A War in Crimson Embers

by Alex Marshall

  Then came real light up ahead at the end of the tunnel, bright and yellow and welcoming as the sun he hadn’t seen in however many hours he’d been down here in the guts of Jex Toth. When they reached the mouth of the cave he no longer found the brightness so inviting, coming as it did from the roof of the eeriest chamber yet. They had emerged onto a ledge overlooking a sprawling grotto that must have been a mile wide and just as long. Far above stretched an illuminated, fan-vaulted ceiling that would have been the envy of every Chainite cathedral on the Star, if only the ribs hadn’t actually been ribs. The great sunken hall looked even gnarlier than the rest of this place, with phosphorescent rivers crisscrossing the already moist meatscape, steam belching from obscenely winking pits, and a lumpy ziggurat rising from a glowing lake in the center of the cavern … And there, beached on the polyped shores of the luminous loch, was a piebald mass of twitching white meat and squirting black geysers that made Maroto need to take a knee.

  He was not creative enough to imagine what dark fluids it might be jetting up, or from whence in the mountain of flesh these fountains might originate. Hells, he was too far away to even begin to guess just what in the unholy fuck it was, but he was already far closer than he ever wanted to be. The spider’s noose tightened around his neck as he fell to his knees on the nauseatingly spongy floor, but then it relaxed before he could choke himself out. Was this why people knelt in prayer? Not from thoughtful deference to a higher power, but because some things were so enormous and terrible that your only recourse was to make yourself as small as possible, hoping you wouldn’t be spotted?

  The sticky rope around Maroto’s neck tugged him insistently back to his unsteady feet, and he closed his eyes, on the verge of tears. He had never known animal terror like this before—he had been prepared for the worst when he sacrificed himself to save Bang, of course he had, but what the fuck even was this place? It would be his tomb, of that there seemed little question, because what mortal could hope to stand strong against such horrors as he couldn’t even bring himself to look at for more than an instant?

  One of the guards nudged him forward, and Maroto Devilskinner, the Barbarian Without Fear, whimpered.

  Something heavy landed on Maroto’s shoulder, thick whip-like limbs wrapping around him for purchase, and he gave a little scream that echoed to embarrassing proportion in the grotto. He tried to throw it off him, but even if his web-mittened hands had been able to find purchase on the hissing spider-thing that tightened its legs and the noose around his throat in equal measure the two guards seized his arms, reminding him of just how very wrong his day had gone … and after a promising start, too. At least he had saved his sweet-palmed Captain Bang from a similar fate, and clinging to that scrap of relief he allowed the monster on his back to get comfortable.

  Bang was safe, and so were Dong-won and Niki-hyun. Maroto breathed in the malodorous air, told his heart to calm the fuck down. Diggelby was probably high as fuck in his plush tent right now, and maybe Bang had been right when she’d given him her pep talk, maybe Purna had survived the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue after all. Maybe Choi and Din and Hassan had made it out all right, too, and they were all safe. They were all safe and alive and an ocean away from whatever hell their old friend had slipped into. Maybe—

  Slack returned to the noose as the two guards dragged him forward, and then they unexpectedly released him as his bare feet found purchase on smooth steps. He opened his eyes but kept them focused on the enamel stairs set into the veiny cliff face beneath the overlook, a treacherous path that led down to the floor of the cavern. He should hurl himself over the edge, sparing himself whatever came next, because whatever it was it couldn’t be good—these monstrous legions that dwelled within the heart of Jex Toth wanted him alive, and that probably meant he should be dead, for the sake of the Star.

  He took a deep breath, ready to jump off of the cliff and plummet to his death … but not ready enough, his knees nearly knocking together, and he took the first step down instead of going over the side. He remembered his father laughing in his face when he told him the clan had decided to name him Craven, and years later the look of scorn on his nephew’s face when they had met in the Cobalt camp. They had all been right about him—he was a coward, and telling himself that going forward to face whatever awaited him below was braver than ending his life now didn’t really wash. Here at the end of his adventures, Maroto was alone with himself, and found the company less than agreeable.

