“Ready? On three, I’m going to let go. Give it everything you have.”
She nodded, focusing on the spiraling bands of cold, mist-like energy.
“One.”
The bands were flowing faster, building up traction around the central beacon of cold focus. She drowned out all outside influences, putting her thoughts only into the sensory feedback loop of her mind’s eye.
“Two.”
Those bands branched, forming invisible wires of evanescing somethingness. They seemed to crackle about—just like the bolt earlier—arcing to and from the font of energy between her fingers.
“Three.”
She opened the imaginary floodgates of her hands and mind and heart, calling forth what to her felt like an insurmountable volume of energy. She forced it between her hands and toward the Flames. She imagined those strands—those webs—of mist intertwining as they spiraled in toward that point of infinite power. Then, as they met, she felt a crystal-clear crackle of electricity split the air. The bolt, as bright as the sun behind her eyelids, pulled the muscles of her fingers into clenched claws. Her eyes shot open, her heart pounding. The Flames had been extinguished.
“Well?” she gasped. “How was that?”
The darkness of the night obscured Mark’s expression. He looked away for a moment. “That’s . . . That had to have been a fluke. Yes, I must have made a mistake. Forgive me, but let us try again.” It took him a moment longer than the first time, but he called the Flames and held his hand in front of her. This time, she glimpsed the deathly light illuminate the walls of the trench. Confidence soaring, she closed her eyes and brought her hands apart, again framing the soul-brazier in the center.
Mark gave the countdown, and Spinneretta called forth the same unlocked reservoir of mental energy. She directed her aura between her hands and built up its intensity as he counted. At two she imagined the mist-bands spiraling across the base of the Flames, building momentum. At one, they had become quantum webs, entangling the psychic particles contained within. At zero, she pushed all the energy she could toward the Flames of Y’rokkrem. That same electric discharge ripped through space within and without her mind. When she opened her eyes, she found that the Flames had once again gone out.
For a long moment, Mark’s silence loomed over her. “How can that be?”
“Well?” she said, gasping for air. “Does this mean I have magical talent? Can you teach me how to use it?”
He was quiet for a moment longer. “No.”
Certain she’d heard him wrong, she awaited a correction that wasn’t coming. “No?” she said, confused. But confusion turned at once to indignation. “What the hell do you mean no?”
“I’m not entirely sure how to say this,” he said in a grim tone, “but if that test was any indication, then it seems that you have no magical potential whatsoever.”
She blinked at his silhouette. “What?”
His hand twitched for a moment, and then the Flames slowly sparked into being. They illuminated the confusion on his face. “As I’ve mentioned, the Flames will burn anything that I wish them to. In this case, I was directing them to burn your aura and convert it into fuel to sustain them in place of my own. When you directed your energy toward them, they should have flared and continued to burn as long as you fed them. Even people without any meaningful potential can usually keep them alive for a few moments; the Flames will choke and sputter on the ambient aura about them. Never have I seen them just go out like that.”
“That . . . That can’t be right, I’m sure I felt something when they went out. Some kind of snapping or cracking or . . . ” Her mind reeled, trying to make sense of the contradiction.
“I know this is going to sound quite ironic, but I believe it may have been your imagination.” He let the Flames go out and stretched his hand. He began to ignite and extinguish the mystic fire, flexing his hand for a couple seconds in between. “You know, I think you may be making me worse at magic simply by being around me.”
“Fuck you,” she hissed, crossing her arms and turning toward the wall of the scar. No magical potential whatsoever? What the hell are you saying? How does that make sense?
“Forgive me,” he said. “I’m just quite baffled.” He stood up with a groan. “Not to mention how many more questions this raises. If you haven’t any magical potential, then how could you have opened the portal in the first place?”
