Heshayol, p.6
Heshayol, page 6
I am a bit peckish myself.
“Enough with the history lessons, skin-switcher!” Drast slung a bolt of lightning at the nearest Nithhoggr, the energy blast ricocheted from its scaled body. The demon spiraled in the air, seemingly unscathed, and dived at him. Drast stepped back with surprise, noticing the creature carried a sickle in either of its humanoid arms.
Without having time to cast another spell, Drast sprang out of the way in the nick of time, the curved blade missing him by a hair.
Too close. Don’t kill us.
The Nithhoggr returned to the sky as a second swooped down to attack. The eyeless demon paused for only a moment, swaying in the air as a circular frill quivered like a bowstring around its neck. The taut skin barely stopped before the Nithhoggr charged. Drast flung fire at the beast to no avail, finally propelling himself from the line of attack with Koldovstvo.
Erzebeth appeared from nowhere, speaking dully in his ear. “They are immune to the elements.”
Drast blew air from his nostrils, ensuring his bow was secured over his right shoulder. “Lucky for you we are dragon-men.”
Two more Nithhoggr came at him. The first swung a sickle at his midsection. Drast twisted, dodging the blade, only to be hit by the underside of the thrashing, barbed tail of the second. He toppled to the side, falling slightly as his concentration was interrupted, and hurried to steady himself again with Koldovstvo. He glanced to his leg for injury and found none. Another few inches and the bone spikes would have been buried in his leg.
Be a dragon-man already.
Before he could act, the first Nithhoggr charged directly from overhead with its arms pulled back, fibrous wings tucked, and bristle-like teeth bared.
Using Koldovstvo, Drast pulled himself through space and time, springing himself from the path of the deadly jaws. Several more of the flying demons screeched nearer to the clouds, needlessly reminding him of his odds. The several attacking Nithhoggr were circling back.
Any day now.
Drast gritted his teeth. Ignoring the cries of battle beneath him and the orange glow of Tyran’s magic burning a path through the Bukavac army, he filled his being with the magic of the void. The cosmos seen at the nexus of Thrice Nine Lands filled his vision as he touched the gap between time and space.
Light blistered through the first Nithhoggr’s scaled flesh, tearing the muscle and skin from the demon. Blood splattered, drenching the horde army beneath. The wings fell limp, enfolding the arms and serpent tail, the carcass plummeting to the Netherworld below. As the finite frame of the demon fell away, the blackened soul of the creature ripped from the skin, crying mercilessly at Drast in a hoarse whisper meant only for those already pervaded with decay. The black wraith twisted, a silhouette against the purplish sky, reaching for him with shadowed claws.
Should have seen that coming.
“Stop talking to me!” Drast snapped. “I have enough trouble concentrating without your incessant chattering.”
Terror stabbed at his heart, hearing the other Nithhoggr crying for his blood. In desperation, he struck at the approaching ethereal beast with Koldovstvo once more.
His magic dissipated into nothingness.
Erzebeth suddenly shielded Drast from the wraith, an ear-splitting scream pouring from her gullet. “Be gone!” Her green light brightened, piercing through the Nithhoggr’s spiritual essence and blinding Drast.
Drast’s focus slipped, causing him to fall several feet before regaining control.
“Listen to me. You cannot defeat them alone.” The undead Vucari did not give him time to think. “You must use magic from the void. Flame and stone, sky and sea—these things cannot avail you. Tear them all apart in spirit, Red! I will do the rest.”
Don’t listen to her.
“Shut up!” Drast snarled.
“I will not!” Erzebeth cried, her glow swelling again.
“I wasn’t talking to you!”
Taking heed of her advice, he reached into the void to find the essence of the next Nithhoggr, tearing it apart. The demon shrieked and dispersed into nothingness. With a cackling laugh, Drast duplicated his feat, reaching out with a dozen tendrils to do the same.
The battle raged as Drast and Erzebeth ripped the Nithhoggr to pieces, both materially and spiritually. One after another, a dozen or more of the snake-like demons emptied from the clouds. Drast evaded the sickle blades and spiked tails until his body ached in equal measure as his skull, a pounding headache stretching to the base of his neck.
