by Sam Sykes
Its face twitched. It couldn’t remember the words. And, frustrated, it threw its head back.
Oh, also, they can scream.
“aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH—”
Really fucking loud.
I put my hands to ears that felt like they were going to explode in bright sprays of blood. I shut my eyes to keep them from rattling out of their sockets. The cavern shook, screaming right along with that damn thing, sending rocks falling in waves and dust falling in sheets. Everything in me screamed to run. It was only because my muscles still felt frozen that I didn’t.
After a time, its voice abated. Silence fell over the cavern again. Through the ringing in my ears, I could hear it shuffle this way and that as it looked around.
“… hello…”
I could hear it walking on shaking, trembling limbs as it wandered off into the darkness.
“… helllloooOOoooo…”
I could hear it fading, disappearing.
“… hellohelloHELLOhellohellohello…”
Until it was gone.
And only then, I felt brave enough to speak.
“Fuck.”
Or squeak, at least. My voice came out in a hushed whisper, but it came and I couldn’t stop it.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
That was what Galta and Taltho were here for. They weren’t lying in wait for me. They were after this thing. Vraki must have fucked it up somehow and they had chased it all the way here. This thing had been the result of all that death at Stark’s Mutter.
Vraki would have wanted them to retrieve it. But when they had chased it down here, they probably saw no reason to go down after something that could just as easily rip them apart.
Or me.
That shit Galta. Said she’d spare me and threw me down here with that thing.
I’d have been angrier if I didn’t know what this truly meant. One Scrath was difficult to control. Two would have been impossible. Vraki hadn’t been able to control this one, so he’d turned it loose.
Which meant he was ready to summon his new one.
And all those kids he had kidnapped as hosts were about to…
I shook that thought from my head. I couldn’t afford to dwell on it. Or to dwell in here. I had to get the fuck out, Scrath or no.
I flipped open the Cacophony’s chamber, counted the shells. Hellfire. Hoarfrost. Discordance. Good on their own.
Against a Scrath? Who the fuck knew? But then, if it came to the point where I had to shoot the thing, I was probably already dead.
Low to the ground, I hurried through the cavern, moving swift as I dared. Somewhere in the dark, I could hear the Scrath’s bleating, croaking gibberish, the shuffling of its withered feet. It made no effort to hide where it was and you might have thought that’d have given me some comfort.
But if you did, I’d say you haven’t been paying attention.
Scraths aren’t a part of this world. They don’t fit. Their sounds come out all wrong and nature just doesn’t know what to do with them. They don’t cause an echo, a reverberation, anything. It spoke one word and sounded like it was a thousand miles away; it spoke another and sounded like it was right next to me. The damn thing could be anywhere. Across the cavern. Looming up behind me.
Or right the fuck in front of me.
The shadows twitched. I leapt behind a nearby rock, pressed myself to it. I peered out and saw it, its dead-tree shape shambling across the trail, twisted head lolling on a too-thin neck as it emerged from behind one rock and disappeared behind another. I waited the longest minute of my life before I dared to move again.
For whatever good that would do me.
You can’t predict a Scrath. You can’t listen for them. You can’t smell them. And if you see them coming, you’re already fucking dead. The best you can do is wait for those spider legs running down your spine, that cold knife twisting that tells you something’s about to go wrong, and hope that’s enough to get you out in one piece.
And that was all assuming any of the shit I was telling myself could be trusted. Where Scraths were concerned, our knowledge came secondhand from severed fingers. Over a thousand years, the sages of the Imperium had only been able to piece together whatever fragments of knowledge they could salvage from a Scrath’s victims. I had no idea if any of this was true, if any of it would help me.
I’m used to no help. I’m used to the odds being stacked against me. And I wish I could tell you either of those made me less scared.
I wish I could.
