Circle In The Deep (The Outcast Royal Book 1)

by Aaron D. Schneider

  Before she could reply, the creature upon the floor stirred.

  Woman and girl froze, hoping for a sluggish grumble as it tossed in its sleep, but one filmy eye slid open with mocking slowness. It beheld them in a moment and the eye flared to wakefulness in the ghostly light that hovered over it.

  Zoria was the first to act and plunged her dagger into that eye, but not before a shrill squeal escaped the creature's throat. Even after the blade had penetrated, driven by all the strength in the girl’s slight frame, it still thrashed and uttered gargled croaks while splintering claws raked at the filthy stone.

  Frantic to silence the dying degenerate, the girl yanked her dagger free and careful of the flailing claws, aimed for its breast. Like a prospector’s pick, the fang-sharp point of the weapon drove into the soft, pendulous chest but still, it would not die quietly.

  Ax-Wed heard snarls and alarmed braying from the corridors to their left that led upward.

  It’s time to go.

  With one long-legged stride, she moved around the dying, flailing creature and with the next, she dragged Zoria from her bloody work.

  “Move,” she snapped under her breath and gave the girl a slight shake as she did so.

  A slight shake from her was enough to rattle her companion’s teeth in her skull but it broke the girl out of her murderous trance.

  “Where are we going?” she demanded as she fought to free herself from the Thulian’s grip.

  Ax-Wed released her hold as they began to jog down the right-hand corridor, which swept ever so slightly downward.

  “Down,” she declared and increased her pace, her ax held before her as she raced into the deep.

  Winded and trembling, they ran down the corridor and rushed through three or perhaps four chambers before they finally staggered into a wide and peculiar room.

  Rough columns of stone jutted from the floor like the trunks of fossilized trees that had sprouted between the tiles and lunged toward an eternally distant sky. The room bore markings and signs that suggested it had once been akin to the space where Ax-Wed had interpreted the bas reliefs for Zoria, but its carvings and artwork were fractured by the pillars that had split and splintered the fitted stones in many places.

  Here, the two women stopped, puffing and panting, their path suddenly complicated by a mineralized thicket.

  The warrior woman’s weapon was splashed and smeared with blood that glistened black in the alchemical light. As they’d run through the dark, pursued by the hunting calls of the gnashers, a grasping hand or grimacing face had sometimes emerged but each time, her ax sang and their path had cleared.

  Here, though, even Thulian sylver could not cleave so cleanly through what slowed their flight.

  “Do you think we lost them?” Zoria asked as she leaned on her knees and panted.

  The sounds from the corridor behind them were more distant than ever and seemed to be only the echoes of pursuit bouncing down the stone-lined walls behind them. That suggested hope, but even the gnashers would have understood that they were moving down, not up, so perhaps a vigorous pursuit seemed unnecessary.

  Why hunt us when they know we’ll run out of tunnel?

  “I won’t wait to find out.” Ax-Wed grunted as she moved towards the stony forest. After a sigh that was as much a groan, the girl straightened and prepared to follow.

  “It couldn’t get any worse, I suppose,” she muttered as she tried not to imagine gnashers creeping up on her in the dark with their filthy, malformed hands curled in anticipation of seizing her. The death-slicked dagger was still in her hand and her palms adhered to the hilt from the blood. She scuttled quickly and nervously to close the distance and walk directly behind her Thulian bulwark.

  “Don’t count on it,” the warrior woman muttered as her head tilted to one side and her ears strained against the murmurs of pursuit and her thudding heart.

  Three shapes detached themselves from the dancing shadows and stepped in front of them to bar their way. Another step into the azure light revealed the wardens of that treeless wood, creatures both familiar and yet strange. Although wrapped in the same tattered robes, they were clearly a different breed and stood upright and defiant with straight limbs and stiff spines. Their exposed skin was still translucently pale but far less pocked and marred by corrupting sores, except for their hands. These looked as though they’d been dipped in something noxious which now dripped from their claws.