When the Nithhoggr stopped coming, Drast joined Tyran beneath him, still waging war against the Bukavac. The young Warden, despite his visible exhaustion, continued to fight them, tearing into every demon that approached. Blood seeped from the wound on the Warden’s leg, leaving him slowed in the battle, but not completely useless. When the last demon finally dropped, bones decorated piles of blackened ash alongside small hills of tangled, bloodied bodies.
Drast coughed, grabbing at his chest and falling to his haunches. “On the bright side, if we do not bring Wolos back from the dead, we could stay and clear out all these demons for the centuries to come. How many could there possibly be?”
How many people live and die in a thousand years?
“I promise, you have barely scratched the surface of the darkness in the Netherworld,” Erzebeth said. “Wolos must be reborn.”
“Wolos? We came to give rise to Wolos?” Tyran grunted in awe, joining Drast where he sat. “Someone should have told me.”
Drast blinked confusedly at his brother but did not have the energy to respond. His eyes fell to the Warden.
Kam crumpled to a knee behind them, groaning as the bestial form shredded away. His inner skeleton fractured and popped, realigning itself with the human form. The gristly hair fell away from the exposed flesh, the fangs retracted, and the face readjusted to that of a young boy.
When finished, Kam tried to stand slowly, running a hand along his pale cheek and across his shaved scalp. The wound on his leg caused him to kneel again, eliciting a groan from his thin lips. The Warden’s brown eyes began searching for the grey robes about the time Drast recognized something missing from between the boy’s legs and the trifling breasts pointing in his direction.
“By the gods, the boy has tits, Tyran!” Drast grabbed at his brother’s cloak, ignoring the gash on the leg and instead, staring at the nakedness of the Warden with absolute fascination. Kam was not a boy, but a young woman! “Small tits, but tits nonetheless.”
Chapter V
“I am ready to carry the stone,” Drast said, reaching eagerly for Tyran.
Tyran ducked around Drast’s extended fingers, stumbling over to the Warden’s gear. While Kam awkwardly wrapped her robes around her pale skin and tied the belt around her waist, he rushed to hoist her bags over his shoulder. The weight nearly took him to the ground. He rumbled in his throat, straining to keep his knees straight while continuing to hold his focus on his shield, which magically hovered in the air.
Drast followed him, persistent with his request. “This old body needs rejuvenation.”
“You are not sleeping with her,” Tyran bluntly said, turning around to his brother. His throat ached with the effort of speaking the few words after so many centuries, the splendor of his voice gone while the Alatir Stone repaired it.
“What? Of course not! Her tits are too small.” Drast winced, withdrawing his hands. “If you are going to start spouting nonsense, you can go back to holding your tongue. By the gods, I have survived this long with only the sound of your grunting. I can last another thousand years.”
“I do not know what you are talking about. I have never stopped speaking to you,” Tyran said.
Drast looked over his shoulder at nothing. “Maybe my ears were broken all this time instead of his voice?” He chuckled, shoulders shaking. “Well, that is true. I never stopped hearing you, but who can say if you are real at all?”
“Who are you talking to?” Tyran grumbled.
“Look what you did now!” Drast said, covering his mouth with his hand as though he were sharing a secret with someone other than Tyran.
He was not sure what happened to Drast, but Tyran knew he was the one who had been ignored these past many years and not the other way around. Certainly, old age had done Tyran’s memory no good—already the battle a few moments ago was fading like a dream—but it stood to reason that Drast’s mind also suffered from some sort of internal rot.
He stifled a groan as the weight of the bags rested on his shoulders. As he stood erect, he realized Kam was staring at Tyran and then at Drast, her mouth falling open in shock.
“He is not getting the stone, and he won’t rape you,” Tyran tried to assure her.
“Why in the Nine Lands would you say something like that?” Drast huffed, blowing air from between his lips. The act looked like a desperate attempt not to smile any longer.
