyeh had ever met, these four were the only ones who truly deserved the title. They were the way she imagined her people must have been years ago, before the Trauma had tortured them into being civilized.
“Who are you?” the Eel in the white furs asked. His voice was raspy, his words rounded; it sounded like two glaciers colliding. His mask was an eel’s skull with three bloody smears running down the face of it. “You’re not from here,” he said, pointing his spear at her. “I am Ghelys. Who are you?”
R’lyeh exhaled. “R’lyeh of Alluvia.” She yanked her ax out of the snow; the other Eels flinched, but Ghelys didn’t. “The only survivor of the Red Worm and Geharra.” Memories of the pit punctured her thoughts, but she kept it together. “I come from Caldera.”
Ghelys chuckled. “Another?”
Another? Another what? Survivor? Or person from Caldera?
“You sick?” Ghelys moved toward, his head moving up and down, as if he were sniffing the air. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Ate something bad.” R’lyeh stared at the other three Eels; they were smaller in size, not as thickly dressed, and far less intimidating than Ghelys. They didn’t speak. She figured they probably wouldn’t unless Ghelys gave them permission to.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but why you here?”
R’lyeh glanced back at the snowdrift, hoping that Elizabeth and Miranda were watching, waiting—preparing for an attack. But they weren’t there. They were back at the cave, warm and cozy, and probably cackling around a crackling fire. And here she was, shit running down her leg, her life on a quickly fraying line.
Finally, she said, “I… I… I have a message for your elders.”
Ghelys grunted. “Birds are better for delivering messages.”
The wind kicked up and sliced like a scythe through R’lyeh’s mask. “B-birds can be intercepted.” And then, out of nowhere: “B-by Witches, or e-even the Marrow Cabal.”
“Witches?” Ghelys ground his spear into the snow. “Hmm.” He looked at the other three Eels, and they nodded at him, silently.
“What do you know of Witches?”
R’lyeh shrugged, thought: Oh shit, is she here?
He gestured for the other Eels to return to their duties in the plains. “You’re small,” he said, watching the three go crunching through the snow.
“Yeah,” R’lyeh said, her heart beating faster.
Ghelys nodded and gave his spear the up-down.
“That’s great,” R’lyeh said. She brushed off her shoulder. “I get the point.”
Ghelys snorted. “You just might.”
R’lyeh took the lead, because with Ghelys at her back, his spear in her spine, she wasn’t in any position to do anything else. The field fought her every chance it could get. If R’lyeh wasn’t stumbling across the uneven terrain, then she was wrenching her legs out of the snow, breaking them free from the icy barbs that littered it, which seemed capable of freezing anything around them on contact. She glanced over her shoulder at Ghelys to see if he were struggling, too, but he might as well have been levitating he was walking so gracefully. These were her people, she realized, but this wasn’t her place. The field knew she was foul, and it wanted her out.
Rime was ready for her; this much R’lyeh could tell now that they were only fifteen or so feet away from the village. Hulking Night Terrors draped in furs and animal skins started to gather outside the village—a sinister welcoming party of Oxen and Walruses that breathed fog as if it were fire. Past the demonic bulwark, R’lyeh noticed smaller, more agile Rimeans darting back and forth between the bonfires at the village’s center and one of the coffin-shaped buildings. They were carrying rags and buckets, and heavy, lumpy sacks were slung over their backs. There was something else, too: the noises. It sounded as if whoever was in the building was tearing it apart from the inside, ripping up the floorboards, hammering through the walls.
R’lyeh dropped her voice to a whisper. “What’s going on?” She stopped, the guard of Oxen and Walruses now toe-to-toe with her. She searched their masks for eyes, mouths—anything to convince her they weren’t some grotesque parody of the creatures they resembled. But there was nothing. No eyes, no mouths. Just stolen flesh and pilfered bone, and the smell of blood on their steaming breaths.
“Another Calderan,” Ghelys said, smugly. “I’ll take her to him.”
The Rimean brutes didn’t
budge. They weren’t equipped with any weapons as far as R’lyeh could tell. But with arms like tree trunks, what did they really need weapons for?
“Real’yuh,” Ghelys started.
She cringed underneath her mask.
“Show us your face and arm.”
R’lyeh dropped the ax into the snow. She rolled up the sleeve on her right arm to show she wasn’t Corrupted. Then, she tipped back her mask and revealed her clammy, wind-chafed face. Ghelys stood over her; he bent his knees and pushed his Eel skull against her forehead. It was then that she saw his eyes: two black pearls in the skull’s sockets, wet and quivering.
