by Martha Carr
“Of course.” Venga sifted the handful of crushed hide in his hand into a large crucible in front of him. A thick bubbling sound filled the air, the stink of the flesh-setter hide intensified, and Cheyenne felt herself growing dizzy. The scaleback necromancer thrust a black claw at Cheyenne without turning away from his work. “But she would have loved to stay.”
Ember barked a laugh and clapped a hand over her mouth. She shot her friend a quick glance and cleared her throat. “What makes you say that?”
“It’s her nature.”
“No.” Cheyenne’s nostrils flared, and she exhaled sharply against the stink of Venga’s new concoction burning up her nose. “I might be related to both L’zar and Ba’rael, but I’m not into the dark shit. As far as magic’s concerned, anyway.”
Ember gave her friend a once-over.
“First you force me to defend my position with this room, now you’re arguing against the very fabric of what makes you who you are,” Venga hissed, his four arms darting out and in and pumping wildly as he grabbed ingredients and stirred and cast brief bursts of spells. “Must I explain your own heritage to you?”
Cheyenne folded her arms. “Whatever you think you know, my heritage doesn’t include black magic.”
Venga snorted and stepped aside to reach for another vial of a viscous yellow liquid from the shelf on his right. “How you got this far knowing as little as you do defies all logic.”
“Yeah, I’ve been the exception to a lot of rules.” Cheyenne frowned at him. “That doesn’t include sitting back and letting someone else insult me.”
“That was a compliment. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll leave it, thanks.”
The necromancer stopped his furious work and turned around to look her over. “Drow were the original darksellers, Cheyenne. Purveyors of necessary goods too unsavory for the rest of us to dirty our hands with, not practitioners of dark magic.”
“Oh.” She rubbed a hand under her burning nose and shrugged. “So, you’re telling me I should want to go back down there to play personal assistant with your shopping list?”
“More or less. I’m surprised you didn’t take longer.”
Ember’s chuckle escaped through her nose even as she pressed her lips together. “Well, she wanted to.”
Cheyenne flashed her a quick warning glance, then rolled her eyes and fought back another smile.
Venga cracked a thin metal tube against the edge of the workbench, splitting it neatly in half, then pulled the two ends apart and dumped tiny glistening silver beads into his concoction. Another burst of smoke ballooned from the crucible, flashing purple and black and green this time, and he stuck one end of the broken tube into the mixture, stirring and pulling it out to check it like an engine dipstick.
Cheyenne leaned sideways, attempting to look around the necromancer’s bulky, scaley form. “What’s the flesh-setter hide for?”
“I need silence. Surely you can appreciate the sentiment.”
She frowned and exchanged confused glances with Ember. What the hell’s that supposed to mean?
A hissing whisper filled the room as Venga cast an unintelligible spell. All four hands moved in different gestures, pulsing every few seconds with red and black light. Another puff of smoke rose from the crucible, followed by a loud, crackling groan like a lakebed freezing over. Then the necromancer fell silent and dipped his head toward his work. “Ah.”
“Is that a good ‘ah’ or a bad ‘ah?’” Ember asked.
He ignored her and grabbed what looked like a metal ladle from the shelf, though the bowl at the end of the handle was long and narrow with a lip at the end for precise pouring. His other hand snatched a round metal tin the size of a two-liter bottle cap, then he dipped the weird ladle into the crucible and poured the silver-green sludge into the tin. Silver sparks flew from the small, round piece of metal, but the substance settled quickly. Despite the necromancer’s huge hands and the black claws at the tips of his fingers, he handled the tiny tin with delicate care and didn’t spill a drop.
The ladle plunked back into the giant crucible, and Venga leaned down to blow lightly on the silver-green substance cooling rapidly in its new casing. He grunted and watched his creation intently, waving a brusque hand toward Cheyenne. “The black fire.”
She frowned and drew her head back. “What about it?”
“Summon it, hinya.”
“I mean, if you want to risk something happening to your—”
“Do it!” Venga’s four shoulders hunched over the workbench. “We’re running out of time.”
