by Sam Sykes
It scuttled to escape his prodding finger, flailing as it found itself upon his palm again. And still, he tormented it.
“And why are you even here? What are you supposed to do? If you have no purpose, then how can you-”
He hissed as he felt a sting shoot up through his finger. The tiny pincers released him almost immediately, leaving little more than a bright red slash across the digit and a distant pain that grew to nothing in the blink of an eye.
In the next blink, his fingers had curled around the thing. He spoke a word, felt his eyes burn, felt the crown burn upon his brow. The flame coursed through his palm, licked his fingers. His nostrils quivered with the scent of cooked flesh.
When they uncurled, a tiny black husk smoldered in his palm. He turned his palm over, let it drop to the terrace floor. It shattered, splitting apart into tiny, burning slivers, quickly sputtering out into thin wisps of smoke.
“There,” he said. “There!” He turned to the other end of the terrace, thrust a finger down at the floor. “Did you see that?”
Xhai blinked vacantly. Her brow furrowed as she looked down at what had once been the crab. With a snort, she looked up, shrugged, leaned back upon the terrace’s railing, and crossed a ruined arm over a healthy one.
“So fragile,” Sheraptus whispered, turning his attentions back to the black stain. “Why did they make it so fragile?”
“If it’s weak, it’s weak,” Xhai replied. “Just the same as any other overscum or underscum. Why do they do anything they do?”
“Precisely,” he murmured. “Why? Why were they made? Who made them?”
“No one did. From nothing to nothing.”
“That’s for netherlings, certainly. . or is it?”
Xhai’s face screwed up at the notion. He didn’t bother to note the look of genuine displeasure across her face as he looked at her.
“Who’s to say we weren’t also made?”
“Master. .” she said, taking a step forward.
“But this thing. . it was made fragile. And we. . were made strong.” He tapped his chin. “The Nether made us strong.”
“The Nether is nothing.”
“The Nether is-”
“We are netherlings,” she said, her voice rife with more force than had ever been used with him. “We are not called that because we were made. We are strong because we are netherlings. For no other reason.”
He recoiled, feigned a look as though he had just been struck. Almost instantly, her visage softened. No, he corrected himself, Xhai was incapable of softening. Her face. . twisted, looking as though it were trying dearly to find the muscles to look wounded.
Just as she always did whenever he looked hurt. She was so predictable, especially when it came to him. If he flinched, she was ready to kill. If he sighed, she was ready to kill. If he looked at something, she tended to assume he wanted it killed and thought it might just be easier to let him say otherwise if he wanted it alive.
The more he looked at her, the more genuine his frown became. It was a crab he saw. A crab tall, purple, and muscular, but a crab, nonetheless: without purpose but to move, to pinch when prodded, and just as fragile.
Perhaps, then, netherlings were not made. Perhaps everything came from nothing, scuttled about without purpose until they died. Perhaps this all came about for no reason.
Perhaps. .
But then why were trees here, if not to be made into ships? Why were slaves here, if not to serve? Why was there so much of it? And why was he, and only he, wondering any of this?
“Master,” Xhai whispered, edging closer. “You seem. . well, we are to leave for Jaga soon. You said. Is your time not wasted by thinking on this?”
The invasion. To bring down Ulbecetonth. Enemy of the Gods. And the Gray One That Grins.
“Perhaps,” he whispered. “Purpose is not given. . but discovered.”
“Master?”
He turned to her, smile broad, eyes bright.
“Bring me the human.”
It had not once occurred to her to pray.
Not when she had awakened, bound and bruised upon the deck of the ship, her companions absent and probably dead. Not when she had been marched bodily across the great scene of fire and death that was the island’s shorefront. Even when her captors had intentionally lingered near the great pits from which bestial laughter rose between sounds of bones cracking and meat slurping, not once did she look to the sky.
Not to heaven, anyway. She did look up, once, and found her gaze drawn to the terrace overlooking the blackened, blood-stained beach.
