by Sam Sykes
And if I were to do that, I wouldn’t be a Rhega.
The gurgling behind him became a low rumble as something boiled up from the endless corridor behind him, sending the walls shaking, the floor writhing as he clawed his way forward.
And then, what would the point of this all be?
He tightened his grip, sinking his claws in to the skin of his fingers, stomped his feet down to secure a footing on the writhing floor. He felt liquid pour out in great, spurting gushes. He dug the claws of his toes into the floor, felt the blood pool around the soles of his feet.
The rumble behind him became something louder that shook the walls and floors and ceiling and the dark, dank air around him. And Gariath could feel by the trembling, the sound of the walls contracting around him, the great lurching shudder that shot through them, that it heralded something much, much bigger.
You have to earn my death.
Thoughts weren’t enough.
But he trusted by the blood pouring over his hands and the great tide of bile rushing up behind him that he had made his intent clear enough.
A crack appeared in the darkness before him, quickly spreading into a great, gaping hole bordered by black, jagged spikes. In as much time as it took to blink, soft blue light poured in.
The flood of seawater came right after.
The dragonman released his grip suddenly as the seawater crashed against his chest and the bile struck against his back. For a moment, it seemed as though he might be crushed between the two liquid onslaughts. But the ocean was merely an ocean. The digestive juices boiling up behind him had an entire day’s worth of hate and fury at having a clawed obstruction lodged in a tender gullet.
And expelled him like an undigested red morsel on a cloud of blood and black bile.
He went tumbling helplessly into the vastness of the sea as the Akaneed’s jaws crashed shut behind him and its tremendous column of a body pressed forward. Its snout only just grazed him, but it was more than enough to send him flailing, bouncing off the beast’s blue hide as it sailed beneath him.
It would have been easy to let go, to drift into the endless blue and disappear. Maybe he would survive, maybe the Akaneed would live the rest of its life with one eye happily, maybe they would kill each other later. But “maybe” was a human word indiscernible from human thought: easily twisted.
He was Rhega.
That was why, as the serpent’s tail passed beneath him, he reached down and seized it.
A tiny red parasite on the beast’s great bulk, Gariath fought to hold on against the twisting tail, against the wall of water, against his lungs tightening in his chest. Here, claws sunk into the flesh of the creature’s tail, he couldn’t even see where the beast’s head was, the vast road of writhing blue flesh disappearing into the murk of the sea.
Such a sight would have been enough to make him consider letting go, consider the wisdom of fighting a snake the size of a ship, consider if such a thing could even be killed.
It would have.
If he hadn’t already seen it from the inside, anyway.
The Akaneed’s throaty keen echoed through the water as the beast shifted beneath him; tiny as he might have been to it, he had not gone unnoticed, his crimes against the beast had not gone unremembered. That thought gave him pride. Pride that was quickly overwhelmed by the burning need to breathe as the beast’s tail swung from side to side in an attempt to dislodge him as it abruptly shifted upward.
His lungs nearly burst along with the water as the Akaneed broke the surface, out of the world of water and into the world of mist. As vast as it might have been, as much reason as it might have had to kill him, it still needed to breathe the air like him. It was still alive, like him.
And you can die, he thought, like me.
That thought propelled him as he hauled himself, claw over claw, across its columnous body as it tore through the waves, cleaving a path of froth and mist out of the sea. The salt stung his eyes; he didn’t close them. It made his grip slip; he clung harder. The beast twisted, writhed, slapped its tail in an effort to dislodge him; he refused to let go.
You deserve to kill me, he thought. I deserve to die.
Pillars of stone appeared out of the mist, walkways of stone cast shadows against the gray mist overhead as the beast wound its way between them, slamming its body against the rock in an attempt to dislodge him. But stone could not stop him. Sea could not shake him. He continued to climb, to claw his way up the beast’s hide, leaving bloody tracks in its hide behind him.
But I don’t want to die.
