Into the Dark

by M J W Harrington

  Clara followed up on my attack, sliding clear between the creature’s legs and slashing out at where hamstrings would be on any sane creature. While it did not immediately fall and cry out with pain as it would have if those hamstrings had existed, it staggered and almost fell, but quickly righted itself, spinning with inhuman quickness belying its size. I swore as I saw Clara wasn’t going to be able to avoid the swing as it spun on her, and reacted instinctively, dropping my blade and grabbing the creature’s arm, planting my feet into its body and trusting in my monstrous new strength, praying it was enough to give her time to move. I strained and grunted as I felt immediate regret for my choice. I’d arrested the momentum of the swing, but my arms burned in their sockets, and I wasn’t able to stop it completely. The punch not connecting with Clara was in equal parts due to my efforts and the fact that it had stopped to deal with me in annoyance. It raised its arm high, crashing me into the stalactites on the ceiling, and I felt one of them puncture even my toughened skin. I cried out with pain and once again found myself flying across the room.

  I waited for the inevitable crunch and agony of hitting the wall once again, but found myself floating as The Architect, stood to one side, pointed a device at me and guided me back to the floor. I shot him a thankful grin before collapsing to one knee, clutching my side. My hand came away sticky with black blood. It seems light wasn’t the only thing that could hurt me after all, and I wondered just how strong this thing was. It wasn’t the only hellishly strong thing in the room, though, and I realised my other hand was full of the white, not-quite fleshy substance that made up the creature’s flesh. I recoiled in horror before realising the material in my hand wasn’t quite as gory as I expected. My eyes widened as I squeezed and moulded it. It seems my comparison to clay from earlier was even more accurate than I’d realised. Clara staggered and barely spun away from another attack, her counterattacks still laying into the creature with dazzling skill, but her energy levels were hitting rock bottom, so she did not cut as deeply as before, and the creature still showed little signs of slowing.

  “Architect!” I yelled in a weak voice and held up my hand. “Clay!” I hoped that would be enough as I doubled over in pain, vomiting up a spray of that same black blood. My blood, I assumed. Great, even my blood is evil looking, I mused in the delirium of agony. I looked up once more to see the Architect staring at me with wide eyes. He snapped out of it just as Clara slipped and fell on a patch of smashed mushrooms, staring up at the creature as it spun towards her and swung its huge clublike arm down. Moments before it shattered her body, the entire creature suddenly collapsed in on itself, like a piece of paper crushed in someone’s fist. Its flesh rippled and writhed as it tried to assert its former shape, but slowly, painfully (or at least so I assumed from the moaning and crunching noises), the creature was forced in on itself, condensing to a small pebble that dropped to the floor and shattered. The Architect lowered his Stoneshaper and let out a little shout of victory.

  “You fight with the Artrazoic, you get the geesh!” he crowed, and Clara and I stared at him blankly before laughing, mine cut short by another wave of agony from my wound. I could feel it healing though so I waved away their concerned looks and instead looked around the room. I frowned as I saw the crushed mushrooms had let out sparkling spores, and realised we weren’t out of danger yet.

  “Don’t… breathe.” I called out lamely, before realising the patch I’d landed in had also exploded into the same beautiful spores, and I’d been breathing deeply to catch my breath after being almost crushed. “Damn.” my vision spun and swum, and I saw my companions hitting the floor moments before oblivion claimed me as well. As my sight went dark I had one last thought that at least it hadn’t happened while the creature was trying to kill us. Thank the gods for small mercies at least. Though in hindsight, I think I’d rather have had another of those creatures.

  Chapter 10

  I woke up to agony. First the burning pain of the viridescent light of the builders, then the searing pain of cutting and twisting. I screamed in pain and did my best to open my eyes as someone did their best to stab me, over and over again. The agony was intense and I found it hard to focus on anything else. The darkness within me took over and I shook and snarled, but still the stabbing continued. I sobbed with pain for what felt like an eternity, until blessedly it ended as quickly as it began.