She nodded numbly, her mind on the threshold of helplessness. And then she made the mistake of looking up at Mark. In the dark of the trench, the Zigmhen night sparkled with distant, clear stars. They were far clearer than she’d ever seen on Earth, brighter, glittering like diamonds. But at once she noticed something else aglow in the sky. It may have just been a visual artifact that caught her eye, but as soon as that fragment captured her attention she was unable to look away.
At first, it was just a trace of light she only noticed because Mark’s silhouette broke it in half. Transfixed by that pale light, she stood and stared into it, hoping to make sense of its shape. It was a long, straight line, like a contrail frozen in the middle of a moonbeam. But as her eyes adjusted to it, its shape became clearer and clearer—and worse than that, it was not the only one. The revelation hit her in her very soul. She could not stifle the horrified gasp that broke from her lips. Mark tried to ask what was wrong with her, but she could not formulate any words; instead, she just pointed at the heavens as she began to shake.
It was all too clear now; there in the heavens hung a vast number of long, thin strands of terrestrial material that stretched from one end of the sky to the other. Illuminated by the twin stars that had sunken below the horizon—and until then concealed by the barriers of the clouds—those strands glowed with the pale omen of the full moon. Innumerable overlapping shadows fell across the closest strand and those further distant. From the position of the two stars, the ground they stood upon must have been included in those wiry eclipses.
Spinneretta convulsed and forced her eyes to the ground; she had to stop—or even delay—the malign implication of those strands. But it was useless; the connections fired and before she could halt her traitorous mind the reality was revealed in stark and illuminating horror. Worlds, hundreds of worlds, perhaps thousands, perhaps even millions, had been consumed in the creation of the Web; that it was indeed a literal web was a reality almost too horrible to imagine. Each colossal planetary strand overhead was nothing more than a single wire, a single thread, in the massive woven tapestry of some forbidden architect’s creation—
Some forbidden architect? Say the name. Say her name. Aloud, if you dare.
It had to have been millions; it must have been millions of worlds so collapsed. The two stars rolling through the sky proved that hypothesis; how could a cyclopean web so constructed possibly revolve around a star in the same way a planet would? The answer was obvious: the Web was of such singular mass that it had entrapped the stars, which now orbited the Web as helplessly as any prey caught in an Earth spider’s snare. The insurmountable vastness of the entire Web combined with the sudden, undeniable precariousness of their position. A momentary terror overcame her. In that moment, the sharp pain in her mind came again, clearer than ever before. It originated there, in the heavens, upon one of the strands of Zigmhen. It was there, from there alone, that the scraping emerged. The scraping and clawing of some forbidden—
Some forbidden what? Architect? Just say it. Speak her name.
“Mother Raxxinoth,” she whispered, her voice a choked whimper.
The veil separating her mind from the thing on the other side of the static seemed to melt away. A flurry of images came, each more awful than the last.
Legs, drumming against the wall between reality and the void that awaited beyond the barrier.
Eyes—recursive, unhinged eyes—staring back at her from the stars.
A black shape that seemed to spiral outward from a point of infinite mass.
Radially symmetrical appendages, cover
ed in seamless rifts in which independent arrays of jagged teeth snapped and clattered.
What lurked beyond that wall, that thing hanging suspended within the core of A’vavel, articulated its legs with a malign rhythm, tapping and scratching them against the Barrier and the wall of her mind. Each tap-tap-tapping racked her with violent tremors.
A great maw, surrounded by rings of undulating teeth and eyes and vestigial, unfinished structures that resembled nothing she’d ever seen before.
A body of unthinkable mass and dimensions, shifting balefully in all directions at once.
Galaxies of legs serving their own machinations, and yet always returning with that same terrible tap-tap-scratch, tap-tap-scratch.
It was as though the phantom creature in her mind was communicating, spreading alien thoughts with a pernicious variant of Morse code. Shaking at the mania that had taken over her mind, she was unable to banish the idea that the tap-tap-scratchings were words, spoken from a thousand corpses in the graveyard of A’vavel. DO NOT LET HIM OPEN THE GATE, those corpses may have been screaming—and for the split second that this fantasy seized her, she was certain that they were. DO NOT LET HIM OPEN THE GATE.
