Mother of Slag

by Timandra Whitecastle

  Nora turned a fraction too late. A dark blade punched into her side, pain exploding white and hot. Another Whisperer-warrior appeared from the darkness just ahead. His skin was bloated and rotten, stretched in cancerous, pockmarked growths on his right side. The limbs on that side of his body seemed to be made of numerous limbs packed together. A hunchback formed a second screaming face on his shoulder. His left fist came whizzing at her so fast it was a blur. She caught his left with her spade, warding it off with a clang. She parried the next blow from the right awkwardly. A slice across her upper arm made her suck in a breath. She whacked her spade into the warrior’s chest repeatedly. A knee to her stomach winded her. A piercing stab took out her eye, and she doubled over, whimpering, blinded. Her blood streamed hot down her cheek, flowed through her fingers, and spattered red onto the steps.

  “Keep going!” Owen shouted in her mind. “Get up, Nora.”

  I’m trying, she thought, unable to speak, as she traded blow for blow with the warriors the darkness spew forth. A glancing dagger took skin off her thigh. Another axe-blade slashed a deep furrow into her forehead. She pushed back, fought back, slipped from their grasping fingers and clutching claws. Her muscles began to ache, and she could only see with one eye, but she pressed on upwards. One step at a time. She had to reach the top. She heard Owen’s voice. He must be close now. He must be.

  Pieces of her attackers clattered in shards of brittle, black glass to the floor, and yet again and again the same warriors appeared. The skull face, the mushroom face, the cancer. The spade flashed. Its silver metal cut into the darkness, sizzling when it made contact with the inky black.

  A maelstrom of screeching filled the sky, a crash of thunder. A storm raged around her—

  —and the ground shook so suddenly that she lost her footing.

  She stumbled into one of the warriors. It made to slice her arms off, but missed. She fell, scrabbling on the steps, and hacked at its ankle, toppling it.

  “Get up, Nora.”

  The dark land below rose. It bubbled up into a towering fountain of slag. The staircase heaved. The warriors trembled and fell over the edge of the steps, one after the other.

  A head, then shoulders and a chest, rose into the black sky. Someone who had been asleep beneath the earth—her arms and legs the rolling hills and valleys of plains—was sitting up. Waking.

  “Get up!” Owen screamed over the storm. “You’re nearly there.”

  Nora pushed herself to her hands and knees and started crawling up the shuddering staircase. The land moved with great slowness, millions of tons of earth shifting and groaning around them. Two giant arms unfolded.

  “Nora!”

  She reached the final step and hauled her aching body over the top, raw and bleeding.

  And there, in the upper courtyard, just below the statue of Scyld, stood Owen, encased in dazzling, silvery light, one hand stretched out to hoist her up.

  “Owen? Is it really you?”

  “I’m here.”

  She reached out tentatively.

  His light flickered. He frowned and opened his mouth to speak.

  “Nora—” he managed.

  A hand with fingers longer than towers reached down, picked him up, and lifted him high into the wild, dark air.

  And he was gone.

  Chapter 13

  Nora screamed. She screamed at the injustice done to her. She screamed out her pain and her anger and her loss, and then she took a deep breath and screamed some more.

  “Give him back. He’s mine. I need him.”

  She howled her rage until her throat was raw, until her voice cracked and broke.

  “Need?”

  A voice drawled behind her, and Nora turned to see Scyld step off of the plinth, her eyes black on black. A skull was perched on top of her head, the darkness streaming out of its eye sockets into her flowing black hair.

  “You.” Nora’s heart sank. Scyld was Two-Face. Of course she was.

  The sword in Scyld’s hand changed. The blade turned from stone gray into a black like obsidian, the edges gleaming wicked and sharp. And yet, when Nora looked at it directly, there was simply nothing there.

  “You speak of need.” The stone woman was twice Nora’s height, and as she approached, she let her dark blade trail against the cobblestones of the courtyard. Sparks jumped from it in snarling blue. “And yet whenever we try to give you what you want, you reject it.”

  The stone face rippled and took on Owen’s features before turning back into Scyld.

