Two eyeless heads turned to Nora, and two mouths that were all teeth and cracked lips hissed at her.
Found you!
So these … things were the whisperers she had heard?
This one lunged at her as the earth still shook, and she managed to dodge around the pillar. It followed her move, its huge clawed hands grappling at the stone, tearing deep gashes into the pillar. They began to bleed a sticky, dark liquid, and Nora backed off from the pillar, seeking to blend into the darkness. But the other whisperers had heard the call, and were converging in from all sides.
break rend tear eat
She had to get out of here.
Fast.
There was another pool of pitch black between this pillar and the bottom of the stairway that she’d have to cross before the creatures were on her. There was nowhere to hide. Only darkness ahead and the broad staircase into the void above. She didn’t have a weapon with which to defend herself from so many. She was outnumbered. Maybe if she ran, she’d be faster than them? But no, she saw one monster bounding toward her, long tongue lolling, a cloak of rippling skin fluttering behind it. Her heart sank. She’d never be fast enough. You never were in nightmares.
The two-headed monster rounded the pillar and growled at her, both maws snapping. She backed away, slowly, trying to steer towards the stairway. It must have sensed what she was doing, and pounced, blocking her path.
Found you. Want you. Need you.
Nora whipped around and dashed into the darkness. A wave of stench rolled over her as Two-Heads followed. Razor sharp teeth clamped onto her ankle. She screamed and fell. An ice cold sting coursed through her leg. She pummeled Two-Heads with both fists and howled in pain, but all it did was bite down harder. Blood welled up between its teeth, and she felt herself being dragged deeper into the black, away from the pillar and the twilight of the staircase. She stopped wildly flailing at the two heads, and instead tried to find a handhold, skinning her hands on the dust covered ground, scrabbling for purchase, groping for gaps or fissures. Anything she could cling to. But she found nothing. She was panting heavily, nails torn and fingertips bloody, and turned her attention back to Two-Heads.
It had neither eyes or nose, only two bloated fleshy faces with mouths, one clamped on her ankle, the other snapping at her calf. She kicked the biting head where its nose would be, and it grunted, annoyed, but her heel sank into the doughy gray skin with hardly any impact. She kicked down harder, again and again, aiming for the jagged teeth. They at least seemed made of bone. And bone could break. She felt the sting in her leg as she broke off two front teeth, felt them stick in her flesh, even as the mouth ripped open with a screech of fury.
For a second, her ankle was free, and she struggled backwards before the other head managed to snatch her other leg. She flopped onto her belly and pushed herself up, gasping, but ignoring the pain in her ankle. She had to get away.
Other whisperers were closing in around her, and Two-Heads was already recovering from its shock. She limped forward as fast as she could, making for the staircase. She ducked and dodged, punched and kicked her way through the cluster of twisted creations, screaming incoherently to drown out the whispered snarls. An elbow jab against the ribs of one monster, a stomp on a tendril reaching for her. She pushed back, fought for every inch forward, slipped from their grasping fingers and clutching claws—every touch of their flesh stung as though she were swimming through shards of glass. The staircase. She had to get to the staircase and find Owen and get the hell out of here. Being dead was nothing like the restful journey to nothingness the pilgrim masters had always preached, and she was quite tired of it, thank you very much.
She stumbled, fell, rolled between a creature’s six legs, and she was out of the darkness, hobbling towards the bottommost step. Claws and tendrils reached for her, hissing and screeches sounded from behind, but the creatures did not dare to pass into that strange gray pre-dawn light around the foot of the staircase. Their limbs fractured in the light, gleamed obsidian, but then knitted themselves together almost immediately.
Her breath hitched, her injured leg gave way, and she staggered upon the first steps. She didn’t dare rest, but pulled herself higher until her arms shook with strain and she collapsed, staring into the starless void above, catching her breath, her whole body sore and bleeding from numerous cuts and scrapes. Now that she wasn’t moving, she noticed that the ground had stopped trembling as well. When had it stilled? While she had been fighting against the Whisperers, or just now, when she had reached the stairs?