  “Interesting.” A croaking, wheezing voice mused. “It still hurts but it heals.” The light moved away briefly and I steadily regained focus to find myself on the wall of a small cavern. More of the glowing mushrooms from before dotted around the cave, but in smaller quantities, giving it an ethereal multicoloured glow. In the middle of the cavern, inexplicably, stood a small stone hut with a fire burning outside. I tried to move my arms and legs but found them encased in the stone of the wall itself, unable to move even with my strength. My inner darkness roiled and roared as it took control, desperately trying to lash out at the small figure who stood before me. Her voice sounded feminine but twisted, like that of an incredibly old woman but distorted and changed somehow, but I was too enraged to ponder any further, the rage at being confined proving uncontrollable. I snarled and snapped at her, but with my limbs fully encased in the rock I had no leverage, and my strength proved insufficient to break free. The figure chuckled at my efforts.

  “Now now, none of that, we have so much more to learn before I look at the lesser specimen,” she told me in a calm, yet sinister voice. A small amount of that pierced through the fog, specimen. Not specimens. That meant either one of the others was already dead, or somehow not captured by this twisted witch. My musing was cut short once again as the light returned with blinding intensity, and I was forced to watch as she pulled out an ornate knife once more and began carving into my flesh. For a time I was lost in a haze of pain, rage and darkness, somehow never passing out from the agony, but incapable of rational thought. An unknown period of time later, I found myself alone, hanging from the same spot of the wall, staring out at the cavern. I could see my captor moving around the stone hut and her campfire, some meat on a spit. Looking down I could see my healing had taken care of most the damage she’d done, but leaving blotchy scars where it looked as if chunks had been torn out of me, and I had a sickening feeling I knew where they were. Taking a deep shuddering breath to try and calm myself I started looking for a way out, or any sign of my companions. My body was still almost entirely restrained, but I still had the ability to move my head. I briefly considered whether I could gnaw my own arm off but swiftly concluded that there’s no way I had the stomach for that, even if i was capable of regrowing it, which wasn’t something I wanted to test.

  I finally realised that a lump lying near to the hut was probably The Architect, his bag not far from him, its contents scattered on the ground. I assumed that was how our captor had locked me in the stone and created her hut, with his Stoneshaper, which raised the question of just how long I’d been out from the spores, but that wasn’t important. I couldn’t see Clara anywhere, and somewhat bizarrely I almost hoped it was my meat that the witch was currently roasting and not hers. At least mine grew back. The darkness growled inside me.

  -I will not be caged again.- it snarled, and I found myself inclined to agree.

  “Well if you have any ideas, feel free to share,” I replied in a hoarse whisper, part out of desire not to attract the attention of the twisted old woman, part because my parched mouth wasn’t capable of much more. The darkness rumbled with anger but I got the impression all its ideas started after I got free and involved tearing the witch limb from limb. Not the most helpful, so I ignored it and continued looking around for an answer, but found nothing. Despair raised its head but was beaten back by overwhelming anger and rage from the being within me each time, in a cycle of disturbing emotional angst that continued for what felt like a few hours. Eventually the woman finished her meal and moved inside the hut, seemingly unconcerned about doing anything with The Architect, he was eithe
r dead or heavily unconscious, and I prayed it was the latter.

  Hours passed, and I felt no closer to escape. I could find no solution to the issue of my arms being locked deep in the stone, and my body ached from being restrained and hanging from the wall, my full weight pulling at the sockets of my arms and hips but constantly healing. Compared to the agony of the knife, however, it was nothing, so I set my mind to alternating between fantasizing about murdering the witch, trying to find a way to escape and worrying about the others, one comatose, one missing. Was Clara dead already? Lost in the tunnels alone? Had she left us for dead? The questioned burned through my mind, but I had no way of answering them. My captor eventually emerged from her hut and we repeated the cycle of cutting, of agony and darkness. Hours or perhaps even days later when I regained coherence, I had no idea, I found myself feeling oddly detached. This was my existence now, locked in a wall, cut up for meat and study. The old woman stood in front of me inspecting a particularly fresh looking cut of Dav-meat, her wicked blade still in her hand. She wore dirty rags, and her face looked a bit like a raisin with how wrinkled it was and the way it twisted in on itself, almost completely destroying her facial features. I suddenly realised that being imprisoned up on the wall was skewing my perspective, and the figure was massive, even hunched and twisted her head was almost level with my own, and the blade she held must’ve been about the length of my arm despite her wielding it with the precision of the knife it looked like in her hands. Her hideous face snapped up to mine as she caught me inspecting her and she grinned with feral glee, revealing blackened rotting teeth and giving me a whiff of her awful breath. If my stomach hadn’t been empty I would likely have vomited, but thankfully not needing to eat meant that there wasn’t really anything there to lose.