“How many dead stars will ignite?” she muttered as if in tongues. “How many dead stars will ignite?”
“Spinny, are you alright?” Mark’s voice was concerned, but that sound was a chorus of laughing ghosts in her ears.
Her hands twitched, trying to grab a fistful of the loose dust beneath her. “How many dead stars will ignite?” she said again, arms and legs and spider legs all beginning to quiver helplessly. The web was the source of the pressure on the front of her mind. Somewhere in the literal web that spanned the stars, beyond the web, beneath the web, it was there. It was not asleep; the thing beyond the web was awake, but it was trapped. She had fallen into the very den of its slumber, and now there was no way out. The sigil had delivered them to the maw of unreality itself, and now its traitorous aspect had become clear. “How many dead stars will ignite? How many dead stars will ignite?”
“Spinny?”
Spinneretta felt Mark’s hand on her shoulder and she shoved it away. She lurched to her feet, nearly falling prone. Her jaw was tight, her brow wet. Three shaky steps toward the sheer wall of the small canyon, and her resolve collapsed. “Let me out of here,” she said under her breath. Her spider legs unfurled around her. “Let me out of here. Let me out of here!”
Her legs flew into the stone face, violent sweeps leaving deep gouges in the weathered rock. The last vertical slash tore through the sigil. The shock from before struck her mind like a hammer. And the sign just sat there, a silent mockery of her desperation. She stumbled back, shaking, and clamped her jaw tighter. She lunged toward the cliff face and her legs went to work again, slashing the strokes of the sigil and leaving a second image over her first. The final downward carving again sent an electric jolt through her brain, and she struggled to maintain balance from the pain and anger and terror flooding her. She stumbled a step to her left and again began to carve the sign, a deep growl rumbling in her throat. “Let me out of here. Let me out of here. Let me out of here!”
“Spinneretta, stop!” Mark said from behind her.
She thought of nothing, but it came alive around her. Her legs slashed through porous rock, dragging humid mind-trails behind them. Then, sparks of blue-green ghostlight danced in the air, spewed by some crackling reaction beyond the physical wall. Wisps of light, casting green and blue and black shadows upon the walls. Flames of Y’rokkrem. She cringed with each stroke of her legs, mental facsimile of magic clashing with the spell beyond the sigil.
Her scream grew more desperate, shriller, violent. Again and again she carved the sigil, one inscription flowing into the next. Tongues of glistening green light burst from the surface with each shock to her brain. It was a wall, a latticework of unknowable purpose and proportion, a counterspell barrier of infinite density. “Open. Open. Open! God damn you, open! God damn you!” The last sign hit her with the same force as the others. She let out a howl of helpless frustration on the final vertical strike of her work, and when silence greeted her she just hunched over, panting.
As she regained control of herself, her legs went limp and she fell to her knees. Her spider legs coiled about her chest and she thought she would break down in tears. But her legs tasted movement in the air. It was Mark, looking over his shoulder. Her overloaded senses caught his muscles tensing. His heartbeat elevated, and Spinneretta looked up.
A tiny part of her had hoped, against all sound reasoning, that it was the late formation of the mist portal that had caught his attention. However, the nearing sound of something sharp scraping against rock dispelled any hope of that happening. “Oh shit,” she said under her breath. Searching the dark, she found the source of that insectoid sound: twelve red orbs, glowing like Chinese lanterns, staring down at them from the top of the canyon wall.
The Instinct dilated her eyes, bringing the things into sight. Three great shapes, each supported by eight spider legs. They looked less arachnid than her initial estimations; each of the beasts had two massive, reflective red eyes, and two smaller ones set further back on the sides of their elongated, sloping skulls. They each had two pointed and vaguely felid ears pressed back against their heads. Two of the beasts had mouths full of long, interlocking fangs that bulged outward from their jaws, while the third’s fangs were barely visible at all. Up close, it was now clear that these creatures were mammalian, for they were covered in thick black fur growing everywhere except their bladed spider legs.