  “Blazphemerz!” the central figure declared in lisping old Thulian and raised its hooded head to howl, which was taken up by the others. The sound possessed a strange resonance in that place and to Ax-Wed’s ear, she could almost have believed there was ghastly harmony in it.

  Sensing the curdling presence of Sorcery in the air, she lunged forward and scythed the sylver head at the central foe. The creature raised its blackened hands over its head as though cowering and she smiled behind her metallic veil.

  The smile vanished when her stroke did not part flesh and bone but stopped with a wrenching jolt up her arm. She gaped and ground her teeth against the strain on her limb and realized that the stained hands now grasped her ax-blade above the creature’s hooded head.

  It was the creature’s turn for a black-toothed grin but she dismissed the taunting smile as quickly as her own with a boot in its belly. The dark-handed creature staggered back and rebounded off a pillar when its head clipped against the stone with a dull thunk. Its legs buckled and it fell on hands and knees.

  “Stay close!” she called over her shoulder to Zoria as the other two closed in, their hands twisting and warping.

  Something flashed at the corner of her vision and she spun away with a flourish of her ax. Like the scrape of stone on steel, one of the creature’s hands—now little more than a nest of jagged spurs—grated against her weapon. The other hand swiped, having taken on a similar configuration, but the attempt was wasted as the warrior woman’s deft footwork moved her clear.

  The battle-wise Thulian might have seized the advantage of the squandered strike but the other attacked as her shoulder turned. Arms twisted into serrated appendages swept at her. Some rasped off her armor while others threshed only air.

  One overreaching arm brought the attacker directly over her and she drove upward with the horn of her ax. To her relief, the point bit deeply into the creature’s chest and the blade slid between the ribs. The unhallowed degenerate staggered back and suddenly, pale hands clutched the ax as something lightless and terrible sprang serpentine-like from the wound to latch onto the Thulian sylver.

  Ax-Wed knew in an instant that the grasp would take more than a moment to break and when the enemy with the jagged arms made another attempt, she did the only thing she could. With a furious roar, she drove forward and thrust the ax deeper into the creature’s chest until it backpedaled and made impact with a stony trunk. The head bit deeper into the stunned creature but she had no time to savor the victory as a spiny fist raked across her back.

  The armor held but the blow unbalanced her as she spun to face her attacker. That blow was followed by two more. The unnatural spurs screeched and snapped off as she was pummeled to one side and reeled between two pillars of rock.

  Her ears rang and the world threatened to keep spinning so she darted behind one of the columns of stone to escape the next few blows and orient herself.

  She’d barely regained control when the unhallowed lunged after her.

  The first swing slid over one shoulder and she ducked the second before she hammered an elbow into the creature’s jaw and seized it by the head. Drawing upon every muscle in her shoulders and back, she shoved it down while her armored knee jerked up. Cartilage popped and bone cracked, but she wasn’t satisfied. Her knee rose twice more before she let the degenerate slump on the floor.

  As she drew in a steadying breath, Ax-Wed looked up and saw what lay through the thicket of stone, and her breath caught in her throat. She scowled and her stomach twisted in a way that had nothing to do with the stink of t
he creature at her feet.

  A sharp cry snapped her mind back to her immediate surroundings. With a low rumble in her chest, she moved around the stone pillar.

  Zoria, her feet dancing in the air, dangled from the claws that had caught the Thulian’s stroke at the onset. The unhallowed degenerate stood with the dagger protruding from its bloodied chest and its cowl filled with impenetrable shadow.

  I am the Drinker of Life, the Voice thundered in her mind, each word a hammer blow inside her skull. Wallower of—

  “Of Souls!” she shouted at the top of her lungs and beat the dark presence back with sheer volume. “Quencher of the Light! I know who and what you are, Atlacothix!”

  The presence seething within the hood of the possessed degenerate seemed to twist forward like a bird cocking its head to one side in assessment.

  “We were once known by that name,” the Voice said in its sonorous tone.