  Alone was all he deserved, sure, but pity the simpleton who couldn’t long for more than that.

  And if he could have only one other person down here beside him, in this horrible place he couldn’t even process, to go down beside him, to hold his hand as they both fell for the last time? It was still her. It would always be her. If only because she was the only one he’d ever met who would have still been able to summon a smile, even here, and ask him just what the devils he’d expected to see waiting for them at the finish, after the lives they’d lived? Heaven wasn’t for the likes of them.

  And real talk now, the main reason he wanted her here was because if one of them deserved this shit it damn sure wasn’t him; he wouldn’t even be here right now if it weren’t for Cold Zosia.

  Another, harder nudge to the neck from a bristly gauntlet, and he took another shaky step. Heights had never bothered him, and now at the one time he would’ve probably been better off slipping he found himself with bad vertigo and would have welcomed a steady hand to help him down the slick path. His captors stayed behind at the top of the overlook, however, letting him proceed on his own. Or as close to on his own as he was going to get, so long as the unpleasantly hot and disconcertingly soft arachnid clung to his back. As he descended the narrow stair a familiar burning returned to his calves, and he almost laughed to think how just a few short hours before he’d been hiking up the side of a scenic mountain with a handsome pirate keeping him company, and now he might be miles beneath that very spot.

  Almost laughed, right, but not bloody quite. He paused to lean against the pulsing wall of meat until his head stopped spinning but the monster on his back immediately tightened its noose, and he felt even less like chuckling. There’s a limit to everything, even a man’s ability to find gallows humor in his own ill fortune. As he reached the bottom of the sweaty-stepped path and finally made himself look up from his feet, he figured things weren’t getting funny anytime soon. Not that kind of funny, anyway.

  A figure was walking swiftly toward him, through a field of wavering, luminescent meat fans. That the person appeared to be human would normally have put him at ease, but somehow this only made them more horrific. Maroto believed just about anything was possible in this world where devils granted miracles and monsters of every conceivable shape stalked and squawked; seriously, now, he’d just tromped through the literal bowels of a long-lost kingdom, so he was willing to accept anything that greeted his eyes … or almost anything, it turned out, because even though he was looking right at this he still couldn’t believe it.

  The dead stayed dead, that was one of the few truths the Star round. Nothing could make them stir, not deviltry nor witchery, not bugs nor drugs … yet as soon as Maroto saw the approaching figure lit up from the orange-shimmering field of flesh at its feet he was sure of one thing, and that was that while this stranger should have been long dead, it wasn’t. Despite the brightness of the glowing, anemone-like fans the spindly person was cloaked in flowing shadows, and as it reached Maroto he realized this was due to the thousands of cockroaches that crawled over its naked form. It was so desiccated he couldn’t begin to guess if it had skewed more to the masculine or feminine by birth if not by identity, translucent skin stretched taut as a cannibal’s drum over its sharp skeleton.

  “Fuck me,” Maroto whimpered as the bug-clad mummy came to a stop spitting-distance away, its eyes bright and ageless in its bleached, cadaverous face. It cocked its head at him like a rooster sizing up a grub, the swarm of insects going still and for
ming an uncanny approximation of old-timey Immaculate attire. Aside from the chitinous slippers and trousers, shirt and housecoat, the monster’s only trappings were rings made of bleached white vertebrae that crowded its left hand and a rather gaudy choker of yellow gold and red stones in the shape of miniature skulls.

  “I, um, come in peace?” said Maroto when the creature took no immediate action, because you always had to hope for the best even when the worst was coming in for a great big sloppy kiss. In response its shriveled lips parted in a grin that revealed stunningly white teeth. It raised its hand, thick rings clattering on thin fingers, and reached out for Maroto’s face.

  That wasn’t on, no fucking way. Normally he would’ve lashed out if some horrible monster was trying to get its dirty digits on him, but he was loath to touch this thing, even in self-defense … lest he provoke it. This fiend filled him with pure, concentrated dread, and rather than attacking it or batting away its outstretched hand he jumped back—and bumped into a second living corpse.