“Yeah, okay. Jeeze. No pressure or anything.” Shaking her head, Cheyenne closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Not a fan of pulling up my single most destructive ability on command to humor a necromancer, but whatever. Here we go.
She thought of the Nimlothar seed that had made itself a part of her and felt the pulse of her magic strengthen and flare to life. Though she was already in drow mode and had been for the last two days, the intensity of her magic jolted up the base of her spine, burning all the way up until she couldn’t contain it any longer.
Black fire erupted, racing up her purple-gray hands and along her arms, neck, and chest. A halo of dark flames whipped around her bone-white hair, tongues of it flickering from the corners of her eyes and filling them with black light when she opened them. If I have to stand here like this much longer, I’m gonna need a target for this.
She gritted her teeth against the immense power racing through her. The black-lined wounds in her shoulders and hip burned fiercely.
“Whatever you’re doing, make it quick.” Her voice filled the lab in a dark, eerie growl in multiple tones as she stared at the far wall.
“That is the plan.” Venga stepped toward her, his black eyes wide as he looked her over. Then he lunged at the halfling, drawing a muscular arm back before slapping his hand on the center of her chest.
Cheyenne stumbled backward. “What the fuck?”
“Hey!” Ember darted forward. “What the hell are you doing?”
The black fire racing across Cheyenne’s body snuffed out on its own, and a pulse of agony spread from her chest where the necromancer had hit her. She screamed and doubled over, slapping her chest to find the metal bottlecap-sized tin stuck to her flesh. “Fuck! Get this fucking thing off me!”
She clawed at the tin, and a burst of heat unlike anything she’d experienced with her drow magic pulsed through her chest. Cheyenne staggered and dropped to one knee with another scream as she doubled over, forgetting her attempts to remove the device.
Ember raced toward her friend, but a crackling burst of blood-red magic seared through the air in front of her face and made her stop. She glared at Venga as Cheyenne screamed again. “Are you serious?”
“Wait.” Though he pointed at her with a claw engulfed in another sparking crimson spell, his black eyes remained fixed on the halfling doubled over on the floor. “Just wait.”
“Fuck you.” Ember approached her friend, her legs and hands flashing with purple light as she knelt beside Cheyenne, her knees and shins still hovering an inch off the ground. “Cheyenne? Hey.”
The small metal tin dislodged from the halfling’s chest and pinged on the floor, wobbling as it rolled on its side, hit Venga’s boot, and toppled over.
Cheyenne’s knuckles pressed painfully into the stone floor to keep her from falling flat on her face, but she’d stopped screaming. Breathing heavily, she fought to gain control of her body again and swallowed. “I’m good, Em.”
“Bullshit.”
“Really.” The halfling pushed to her feet, gratefully accepting Ember’s help up when the fae grabbed her arm to steady her. Cheyenne looked down at her shirt and the disappearing wisps of smoke coming from the perfectly round hole burned through the fabric. The skin beneath was a darker shade of her purple-gray flesh, but that faded quickly into its normal color. “Well, this shirt’s fucked.”
Ember gave a sigh of relief. “It
kind of already was. You sure you’re okay?”
“No, but I don’t feel like I’m getting cut open anymore, so there’s that.” Cheyenne lifted her glowing golden eyes to Venga’s face and sneered at him. “Low blow, necromancer.”
“I could have gone much lower.” He kicked aside the empty metal tin, sending it clattering across the room. “But the chest is a good place to start.”
Ember whirled toward him, her fists clenched at her sides. “You can’t just slap a whatever-the-fuck-that-was onto someone without their permission or even a goddamn warning!”
“I just did.” Venga’s four hands opened and closed in anticipation as he stared at Cheyenne’s chest.
Cheyenne rubbed her chest, then her hand moved absently to her shoulder to scratch the burning itch there. “Doesn’t make it okay, asshole. Do that again, and I don’t give a shit how much you know about the blight.”
“It doesn’t matter now, does it?” Venga pointed at her shoulder, where her unconscious itching had pulled down the shredded fabric of her shirt to reveal the unhealed wound there. “Look.”