Tyran gritted his teeth. He was sure Drast’s thoughts mirrored his own when seeing Kam’s naked body. No doubt, he feigned innocence, and the lengthy explanation that flew off Drast’s tongue did not convince Tyran otherwise.
“Listen, I am exhausted from battle, and I wanted to see what the fuss was about with this stone. The last thing I want is to have a run at some child out here in the forsaken cold. Have I not warned you often enough about sleeping with skin-switchers?” Drast made a point of shooting daggers at Erzebeth with his eyes, lifting his eyebrows before ending with the biting remark.
Tyran trailed the sharp look, feeling the pang of guilt in his stomach, though the long-dead Vucari gave no visible reaction. In fact, she hardly paid him any attention.
Drast went on, “By the gods, I would not betray my own advice.”
“You might if it suited you,” Tyran said when Drast stopped talking. His skin heated. His thoughts raced, admitting to himself, We both might.
“That is a boldface lie.” Drast ran his fingers through his stringy beard before balling his hand into a fist. He laughed out loud. “I would if it suited me. Irrefutably...but it does not suit me. She is a child.”
Tyran cleared his throat, forcing his jaw to move with his words. “Kam needs the Alatir Stone until her leg heals.”
“What?” Kam blurted. She limped forward. “I do not need the stone. Give me my bags. You two are, without a doubt, in far worse condition.”
Drast spoke over Kam, ignoring her, the sharpness fading from his eyes. “Why should we care if she bleeds out? My ribs are broken! Are we not the ones who Erzebeth brought to pull Wolos from his grave? The small-breasted tart is the liability here. Ah, look at her! She could not have expected to survive down here.”
Tyran scratched his head, faintly remembering why he was in the Netherworld with the Vucari and his brother.
Kam flared her nostrils and stared at the ice-covered ground. Tyran never had the impression she was one to back down from a fight. Something more troubled her.
The pulsating vein in her neck caught his eye. Tyran was not stupid, but he did not know Kam well enough to guess at what upset her. He knew she was Vucari. He knew she was a Warden. And the only other Vucari Warden he had crossed was Erzebeth, who never hesitated to make herself heard, unless duty kept her from it. Kam was surely as strong as Erzebeth, or she would not have been sent to accompany them. If Kam wanted to speak her mind, he doubted there was anything he or Drast could say to stop her.
In the end, whatever thought suddenly riled the Warden was her own to sort out. Just like he and Drast had to sort out their own problems; protected by those who were once their enemies, accompanied by those who were once their captors. And now Kam—man or woman—endangered their quest simply by existing.
Drast was right. Kam was a liability. He did not want to lead another to their death, but the cards were dealt. So whether she hated his and Drast’s lack of empathy for her plight as Warden or their shortsighted opinion of her as a woman, he hardly cared.
What he did care about was Drast’s words, which he mulled over in his head.
They came to resurrect Wolos. They came to the Netherworld to right their wrongs, to see their duty done so they might die. He was not here to change and, without a doubt, his brother was not either. He did not know when they had talked about the purpose of their journey—or if this was even the first time—but this was significant. He did not want to forget.
Drast interpreted his silence, or maybe he had been talking all the while and Tyran only now chose to listen. “We should save her the trouble and kill her now, and keep the Alatir Stone. She made the choice to come here, knowing who we are—what we are. Nine Lands, we told her to stay behind.”
Tyran gripped the Alatir Stone in his hand, his words oozing through his lips with great effort. “We are not killing her.”
“I am standing right here,” Kam said.
“She will not spread her legs for you any more than me, Tyran. Your love for women will only lead to our suffering,” Drast said with a snort. Tyran shuffled a step, considering hitting Drast, but he did not have the energy. Drast went on, “I do not know what made her think a two-legged ox could battle demons and walk away unscathed.”
“It is called a bies, and it is a blessing to my bloodline, gifted by Wolos,” Kam said. “And you would do well to keep your thoughts away from what is betwixt my legs, because if I find you between them, the bies is the last thing you will ever see.”