  This one looked male—the tumescent prick rising like a mast from the maelstrom of insects swarming his crotch was a tell, and with a wordless cry of revulsion Maroto pushed away from him. This sunken-eyed ancient boasted a bloated gut and liver-spotted wattles that somehow rendered him even more gruesome than his emaciated peer, his hungry eyes the only sharp thing about him as a soft fat tongue ran over soft fat lips. Maroto’s world got all tight and treacly the way it did in only the shittiest of shitshows, each moment passing so slow he had plenty of time to think about what to do next instead of just reacting …

  Or so it usually went, anyway, but fast on his feet and his wits as Maroto was operating, these things were a good bit faster. A third came out of nowhere—as in, she appeared out of thin air, that was how fast she was—and swept his legs out from under him with a shin so thin it looked like it should’ve detonated on impact with his thick calf but hit harder than an iron rod.

  Anyone else would have gone down, and gone down hard, but Maroto threw himself into a roll and came up running. Never, ever underestimate the value of a well-timed roll followed by a breakneck flight. He crashed through the wavering meat fans, finding them less like the soft flesh they resembled and more like jagged coral. The spider creature on his back tightened its noose around his throat, trying to choke him out. He slapped over his shoulder and put his hand through its surprisingly soft carapace, ripping the thing off him in gooey chunks even as his world went dim from lack of air.

  The Hell of the Coward Dead. Old Watchers forgive him, he had always doubted his ancestors’ warnings, had never believed that the ancient ways were anything more than savage superstition, but as he staggered forward he knew, yes he fucking did—he had finally ended up where his dad and sister had always warned him he was bound, and it damn sure wasn’t Old Black’s Meadhall. He was dead and in hell. Not the first time he’d jumped to such a morbid conclusion, but this time he reckoned he was really onto something.

  A behemoth reared above him out of the living foliage, all the more ghastly for its familiarity. It was the larger cousin of the monster whose eggs he and Bang had stolen what seemed like a decade past—a huge black-shelled nightmare somewhere between a crab and a cobraroach, with a giant, sharp-fanged human face on its chest and snatching hairy arms in place of mandibles. The one he had lured down to the beach was big enough it could have eaten him in a few bites, but this mother could do the job in one, swallowing him whole if it had half a mind.

  It looked like it intended to do just that, and Maroto reeled sideways, arms and legs refusing to do his bidding anymore—he had massacred the monster on his back, but its webbing continued to garrote him, and his fingers couldn’t find purchase on the caustic noose …

  But then the great monster was dismissed, fleeing as if in fright from the posse who waded through the broken meat-ferns to crowd Maroto’s asphyxiation. Their spindly hands were all over him, unpleasantly reminding him of the gross arachnid he had torn off his back as they explored his body. The morbidly obese one squeezed and prodded Maroto’s midsection, drool dangling from his split-sausage lips, and then the withered woman hooked her fingers under the noose and tore it free, allowing their quarry to again breathe the stinking fumes of their lair.

  They kept giving each other knowing glances as they inspected Maroto with obvious relish, more and more of the shriveled old figures emerging from the bleeding landscape until there must have been a dozen of the things surrounding him. The close air crackled as the fiends gathered, and as he gasped like a landed trout Maroto reckoned by their rapidly changing expressions and fiercely knowing looks that his captors were communicating with one another by some silent, unknown means. They were intelligent. In some way he couldn’t begin to guess, yes, and no doubt of diabolical intention, sure, but they were a pack of thinking creatures, and as an impossibly old man softly gummed Maroto’s bicep and then let out an appreciative moan, he figured he’d at least piqued their interest.

  “I’ll help you,” he gasped in Immaculate, hoping the universal trading tongue extended all the way down here to the bottom basement of the Sunken Kingdom of Jex Toth. “I’m useful. Whoever you are and whatever you want, I’m your boy. Just let me go.”