  “We told you we would wait. Now you have nowhere left to run.” With a simple wave of her hand, the long descending stairway turned into a smooth, black slope leading into darkness. “You are dying. Soon there will be only us left. You have completed your ascension.”

  “You crawled into me, seeped into my veins, into my mind, turned it against me,” Nora said. “You confused and deceived me. I won’t let you kill me.”

  Here it was.

  The final edge.

  Nora felt the ground stir. She felt it begin to roll, and grasped the handle of her spade tight.

  “What happens now?” she asked Scyld.

  “Now?” the giant stone warrior replied, a benevolent smile on her face. “Now we become one. Everything you could be. Everything Owen ever saw in you. You will change things with a wave of your hand. You can make things right or make things wrongs. You get to decide which is which. You are a new goddess. You will never die.”

  A gust of wind blew Nora’s hair out of her face.

  “Fuck that!” She raised the spade and charged.

  And landed on her back with a thud. Winded, she stared at the rolling skies above, one eye seeing the black storm in the sky, the blinded eye staring into the dazzling blue of a clear desert sky. Both realities at the same time. She was here and there, deep within and far outside. Inhale and exhale. Two sides of a spinning coin.

  Here was a place of balance. Of clarity.

  She heard stone rasping over stone—the sound of Scyld approaching, sparks sizzling onto the ground from the black blade. Scyld loomed over Nora and stared at her with something that was pity and contempt at the same time.

  “That’s it?” Scyld asked. “No more fight in you?”

  Nora rolled to her feet, spade still in one hand. “Give me Owen.”

  “You will join him soon.”

  Nora laughed through her nose as she stepped to the side, giving the shovel a little twirl. “I know he’s here. I can feel it.”

  Scyld stood and half closed her black eyes, taking a deep breath, facial features rearranging themselves a little. All sorts of faces appeared lightning fast, as though she were sorting through them.

  “Owen desired knowledge most of all, so we drowned him in it. Does that give you peace, Noraya?”

  “I’ll find him. I’ll take you apart, and I’ll find him.”

  Nora wiped the blood from her cheek, and danced closer to the low wall encircling the courtyard, the tip of her spade clanging against the stones. As though she had thrown a pebble into a still lake, the touch of iron distorted the landscape around her, reflecting the light in an odd way, all the way up to the skies. It was black like Scyld’s blade, an infinite void, and only upon contact a bright star burst into life, twinkling and dying in an instant. And deep within the sparkles, she saw another face. Her own.

  The land had risen, and it was her. A giant Nora who held the darkness within her, had the land in her bones, and the ruins of those that came before as memories embedded. Inside the giant chest, a blue flame flickered. The giant Nora had swallowed Owen, kept him safe. He was still there. Deep within her.

  She was watching herself fight the Blade, watching who would gain dominance over her.

  The confusion, the pain, and the grief, it all washed away. She saw her flawed thinking now. That to escape, she must ascend, climb up, strive higher, be better. That was all bullshit. The same old bullshit, in fact, that had got her here. Someone telling her how sh
e should be, that something was wrong with the way she was. They believed she was cursed and had told her so until she believed it herself. Nora was here because the baker’s wife couldn’t keep her mouth shut. So much blame. So much need for redemption. It was time to let it go. She laughed a little as she touched the translucent barrier.

  “What’s so funny?” Scyld asked.

  “I suddenly realized that I know where Owen is.” Nora turned, one hand over her heart. “I know he’s here.”

  Scyld was waiting for her a few paces away.

  “Will you bargain with us, Noraya Smith? Will you plead for your brother’s soul?”

  Nora lunged forward, swiping through the air with the spade. It clanged against Scyld’s stone waist, and Nora’s arms went numb from the impact. She groaned, but sensed a movement, and only just managed to raise the shovel to protect herself from a vicious swing from Scyld’s black blade.

  Nora dodged the stone warrior’s blows and snakelike grabs as best she could, but it was quickly clear to her that she was no match against the Living Blade. It was faster, stronger, larger, and besides—that bitch was older. In this place, in this fight, Nora was telling herself a story—a story of who would be in control of her life. Whether she’d be a prisoner inside her own body, looking out through a barred window, seeing herself feared and hated but unable to do more than accept the abuse, perpetuate it, pass on the misery to the next generation.

