Eldritch, p.63
Eldritch, page 63
“Why flammapul? She used that to kill them.”
The old mage sighed. “She loathed conflict. It was easier for her to seduce her victims in brothels. No rituals or ceremony, nor violence or ancient chants. Just hunger and the desire to walk amongst other mancers without judgement. Flammapul simply kept them from fighting. As a child, Melisara was gentle as a butterfly.” A darkness shadowed his eyes. “The world made her a monster.”
“Zevander?” The sound of Maevyth’s voice had Zevander twisting around, searching for her.
The small hovel blurred and shifted.
Zevander stood before a colossal tree, the width of the trunk about the size of the home he’d just stood in moments before. The dark hollow had him staring, recalling a time when he’d seen it once before. Weeks ago, in the woods.
“Zevander?” The distant sound of Maevyth’s voice called him from inside the tree.
“Go on, then,” Cadavros urge. “Find her.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Zevander strode forward, and stepped inside the cavity of the tree.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
MAEVYTH
Hand outstretched, I watched the ledge drift farther away. Wind hurled at my back, my dress flickering around my legs as I fell.
Down, down, down.
A scream ripped from my throat—useless and futile, as I continued to plummet toward what would ultimately be a painful death. I only hoped my body would give out, that I might slip into darkness before hitting the ground.
Air exploded from my chest as my spine struck a hard surface, and my stomach rose into my throat.
Already? Surely, the mountain had been taller than that. As I turned over to cough, my fingers curled into feathers. Soft black feathers. Retching and gagging, I flipped onto my stomach, hacking and coughing for one sip of oxygen, while the wind rushed over me like a thief, swiping up the air in a vicious gale. I buried my face in Raivox and gasped a breath, pulling my knees beneath me. Clawed fingers digging into scales, I grasped my way toward those horns, the wind tearing at my face. Once secure, I exhaled a shuddering breath and closed my eyes.
Pushing to my knees, never once taking my hands off the horns, I looked to see that we were flying away from the mountains.
Hopefully, toward The Rotting Tree.
Adistance that should’ve taken days to travel, only took a matter of hours for Raivox, who soared through the skies at a dizzying speed. My legs trembled when I climbed from his back, and they nearly buckled beneath me when my boots finally hit the ground. I’d have kissed it, had we not been standing smack in the middle of The Eating Woods.
When Raivox straightened, the view he’d been blocking had my stomach twisted in knots. Through the white fog, stood a towering tree, weathered and gnarled like every other in the forest. But what set that one apart was its size and the way its roots stuck up from the ground, like a small labyrinth, leading up toward the gaping hole in its trunk. I swallowed a gulp, keeping my eyes on that dark cavity as I approached with careful steps.
Raivox stalked alongside me, quietly growling in his throat.
Stepping over thick, knotty roots, I swept my gaze across the surrounding trees in search of Zevander but found only the eerie stillness of the forest. When we reached the mouth of the entrance, Raivox lowered his head, sniffing, his body far too big to fit through the opening that seemed to be waiting to swallow someone whole. He growled again and I placed my hand on his neck to calm him.
“It’ll be okay. Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’s not even in there.” A nervous laugh escaped me as I peered into the hole, where a flickering light shone over a staircase that looked to be covered in a leathery texture and descended below ground level. Every dozen steps, or so, smooth, ivory bowls, which looked to be carved from bone, held kindling and oiled cloth that crackled beneath small flames. Seen through what little light there was, the stairs curved beyond a wall, the space around which was so dark, it nearly consumed that small bit of light.
“I’ll return soon,” I said to Raivox then carefully ducked inside, trailing my gaze over the spider webs I spotted overhead. Even though I’d gotten somewhat used to seeing them while visiting Branimir, the sight still cast a shiver down my spine.
As I took the first step, my hand brushed a small handrail, the surface too smooth to be wood. I glanced down.
Not wood, but skin.
It brought to mind the corpses often found at the edge of the woods, absent of their skin.