I forced my head clear; thinking would only cause that panic in me to well up, cause me to make mistakes. I didn’t bother listening to its burbling, bleating voice; it couldn’t be trusted, anyway. I let everything seep out of me in a stale, shuddering breath—the fear, the hate, the desire to just curl up and start sobbing—so that there was nothing left in me but a great emptiness waiting to be filled.
When that cold knife came, I was going to feel it.
“… going… going to… promotion… General rewards… protects… seeseeseeSEEseesee…”
I could hear its voice as the faintest of whispers, so far away it might as well be on the other side of the world, let alone the cave. I ignored it, kept my eyes on the end of the cavern.
“… life… better… childrenchildrenchildren… you’ll ssseeeeEEEEEeee… wife… my wife…”
I could hear it on the other side of the cavern now, just on the other side of the boulders, voice not raising an echo even as it bellowed, bleated. I pushed my fear out of me, looked up at the dark hole in the wall growing ever bigger.
“… last… last… PROMISE… we happy… will be… we… so happy…so happy… you and I and I and I…”
It kept repeating itself, stuck on that word, and every time it spoke, it sounded somewhere else inside the cavern. I ignored it, all of it, kept moving, kept my head up, my eyes locked. The cavern hole was getting bigger, so close I could almost see inside it. I dared to pick up speed, let myself move faster. My heart was pounding in my chest. My blood was going cold. I felt a stab of fear inside my bowels. I felt—
I froze.
My heart fell silent. My blood stilled. My feet locked.
And I knew it was staring at me.
“… happy… we’ll be happy…”
Slowly, so slowly I could hear the vertebrae in my neck popping, I turned around. And there it was. Standing right behind me in the middle of the trail. It shuddered unsteadily, its dead-tree shape swaying in some imaginary breeze. Its head lolled back and forth, forward and backward, yet it always kept one of those bulging, unblinking, quivering eyes on me.
“… my wife…”
Its tongue lolled. The twisted mass of teeth and gums pulled open. Its voice rose to a bleating shriek.
“MY WIFE.”
Its arm shot out, stretching impossibly long. I heard the bones snap, the skin stretch as its fingers extended as long as knives, reaching for me. My blood was cold, my body frozen, I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t.
But he could.
And whether it was me or the Cacophony that pulled up and aimed his grinning barrel at the thing, I didn’t care. I pulled the trigger. There was a bright flash of gunfire. The Hellfire shell blazed, flew toward the Scrath, past its reaching fingers, right for the twisted mass of its head.
And then it vanished.
Impossibly quick, the Scrath’s arm snapped back, caught the bullet out of midair. It shouldn’t have been possible. But then, neither should the Scrath.
The shell exploded in its hand, torrents of flame leaking out between its clenched fingers. What should have been an eruption of red hell was just a few pitiful crimson ribbons. When it unclasped its hand and the spent shell clattered to the ground, there was no visible damage. The skin was blackened, little more than a layer of soot covering it, but it didn’t look remotely fazed.
The Scrath just kept staring at its hand, like it couldn’t believe what it was seeing. It wasn’t hurt. But
something, the last shred of the man it wore like a suit, knew that it should hurt. Yet it didn’t. It was wrong. And it knew it. It knew it didn’t fit, didn’t belong.
And so…
“aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—”
It screamed.
The stones shook. The light darkened. The cavern seemed to scream right along with it.
And I was running.
I didn’t fight the fear anymore. I let it surge up through me, up through my veins, into my heart, forcing me to move. It carried me down the trail, toward the cavern opening. I couldn’t hear my heart pounding or my feet hammering the stone or my breath running short.
I couldn’t hear anything over it screaming.
I looked behind me. It was chasing me. Its legs were too long, twisting and bending and cracking as it took massive strides toward me. Its tongue flapped about like a banner in the wind as the scream tore itself out of the Scrath’s throat. It drew back a hand, swung it at me. In as much time as it took me to curse, its arm had grown twenty feet long. I ducked as it arced overhead, swung toward a cluster of towering stalagmites.
And went right through them.