She sat up and saw the twisted creatures prowling along the edge of the darkness, hesitant to move into the light.
Listen, the Whisperers hissed. Come back into the darkness.
“Fuck off!” Nora screamed.
A female voiced laughed in the shadows. She sounded familiar but Nora couldn’t place her. A touch of madness rolled through the whoops and barks that echoed the laughter.
burn rip break
Nora sensed movement in the deep black and scuttled farther up the stairs, expecting the Whisperers to follow or burst out at her in a ferocious attack. Instead, they faded out of her vision, hiding from her sight, though their voices remained, coalesced behind the veil of darkness.
The darkness, the woman’s voice said. You know it so well. We have all been looking for you.
rend cut tear
You are … family. We’ll look after you.
“Yeah sure,” Nora scoffed.
The whispers increased in fragments of voices, uttering snatches of phrases, screams of ecstasy, howls of pain, curses, pleading, sneering—the woman’s voice cut them off.
Your hands are stained with blood. We’re not so different.
“We are so very different,” Nora spat. “Who are you? The Blade? That’s what you are, isn’t it?”
We are you.
“Where’s Owen?”
You want him? He’s here. With us. Come back to us. There’s nothing up there for you.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Nora rose to her feet, and shuffled a few steps upwards, wincing at every stab of pain in her ankle. She climbed the staircase slowly, aware of the surge of hissing and snarling below. When she looked over her shoulder, the voices hushed, and she saw that the ring of light around the foot of the stairs was much smaller than it had been before. Hands and claws darted out of the darkness, reaching for the first step.
They were coming after her. They were bringing the darkness with them.
She clenched her teeth and hobbled up the next few steps as fast as she could go.
“Nora!” Owen called out.
Her heart missed a beat, and she whipped around. His voice had been loud and she couldn’t tell from where it had come. Below, the rising tide of darkness lapped against the bottom steps, and sprawled there, face down, lay Owen. She was halfway back down the steps before she realized that something was off. It wasn’t that she couldn’t see his face, or that he lay perfectly still, his chest neither rising nor falling. The darkness washed over his torso in silence, as though ready to yank him back into it as soon as she drew near.
It was a trick.
She stopped, hesitated. With all her strength, she willed herself to turn her back on him, and steadily made her way back up the stairs.
“Nora, please.” Owen called. “I need you. Help me.”
She pressed on, ignoring the pain.
“Help me. It’s so dark. I can’t see a thing.”
She continued, repeating to herself that is was a trick, nothing more, just a trick. Madness was the curse of the Blade. She’d seen it control Bashan. She’d felt it herself. That wasn’t Owen down there. It was just a trick.
She heard him whimpering and nearly turned back. She looked over her shoulder, not stopping, and indeed, the false Owen had been swallowed by the obsidian tide. It crept up the steps, pulling itself along with a myriad blackened limbs, one live, heaving mess.
“I can’t s
ee, Nora.” Owen’s words carried echoes of the whisperers around the edges. Mirth rippled on the black surface. “Give me your eyes.”
“You fuckers,” Nora growled. “Is that all you’ve got?”
She put a foot on the next step, slipped on the lichen that grew there, and fell. The farther up she dragged her aching body, the more the stone steps seemed to age, grow crooked, and were covered with a reeking, crimson moss. The staircase also grew steeper, until it felt like she was climbing a mountain wall. She thrust an arm up and grabbed a slim shelf above her head, hoisted herself up a few inches more. Sweat ran into her eyes as she clung to the stone, blood from her ankle pooled in her boot. She pushed herself upward a little more to reach the next thin ledge. The stone crumbled beneath her fingers, a light rain of dust falling down. She peered over her shoulder and saw herself, like a mirror image, standing in a forlorn spot of light amid the black sea. The Nora far below clutched at a stone pillar and looked up. As the dust fell, she watched herself raise a hand to her eyes, winced at the memory of the sting. Then the Nora below was gone, swallowed by a ball of darkness. There was movement beneath the surface. It churned, agitated.