Drawing back my hand, I held it tucked close and tiptoed on down into the depths of the tree. The unsettling feeling of something watching me sent a prickling over my skin. That, or perhaps it was the cold swallowing me the deeper I ventured.
The stairwell opened up to a vast, cavernous space, the height of it impossible to estimate through the thick webbing overhead.
I stepped cautiously, careful not to get close to the bits of webbing that hung lower. A cocoon-looking lump in the web dangled by a silky gossamer strand and held the shape of a body trapped inside of it.
Zevander?
I glanced around for something to cut through the webbing and raised my hand with the sharp, metallic claws on the glove.
In quick slashes, I cut away the webbing which didn’t seem to stick at all to the glove’s scaly surface. Instead, it fell away in flitting tufts to the ground, revealing Mr. Thurman, the village carpenter, and his half-decayed face.
Grimacing, I stepped back.
His eyes shot open.
I exhaled a sharp breath staring back at the black of his pupils which bled into his irises and sclera.
He wriggled in the cocoon and let out a growling, moaning sound.
Slow and guarded steps carried me backward, away from him, and I kept on, scanning over the webs for whatever creature had spun them. The deeper I ventured into the tree, the thicker the webbing. Another cocoon stood off in the distance and as I made my way there, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.
A shadow shifted overhead, and I lifted my gaze to find hundreds of eyes watching me. Shallow breaths stuttered out of me as I tore at the cocoon quickly and in three quick slashes, confirmed the body held within wasn’t Zevander’s.
The spider didn’t stir when I backed myself away and kept on.
When I turned back to my path, my breath hitched. Dozens of cocooned bodies hung from the web, none of them giving any indication of who might be inside. I clawed at the first three, panic rising into my throat, as none of them revealed Zevander’s face. I swiped my claw across another, splitting it open at the face to reveal Ms. Yarbrough. Like Mr. Thurman, her eyelids lifted to show black, bulging eyes and she hissed, chattering her sharp teeth.
The hissing seemed to stir the other cocoons, because they too wriggled and hissed—a terrifying symphony that coiled around my spine.
As I backed away, the web caught in my hair. Hands flailing to get loose, I managed to tangle my arm in the silken strands, and lifting my gaze to see the spider inching its way toward me, I clawed at the webbing with my gloved hand, setting my arm free. Breath shuddered out of me as I darted away from it and when I turned, I found Zevander.
Arms and legs outstretched, but not cocooned, he hung trapped in the webbing.
I bolted toward him, dodging the stringing bits of sticky webs, fear quickening my strides.
“Zevander!” I whisper-yelled, tearing away endless layers of the web that secured his wrists and ankles.
He didn’t so much as twitch in response.
The sensation of being watched prickled the back of my neck again, and I spun around. My heart caught in my throat as I stared up at the massive figure towering over me, his tessellated skin and crooked antlers springing forth terrifying memories. The creature in the woods.
The wrathavor.
“Hello, Maevyth,” He spoke in a voice too human, too articulate for monsters, yet even so, the tearing sound of Uncle Riftyn’s flesh echoed inside my mind. He tipped his head toward Zevander. “You found each other. How lovely.” With his bony, branch-like hands behind his back, he crept closer, and I backed up a step, maintaining distance between us. “I do not believe we’ve formally met.”
“Release him,” I commanded with a faltering crack of my voice, ignoring his comment.
“He is at peace, I can assure you. Dreaming of you.”
“I know what you want with him. You led us to the vein to strengthen him so you could use him to burn the Umbravale down.” I steeled my muscles and met his gaze, refusing to look away. “I will not allow it. You will have to kill me.”
The slightest curve of his ruined lips told me the threat amused him. His gaze drifted upward, trailing over the webs. “Do you know what resides in this tree?” He didn’t give me an opportunity to answer. “A god. An ancient power that could pluck you from this world like the soft petal of a rose.” Fingers outstretched toward me, he stepped forward, as if to touch me, but I jerked back. “You are delicate and fragile. But beautiful.”