  “Coherent again, yes?” she croaked at me, turning her head to regard me with each bulging eye in turn, her head so twisted and distorted that she clearly had trouble focusing both at the same time. I simply nodded, not wanting to provoke more pain, but also somehow not wanting to be left alone again, as pathetic as it was. Hanging in the dark with only the darkness and pain for company was worse than even the company of this wretched creature. She let out a cackle and ran clawed hands over the flesh of my stomach and my skin crawled with disgust and remembered pain. “Been so long,” she crooned, giving me whiffs of her foul-smelling breath, “so long with nobody to cut, nobody to examine, nobody to talk...” she trailed off, looking away is if distracted by something else in the cavern, but and my eyes widened as I realised what she’d caught a hint of.

  “We can talk,” I half-begged in my hoarse whisper, parched lips forcing the words out desperately, trying to focus her attention back on me. “We can talk about whatever you want!”

  She didn’t turn back to me, still scanning the cavern, or so I assumed with her head slowly moving back and forth. “Talk isn’t much fun though, screaming is better,” she absently noted, not turning back to me. I desperately needed to buy more time, as my superior vision had shown me a sight I never thought I’d see again, Clara rounding a corner of a tunnel leading to a ledge partway up the cavern wall and quickly dashing back out of sight. She was alive, somehow, so I did the only thing I could.

  “Then how about more cutting?” I suggested in a small voice. The witch turned back to me with a sinister, but questioning grin. “There’s secrets in me,” I explained, trying and failing to swallow with a bone dry throat, “darkness to cut out. That’s why I keep healing. For more cutting. To earn the secrets?” I rambled semi-coherently, and apparently something I said resonated with her deranged brain because deceptively quickly she turned back to me and slashed at my chest with the long blade, and once again my world dissolved into agony as she laid into me with renewed vigor. I even somehow found enough of my voice to scream, much to her pleasure. This time, though, I kept control of my senses as best I could, forcing through the pain and rage, and tried to watch for Clara. She slipped down the rockface, her light away so as to not throw telltale shadows on the cavern walls. She rushed from stalagmite to stalagmite, making haste towards me and my monstrous torturer while doing her best to avoid notice. I made efforts to be louder, scream longer, not that I needed much inspiration to do so with the knife twisting inside of me. Any cover I could give Clara was worth it. What seemed like an eternity later, Clara finally was close, I could see the horror in her eyes as they met mine as she watched what was happening to my obsidian flesh in the light of the device.

  Without warning she struck, springing from concealment and swinging her glowing blade into the witch’s hamstrings, even as it formed, this time taking the form of a thick claymore which Clara swung as easily as a switch. As it sank it deep and the witch cried out with pain, a balm to my own, Clara immediately pulled back, switching the blade seamlessly into its smaller curved form and unleashing a flurry of attacks as the witch turned, staggered, and sank to her knees. The old monster wasn’t done yet, however, and used that ornate slender blade to deflect the many of the attacks with surprising swiftness. The rest bit deep, letting out a spray of dark blood, but before our eyes her wounds began to heal in a manner disturbingly similar to my own. She let out a screech of anger and pain and swung the blade down at Clara, who almost effortlessly stepped to one side, covering herself as she evaded in case her incredible speed wasn’t enough, but moving no more than she needed to, the mark of a master swordswoman. With a flick of her wrist she transformed Kirana into a long whip of light, wrapping it around the blade and pulling it from the surprised grasp of the giant. With a hiss her opponent let it go, rising suddenly to her feet and closing the gap between them to grab at Clara. Despite Clara’s speed, the size of her opponent and sudden increase in her reach caught her by surprise, and the giant’s hands gripped her from either side. I let out a cry of dismay as the large gnarled fingers closed around my one hope and the witch lifted her off the ground to inspect her.

