A Shard of Sea and Bone (Death of the Multiverse Book 1)

by L. J. Engelmeier

  He straddled the limp creature until the dust around them cleared. Then the creature was revealed: a hollowsoul. Its skin was slick like exposed muscle, but grey. Its mouth jutted out in a slack snout, tongue lolling to the side. Red eyes streaked through with yellow bulged obscenely. Its neck was a mangled, bloody mess. Kinrae pulled his hands from it, jolted.

  I killed it. Kinrae stared down at the blood painting his gauntlets, steam rising from them. I killed a living creature. I took a life from the world. In retrospect, he wondered why he’d chosen his hands, why he hadn’t reached for his sword. He looked at the savagery underneath him, the savagery he’d inflicted, and his stomach turned. I did this.

  A few feet behind him, Naliah argued: “Draven, please just let me look at your face. I need to try healing you.”

  When Kinrae turned, Draven was swatting at Naliah’s outstretched hands and angling his body away. He’d tucked his face behind the upward swoop of his bevor, completely hiding it. All it took was Kinrae locking eyes with Naliah for Naliah to nod and stand up, leaving to scout the small perimeter of the distorted ward surrounding their group, which Artysaedra must have erected at some point and was now watching diligently.

  Kinrae budged up from the hollowsoul’s corpse and knelt down next to his brother instead. The rubble bit into his knees. Draven did nothing to signal that he registered Kinrae’s presence. His breath was shuddering through his chest, some of his raven-black hair plastered to his temples with blood, but whatever damage had been done to him was hidden by his bevor and by his gauntleted hands, clasped over the sides of his head.

  “Well, this should prove it to everyone,” Draven said with a heavy slur. A laugh left him, wet at the edges. “You are useful, Brother! I’m the idiot tag-along of the group.”

  Kinrae laid a hand on his brother’s spiked pauldron and wished there weren’t layers of metal separating their skin. He wanted to offer comfort, not the cold of steel, but Draven flinched away regardless. It stung Kinrae. “I did not aid you to make you feel inadequate,” he said.

  Draven gave a nasty, wet cough, followed by a series of them and then a chuckle. “No need, Brother. See, I do that all on my own.”

  “You aren’t inadequate.”

  “Aren’t I?”

  “Look at me,” Kinrae commanded. When Draven didn’t, Kinrae ordered it again, harsher, until Draven finally moved his hands and lifted his head to meet Kinrae’s eyes. Draven’s mask was in tatters, shredded and stuck to the bloody chunks of face. His teeth were visible through the skin, and some of the bone of his cheek and jaw peeked through. His skin was knitting itself back together slowly, the bleeding sluggish, but all Kinrae could think was that if Draven’s bevor hadn’t been there to obstruct the hollowsoul, the creature would have sunken its teeth straight into Draven’s throat instead. There would have been no saving him. He would have been dead in seconds. He was already lucky the creature hadn’t crushed his skull between its jaws.

  Kinrae’s mind stuck on the thought. Draven dead. He couldn’t fathom it. Draven had been a constant at his side for four thousand years. In every memory of Kinrae’s, Draven was there, in the center, on the sidelines. Their lessons had been together, their debut to the public. They’d bathed together and snuck into each other’s beds. They’d run around the castle playing make-believe. Kinrae couldn’t remember a time before his brother had existed.

  Kinrae raised his hand with every intention to place it on his brother’s injured jaw, but Draven’s garnet eyes widened and, again, he flinched out of reach. “Don’t,” he said, firm. “Don’t.”

  Kinrae’s hand froze mid-air. Oh, he thought. Oh.

  He’d suspected he’d given away too much at the riverbank. There was no way his brother couldn’t have seen it. There was no way, as close as they’d stood, that Draven hadn’t seen Kinrae’s feelings for him written all over his face. So he’d done the only thing he could think of in the moment: knocked his brother back as hard as he could in panic.

  But it had been too late, hadn’t it? Draven knew now. He knew, and he was avoiding Kinrae. He knew, and he didn’t want to be touched by him. He knew—and at this, Kinrae swallowed hard—he knew, and he was revolted.