  She was panting, sweating, bleeding—she was in bad shape already and only a few heartbeats had passed since she had lunged at Scyld. The muscles in her legs quivered with strain, although … she wasn’t sure. It could have just as well been tremors from the shifting ground beneath her feet. Occasionally, in the corners of her eye, she thought she saw a light from deep below. The giant was settling down.

  After another desperate flurry of blows, Nora jumped back to the rim of their fighting circle, and yelped. Scyld had caught her arm and held it fast, letting Nora’s own movement work against her. With a snap, the arm broke.

  Nora fell to one knee, trying to breathe through the pain. The spade clattered to the ground next to her, useless. Blood and salt mixed to become the taste of defeat in her mouth.

  “You can’t save him.” Scyld’s bare feet came to a halt right in front of Nora. She peered along the black blade into Nora’s one-eyed face, and then reached for the spade’s handle. “He’s gone.”

  “Is that what you want me to believe,” Nora groaned. “After all you’ve done to me? And to him?”

  Scyld laughed and pointed her blade to the side. “We won’t kill you, we’re going to be you.”

  Her hand shot forward once more and grabbed Nora by the throat, lifting her with ease. Nora’s feet kicked the air in futility. The ground was far below her now that she was face to face with the stone warrior, the pupil-less eyes impassive, dead.

  “So frail,” Scyld said, nearly sounding saddened. “You won’t be much more than a shard, a Whisperer.”

  She gently moved Nora into an embrace, letting go of her neck, pressing Nora’s face against her cold bosom. Nora’s ear pressed against Scyld’s chest; Nora heard the roar of a thousand voices locked within the form the Blade had chosen as well as a thunderous beating heart. Her own?

  Nora felt a numbness in her legs, a cold seeping in through her feet. She could hardly look down, but what she could see chilled her even more. Her feet and her legs up to her knees were being sucked into the stone figure. Wherever her body touched the polished surface of the statue, it was being drawn in. She struggled against the grip, tried to wriggle her legs out, but only managed to twist them painfully. At least the pain was better than the numbness—it made her feel more alive. The only heat she felt were the hot stabs whenever she moved the broken arm. When she exhaled, her breath misted before her. The spade lay on the floor below her. But not really. It was a part of her. Always there. A thought and the fingers of her good hand gripped the wood tightly.

  “Defeat came so easily to you because your only defense is attack.” Scyld spoke, and her voice reverberated in Nora’s chest. “It’s all you know. So you wear yourself out attacking, attacking, attacking. But it leaves you bare, weak against any counterattack. Like this. You can’t extract yourself from me now. You have lost. You have nothing left. No fear. No hate. No quest for your twin. Nothing.”

  “You’re right.” Nora twitched as she felt the stone ripple against her cheek, softening to suck her in. “You’re right about my defenses, I guess. Diaz told me much the same, once. You know what else he said about me?”

  “I know it all. His words are imprinted especially deep in your mind.”

  “He said I’m stubborn. Die, bitch.”

  Nora brought the charcoaler’s shovel up and thrust its metal into the soft clay of Scyld’s face with all her might, hacking a hole into Scyld’s rippling surface. There was a hollow space beneath the hard outer shell, and liquid heat burst forth as she stabbed the tip of the spade deeper. It was easy. It was truth. The side of Scyld’s face burned to ashes, while the skull perched on top of her head shrieked with pain.

  Nora grinned. This was just like breaking open a clamp to retrieve the precious transformed charcoal within.

  Scyld gasped. She clutched at her face with both hands, releasing Nora.

  Nora fell to the ground.

  Hard.

  She screamed as the limp, broken arm was crushed beneath her weight, and several areas of hurt flared up across her body. She tried standing, crippled by pain, and found that one of her ankles had been twisted, mangled. She couldn’t stand on it, but pushed herself aright with the shovel, using it as a crutch, and hobbled over to the edge of her mind’s prison.

  A tap of the spade against the invisible barrier, tiny iridescent sparks like a thousand reflected Noras wincing in anguish.