“She’s clean,” Ghelys said, rearing up.
The Rimean brutes exchanged glances with one another, and then they broke apart, the Oxen going into the plains, while the Walruses headed into the village.
R’lyeh lowered the octopus over her head. “Clean?”
“Not sick.” Ghelys gave her a nudge with the tip of his spear. “Go warm yourself by that fire. You have rime growing out of your skin.”
R’lyeh pulled up her sleeve. He was right: on the underside of her forearm was a patch of thin, white needles protruding like hairs from out of her flesh. She freaked; with her other hand, she scraped the icy growths from out of her pores. They came out easily enough, but not before leaving behind a dull pain and a few droplets of blood.
She grabbed the ax out of the snow and hoofed it into Rime. Heading straight for the nearest bonfire, she tore off her gloves, stuffed them in her pockets, and pulled off her mask, too. Now that she knew about the growths, she could feel them all over; on her forehead, on her earlobes; along the edges of her neck; across the small of her back.
Rimeans stepped out of R’lyeh’s way as she ran up to and dropped down in front of the roaring bonfire. A wagon rolled past; the chop, chop, chop of butchers’ knives from some meat stall found her ears. Maybe it was the aftereffects of the gloom caps, but she couldn’t handle this shit right now.
There was a pile of wood next to the fire. Quickly, she hauled a thick trunk out of it, dropped it in front of the fire, and sat on it. She unfastened and unbelted all her layers, and then let the heat get to healing her.
“Rime Rot,” Ghelys said, coming up beside her. “Same family as Vein Rot, Mind Rot, and Morph Rot.”
Was that sweat dripping down her brow? Or blood? She wiped it: blood. Little vortexes of pain opened across her body as the icy needles were pricked by the warmth from her flesh.
“Thought you s-said I was clean.” R’lyeh leaned in closer to the fire. So cold, she had been so cold; she looked back just to make sure her ass was still there.
“The air in this part of the North is different.” Ghelys pointed to the back of the village. There, the black woods, like a crude charcoal drawing, began. “In the heart of the wood, there is a lake. It is completely frozen, except for one, thin crack. At the bottom of the lake, Onibi waits, trapped in the ice. Onibi is a spirit of the dead; it takes the form of a burning headstone. The North once belonged to it, until it hid in the lake to escape the Trauma.”
Ghelys nodded at the Rimeans rushing into the coffin-shaped house. “Now it stays down there forever, and the hateful breath it breathes through the crack is our wind. Onibi tries to kill us with the wind, to make our bodies frozen like its body, but we have lived here a long time. Like with many things, we Night Terrors are immune.”
R’lyeh craned her neck. The coffin-shaped house had gone quiet. Now that she was in the village, she could get a better look at it. It was a two-story row house, and its appearance did a pretty good impression of the side of a ship. Wiping the fire out of her eyes, R’lyeh saw that the house was covered in symbols; they had been carved, painted, etched, and burned into the doors and walls. The symbols were simple, child-like; a stick figure with two heads, four arms, and four legs.
R’lyeh tore herself away from the sight. The symbols made her uneasy, like she had fingers inside her stomach trying to get out.
“Madness. Little bits of blue in the iris, like diamonds.” Ghelys grabbed R’lyeh by the scruff of her armor and hauled her up with one hand. “Gibbering mouths. Talk about pilgrimages. Hallucinations.” He spun her around to face him. “That’s the sickness we seek.”
That’s what Hex had, R’lyeh thought. “W-what is it?”
Ghelys ignored her. “Don’t have a lot of bodies up here in the North. Everybody matters. You say you’re here to see the elders? What for?”
“To… to—” R’lyeh’s grip tightened on the ax, while her other hand slowly made its way for the Cruel Mother’s talons.
Ghelys grabbed R’lyeh’s wrist and twisted it a few centimeters away from a sprain.
“Ah!” she cried.
“I know you’re a Night Terror. I’ve heard of you. But I don’t know why you’re here.” The Eel’s black eyes squirmed in the mask’s sockets. “There is only one elder in Rime, and I’m it. Anguis, Faolan, or Nuctea would’ve told you that before they sent you here.”
He dropped her wrist and, in a flash, drove the spear tip into her neck, just barely breaking the skin.
“S-stop,” she begged.
“Those two Corrupted you were with—”
Oh, fuck. Elizabeth and Miranda. She turned toward Rime’s entrance and saw that several more Rimeans were in the plains, headed toward the snowdrift they’d spied the village from.
“—you’re not going to tell me they were Night Terrors, too, are you?”