  “I hate to interrupt the heartfelt bonding, guys,” Artysaedra cut in, and Kinrae and Draven both whipped their heads around to where she was standing at the edge of the ward. She had Mercy in her grip for the first time since they’d arrived in the Realm, the scythe’s double blades gleaming with the glow of an overcast sky that seemed determined to spit out snow any time soon. Naliah was hovering at her side, his hands engulfed in crackling flame. “We have company.”

  “Define company,” Draven said.

  Standing, Kinrae fought the urge to grab his brother’s hand and help him to his feet as well. Draven got up on his own and quickly pulled a tin of healing salve from the ether, removed his gauntlet, and slathered it generously into the mush of his face. It would be a few hours before it healed completely, Kinrae knew.

  “I think you should see for yourselves, guys.”

  They made their way over to their sister and looked down at the demolished landscape from their vantage point. This side of the city—the southeastern section—had fared better than the others, factories cracked and tilted but largely upright. A large advertisement for sliced bread was painted on the side of a building in front of them. Kinrae couldn’t see much beyond it and the other factories, but he slowly began to register noise racketing through the area. Rocks shifting. Heartbeats. Snuffling noses. Shrieks and barks. It all became an uncountable cacophony, coming from every direction, like a pack of dogs had been set on the city. He watched through the silky, barely distorted wall of the ward as creatures began to emerge from the ravaged streets—one, two, thirty, two hundred, thousands. In no time at all, Kinrae and the others were surrounded on all sides. Hollowsouls dotted the area with minimal space between each of them, scaling the sides of buildings, pouring out of broken windows like a disturbed colony of ants. They whirled around aimlessly, ears and snouts turned toward the sky, searching.

  “Still think we should stay?” Artysaedra asked, raising a pointed eyebrow at Naliah, who gave no response other than extinguishing the flames trailing up his vambraces. The metal glowed red-hot in the wake of the fire.

  Something didn’t add up, and Kinrae couldn’t keep himself from pointing it out. “Grandmother said prayers for help from this Realm were received only days ago, but these hollowsouls are all years into permanent mutation. At these numbers, the hollowsouls would have been noticed years ago, not days.” He watched a hollowsoul climb the side of their rubbled building until it was just feet from him. It bobbed and weaved outside the wards, snapping its slobbering jowls. Its flared snout brushed up against the wards, inches from Kinrae’s face. Another hollowsoul launched into it. There was a flurry of limbs as they snarled and went for each other’s throats in the rubble, crashing down the side of the hill. A loud whimper sounded. From inside the wards, Beaker growled and paced a circle. “These creatures do not possess the cognizance to conceal themselves. Their minds have been ravaged by mutation. They are slaves to slake their bloodlust and nothing more.”

  “Slaves have a master,” Naliah said, tone edged with a darkness that surprised Kinrae. His breath puffed riverine through his mask. “Slaves always have a master. These hollowsouls belong to someone. Someone amassed them. Or released them from somewhere. Whichever it is, there’s too many fully mutated ones in this Realm to be natural.”

  Artysaedra pulled down her mask. She blew out a shrill, impressed whistle. “Powerful puppetmaster to gather them together, then sic them on an entire continent.”

  The implication in her words rang clearly: powerful like a Guardian.

  “Do you truly believe Arielle would betray the Infinity?” Kinrae asked. He’d read every book penned on Guardian Penthoseren he’d ever laid eyes on. She was worshipped, loved. Back in her time, religious convents had sprung up to worship her. They were sti
ll in existence. “I cannot elucidate any motivation to this dimension’s massacre. What would she gain from this chaos?”

  “Betrayal doesn’t need a reason,” Naliah said. “It’s like my father used to say: wej mollen vakkas wej idla mollen. We conquer because we can.”

  “While this is all fascinating and more than slightly depressing,” Draven cut in, “are we fighting or running? Because I vote running. Emphatically, I might add, as the one whose face was nearly eaten off.” He was staring at Beaker, who was snarling at the hollowsouls scattering below them, her hackles raised. Kinrae knew she wouldn’t last long outside the barrier. He knew he wouldn’t. Neither would his brother. They weren’t trained for the open warfare that waited on the other side of this warding.

  Artysaedra snorted. “Oh, are you scared, Brother?”

  “Do I need to say it again: face, eaten off.”

  “It’s already healing, you damn pansy.”

  “I quite like my face, Saedra!”

  “If you ask me, I think it did you a damned favour.”