  “Ugh, one of you. Boring. Had you.” she said dismissively, and with a heave she threw Clara across the cavern. “Eat later.” My heart sank as I watched Clara crash into the small stone hut and lie unmoving. “Sneaky smalls,” my captor shook her head, “Always sneaking.” She turned to face me, her twisted face unreadable, “Thank you for the healing juice.” she let out a sinister grin with her gappy, rotting maw and grabbed a cup i’d seen her use previously to collect my blood and had a sinking feeling, which was immediately confirmed as sunk when she took a long drink and her few remaining wounds closed. I turned my face away in disgust and hopelessness and my eyes widened as I saw Clara unsteadily rising to her feet. She was clearly badly hurt, but somehow alive. I frowned though, it looked like she was concussed as she unsteadily weaved her way over in the wrong direction to either escape or rejoin the battle, which was a terrible idea in her condition but I wouldn’t put it past her; Clara never gave up on a fight, I knew that much. My eyes widened as I realised where she was going and I forced my attention on my torturer, who had continued rambling and was starting to look for her blade.

  “It’s over there,” I croaked, rocking my head towards a small cluster of stalagmites, and she turned to regard me.

  “What?”

  “Your blade, it’s behind those rocks.”

  She squinted at me, disbelieving me, and I did my best to look sincere. I don’t know how that looked on my face in the green light, which barely registered now in comparison to the pain I’d been forced to endure for who knows how long, and after a moment she moved over in the direction I’d indicated. The blade most certainly wasn’t there, it had slipped into a crack on the rock wall not far from me, but I wasn’t about to pick that method of distraction a second time. I heal fast, I’m not stupid. It didn’t take her long to discover my deception, particularly after I suggested she might find it if she took her eyes out and shoved them… never mind, but it took long enough. She turned to find me standing unsteadily, gaunt and scarred but whole, strong, and most importantly holding the long knife she’d dropped, a s
word to me, and by the way it was balanced even I could tell it was originally intended more for someone my size, probably a previous victim. Clara leaned heavily on a stalagmite a short distance away, clutching The Architect’s Stoneshaper, which she’d used to free me. While I’d played my game, Clara had rooted through The Architect’s bag and slowly made her way to me, clutching her side and limping with every step. She was in no shape to fight, but she found the weapon she needed to do so. Me.

  The giant old woman let out a shriek of rage, “Always SNEAKING!” and rushed towards me. I didn’t have an ounce of Clara’s skill, but I did have the strength and fury of a beast released from its cage, and I didn’t hold back. My captor’s attentions had left my healing in high gear, and for every crushing blow she landed with her clawed hands, my ribs almost immediately popped back into place and my flesh knitted almost immediately. We traded blows, mine sinking that hated blade ever deeper into her flesh as she futilely battled against my healing, but I steadily won the war of attrition; my blood was apparently powerful, but I had a lot more of it than she did, despite her best efforts to relieve me of it previously. The beast within me snarled with every blow and for once we were in full agreement, hacking and slashing with wild abandonment, slamming into the stone again and again but always getting back up, always returning to the fight. Each of her blows landed with less and less strength as my onslaught continued, unyielding, unstoppable. At some point she began to try to turn and flee but I didn’t notice or care other than noting that my blows were now landing in her back, and that she wasn’t clawing at me any longer. I plunged the blade into her back over and over again, and as she fell to her knees and to the ground I swept the blade into her thick neck. Even with my strength it didn’t behead her in one clean sweep, the sword cracking deep into one of the bones of her spine, but I swung again, hacking as if felling a tree until the bloody mess came free, tumbling to the ground with a meaty thump.