  “Open,” Nora rasped, trying to focus through the pain. The barrier remained, and the faces seemed to be laughing at her now.

  “Fool.” Scyld was healing herself, black fragments of souls flapping madly to escape their confinement with her form, screeching in high-pitched wails as they were relentlessly drawn back in.

  “You have no power over me,” Nora said.

  She willed the searing pain within her into the hand of the broken arm where it combusted into a tiny ball of fire, and grimacing, she thrust it against the barrier. The trapped flames were scalding her palm.

  “Open now,” she pressed through clenched teeth. “I will it.”

  “Even if you managed to break through, there’s nothing down there but death.” Scyld’s voice from behind let the tongue of fire flicker with doubt.

  Nora held it in place, feeling the fire burn into her skin, lick at the layer of fats underneath. A scent of chargrilled flesh arose. She leaned forward on her broken ankle, hissing with the pain, channeling it along with anger and rage into the crackling fire. She had been burned before. She knew burns. They fucking hurt.

  “I don’t believe you, Blade.”

  “You will plummet to your demise, and we will have won!”

  “Then why are you so afraid?” Nora asked.

  She raised the shovel. The ground beneath her feet rose with her, and she slammed the spade’s tip into the blazing fire.

  The barrier broke.

  A fierce stormwind swept around Nora as she gazed into the abyss. The land below was a giant Nora. Her chest rose and fell like the top of a charcoal clamp when the heat raged within. The cracks, the fault lines were clearly visible now, all through the giant’s body. All that was needed, Nora knew from experience, was a little pressure, a tap in exactly the right spot, and the whole thing would blow to immolate the world with a cleansing fire. She grasped the spade, tool of her trade, her brother-in-arms in the art of transformation and stepped away from the edge.

  Scyld was still burning. The stone warrior screamed her frustration with a roar that was larger than her body could hold. The skin of her face flaked and then she broke into a myriad pieces, int
o an angry swirl of black and crimson that rose to the skies.

  Nora’s ankle burned with pain every step she took, but she had to do this. Fast. Furious. She gathered all the pain, past and present, every ounce of hurt and rage and despair, and threw it before her feet as she leapt off the edge.

  She dived into the darkness, the air rushing in her ears as gravity seized her, accelerating her. Her hair streaming behind her, tears in her eye from the wind, she shot towards the ruins gathered within the land, spade raised high above her head.

  At first she simply fell, but then she flew, exhilarated, surging forwards headlong at the ground. It felt right. This time, it all felt all right.

  For one perfect moment, she hung suspended in the air, both hands on the shovel, the tip rising high behind her in a silver sheen. She swung with everything she had. The raw energy of her fall smoked on her skin. She hit ground at a fault line that ran like a vein to the glowing heart and tore open the clay seal.

  The rock trembled. It breathed and shivered. She left a channel of shattered earth in her wake. The ground rose and exploded in a ring, moving outwards from her, growing in strength and size. It obliterated the remains of the city of the twin god. The earth and rock lifted in a cresting wave and then froze into mountains surrounding the plain of destruction she had wrought.

  And here, at the soul and center, buried deep as he had been all along, she found Owen, sleeping. She touched his shoulder gently, and his eyes blinked open.

  “Owen,” she said.

  “Hey. You found the shovel?” he asked, still a little groggy.

  “I did.” Her smile trembled.

  Chapter 14

  Nora held out a hand and Owen let her haul him to his feet. For a moment, they simply stood, taking each other in, each one hand on the shovel. Her ruined eye hurt and tears streamed freely out of the good one. He caught her as she tumbled into his arms, nestling her head in the nook of his shoulder. His grip tightened around her as she sobbed. Her arms ached and her legs were weak. She was bleeding from a dozen wounds. But she had finally found Owen, was breathing in his familiar scent. Ink and old parchment, beeswax and charcoal. A touch of iron lingered on his skin, a salty hint of blood. But maybe that was her. Holding Owen filled her with calm. With quiet. A sense of being whole. Nothing in her ears but his gentle breath and the simple steady rhythm of his heartbeat.