Something hurtled towards the steps.
Something huge.
Better not wait to find out what abomination was coming for her now. Nora took a deep breath and leapt for the next ledge, her hand snagging on a crack in the stone. The whole staircase groaned as something hit it, shifting, spasming beneath her. One step after the other, her knees braced against the splitting stone, she hoisted herself up while the staircase shook, and finally reached a platform made of thick wooden beams. She rolled onto her back and waited for the trembling to stop. The endless night sky above her was not one bit closer than at the bottom of the stairs, but here seven iron-wrought, star-shaped lanterns hung suspended in the air, the candles within giving off a warm light. Color had finally returned. Nora could make out the different shades of brown in the wooden beams; her skin a healthy tan instead of the ghostly gray tone; her wounds seeping red.
At the end of the row of lanterns, a man-high, round mirror reflected their light. For a moment, she thought it was a portal, an opening into a different, a kinder world. But when she moved her head a little, she could see the star-shaped lanterns in it. Too bad.
She pushed herself onto her elbows, and thought it was funny she couldn’t see her reflection in the mirror. She squinted at the image.
Wait.
Those weren’t the star-shaped lanterns hanging above her. They were simple lanterns lining a long street. A street crowded with houses on each side, opening up onto a square. She knew that street. Had walked down it just a few … days ago? It was Temple Street in the city of Arrun, the Kandarin capital.
She tilted her head a little, and yes! She could make out the silhouette of the tower-like temple looming over the tops of the houses. It was Arrun! She was close to the Temple of the Earth.
She sat up.
“Come back, little one. There’s nothing up there for you.”
That voice again …
She crawled to the edge and looked down.
The darkness was rising and on its surface stood another Whisperer, one that looked nearly human. One that looked nearly like her, in fact, except for the two faces, one perched on top of the head and scraped clean of flesh, as though the fake Nora wore an animated skull as a head covering. Her hair streamed from the whispering skull like a long veil, ribbons of black falling into the darkness below.
Nora blinked at her image and swore.
“You cannot escape from us,” Fake Nora said, her skull-face chanting along like a choir. “We are you.” She raised one hand, palm up, and a sword fashioned of bone grew out of it, nearly as long as one of her legs, and with a wicked edge. “It’ll only hurt a bit while we take you apart,” she said. “Afterwards you’ll never be lonely again.”
“Fuck that shit,” Nora muttered.
She stood up, and made a run for the mirror to Arrun. The wooden beams creaked alarmingly under her footfalls, some of them loosening, but they only had to hold until she got to the mirror. One snapped apart, sending her flying, smacking her head fiercely against the floor.
Behind her, she saw the two-faced Nora with her bone sword lifted onto the platform by the swirling black mass. The twitching fluid spread like a pool of molten metal, seeping into the wooden beams, turning the platform into a bridge. One by one the star-shaped lanterns were extinguished by the darkness.
No.
Nora scrambled to her feet. She had to reach the mirror. The floorboards beneath it had started to warp under the influence of the darkness. It sagged on one side.
She ran faster, and with a yell, she dove headlong into the mirror.
Chapter 3
Nora slid into a blank world, devoid of any color, sight or sound, yet still the brightness hurt her eyes. For a moment she lurched, dizzy in the confusion. She stood alone on a cobblestone square. Buildings wafted into view as though dense smoke gave them air to breathe for a moment’s respite, only to swallow them again. Human figures stalked the mists. Muffled by the thick fog, from somewhere beyond the row of tenements, she heard a scream.
She turned around, but the mirror she had came through was gone. Instead she saw the lantern-lit street behind her. She thought she recognized the stairs to the temple. She wasn’t sure—everything looked . . . wrong. The flagstones stood erect from the ground, and heaps of rubble made walking near impossible. Once proud city houses in the temple district now lay in bits and pieces, strewn across the temple precinct like discarded, broken toys left over from the tantrums of a giant child. Whatever had happened, had happened hard.