It was nothing but a bunch of sinew and bones, but it tore stone apart like it was cotton. The rocks fell into my path; I was going too fast and tripped.
I hit the ground, scrambled to my hands and knees, twisted to land on my rear. I picked the Cacophony up in both hands, aimed him down the trail. In flashes of dying light and fleeing shadows, I saw it. Its teeth and tongue glistening with saliva. Its too-long arms and too-long legs hauling its twisted body toward me. Its quivering, teary eye locked on me.
I pulled the trigger.
Hoarfrost flew, striking it square in the chest. The frost blossomed over it, covered its skin in icy patches. Its step slowed, grew slower with every stride. And by the time its teeth were close enough to my face that I could see the black hole from which its scream died, it was frozen.
Why it worked, I don’t know. Maybe it froze because it knew that’s what frost did. Or maybe the Cacophony was just stronger than whatever foul magic had called it to this world. I wasn’t sure. And if you had asked me if I had cared, I would have punched you in the face and left you to die.
I was running.
I hadn’t even taken five steps when I heard the frost begin to crack, the scream start to tear itself out of the ice. By the time I’d taken ten, I heard the ice shards hit the ground and the thing take off running again. But I didn’t care. I couldn’t care.
I was there.
The cavern hole loomed up before me. I could see it and the ancient wooden beams that held it upright. A secondary mine entrance, it must have been started by the Revolution and never finished.
Considerate of them.
I hauled myself up onto the ledge where it was, ran through the hole, into the darkness. The stone groaned around me as the light faded behind me. Blackness swallowed me whole, eating sound and sight alike, until I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face.
Let alone the Scrath’s.
Fingers wrapped around my ankle. I tripped, fell. I twisted onto my back. I couldn’t see it.
“… hurts… hurts too much… need new…”
But I could hear it.
“… new skin… new body… new new new…”
And I could feel it pulling me.
“myskinmyskinmyskinMYSKINMYSKINMYSKIN—”
One shot left. Discordance. If I hit it in the face, it might release me. But I couldn’t see it. I didn’t know how far back it was. I couldn’t aim, I couldn’t—
The Cacophony burned in my hand, whispered an angry secret that only I could understand.
And I realized I didn’t need to aim.
Not at it.
I slid along the ground as the Scrath pulled me closer, back into the cavern. I tilted the Cacophony up. I aimed toward what I thought was the ceiling. I pulled the trigger.
And everything went to shit in a real big hurry.
A bright flash of gunfire. I saw the Scrath’s quivering eyes and flapping tongue for just a moment. The shell hit a wooden beam holding the ceiling up. Discordance erupted in a burst of sound. The shock waves tore into the wall, sent me flying backward, caused the Scrath’s grip to loosen.
It screamed.
But the mountain screamed louder.
Beams wailed, broke. Earth groaned, shifted. Boulders sobbed, fell. The ceiling came crashing down. I hauled myself to my feet, started running. Dust fell around me in sheets. I kept running. Wood splintered and fell and rocks buried it. I kept running. A cold light blossomed before me.
I didn’t stop running until my legs gave out and my breath ran out and I fell to my knees in the sand and gasped for air.
When I looked behind me, there was no more tunnel, just a sheer rock face and a mess of stones at the bottom where a tunnel had once been. The mountain groaned as it settled down, and even through the great sigh of rock, I thought I could still hear the Scrath.
Screaming.
I paused, watching that pile of rocks, hearing the creature shrieking through it. My heart wouldn’t start beating again, as though it expected me to turn around and see the Scrath there, waiting for me. Seconds of wordless agony passed. They turned to minutes. And soon, the sound of the Scrath passed, too.
And I was left with the wailing of the wind and the sound of my own laughter.
I didn’t know why—it wasn’t funny. Maybe it was a release, the sound of my nerves prying themselves apart from the twisted bundle they had become. Or maybe I just didn’t know what else to do.
So I kept laughing.