Cheyenne stopped itching and glanced quickly down at her shoulder. The black streaks kept at bay by the darktongue serum faded rapidly, shrinking back into themselves toward the crusted edge of the wound that still wouldn’t close up. She quickly pulled down the other side of her shirt to find the same thing on the opposite shoulder.
“Oh, my God.” Ember’s eyes widened, and she nodded at Cheyenne’s hip.
“Yeah.” Cheyenne jerked down the waistband of her pants, hiking up her shirt to get a good look at the last of the black streaks disappearing from the perfectly round hole there too. “Damn. It worked.”
Venga spread all four arms and dipped his scaly head, exposing his sharp teeth in a leering grin. “A success, one might call it.”
“Sure.” Cheyenne dropped her shirt and hiked up her pants. “Thanks, I guess. For the healing. Not the rest of it.”
“My pleasure, Cheyenne.”
“So, this is it, then.” Ember stopped staring at the slowly closing wounds through Cheyenne’s shirt and looked at the necromancer. “We found the antidote, at least the one that works for Cheyenne, right?”
“I told you what healed the Black Flame would also heal this world, did I not?” Venga turned toward his workbench again and fiddled with the rest of the silver-green sludge in the large crucible.
Cheyenne’s mouth went dry, and she drew her tongue between her upper lip and her teeth, trying to get everything unstuck.
“And we did not find anything,” Venga continued with a dismissive wave. “I will credit you with procuring the flesh-setter hide, but let us not forget who engineered this so-called antidote.”
“Oh, sure. That’s what you’re the most concerned about, huh?” Ember glanced at Cheyenne and shook her head. “Taking credit.”
Cheyenne’s gaze dropped to the floor, and she blinked against the shifting, undulating lines of code in her vision. They’re not supposed to move like that.
“We will heal Ambar’ogúl at its core, Ember. I worked for Ba’rael in good faith, and she betrayed me and my reputation. I wish to clear my name.”
“I didn’t think necromancers could clear their names. Death magic and all.”
“Death and life are two sides of the same coin, fae. Perhaps you will realize this as your experience increases.”
Wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her forearm, Cheyenne said, “Something’s wrong.”
“What?”
“It will pass.” Venga waved them both off and kept working, though his urgency had faded and his hands now moved slower. “Healing takes its toll, just as destruction does.”
“No, I mean something’s really wrong.” Cheyenne lurched forward, her vision swimming. A tight, burning knot of nausea clenched in her stomach.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Ember asked, leaning forward to meet her friend’s gaze as she set a hand on Cheyenne’s upper back.
Cheyenne heaved and stumbled forward, not sure where the hell she meant to go but feeling the need to get away from the scaleback and his reeking potions. She took three lurching steps, and the pain in her hip made her leg wobble. Her knee buckled, and she threw herself against the edge of the closest empty chamber that had been filled with magic-siphoning black sludge two weeks before. Her body did the rest all on its own, and she vomited black and silver tinted with green into the empty basin.
Chapter Nineteen
“Shit.” Ember darted toward Cheyenne and couldn’t think of anything to do but pull her friend’s hair away from her face and hold it there. “Venga, this doesn’t look right.”
“I said it will pass,” he hissed. “If you expect this process to be quick and easy and comfortable, you will be disappointed.”
Cheyenne heaved and vomited again, then kicked the metal wall of the basin. She groaned and sagged over the edge, giving herself a second to catch her breath. “I don’t think this is part of the process.”
“You good?” Ember stared at her, and the halfling nodded. “Here.”
The fae pulled a hair tie off her wrist and handed it over.
“Thanks, Em.” Cheyenne tied her hair back in a sloppy mess just in case, then turned stiffly and sank to the ground with her back against the basin. Her hip flared in protest, and her shoulders echoed the sentiment and made her grimace. With a trembling hand, she peeled away the top of her shirt, then dropped her hand into her lap and thumped her head back against the basin. “Fuck.”