  The fat man delicately kneading Maroto’s flattop paused, as did the rest … and then, one by one, they began to scream. At him. In his face, leaning in close, the shrill sounds so raw they made Maroto’s throat ache in solidarity even as the rest of him trembled in panic. Then the original, roach-wreathed ancient reached down from where it had been standing aloof from the others, its spine-ringed fingers finally grazing Maroto’s nose … and immediately triggering violent hallucinations.

  Burning worlds.

  The frozen blackness of the place between the stars, beyond the Gates.

  A crowd of priests performing a ritual Maroto himself had once enacted, to bind devils, and horror of horrors, offering themselves in sacrifice instead of animals.

  Armies marching, cities smoldering.

  A garden of monsters.

  Legions of the black-armored Tothans marching through Diadem, across the Isles and the Dominions, the Frozen Savannahs melting beneath the vile secretions of their titanic warbeasts and snow falling on the deserts of Usba as their sorceries ripped holes in reality, the armies of Jex Toth conquering the Star absolutely.

  The world as sacrifice.

  “Fuck.” Maroto gagged on the word, on the hot spew ejecting from his guts as the visions faded, leaving him alert and aware in a netherworld of living muscle and meat beneath a breathing sky, held down by the high priests of Jex Toth, who had vanished along with the rest of their kingdom half a millennium past. He wasn’t in the Hell of the Coward Dead after all, and figured going forward he would just have to assume he was still alive until proven otherwise … which might not be a long wait, anyway, considering the pack of fiends crowding their prone victim.

  Eyes stared from black pits set in white faces, fingers stroked him with sensual menace, the creatures looking almost as amazed by Maroto’s living body as he was by their mummy-like forms. They weren’t screaming en masse anymore, and Maroto pulled a hand free of their groping paws and wiped the wetness from his eyes. Blood streaked the back of his hand in lieu of tears, and the ring-fingered monster elbowed its fellows away and started shrieking again, right in Maroto’s face. He flinched back from the shrill death rattle, but then caught a word of antiquated High Immaculate, and then a second, and tough though it was to parse with just the one good ear, with some effort he was able to tune in to the shrill frequency.

  “—you will help us! Indeed!” It crowed, reaching into its scuttling coat and withdrawing a crude dagger fashioned from curled black horn. “Our first sacrifice!”

  Thin fingers tightened hard as steel all over Maroto, but while most of the cohort were enthusiastically laying hands on him the bloated man seemed to take nearly as much umbrage to this suggestion as the sacrifice himself. The ancient didn’t scream, didn’t sp
eak at all, but it was plain from the shuddering of his pruny jowls and the shaking of his spoiled-salami fingers that he disapproved. From the crackling waves of energy Maroto felt flowing back and forth over him, he was sure the two monsters were exchanging something, if not words. More visions, perhaps?

  “Kill me if you must, but kill me last!” Maroto cried in High Immaculate, or as close to the formal dialect as he could manage. “You want to sacrifice the Star? Good! I can help you do it! Kill me last and I’ll do anything you want!”

  The last shred of Maroto’s pride left his lips along with the futile words. It was almost a relief. Ever since falling in with Purna he had been planning on dying like the hero he had never been in life, but that was the thing about plans—they had a way of getting fucked, and without the benefit of coconut oil to ease the passage.

  At least his words had gotten the monsters’ attention. A pair of them immediately released him, falling all over each other as they made the worst sounds imaginable … sounds he realized were rattling laughs, or as close as their withered bodies could manage. The woman who had knocked his legs out from under him began to sob as she stroked Maroto’s neck, the lanky hair she dangled in his face swarming with spiders. Through his revulsion he realized her sick cries were more rasping words of High Immaculate, her sharp fingernails now lightly scratching his chin as she spoke.

  “Sacrifiiiiice! Yessss! The first shall be the laaaaast!”

  “It will do anything?” the one with the dagger screamed at Maroto, and intense and dreadful as this exchange was he still saw it as a definite improvement. He had them communicating in a way he could understand, and the more he understood them the better his odds at ingratiating himself. “It will let us peer inside for proof?”

  “It will!” howled the fat geriatric, placing its puffy fingers around Maroto’s throat. “Open its heart! Open its head!”