“I am glad you have a name for it. Does not change the fact that you are hurt,” Drast muttered, and then came nose to nose with Tyran. He clutched the broken ribs at his side, meeting Tyran’s eyes, mocking the Warden. He looked over his shoulder at nothing, and then chuckled. “Fine. If we are not going to kill her, let her carry her injuries like any mighty fighter would. You and I need our strength if we are going to reach Wolos.”
“She is our charge now. I will not see her die when we hold the means to her survival in our hand,” Tyran said.
“Do not grunt at me, brother.”
Tyran angled his brow, realizing the words had caught in his throat. Maybe there was some truth to what Drast said of his inability to speak. “She is our charge,” he rasped.
“Our charge?” Drast laughed, spinning around on his heel, hands fanning out at his sides. His wild eyes drifted to Erzebeth, who hung back in silence. “Like coming to the Netherworld to raise Wolos was our charge? We have done many terrible things. We wrought hell on the world and any who crossed our path, but the burden does not fall solely on our shoulders.”
“No, it does not,” Tyran mumbled. “Yet we are the only ones left to lessen its weight.” He pointed to Kam. “And she is helping us see it through willingly.”
Drast rocked his head, missing Tyran’s gesture entirely as he continued to glare at Erzebeth. Rolling his eyes, he spun back around. “I am here for you, brother,” Drast said, “but I am only here for you. We cannot make every obstacle in this journey our onus. You and I look like an old man’s shriveled bits on a wintry morning. We need the Alatir Stone or we will die—”
“We should already be dead!” Tyran bellowed. His lips quivered with the reverberation of words bounding from his gullet.
Drast rocked back with a hum, shaking his finger at Tyran in appreciation. “You—you sound like Father when you are angry. Hear me, though, when I tell you that I would have preferred we died at Anaerfell than face whatever hellish fate exists here.” Drast smiled. “I am here because you are here! By the gods, we cannot do this if every problem becomes our problem.”
“I am not your—” Kam cried out only to be cut off.
“Shut up!” Drast and Tyran said together, neither drifting their eyes from the other.
Tyran’s next words were swift, although his voice was strained once more. “We are bringing our enemy back to life. We will undo what we have done.”
“If you say so, brother.” Drast grinned, his cheek muscles tightening beneath his white beard. He tilted his head, nodding to himself again. “You are right. This place definitely has more promise than being chained at Anaerfell, but I would expect you to give a convincing argument,” Drast paused. Tyran was not sure if he was speaking to him anymore, and then his older brother added, “Alright. Give her the stone, but we are resting here for a few hours. I can hardly breathe.”
“No,” Erzebeth finally said from behind. “We need to keep moving. Enough time has been wasted and Wolos is waiting.”
Drast tittered with amusement, dropping to the ground and crossing his legs. “If you were worried about saving time, you should not have brought two old farts. To remain compliant, we need certain things. Warm milk, our drawers changed regularly, and frequent naps...” He groaned, lying his head back on the ground and closing his eyes.
Ignoring the Vucari, both living and dead, Tyran followed Drast’s lead and soon fell asleep.
Tyran could not say if they slept a couple of hours or a full night. From what he could see, the soft hue of purple and blue meshing between the ground fog and the clouded sky did not change. Upon waking, the three of them ate a bit of food from the packs and set out behind Erzebeth.
As they walked, Tyran savored the taste of dried meat and sugared bread on his tongue. The flavor was nearly overwhelming. He could not remember when he last tasted seasoned food. He feared it would make him sick, but he managed to walk on and on without vomiting. And soon enough, his stomach began to rumble, begging for more.
Tyran could not track the time while they walked any more than he could while they had been sleeping. His thoughts were disorganized. He could not pinpoint when he forgot his purpose in this frozen wasteland, and while he asked several times for someone to remind him, no one answered. He eventually decided to simply keep up as best he could and listen for whatever tidbits might give him some idea of why he was traipsing through the cold with his weapons. While his brother chatted almost constantly to some unseen being, Drast rarely spoke to the Warden, and Erzebeth said absolutely nothing.
Tyran was left in dismay, trying to hold Kam upright with his weakened muscles, his shield held up with magic.