  “Well, I’d like to avoid that hoard out there doing favours to the rest of my body, thank you. I’d wager most people are scared in the face of inevitable death.” When Artysaedra opened her mouth, Draven snapped, “Most people, Saedra. Normal people. People with a modicum of sanity that wasn’t beaten out of their skull by too many drunken fists to the head.”

  “I take offense to that.”

  Naliah said from the sidelines. “No, you don’t.”

  “I second the motion to leave,” Kinrae cut in. “We have little to gain by remaining here but our own deaths.”

  “Fabulous,” Draven said. “All in favour say aye?”

  There was an explosive blast far in the distance, and Kinrae jolted, the rubble lurching underneath them. A cloud of flames unfolded a couple miles out, rock hailing down. Hollowsouls shrieked and squealed. Others turned in the direction of the destruction, and then they were sprinting off, blurs of slick skin streaking through lopsided buildings.

  “Someone’s out there,” Artysaedra said. She lifted her scythe one-handed, and wondrous, she took a step closer to the shimmering wards, bevor almost touching it. “We have to go grab them. They could tell us what they saw.”

  Naliah snagged her arm, pulling her back. “You don’t know that someone’s out there. It was just an explosion.”

  “Do things often explode without a catalyst in your experience?” Artysaedra shot off lasciviously, then pointed her head out at the fading plume of smoke. There was another blast, larger this time. It shook the rock beneath Kinrae’s feet again. “Look at the edge of the smoke. See how the air warps? That’s spellcasting.”

  “You know I can’t see as far as you can, Sae.”

  Curious, Kinrae increased the focus of his eyes until he could see nearly every mote of dust in the air two miles away. Each mote danced and twirled through the air, but there, if Kinrae watched closely enough, there the air around the edge of the smoke plume bent, like a mirage. He blinked in surprise.

  Beside him, Draven sighed. “So that’s a nay on the running,” he said. “It’s always a nay on the running. Any tips on using a sword then, little sister?”

  “Jab it straight through their hearts.”

  “Seriously, Saedra, who hurt you as a child?”

  EVEN GODS BLEED

  _______________________________

  Take my life! But I will take room in your memories and I will take the fort in your heart safeguarding your peace, for I am not the first—nor will I be the last—to challenge your hold on this world.

  revolutionist Victoria Skinner’s last words before hanging in the Realm of Head Fruits

  THE MULTITUDINOUS REALM OF BLACK WATERS

  THE INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT, SOUTHEASTERN LINDENNACHT,

  COUNTY KAVETT, NORTHERN OSNASTEDT, FJORDE

  The wind in her hair and blood on her face: nothing brought a smile to Artysaedra’s lips quite like those things did. She felt like a storm right now, like lightning was cracking under her skin and thunder was growling under her ribs. Her whole body thrummed to the same commanding rhythm as she ran into the battleground.

  On Naliah’s countdown, she’d dropped her scythe into the ether and released her warding, and they’d swept forward into the ruins of the city without looking back. They’d barely made it to the foot of their rubble hill before the hollowsouls had swarmed them. There were teeth and claws on all sides now. A wall of writhing flesh. Artysaedra’s heart raced in equal measures of excitement and fear. The ease with which the beasts could wrest her soul from her body if they got a good swipe in—something about the thought was holy. It felt like standing in a cathedral and finding a power higher than herself.

  Steaming hot skin crowded and smothered her. Claws glanced off her armour. Rank drool went flying, and then blood as Artysaedra ducked and dodged blows from above and below, shattering beasts’ faces with savage punches. She tore off their arms and heads with her hands and ripped out their throats with her teeth. She delivered brutal kicks to their ribs and knocked down hollowsoul after hollowsoul that leapt from a roof at her. She threw herself into the blind chaos of the fight until her muscles were burning and her heart was churning from beat to beat like an overworked cog. When she had enough room, she brought her scythe into play. Its blades ripped through the bodies of the hollowsouls around her, cleaving them in half in large droves. The sounds were wet and nasty. The shrieks were loud.

  Beg for Mercy, she thought. Beg for her.

  The beasts were fast, but Artysaedra was faster. She anticipated their clumsy moves. All they wanted was the blood pounding in her veins—blood she’d smeared across her vambraces and breastplate to lure them in before releasing her ward—but they had no finesse when it came to pursuing it. They were animals, all slavering fangs, bulging red eyes, and single-minded focus. Getting the best of them was easy.