And, with one more pull, he saw it. Rising high and sail-thin, tearing the sea apart, the beast’s great crested fin stood. He growled, tensed. .
And I’m not going to.
And leapt.
Not yet.
The beast roared and he felt its skull shake under him, just as it felt his claws upon its neck. His footing began to disappear beneath him, swallowed up by the sea as the serpent dove. That was fine. It was always going to be difficult. That’s how their relationship worked.
And so he drew in a deep breath and took the Akaneed’s fin in his claws as the world drowned around him.
Beneath the mist there was nothing but decay. Pillars of stone rose in a gray forest from the seabed. The shattered timbers of ships and their crumbled monolith statues littered the floor, leaves from the dead stone trees. The shattered hulls groaned as they passed overhead. The stone grumbled as they brushed past.
Grumbles became muted cries as the Akaneed twisted, smashing its body against the rock, hide grinding against the pillars and sending clouds of earth and foam erupting as it tried to scrape its parasite off.
Gariath shifted only as much as he needed to avoid being crushed between flesh and stone, suffering dust in his eyes and shards of rock caroming off his skull. Every movement was energy wasted and every ounce was needed.
The ancient warship came into view with astonishing swiftness, its crushed and scorched hull half-sunken into the seabed, its great stone figurehead holding its arm up as if to warn Gariath of the foolishness of what he was about to try.
But what kind of lunatic would listen to a statue?
The beast swam toward it, arching its body to scrape Gariath off on the wood like it would any other piece of tenacious, sticky filth. The dragonman seized the opportunity as surely as he seized the Akaneed’s fin. He spared enough energy to growl, planted his feet, and, with the entirety of his weight and strength, pulled on the creature’s fin.
Hard.
It was about the moment the beast let out a keening wail of alarm that Gariath wondered if the statue might have had a point. It was about the moment when the beast lurched headlong into the statue’s outstretched arm that he was fairly sure he should have paid more attention to it.
Past that, his only thought was for hanging on.
The Akaneed smashed through the statue, its body crumbling with a resigned, stony sigh, as though it knew this had been coming. The warship itself lodged a louder complaint. Ancient timbers came cracking apart in shrieks, splintering in snarls as the beast, disoriented and furious, pulled itself through the wreck in an explosion of wood and sand.
Shards of wood came flying out of the cloud of earth that rose in the creature’s wake, whizzing past Gariath, striking against his temple, bouncing off his shoulders. Each one he took stoically; to cry out, to even snarl would be breath from burning lungs that he couldn’t afford to lose. Even the giant
I owe you blood, he thought.
That was easy to give, coming out in a stream of cloudy red as he pulled the spike out.
Blood is better than screaming, anyway.
It trailed behind him, filling the ocean, flying like a proud banner, boldly proclaiming his progress as he hauled himself bodily across the creature’s hide.
It will let everyone know that I gave something back.
It clouded his eyes, made it hard to see. His lungs seared, threatening to burst. The serpent
picked up speed, threatening to send him flying off as he clawed his way up to the creature’s head.
But you gave me more. You gave me a reason to live.
And through his own blood, through the rush of salt, through it all, he looked down and saw the Akaneed. And with its sole remaining eye, it looked up and saw him.
Thank you.
He raised the spike of wood above his head.
I’m sorry.
He brought it down.
The cloud of red became a storm, the beast’s thunderous agony splitting through the billowing blood. It became a bolt of lightning unto itself, arching and twisting and writhing and shrieking into contortions of blind pain as it sailed violently through the bloodstained sea.
They found the surface, bursting from the sea with a roaring wail too loud to be smothered by the mist. Gariath breathed short, quick breaths, unable to spare the effort to take more. Where he had been a parasite before, he now clung to the beast with tumorlike tenacity as the Akaneed tore wildly through the forest of pillars in a blind, bloody fury.