And eyes alight with fire had looked back.
Sheraptus had offered her nothing more than a stare. No jagged-toothed smiles, no wretched leers, nothing to boast about what he had done to her, of what he would do to her.
He stood. He stared. That was all he had to do to make her look at the pit and think whether it might be better to simply hurl herself into the jaws of whatever lurked inside.
But the netherlings had been upon her before she could consider it seriously, wrenching her arms behind her back, hauling her past scenes of corpses and flame and smoke and blood, into somewhere vast and dark.
After all of that, the dead bodies, the suffering so thick in the air it made it hard to breathe, the cackling laughter of those things in the pit, and him, she did not pray. Even as the cell door groaned and slammed shut, no light but what seeped from the cavern mouth so far away, she couldn’t even think to pray.
Not until she had become aware that she was not alone in the cell.
Not until she had met Sheraptus’s other victims.
After that, it was easier.
Blessed Talanas, who gave up His body that mankind might know, the old words came flooding back to her now as she strained to concentrate over the sound of sobbing in the darkness, know this and always that I never ask You for myself, but that I might ease the pain and mend the wounds of body and soul.
“He doesn’t always come,” the girl whispered. “Not always. Sometimes, he comes by and stares through the bars and I can just. . see his eyes in the dark.”
Her name was Nai. Asper had gleaned that much after a few hours in the dark. They had begun in silence, all queries as to their location or what the netherlings had in store for them were met with quiet whimpers and nothing else.
Asper did not press her. She had met victims before, wives beaten by their husbands, children who knew things of suffering that grown men did not, people for whom speech was agony. People who didn’t want to be reminded that they were still people.
She had waited.
And eventually, the girl had spoke.
“And sometimes, he doesn’t do anything. He’ll just-” Nai continued, her voice so shaky it frequently shattered to pieces in her mouth. “He just stands there and he’s watching me and he. . then he. . he turns around and he leaves and says nothing. Nothing. Never.”
“Ah,” Asper said.
Weak words, she knew, but she had nothing else to offer. She had no idea what Nai looked like in the darkness. Asper was quietly grateful for that; it meant Nai could not see her shake as the girl continued to describe her imprisonment.
She had been snatched, apparently, from a passing merchant ship. The netherlings had rowed up beside them during a calm, leapt aboard, and did what they do best. They took nothing, the carnage upon the decks seemingly wrought only for the opportunity to spit on the gutted corpses.
Nai hadn’t been sure why she had been spared. Not until they dragged her to the island, past the laughing pits and the Gonwa bleeding out on the sands, not until they threw her in the darkness. And by the time she had run out of prayers, she wished she lay unmoving on the deck with the others.
Asper had listened to her. To all the torments visited upon her, to the chains affixed about her wrists, to the times she had tried to fight him, to the times that had only made his smile broader as he forced her to the floor.
Each word sent her bowels churning, her h
eart quaking. Each word told her of horrors and tortures at Sheraptus’s hands she had only narrowly escaped. And with each word, Nai’s voice became more distant as Asper fought the urge to shut her ears and break down.
But she withheld her tears. And she did not block out Nai’s voice. And she listened. Not to know what would be visited upon her, not to try to think of a way to avoid him and his leering grin. But for the fact that Nai had nothing else but words, and Nai had to speak.
She listened.
And she prayed.
Humble do I pray and humble do I ask, she thought, mouthing the words in the darkness, I know that I am weak and have nothing to give but give freely as You once did for us.
“Then sometimes he just takes you,” she said, voice wracked with sobs. “In the middle of the night. . or the day. I don’t know. I can’t see the sun anymore. He comes and he just takes you and you fight him and. . and you hit him and you bite him and he just. . he just. .”