R’lyeh shook her head as Ghelys twisted the spear into her esophagus.
“So, if you’re not with the Cult, who are you with?”
R’lyeh didn’t answer.
“Thought so.” Ghelys tore the spear away and punched R’lyeh in the gut. As she was doubled-over, wheezing, he straightened her out and said, “But you’re in luck. You have a fellow Calderan here who might be able to vouch for you. Come, R’lyeh of Alluvia—” he nudged her, “—before the Rime Rot ruins your perfectly good… skin.”
Ghelys stripped R’lyeh of her ax and daggers and shoved her past the bonfire, deeper into Rime. The cold crept back into her bones, and paranoia gave life to the Rot probably eating away at them. As she plodded down the main thoroughfare, Ghelys’ spear pushing against her back, the Rimeans there stopped to take notice of her. Bears and more Oxen; Foxes and Seals; jagged Ice Dweller skulls and pulpy Winter Wraith masks—with Rime being so spread out, it was hard to tell how many people lived here, but by R’lyeh’s guess, it had to have been two or three hundred. They were all armed, mostly with spears, and they were all intensely interested in her, the Octopus, who was so far from home, she’d have to go back in time to find it again.
With so many eyes on her, and with Ghelys marching her through Rime like a prisoner, bad thoughts started to brew inside R’lyeh’s brain. Dark memories, like beads upon a necklace, began to form, began to come into focus. She tightened her gaze on the black woods beyond and considered Elizabeth and Miranda.
I hope they’re okay. They are; they’re okay. A sour taste like snot and gum plaque washed over the back of her mouth. They’re not stupid. They can handle themselves. But what’re they going to do to—
The snowy stretch of Rime thawed, and out of the melt, Geharra grew. The coffin-shaped buildings disappeared into a haze of cobblestone and buckling wood; the ice-slickened paths cracked and gave way to winding streets and gutted gardens. Gone were the Rimeans; gone were their horrid masks and musky furs. In their place, soldiers stood, the icon of Penance pinned to their breasts. Looking back, R’lyeh saw that Ghelys had vanished; where the one Night Terror should’ve been, there were now hundreds shuffling behind her, swaying to the saccharine spell of the Crossbreed’s will. They were the people of Alluvia in all their bloodied, beaten, and bruised glory, and here they were once more, unearthed ghouls doomed to die again and again, day by day, in the graveyard of R’lyeh’s mind.
She stopped, sweat and tears a stinging mixture in her eyes. The spear stabbed her skin
, but the flashback’s grip would not be broken. An invisible hand squeezed her breast; grimy fingers plunged into her pants. Sickened pleas sat in her throat, desperate to be let loose. She fumbled for weapons, but they had been taken from her. Like then, like now, everything had been taken from her.
“Move,” Ghelys shouted with a shove.
But R’lyeh couldn’t move. Maybe if she were still in Rime she could, but she wasn’t, not anymore. Breathing deeply, she could smell the dead fish coming in from the Western District. Listening closely, she could hear the rattle of the Marketplace, all those pretty, overpriced things being bullied off their carts by the wind. Was she a fool to think she had ever left this place? There was only one way to leave Geharra, she knew that. She had watched everyone do it; watched them do it every way that they could.
R'lyeh’s head went forward. Ghelys had slapped the back of it. Her vision blurred. Rime came into focus. There was a moment of relief; even the cold pricks of Rime Rot didn’t bother her so badly. Then, she started to shake, and suddenly, everything was off balance. Her ankle twisted. Her arms went limp. She fell into the snow. When she thought the ground should’ve stopped her, she kept going, through the snow, darkening layer by darkening layer, until all that had been pure was tainted, and all that had been full was now hollow.
The pit of Geharra lay before her like a dish, the mutilated meals of its serving all along its blackened rim. At the center, naked children splashed in a pool of blood, the limbs of their elders held high above their heads.
“—are you doing to her?”
Something inside R’lyeh. That voice; she knew it. Had it been Alexander Blodworth’s? A shadow stretched across the pit of Geharra; where it fell, intestines grew, like writhing roots; from the holes of those ragged organs, infants dropped, egg-like and mottled.
“R’lyeh? Can you hear me? R’lyeh?”
The voice was coming from somewhere else, somewhere outside of this place. R’lyeh’s arm shot outward as someone grabbed it. Her mask fell off her head. Flashes of Rime broke across the pit, but they were fleeting. In them, she saw another Night Terror trying to help her up. His face was… strange, and his hands were soft. He kept saying her name, but he didn’t expect her to hear him, did he?