“No.” Ember pulled her friend’s shirt away to take a look for herself. The black streaks had returned, only darker this time and spread almost as far as they’d reached before her first darktongue injection. “Damnit. Definitely not a success, necromancer.”
“If you don’t have the capacity for patience in my presence, I suggest you both leave and worry over the outcome elsewhere.”
“It didn’t work!” Ember straightened and pointed at Cheyenne. “You made it worse.”
Venga whirled away from the workbench, one hand knocking aside a vial and sending it crashing to the floor. “Worse?”
“Yeah. Black streaks are back. Darker. Longer. Look at her. She’s shaking.”
“I’m not shaking, Em,” Cheyenne protested in a raw croak.
“Well, I’m not handing you any sharp implements or a martini glass. Those are impossible to carry with a steady hand.”
The necromancer stomped toward them across the broken glass he hadn’t bothered to clean up. “Show me.”
Cheyenne’s head felt too heavy to lift, but she raised a hand to her shoulder and pulled the shredded over collar down with one finger. “Feels worse. Looks worse. I’m guessing it’s worse.”
Venga stared at her with unblinking all-black eyes. His lips peeled back in a snarl before he spun again and roared in outrage. “Not enough!”
He stormed across his lab, throwing crimson sparks at anything in reach. Clay jars shattered on the shelves, spewing powders and knocking over metal boxes and tools. His pounded two fists on the top of the workbench, then roared again and slammed all four hands on the underside of the bench. Metal screeched as the top of his workspace buckled upward, throwing even more tools and ingredients onto the floor. “I can’t do the work if I don’t have all the pieces!”
“Hey, we brought you what you asked for, okay?” Cheyenne closed her eyes and tried to breathe steadily through the nausea churning in her gut, though it wasn’t nearly as intense. “You made the wrong potion.”
Venga hissed and swept a hand across the undented side of the workbench, tossing everything on the floor with an obnoxiously loud crash and clatter of metal. “It’s not the potion, drow. It’s the vessel!”
Cheyenne’s eyes flew open. “The what?”
“Vessel. Don’t tell me you don’t possess a working knowledge of your own fell-damn language.”
“Well, that stupid metal cap thing’s right over there.” She pointed weakly at the rubble
of smashed instruments and tools on the floor. “I mean, I guess this technically counts as a vessel too.”
Her fist thumped the wall of the huge metal tank behind her with a clang.
Ember shook her head. “You can’t be sick and not still be a smartass, can you?”
Cheyenne shrugged and grimaced at the newly awakened pain in her shoulders.
Another roar of frustration burst from the necromancer, but instead of continuing to destroy his lab, he stomped toward the shelves and tossed random objects over his shoulder until he found what he wanted. “You two are insufferable.”
Cheyenne lifted her head enough to watch him storm toward them. “Hey, thanks.”
“This isn’t an issue of my tools or my potions.” Venga glared at them, then stepped around the curve of the basin and bent over the side. “There must be something wrong with you.”
“Ha. You mean all the dart holes and my own special strain of the blight you made? Yeah, I was starting to think the same thing.”
“Undoing, drow! It’s called ‘the Undoing!’” The scaleback’s lower arm punched the side of the basin even as his upper body leaned over the edge.
“You can call me Cheyenne anytime.”
“Get out!”
Ember rose and turned to see the necromancer scooping up the startlingly large amount of silver-black vomit streaked with green from the basin floor. “What are you doing?”
“What must be done.” When Venga was satisfied with the amount of putrid bile in the large glass vial gripped tightly in his hand, he straightened up and went back to his destroyed workspace. He flicked his hand and sent a spray of Cheyenne’s puke across the room to join the glass and broken instruments on the floor.
“Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”
“I will study it, and I will find the answer.” He thumped the vial down on the bench and paused, his chest heaving. “There’s obviously something wrong with her. This is where the issue lies. When I find it, I will manipulate the root cause, and we’ll have our antidote.”
Cheyenne didn’t know why that made her laugh, though it came out as a weak choke. “Why do you need me for this? Obviously, not for the poison inside me right now, but for the whole Undoing. They’re not the same thing.”