But as You give freely, and as You have told us to give freely of our time and our love and our bodies, I beg You give unto me, she prayed, give that I might do the will and restore that which is lost. Please, I beg-
“He laughs. Like it’s the funniest thing in the world. He takes his hands and he forces you down and-”
In the name of-
“He says things. He says words. They don’t make sense. And there’s a light. And you can see his teeth and he’s smiling and his eyes are big and white and he’s just so happy and. . and. .”
Please, Talanas, just. . please give me the strength-
“He makes you scream.”
Just. . please.
That wasn’t how the prayer ended. That wasn’t what she thought she would ask for. She lifted her hand slowly, that Nai might not know she was moving, and wiped the moisture from her eyes.
No tears, she told both Talanas and herself. She needs help. I asked for help. You can’t give me tears. I can’t give her tears.
Words, however weak, would have to be enough.
She opened her mouth to offer them, weak and plentiful, when she was cut off. A long, inhuman wail echoed from somewhere far away, like a long, vocal hand reaching desperately out of the darkness toward daylight.
They came intermittently, sometimes many, sometimes few, sometimes one long, lonely scream from somewhere deeper and darker. Asper had asked. Nai had clasped her hands over her ears, shook her head. Asper didn’t ask again.
Not about whoever those screams belonged to, anyway. She focused on the victims she could speak to.
Asper found her eyes drawn to the other girl in the cell. Or what she suspected was a girl. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell beyond the fact that Nai occasionally referred to the shaggy heap of disheveled hair and torn clothes as “she.”
And “she” hadn’t said a word since Asper had heard the bars slam shut behind her.
“What is her name?” Asper asked.
“I don’t know, I don’t know. She was here when they took me. I asked. I asked her. But she never told me. She just looked at me and told me that I was next and that I had to go when he came and that she couldn’t do it anymore and that she was sorry and that I could never stop screaming if I wanted to live. .”
“She” didn’t move at the mention, nor at the hand that Asper gently laid on her. She didn’t respond to touch, she didn’t resist as Asper rolled her over. She didn’t even blink as Asper stared into a pair of eyes that resembled a broken glass: shattered, glistening, and utterly empty.
“What happened to her?” Asper asked.
Nai’s voice was a soft, dying whisper. “She stopped screaming.”
No one in heaven or earth could blame her for wanting to break down, Asper knew. No one would blame her for weeping, for shrieking, for pleading. But as she stared at “her,” this woman who drew breath and nothing more, she could do nothing but ask.
What is he?
She wasn’t sure whom she asked, who would answer her. She wasn’t sure why she only thought to ask now. But she had to know. She wondered who could do this. Not in the moral sense, but the physical. Who could so easily take a human being in his hands like a cup, turn her over and pour out everything inside her, then let her fall and shatter upon the floor?
What kind of creature had that power?
A god, she thought. They treat him like a god. The netherlings tremble before him. Nai speaks of him in whispers. And she. . Asper looked down at the girl, who stared up at Asper, through Asper. He took her. Everything about her.
But there were no gods.
No one had answered her prayers.
She was still here, in the darkness, with an empty, shattered glass and a girl who had nothing but words. No one was coming. Not from heaven. Not from earth. There was no answer to her prayers.
There was only her.
There are no gods, she told herself. And if there are no gods, there is no one who can do this. Not to me. Not to anyone again. Gods can’t die.
She looked down at her left hand, tightened it into a fist. Beneath her sleeve, beneath her skin, she could feel it. She wore the agony like a glove, the pain welling up inside her a familiar one, a welcome one. One she hoped to share quite soon.
He can.
There was movement beneath her as “she” drew in a sharp breath.
It was something so small it would go unnoticed in anyone else. In a woman that hadn’t made a movement more energetic than a blink, it was enough to seize Asper’s attention.
And in the span it took her to notice the sound of heavy iron boots on stone floor, the door was already flying open. She could not see the tall, muscular women as they swept into her cell. But she could feel their hands, the cold iron of their gauntlets as they jerked her to her feet, wrenched her hands behind her back and hauled her from the cell.