“You’re forgetting roses have thorns.”
A deep, languid chuckle rolled out of him. “Yes. And what a tragedy, how quickly you wilt and die. Mortality is…depressing. But I can offer you everlasting life. Power.” He waved his hand and a soft tickle across my skin drew my attention to the dress I’d worn seconds ago, as it faded away to be replaced by an elaborate, rose dress. Something itched above my brow, and I scratched there, pricking my finger on a thorny object that sat atop my head. I palpated it. A crown of thorns? When I lowered my arms, skinny black vines and roses covered them.
“Bond with my blood and you can have both of us,” he said.
My lips twisted in repulsion.
“Ah. Forgive me.” His body twitched and contorted, bones pushing against the bark-like skin, splintering and crackling, until he took the form of a more terrifying face.
A distorted version of Moros smiled back at me and the sensation of a thousand insect legs crawled over me. “Is this more satisfying?”
“What do you mean, both of you?” I asked, the tension in my throat squeezing my words.
“He and I share this curse. Our lives are entwined as one. I feel what he feels. I love what he loves.”
“You’ve no idea what love truly feels like. The sacrifices. The pain.”
“Show me.” He stepped around me, as if trying to maintain the invisible boundary between us. “Become our queen.”
“I would sooner die,” I gritted out.
“And you will. Or…I can delay your demise.” A tickle at my scalp rattled my nerves and I swatted on instinct, but he quickly moved away. “You are what gives him purpose.”
I snapped my head to the side, catching his form in my periphery. “To murder at your behest? To infect the innocent and turn them into mindless creatures that feed on the living?”
“The way the living has fed on the weak? The poor? The powerless? Have you forgotten your past so quickly, girl?” A hint of irritation clung to his voice. “The hate and vitriol they cast upon you?” The steady clack of his footsteps told me he was pacing behind me. “Tell me, if I were to go back to the moment when you sat in that cell, after they picked and prodded and beat you…what would that girl choose? Mercy? Forgiveness?”
How could he have known what I’d suffered?
I lifted my gaze to Zevander. “Yes,” I said without hesitation. “If it means sparing them, myself, from becoming one of your monsters, then yes.”
He paused alongside me, his proximity setting my nerves on edge. “Is Zevander a monster? Did Aleysia appear as a monster?” A glide of Moros’s palm down Zevander’s arm stirred the scorpion on the back of his hand to life. “Zevander has been infected his whole life. Branimir, too. Without balance, a weakness, he would’ve been more powerful than any creature in existence. There is no element more destructive, nor chaotic, than the flame.”
“The flame was never the cause of Zevander’s affliction?”
“The flame is all that keeps the infection from consuming him. A balance, so to speak.”
“And Branimir?”
“If Branimir didn’t possess a small bit of sablefyre, Aethyria would look quite a bit like Mortasia.” Again, he lifted a lock of my hair, the tickling at my scalp sending a jolt through my muscles.
I turned away from him, shrugging to release his hold but, unfazed by my reaction, he kept on with his fondling and explanation. “Branimir controls his spiders, keeping them contained. So, you see? Not everyone becomes a monster.”
“Why me? What do you want?”
A cold finger brushed across my throat as he swept my hair from my shoulders. “A trifecta of power. Disease. Destruction. And Death.”
“If it’s death you want, all you had to do was ask.” I raised my palm but he swiped out with his arm, catching my wrist before I could summon a single glyph.
“Perhaps you’ve forgotten what would happen if I were to perish.” His rough words, spoken through a growl, never faltered the unnerving smile on his face.
“The same fate as if you live and Zevander burns down the Umbravale.”
“Wrong. I am the only thing that stands between Aethyria and a vengeful god. Without me, you will become the monstrosity you fear and find yourself at his merciless command. Become my queen, and I will protect you and those you love.”
“I choose death.” I spat in his face and grabbed his fingers still clutched around my wrist.
The sound that tore from his throat was a cross between agony and fury as his fingers crumbled to dust. His good hand slammed into my chest and the ground rose to meet my back with a painful crash.