  She responded with a dry chuckle and took a step forward with the haft of her weapon held in a wide grip.

  “You weren’t only known by that name,” she said, her voice wry and insinuating. “You were summoned by it.”

  Zoria whimpered as the dark hand that grasped the front of her ragged ensemble pressed a hooked nail to the side of her neck. The warrior woman’s pulse quickened at the motion but instead of meeting the girl’s terrified eyes, she looked at the dagger and the possessed creature’s stained limbs.

  “Careful, my enigma,” the Voice warned and tapped the claw against the girl’s throat. “This little rodent will be the first to pay for your arrogance.”

  Ax-Wed took another measured step and her gleaming copper eyes fixed on the darkness within the hood.

  “Spare me your threats, Tzitohn,” she retorted and the word came off her tongue with a chorus of unearthly whispers and the taste of blood. “An imp of the Resounding Depths has no business speaking to a daughter of Xhulth in such a way.”

  “Imp? Imp!” the Voice hissed and forced its puppet to take an unsteady step forward. “I was the first cohort of the Pazaul or have the children of Thule forgotten so quickly?”

  If pressed, she would have had to admit that she’d never heard of Pazaul and her stab at the Resounding Depths was a lucky guess. The truth was that she remembered very little of the lower demon and his kind’s history—Tzitohn in the sorcery-laden tongue of her people—but her mother had always insisted that when bartering with lesser demons, time was always on your side.

  When she checked surreptitiously on the black speckled limb that held Zoria, the warrior woman confirmed it was true.

  “You must have been long gone from the Kingdom to not know the answer.” She laughed and stepped forward again. “Which is also why you do not bow to me rather than harassing my witless slave.”

  Despite the dire moment, she still noted how Zoria went rigid at the word and glared at her. She wished she could give her some sign to remain silent but her attention remained fixed on the demon.

  “And what could there be to the house of Xhul that one such as I would even take notice?” the Voice asked haughtily but despite this, she could hear the desperate note beneath the surface.

  “The House of Xhulth stands for Apotheos,” Ax-Wed declared and her shoulders squared as she adjusted her footing.

  Liar! Atlacothix screamed in her mind, forsaking the crude tongue in his fury.

  “You have been severed a long time,” she said as her grasp tightened on the ax. “Much has happened in the world above.”

  Lies! The Tzitohn wailed. All lies.

  “Yes.” She smiled within her mail-skirted helm. “But useful.”

  Thulian sylver split the air like a song and Zoria fell one way and the degenerate’s arm fell another. The darkness on the limbs had retracted to the fingers before the stroke but with the severing blow, it immediately revealed the pale flesh and yellowed nail without a trace of the clinging stain.

  The presence under the hood began to shrink as its vessel sank to its knees, a broken shell bleeding its contents.

  “You will regret this,” the Voice warned but its impactful voice had grown faint and less ominous. “You will regret the side you have chosen.”

  “Perhaps.” Ax-Wed shrugged and her namesake parted more than merely air again. “But now, understand this.”

  The head landed with a soggy thump but still, the darkness clung like a patch of midnight inside the torn hood. She stared into this unlight as she kicked the head aside.

  “I am coming,” she stated a second before the dark vanished and the headless body collapsed to beat out its final shivers on the floor.

  The Thulian watched the last spasm finish and turned her gaze to Zoria, who sat and stared at her with a combination of awe and dread. She began to squirm under the weight of the girl’s frightened adulation and bent to haul her to her feet.

  “Don’t forget my dagger,” she told her and nodded at the hilt that still protruded from the demoniac’s chest.

  Zoria walked forward shakily and began to tug the weapon free although her gaze never left her companion.

  “Did you just intimidate a demon?” she asked and managed to pull the blade several inches before it stuck fast.

  “A lesser one,” the Thulain confirmed and began to stretch in a vain effort to ease the battered soreness in her back. “And it was more of a bluff to buy us time. It didn’t have the power to animate the body much past death.”