She might have cried out. She might have even been tempted to concentrate on the agony in her arm and summon it against them. She didn’t know. It was hard to hear, harder to think with Nai’s screaming.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” the girl shrieked. Asper heard her scrambling away from them, twisting out of their grasp, raking her fingertips upon the floor as they hauled her out by her ankles. “No, please, not again, not again, not again, I’ve been good, I don’t deserve this, please, please, please, please-”
Pleas, tears, screams. A singular, desperate sound that echoed through the cavern. It was joined by the screams from deeper inside, an endless, unrelenting cacophony marching alongside Asper as she was bodily dragged toward a distant halo of light at the end of the twisted corridor.
Within the ring of light, she saw it. A shadow standing tall, hands folded neatly behind its back.
And within the shadow, she saw them. A pair of lights, blood red and fire hot. Stars in hell.
The fear that had been bearing down upon her since she stared praying grew at the sight of him. It settled upon her shoulders. It pressed upon her neck. It ate the anger from her body, it drank the breath from her lungs.
But even beneath its weight, even through the half-formed prayers in her head and the pounding in her heart, she could still hear her curse herself.
Not now, you idiot, she snarled inwardly. Not in front of Nai. She gritted her teeth, felt her neck strain against the weight as she tried to raise it. He’s not a god. There are no gods. Not on earth. Look at him.
It hurt to move her head, hurt to even think about it. But she forced herself to do both.
Look.
She did.
He did not.
Sheraptus stood, head bowed beneath the black iron crown upon his brow, staring intently into his palm. With one long finger, he gently pushed about tiny black fragments in his hand, attempting to piece together a charred puzzle.
It wasn’t relief she felt to be denied his gaze as she was shoved past him. Her fear settled firmly upon her back and she felt extraordinarily heavy at that point. A sudden anger rose inside her, leaving no room for breath. That he
could do what he did to her, to Nai, to the other girl, and not even look when his victims were paraded before him was. . was. .
She had no words for it. Only desires. Only a yearning to scream, a yearning to break free from her captor’s iron grip and lunge at him with an arm that throbbed with a pain she wanted nothing more than to share.
Those desires left her, though, along with the air in her lungs, as the netherling twisted her about, placed a palm upon her belly and slammed her gainst the wall of the round, cavernous chamber. Sense left with the wind and she scarcely even noticed her arms being raised so high above her head as to pull her to the tips of her toes. It returned, however, with the eager snapping of metal as manacles were fastened about her wrists and she was left to hang against the wall like a macabre piece of art.
Her captor stepped back, met her scowl with cold eyes and tense muscles, as if challenging Asper to give her a reason to use those gauntleted fists folded over her chest. The priestess offered nothing more than a glare. The netherling, denied, snorted and left.
Nai had more to give.
“Please no, please stop, please no, please stop,” she chanted the words, as though they would gain power the more she spoke them. “Please, please, please, please. .”
The netherling holding her took no notice of her pleas as she forced the girl into a similar set of manacles on the opposite side of the chamber’s door. Nai seemed to forget Asper was there entirely, shaking her head to add gesture to desperate incantation.
And no one seemed to notice the murals upon the walls.
They were almost illegible, smeared by soot from torches haphazardly jammed into the wall, scratched by scenes of struggle or boredom-induced violence. But Asper could make out a few images: men marching to war against towering black shapes, green, reptilian things marching beside them. Amidst them all strode great stone colossi, dressed in robes, hands outstretched.
She had seen these before, she realized: the great stone monoliths upon Teji, as imposing in paint as they were in person.
They marched into oblivion, crushing black shapes beneath their treads, sending white shapes fleeing before their authoritative palms. She followed them as they marched across the walls, displaying banners of many gods, holding weapons high. They descended toward the back of the chamber, the mural lost in the darkness that was held at bay by the torches, save for but a few strands of crimson paint that stretched out of the gloom.