Lips twisted with a snarl, he stared back at me, his face twitching, changing, morphing again, as the bones sank into his skin and his skin hardened to bark. “I’ve been too merciful. Too patient. I will take what’s mine.” He waved his skeletal hand toward Zevander whose eyes snapped open, his pupils wide and dilated. A void of black that seemed to look right through me. Spidery black veins laced the eye above his scar where infection had climbed into his sclera. As the sticky white strands holding his arms and legs dissolved, he stepped down from the web.
“Zevander?” I kicked myself away from him and when his gaze cut to mine, gleaming with malicious hunger, I jumped to my feet.
Ragged breaths tore out of him and those depthless eyes shone with an evil I didn’t recognize. He’d fallen into fits before and I’d seen his eyes turn, but not like this. Not in such a way that had me convinced there was nothing for me to grasp. Nothing that could pull him out of it. Something ravenous clawed inside of him, begging to be cut loose.
I spun around and ran.
“After her!” Cadavros bellowed behind me.
Ahead stood a dark passageway, beyond a cavity that looked like the one I’d passed through to get inside the tree. I dashed inside of it, and a frigid blast of air sank its teeth into my skin. Slowing my steps, I glanced around, found crooked branches looming over me like ancient sentinels, muted by a veil of fog.
Where am I?
Through the blackness above, I couldn’t discern if there was a sky overhead, whether I’d escaped the tree. There was only the green pulsing glow across the ground that offered any light. My boot struck a hard surface and I tripped forward, falling onto a green patch where something crawled. Hundreds of tiny, slithering, worm-like creatures wriggling across patches of lichen and moss.
A scream tore out of me, and I scrambled backward, pushing to my feet.
Chills palmed the back of my neck, and I felt eyes watching me from overhead, waiting like silent spectators in an arena.
“Raivox!” I called out. “Raivox!” My voice echoed, as it would were I in a cave.
Trapped.
I kept on, directionless. Aimless.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
KAZHIMYR
Atop a hill that sloped down to the edge of Hagsmist forest, Kazhimyr peered around the mossy tor. He, Dravien, and Ravezio crouched there, watching one lone guard who slouched in the saddle as his horse aimlessly plodded along the stretch of woods.
“A single guard? That’s all the king could spare?” Ravezio asked beside him.
“I suppose everyone is busy chasing after someone. Besides, we’re the only fools reckless enough to seek out the mortal lands. Poor bastard’s probably bored to death.”
Dravien groaned. “Are we doing this or are we going to stand here whispering all day?”
“I’ll do it,” Ravezio said, pushing to his feet.
Kazhimyr yanked him back to the ground. “I’ll do it. Last thing we need is a statue to commemorate the moment.”
“Ah yeah, better that he collapses into chunks of meat all over the lawn. I’ll bite my lip, spit on the bastard and it’s done.”
“Hurry up about it, will you? I gotta piss.” Dravien gripped his groin where he sat on the ground beside us.
The moment the guard turned away, making another sluggish circuit along the treeline, Ravezio jumped to his feet and tore across the lawn toward him. He managed to get right up on the guard, knocking him off the horse which galloped off without him. They rollicked across the grass for a moment as Ravezio fought him, wrangling him beneath his body.
Kazhimyr pushed to his feet, striding toward the two with Dravien hobbling along just behind him.
His wounds were mostly healed, except for the blade he’d suffered to his knee that’d penetrated the bone. That one would take another day.
“Is he killing him or fucking him?”
“Must be savoring the moment.” Kazhimyr sneered, hastening his pace when Ravezio finally spat in the guard’s face.
The guard seized and convulsed on the ground and all three men strode past him into the woods. Once cloaked by the trees, Dravien drifted off, presumably to piss, returning minutes later.
“Took you long enough,” Ravezio muttered as he sharpened his blade on a rock.
Dravien sailed a mirthless smile back at him. “Big cocks take a while to drain.”