  The girl stared at her protector in silence for a moment and with a grunting heave, dragged the blade free. With the dagger’s exodus went the fragile aura of wonder that hung about her.

  “So that was all an act,” Zoria said and rose to point at her with the dagger while her other hand settled on her hip. “Especially the part about me being your stupid slave.”

  “I said ‘witless slave,’” Ax-Wed corrected and shrugged. “It was the nicest thing I could think of in the moment.”

  The girl snorted in disgust as she cleaned the dagger on her ragged sleeve.

  “Why not fellow adventurer?” she muttered in exaggerated irritation. “Maybe even companion in misfortune.”

  The Thulian chuckled and a moment later, her back gave a series of deep pops and she exhaled a grateful sigh.

  “My, aren’t we full of ourselves?” she groaned as she straightened and moved between the pillars of stone. “Come along, stupid.”

  “Bladebitch,” Zoria muttered as she followed but then came up short when she looked into her companion’s glaring visage.

  “Guttersnipe,” the warrior woman retorted and a smile twinkled in her eyes as she turned to walk away.

  The girl grinned as she stepped behind her towering companion and the darkness seemed to not press in so much as she skirted the broken bodies of those that had almost killed them both.

  That bright spark faltered and faded to extinction as Ax-Wed led her through the stone to stand and gaze at the vista the Thulian had beheld before the girl’s capture by the possessed degenerate.

  There, glimpsed like a mountain between the trunks of the fossilized forest, rose the sheer white spire of the Gatehouse, iridescent with a burning white glow.

  Zoria might have thought the soft gleam from that structure would be a comfort in this dark place but the pale light only made the darkness that seethed at its heart seem all the more terrible. It conjured the feeling of the Voice—this Atlacothix—so close to her that it stroked her throat with a blackened talon.

  She shuddered and her body began to shake and might have collapsed before that monolithic sight if not for a heavy hand that settled on her shoulder.

  “One step at a time,” Ax-Wed said without looking down, as implacable as ever behind her helm. “Battles are won this way—one step at a time.”

  The girl nodded, uncertain that her hopes could ever recover but thankful for the warrior woman all the same.

  “Very well.” She breathed deeply, the words threatening to stick in her throat. “Let’s go.”

  Chap
ter Twenty-Seven

  Siava was not doing well.

  When the guards had arrested them, Vahrem’s urging that they have the young man’s hand tended to was met with blows and curses. As such, rather than a cleaned and dressed wound, he’d had to make do with what bandaging he could accomplish as he sat in the communal cell they all shared, which was little more than a pit with a rusted grate over it. At his request, he and Iyshan had torn their clothes to provide as clean wrappings as they could manage but the ragged wound did not seem to clot properly, broke open at the slightest provocation, and soaked the bandages in moments.

  As their time in the Tin Quarter dungeon stretched past mere hours, the caravan master watched the young man weaken as he grew paler and quieter. He and Iyshan had sought to exhort and fortify their young friend but the other occupants of the cell seemed determined to act like preening vultures over a sickening animal.

  “It won’t be long now, will it?” one muttered as he paced around the pit and watched Siava. “One more day, maybe two.”

  “Ignore him,” Vahrem whispered in the young man’s ear, his arm around his shoulder. “Alborz is coming and even if he isn’t, you know Numi will rally the Wain Clans to come for us. Stay strong, Siava.”

  “I’ll trade you the next meal for what’s left of ʼis cloths,” another scavenger croaked from where he squatted against a wall. “Two meals if he don’t mess himself when he goes.”

  “Oh, he’ll mess himself,” the first vulture crowed with a cackle that showed rotted teeth. “I think he might have already. Can’t yeh smell it?”

  “Shut up.” Iyshan snarled as he rose to his feet and his hand balled into fists.

  The man cackled all the louder but everyone noted that his prowling ceased to stray so close to the three of them. Vahrem’s manservant held his ground a moment longer and his burning glare turned to each one in turn in silent challenge. The wretched group in the pit suddenly found the floor and walls very enthralling.