I turned and I started walking away from the rubble, trudging down the slope of the mountain, my boots sinking into the sand as I did. The winds moaned around me, as though the Husks were protesting my rudeness in laughing.
And I couldn’t stop.
I kept walking. But for some reason, it got harder with each step. My boots were harder to pull out of the sand. My legs shook more each time my feet came down. It felt like something in me, something important, was draining out of me, left in puddles in each footprint I left behind.
And I kept laughing. And each time I did, it hurt.
I looked down at my hands. In one, the Cacophony. In the other, my blood.
And that was all I had left. A piece of metal and pieces of me.
No magic scarf. No list. No leads. No Liette.
Liette.
I don’t know why, but I wanted her right then. I wanted her near me, to touch her and feel something other than cold, other than pain. Part of me thought that I would look up and see her, waiting there for me, ready to forgive me. That part of me needed her, needed a lot of things.
But when I looked up and saw only the wastes of the Husks stretched out before me, that part of me fell silent.
And I was left with nothing.
Liette was gone. Cavric, too. Jindu was gone, a name that made my scars ache, a bad dream I couldn’t get rid of. Galta was gone. Taltho was gone. Vraki was… was…
I didn’t know. I didn’t know where he had gone. He hadn’t been where he was supposed to be, where I was supposed to kill him, where I was supposed to save his sacrifices. I didn’t know where he was or how to find or how… how to…
I couldn’t remember when I had fallen to my knees. I couldn’t remember when the laughter had made my throat run hoarse. I couldn’t remember when the hot tears started trailing down my cheeks, over my scars.
The fear left me. That rush of blood that had kept my legs moving and heart pounding in the dark tunnels, it just… ebbed out of me like blood from a wound. And with it went my hate, my sorrow, my anger. And when it was all gone, there was nothing left inside of me. Nothing to keep me going.
No reason to stand back up.
The Cacophony fell from my hand, suddenly too heavy for me to hold. My head felt like iron, craning back on my neck as my mouth pulled itself open and I let out a scream into the night. But even that felt
empty, like I didn’t even have enough in me to scream.
And I wondered if this was how it would feel when I crossed that last name off my list, when I put that last bullet in that last head. All this time, I had thought I’d have something after all of it was done—some home to call my own, someone to go with it. But what if this was it? I had no one to shoot, no one to hunt, no one to kill.
What if it was all just emptiness?
I felt something warm. I looked down at my side. Blood ebbed out of a gash. My wound had reopened. From the Scrath? Or the rockfall? I couldn’t remember what had done it. I couldn’t remember when all that blood had painted my middle red. I knew I had to treat it, to fix it, but I couldn’t remember how.
I got to my feet, even though I couldn’t feel them under me. I turned toward the horizon, even though I could barely see it through the darkness clouding the corners of my eyes. I started walking.
Even though I didn’t see a point.
Pain has a way of dragging time out. You can lose hours, days, years of your life to it, either in fear of it or waiting for it to stop. And so I wasn’t sure how long I’d been walking or where I was when the wailing began again.
“Sal…”
Distant voices on the wind called my name, echoing off walls of swirling grit and grime.
“Sal.”
That’s where I was heading, then. Toward the voices that called me to the black table to answer for my crimes, to face my crimes.
“Would you wait the fuck up?”
Only they were being awfully rude about it.
A flicker of movement caught my eye. A great shadow appeared in the swirling winds, approaching me. I braced myself, anticipating some ghastly specter come to take me back.
That might have smelled better.
Congeniality came stalking out of the sands and paused before me, canting her head to the side as she appraised me. Her avian eyes betrayed no emotion, but I swore she looked almost accusatory.
Which I sure as hell wasn’t going to take from a bird who had left me to chase a fucking turkey.
“SAL!”
His voice was distant. His shape was shadowed. But I knew his step, that enthusiastic rush of a man who wasn’t afraid to look undignified. He came out of the sheets of grit, waving his hands, concern painted on a face caked with grime and sweat.