He was nearly thrown off with each spastic flail of the beast’s tail, each time it caromed off of a pillar, each time it threw back its head and howled through its agony. Honor kept his grip strong, pride kept his claws sunken; he had taken everything from the Akaneed.
He would not waste the sacrifice by being thrown off now.
The pillars thinned out, giving way to open ocean. The Akaneed picked up speed, unable to do anything else in its agony. For a moment, Gariath wondered if he might simply ride the beast out into the middle of nowhere until it died and then, as starvation and fatigue set in, he would die with it.
But as the mist began to thin and, in the distance, a great gray wall of looming, unblemished stone arose, that particular fear was dashed. Along with his brains, he was sure, if he didn’t think of something.
Options being limited as they were atop the back of a violently thrashing sea serpent swimming at full speed toward a sheer wall of stone, thinking didn’t count so much as action. And his actions didn’t count nearly as much as the Akaneed’s.
Thus, when its back twisted and snapped like a whip, he had little choice but go flying ahead of it to land in the water with an eruption of froth. And when it came surging up behind him, jaws gaping in an agonized roar, he had little choice but to try and keep from sliding down its gullet a second time as he was washed into its open mouth.
And when he saw the wall looming ever closer to them, growing ever huger with each fervent breath, he had but one choice.
And he chose not to soil himself.
Of the many, many negatives that came with being surrounded by two dozen tattooed, scaly, bipedal lizards with clubs, arrows, machetes, and yellow, wicked stares fixated upon him, Lenk had never once thought that the worst of them would be that they didn’t attack.
But then again, Lenk never once thought that he would be in this position.
Not alone, anyway.
He glanced back up to the fallen monolith behind him and the empty space that Kataria had just occupied. He didn’t know why she left. He didn’t know why she hadn’t come back. He didn’t know why the Shen were apparently taking their sweet time in getting down to the dirty business of smashing his head into his stomach.
But his life had always been full of surprises. And he could do something about only one of them at that moment.
His sword was in his hand, raised as a feeble counter against the threat of the many weapons raised against him. Sturdy and red with Shen blood as it might have been, crude and jagged their weapons might have been, there as little argument his single blade could muster against their two dozen jagged, cruel-edged reasons as to why he should die.
If they were savoring that fact, they had taken an awfully long time to do so.
If they were waiting to see what he would do, they had to know by now.
And so, he had to ask.
“What the hell are you waiting for?” he snarled.
Beyond a collective flash of their yellow eyes, they didn’t reply. He had no idea if they even understood him. All the same, as a throaty, hissing murmur swept through them, as the crowd of tattooed scales rippled and parted, the Shen answered him.
One of them, anyway.
Their weapons lowered, just as their eyes went up to look at the newly-arrived lizardman. Towering over its brethren by a head wrapped in a headdress made of the skull of some fierce-looking beast and shoulders thick with muscle, the tremendous reptile stalked forward, unhurried.
A tail as long and thick as a constrictor snake dragged behind it. A club, big enough that it would take three hands of a human to lift and studded with jagged teeth of an animal long dead, hung easily from a clawed hand that led to a loglike arm that attached to a broad, powerful body thick with banded tattoos.
All red as blood.
One pace away from Lenk, the lizardman came to a halt. Its eyes melted like amber around two knife-thin and coal-black pupils, peering out from two black pits of its animal-skull headdress. It glanced at the tip of his sword, barely grazing its massive green-and-red barrel of a chest, only barely concerned with being a twitch away from impalement.
Lenk supposed that he might also be unconcerned were he a giant reptile wearing a jagged-toothed skull like it were his own and carrying a club as big as the tiny, gray-haired insect of a man the Shen faced.
“That’s not going to work,” he, for he certainly sounded like a man, said.
“I was, uh,” Lenk spoke through a cough, “hoping that you’d admire me for trying.” His blade quivered slightly as the tremendous Shen stared at him. “You know, be impressed with my valiance or something.”
The tremendous Shen tilted his skull-bound head to the side. “And then?”