Ferried on those plated legs, the spider-hounds must have been drawn by her insane cries. But these three beasts crouched at the lip of the canyon, legs twitching and scraping against the sheer stone walls below them, couldn’t have been the same ones from before. The clacking sounds from their spike-filled maws were expectant—the pack was hungry.
“This is why I told you to stop,” Mark said under his breath.
Her shoulders trembled. “What do we do?”
“We run. Now.” He turned and grabbed her hand, breaking into a sprint. Her extra appendages reacted and threw her to her feet. Her spider legs took over, guided by terror. From above there came a ghastly, banshee-like roar, as of a cougar leaping upon its prey. The three spider-hounds descended the canyon wall in a series of impossible bounds and gave chase, legs and maws clattering a funeral dirge.
Chapter 12
The Hounds
Spinneretta and Mark charged through the narrow canyon, the clattering hisses from behind growing ever nearer. Spinneretta’s legs hurt, but the Instinct numbed the pain and kept her feet pounding the uneven rock at an inhuman pace. More than ever before, she welcomed each drop of the primal adrenaline, and her panicked heart sent it flooding through her bloodstream, saturating her muscles with fire. Just ahead of her, Mark’s back wobbled a little as he ran. She could smell the heat of the blood running through him and taste his heavy breaths. His leg was holding him back. He would be as good as dead when the spider beasts caught them. And by the sounds of sharpened appendages cutting the bedrock in gallops, it would not be long.
The scar-like gully narrowed a little. The wavy patterns of the cliffs drew inward. Spinneretta gasped in horror. Ahead, the trench met an abrupt end at a sheer, vertical wall. Her hot breath caught in her throat. “It’s a dead end!” she yelled. “What do we do!?”
“Keep running!” Mark answered, barely audible above the hungry chattering and gnashing of teeth behind them. “Get ahead of me, I have an idea!”
She obeyed, letting her legs ferry her onward without reserve. She inched her way up on his right before putting him behind her. A moment of dread. What was that old adage? You don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the other guy. But as the harsh angle of the scar’s end hurtled toward them, Mark called out behind her.
“Stop!”
Her body very nearly rejected her brain’s override of the survival mechanism. Her spid
er legs grappled the ground, and the world lurched as she came to a swift halt. Mark slid to his own stop, turning to face the mass of eyes and teeth bearing down on them. He threw his right leg out, scraping a line through the thick dust with the toe of his shoe. At once the air began to bend and shimmer, like waves of heat rising just in front of them. The mirage veil stretched between the walls of the gully, and Spinneretta at once recognized it. It was the same bit of magic that had swallowed the unlucky yellow-coated man on prom night.
The tide of fur and fangs and legs stormed closer. Before that dimensional wall could swallow them, however, the things seemed to shake with a visible agitation. The beasts skidded to a stop, assisted by their swarming legs. Dust and desiccated plant matter scattered into the air as they came to a rest mere feet from the shimmering veil. The spider beast nearest them vocalized a chorus of clicks, beneath which rang an almost musical hissing sound.
“Oh, God,” Mark said, barely above a whisper.
The fear returned, nearly stronger than the Instinct’s force. “What is it?”
Another series of clacks rose from the undulating maw of the nearest beast. Mark’s jaw shook. “They’re intelligent.”
Spinneretta gazed through the wall of mirage, studying the creatures. “Intelligent? What does that . . . What, what do we do?” She now saw that the spider-hound with the small fangs was carrying a tiny juvenile on its back. Its four red eyes glanced about, detached from the struggle of life and death.
Mark shook his head in reply to her question. “I know not,” he said. “Can you see them?”
“Y-yeah.”
He clicked his tongue. “I can’t. Except for the eyes.”
Helixweaver (The Warren Brood Book 2) Page 12