  Artysaedra mowed down another wave of them with her scythe and then planted it in the rubble like a staff. With her free hand, she reached toward the building at her right. She could feel every molecule buzzing inside it like a physical extension of herself. She pulled at the air. Her burning muscles tensed, so she pulled harder, meeting resistance. Then, with a final pull, the wall in front of her began to crack. The hollowsouls turned toward it, watching, and with a thunderous set of booms, the building tilted over them like a tidal wave and collapsed. Artysaedra laughed as the ground shook. She leapt across the settling rubble, Mercy hefted over her shoulder. The cold snapped back her hair as she charged forward into the city.

  Another surge of hollowsouls mobbed her, their shrieking snarls announcing their arrival far before they appeared in her line of sight. Artysaedra took them down however she pleased. With water: ripping it from the air, forming it into ice, and then impaling them with a barrage of the spikes; forcing it down their throats and into their lungs until they drowned on it; siphoning the water out of their own bodies and watching them collapse in shrivelled heaps. With earth: crushing them under slabs of rubble; sending small rocks careening at them so fast the pebbles shot through their skulls like bullets; encasing their legs in stone, ripping their hearts out with her hands, slicing off their heads once they couldn’t move. With air: pulling it out of their lungs so they suffocated; increasing the pressure of the atmosphere around them, pulverizing them under its density; forming it into blades of current so thin they sliced through anything. With fire, she simply roasted them in a blazing inferno.

  Her chest heaved with her efforts, but her smile never slipped. The destruction and carnage around her continued to grow. Her mouth was full of foreign blood. It dripped down her chin.

  I am devastation, she thought with relish. I am destruction. Life and death are my servants to command. Nothing in the Infinity can stop me.

  She’d crossed a solid mile of the city, half the distance between the dead Guardian they’d left behind and the percussive blasts of fire still rocketing off ahead. The force of the blast
s had knocked down a few of the precariously lopsided buildings in her path, but she’d dodged them as they fell. She was at the cracked base of a large tower now. Up its steps, stretching over its large double doors, the words LINDENVACHEN VI TORRET - TOWER OF THE LINDENWATCH were engraved in stone. The tower had a bell that tolled idly with each quake of the ground. Behind her, she could hear her brothers jogging to keep up with her a street back—that mutt of theirs having been shoved into the ether again. The two of them had avoided the brunt of the attacks that Artysaedra had barrelled through in order to spare them. What shocked her—now that she had a moment to stop and listen—was that Naliah had gotten ahead of her somehow. Half a mile out, she could hear his breathing and low grunts as he grew closer to their target. She could hear the impact of his fists with flesh and bone.

  There was no way he’d fought his way ahead of her. She imagined he’d reconjured within the Realm itself to get so much of a lead, but as much as Artysaedra wanted to take the risk with him, she couldn’t. Jumping to a different point in the city meant acclimating herself to her surroundings and her targets in hyper-time, and while she could manage it, it would leave her brothers behind to fend for themselves—and she couldn’t do that.

  She was still tempted to join Naliah. He was a capable fighter, but he tended to rely on his fists and his natural abilities as a fire elementus instead of utilizing his Guardian powers. She’d tried to train him to fight otherwise, but the lessons hadn’t taken yet.

  He might need help. He’s never faced a threat like this before.

  Artysaedra noticed the presence at her back too late.

  It took her to the ground with vicious force.

  Mercy went flying, and Artysaedra’s head snapped forward hard. The air shot from her lungs as she hit the rubble. A massive weight pinned her down, and claws squealed off the steel of her backplate. She squirmed against the hollowsoul, but the beast was strong and her endurance was wearing down. She felt a line of drool slide down the side of her neck. Breath puffed against the back of her head. She expected to feel teeth sink into her skull next, but instead, Artysaedra heard something slice through the air. It was a sound like a butcher’s cleaver burying itself in a dead pig. Blood splattered the back of her head and dripped down through her hair into her face. The weight on her back tipped over and vanished. When she rolled over, Kinrae of all people was standing above her. His sword was extended and bloodied. More blood streaked his armour and stained his white hair. His silver eyes were worried. It surprised her when he held out a hand and helped her to her feet.