“I don’t know. You’d all make me your king or something.” Lenk raised a brow. “Do you have kings?”
The Shen shook his head, sent bones rattling. “Warwatchers.”
“Fancy. You’re not going to be making me one, then?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“You sound surprised.”
“Well, your green friends haven’t attacked me yet, so. .”
“They were waiting for Shalake.”
“Who?”
The Shen tapped two fingers to his chest. Lenk sneered.
“Warwatchers get to talk about themselves in the third person?”
“I give you my name and your life, for the moment,” Shalake said. “Because I want to know how you got into Jaga. We have the reef. We have the walls. We have the Akaneeds. No one gets past all three.”
“If that were true, there wouldn’t be a whole mess of you waiting for me once I did get past them all.”
“And how did you get past them?”
The young man smiled feebly. “Luck?”
“Just luck,” the Shen growled.
Lenk glanced up over his shoulder, toward an empty patch of stone atop the statue where someone had once stood. Where someone had turned away and fled from him. Again. He swallowed something back as his gaze returned to the Shen.
“Just luck,” he said.
Shalake nodded with a slow, sage-like patience. His sigh was long, sent plumes of dust rising from the desiccated snout of his skull headdress. He hefted his tooth-studded club lazily.
“I see.”
And then he swung.
Shalake growled. He cried out. Shen hissed in approval. All sounds were lost to Lenk’s ears in a fit of panic as he flung himself to the ground. They returned in the sound of stone crunching, splintering, clattering upon his back and rolling to the highway. He looked up long enough to see Shalake pull his weapon free, a great gash left in the statue’s arm.
And then all thoughts were for the sword in his hand. He took the blade in a tight grip, tensed, and thrust upward. A morbid grin creased his face as he felt the steel eat deeply of flesh until it halted, gorged. That lasted just long enough to look up and see the sword�
�s tip hovering a finger’s length away from the Shen’s kidneys, a clawed green hand wrapped about the naked blade.
The weapon was ripped from him as the Shen’s foot lashed out and smashed against his chest. He slammed against the statue, all thought for his missing weapon going toward desperately trying to find missing breath.
Shalake seemed in no such hurry. Ignoring the blood weeping from his fingers, he tossed the blade aside as he hefted his club with all the urgency that smashing a roach warranted.
Robbed of breath and blade, Lenk was certainly not above scurrying away not unlike a roach. Though once he scrambled to his feet, he became aware of just why the Shen could afford to be so casual. The other lizardmen stood at the ready, weapons clenched and eyes fixated upon him; whether out of espect or morbid curiosity, their reluctance to join the battle clearly only extended as far as the half-circle they had formed.
He could see it in their eyes.
Which were slowly arching up, as though looking at something-
Oh, right.
The sweeping arc would have taken off his head if he hadn’t thrown himself to the side. That was small solace for the heavy, clawed foot that lashed out and drove a hard kick against his back, sending him rolling across the stone.
Small and fleeting, he realized as he crawled to his feet, trying to ignore the sound of his bones popping. He couldn’t take another hit like that. He couldn’t keep dodging. He couldn’t escape.
That left two options. One would be waiting for help. He looked up to the empty air above the stone statue.
“Foolish,” the voice said.
Agreed, he thought in reply.
That left the other option.
He stared at Shalake as the Shen hefted his club and narrowed his eyes to slits behind his skull headdress. Lenk drew in a deep breath.
And charged.
The patience was gone from the Shen’s eyes, as the laziness was gone from his swing. It sucked the very air from the sky; Lenk could feel the wind from the blow itself as he ducked low, ran beneath it, past the Shen.
The tail found him before he could find it, lashing out to strike him firmly against the chest. He embraced the pain as he embraced the tail itself, wrapping both arms around it. While Lenk wasn’t quite certain as to the specific implications of grabbing a lizardman’s tail, he was able to guess as soon as Shalake cast a scowl over his shoulder and roared.