Nora stood among the wreckage, half-dazed, as if she floated outside herself, just above her own shoulder, an observer, watching herself blunder through a strangely muted world. Her stomach felt like she had swallowed a couple of knives. It churned and ached.
break crack slash slit rend cut tear
She looked back over her shoulder and stumbled, but there was nothing there except gray mists swirling around the ugly outline of the Temple of Arrun, cocksure against the sky.
“Owen?” Her voice hitched painfully. She spat a crimson glob of sand to the ground, and tried again. When she spoke his name, something scratched her at the back of her mind, a furious swipe, red hot in anger.
break crack slash slit rend cut tear Nora snapped her mouth shut when she realized she was speaking the Blade’s words, hissing them, rolling them around her tongue. But the silence that followed them was filled with screaming. Not a long haunted wail, but raw, angry screams of loss. It grew louder as she passed a splintered wooden rafter jutting out from a pile of stone rubble like a warning finger. She turned back and saw a pair of feet sticking out from under the bricks, dust covering the sole of one remaining shoe.
Next to the feet, a little girl sat on her haunches, flowers printed on her dress the same color as the blood gushing from her injured hand and spattering the dust. She was shrieking, streaming muddy tears, clutching the bare foot sticking out of the rubble. She flinched violently when she saw Nora approach.
“Hey, little one.” Nora knelt next to her. “It’s all right. Let me help you.”
The girl continued screaming at an even higher pitch, leaning away from her, never letting go of the toes.
Frustrated, Nora managed to tear her gaze away from the foot in the small hand, and looked back at the temple. Where was Arrun—that great shepherd? Where were the old gods now? Why were their temples still standing when they did nothing—nothing at all—to help the people who needed them the most?
“Because the people need their crutch, because they won’t take responsibility for their own lives. Because humanity was made to be slaves, made to kneel.” The words were spilling from her lips, and she couldn’t stop them. “You deserve nothing more than to be trod underfoot, because secretly that’s what you want. It’s what you all want. But we can change that crack slash tear break. S
hut up!”
The Blade was whispering in her mind, in her mouth, rage bubbling up, and she was unable to swallow it down. And it was right. The fucking gods had abandoned them. They had never meant to help anyone or anything. They had left their children alone to suffer, and all they had ever given them was war and suffering. And the wights? Oh, they had kept the ancient temples whole, had encouraged their stupid human pets to worship the dead. Reverence for what came before. Perpetuate what had always been so that it would always be. But they too had withdrawn, the fuckers. They had left humanity trapped in a endless fucking cycle of suffering. They should die. All of them deserved to die.
When Nora opened her eyes again, her scream of fury slammed into the temple walls. Cracks suddenly appeared in the stone and gray dust billowed into the air. Did she just do that?
A wetness ran down her cheeks, and when Nora touched her tears, her fingers came away with a fresh sheen of blood coating the drying, flaking old blood.
Her hands shook.
No.
Her legs shook.
No.
It was the ground that shook under her legs.
The temple … lifted. Its base rose like a chest drawing a shuddering, deep breath, and a white light bled through the cracks. Time slowed, and Nora watched as the temple broke, exploded from within, bursting onto the city that carried its name. Light beamed across the city—a hot kiss, the power of the desert’s sun blasting against Nora’s face. And when the light faded, Nora watched the ruins of the temple’s tower fall in the shadowing gloom.
It fell, a skyful of rock mass tumbling onto the rooftops below.
It fell, like the divine father slamming his fist down on the table one last time, to silence his unruly children.
Nora laughed, spreading her arms wide to welcome the thunderous destruction. She smiled even as the maelstrom swept her away. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. The world fell around her and everything was a whirling madness of flying shards of rock and dust and darkness.
Mother of Slag Page 2