Black Halo

Twenty-Two

WISE MEN REMEMBER TO

STOMP FACES TWICE

Gariath had never particularly understood the reverence for elders that some weaker races seemed to possess. Celebrating the gradual and inevitable weakening of body and mind that ultimately ended in a few years of uncontrolled bodily functions and a mound of dirt just didn’t seem all that logical.

Of course, it was different for his people. A weakened Rhega mind was still sharp; a frail Rhega body was still strong. And while weaker races praised senility as wisdom, the Rhega undoubtedly grew craftier with their years. Taking these traits, and only these traits, into account, he could see how an elder might be revered and respected.

However, when he factored in how incredibly annoying elders, particularly dead ones, could be, he figured he was justified in regarding them with a level of contempt just a hair above ‘intolerable’.

‘How long has it been since you saw the sun shine like this, Wisest?’

He growled in response, not looking up. ‘Is that rhetorical?’

‘Philosophical.’

‘There are an awful lot of words to say “pointless”, I’ve found.’

The fact that he didn’t even have to see the elder’s teeth to know he was grinning, with a profound smugness that only someone who had died and come back could achieve, was just number eleven on an itemised list of irritating traits that was quickly growing.

‘Have you not noticed your surroundings, Wisest?’ the grandfather asked. ‘There is beauty in the land.’

Senseless optimism. Number five.

Gariath stopped in his tracks and looked up, regarding his companion, the grandfather growing slightly translucent as a beam of light struck him. Narrowing his eyes, he looked up and out from the river, its stream reduced to a shallow half-a-toe high. The forest rose in great walls upon the ridges of the ravine he stood in, fingers of brown and green sticking up decisively to present a unity of arboreal rude gestures at him. Sunlight seeped through them, painting the ravine in contrasting portraits of black smears and golden rays.

‘Dying rivers,’ he snorted. ‘Broken rocks. This land is dead.’

‘What?’ The spirit looked at him ponderously. ‘No, no. There is life here. We spoke to it, once. We heard the land and the land … the land …’

His voice drifted into nothingness, his form following soon after, disappearing in the sunlight. Gariath continued on, unworried. Grandfather would not stay gone. Gariath was not that lucky. His sigh was one of many, added to the snarls and curses that formed his symphony of annoyance.

The river’s bed of sharp rocks was not to blame, of course. His feet had been toughened over six days, searing coastal sand, twisted forest thorns and, more recently, a number of ravines home to sharper rocks than these.

It was the repetition, the endless monotony of it all, that drove him to voice as he did, if only to serve as reprieve from the forest’s endless chorus. The island’s dynamic environs might have pleased someone else, someone simpler: a leaf-brained, tree-sniffing, fart-breathing pale piece of filth.

The pointy-eared thing would enjoy this, he thought. She likes dirt and trees and things that smell worse than her. This sort of thing would fill her head with so many happy thoughts. He paused, inhaled deeply and growled. As good a reason as any to spill her brains out on a rock.

‘Really? Thinking about brains again?’

The voice came ahead of him. He looked up and growled at the grandfather crouching upon a large, round boulder. The elder’s penchant for shifting positions wildly did not do anything to impress the dragonman anymore.

‘You’re getting predictable, Wisest,’ the elder chided.

‘It weighs heavily on my mind,’ he grunted. ‘And hers will weigh heavily on the ground.’ He stalked past, trying to ignore the grandfather’s stare. ‘Once I pick up the scent again.’

‘It’s been days since you last had it.’

‘It’s important.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she will lead me to Lenk.’

‘Which is important why?’

‘Because Lenk is the key to finding meaning again.’

‘How?’

‘Because …’ He stopped and whirled about, not surprised to see the rock empty of residence, but growling all the same. ‘That’s what you told me.’ He turned and scowled at the elder leaning against the ravine’s wall. ‘Were you lying to me?’

‘Not entirely, no,’ the grandfather replied with a roll of effulgent shoulders. ‘I had simply thought you might lose interest by now, as all pups do.’

‘Pups aren’t big enough to smash heads, Grandfather.’

‘Size is relative to age.’

‘No matter how old you are, I’m still big enough to crush your head.’

‘All right, then, size is irrelevant to someone with no head to crush, which is a benefit of being very old.’

‘And dead.’

The grandfather held up a single clawed finger. ‘Point being, I had thought you would have found something else to do by now.’

‘Something else …’

‘Something else.’

He spared a single, hard scowl for the grandfather before shouldering past. ‘Something other than finding a reason to live? I suppose I could always die.’ He snorted. ‘But someone had a problem with that.’

‘I meant finding a reason that doesn’t involve killing so many things. You’ve tried that already. Has it brought you any closer to happiness?’

‘I’m not looking for happiness. I’m looking for a reason to keep going.’

‘The sun? The trees? There is much here, Wisest, far away from the sorrows that have made you unhappy. A Rhega could live well here, wanting for nothing, without humans of any kind.’

‘And do what? Listen to you all day? Have pleasant conversations about the weather?’

‘Would that be so bad?’ The grandfather’s voice drifted to his ear frills softly. ‘It is rather sunny, today, Wisest … Have you noticed?’

The whisper in the elder’s voice quelled the roar rumbling in Gariath’s chest, so he merely snorted. ‘I’ve noticed.’

‘When did you last see this much life?’

Gariath glanced around. The forest was silent. The trees did not blow. ‘There is nothing but death here, Grandfather.’

He didn’t bother to look up to see. He could feel the elder’s frown as sharp as any rock.

‘The stench is hard to miss.’ His nostrils quivered, lips curled back in a cringe at the scent. ‘The trees are trying to cover it up, but there’s the stink of dead bodies everywhere. Bones, mostly, some other smellier things …’

‘There is also life, Wisest. Trees, some beasts, water …’

‘There’s something, yeah. I’ve been smelling it for hours now.’ Gariath took in a deep breath, glancing over his shoulder. ‘Broken rocks, dried-up rivers, dead leaves and dusk.’

‘There was so much before … so much,’ the spirit whispered. ‘I used to hear it everywhere. And now … death?’ He sounded confused, distracted. ‘But why so much?’

‘There would be more,’ Gariath growled. ‘Good deaths, too. But someone distracted me from killing the pointy-eared one.’

‘Would that be me or the roach she shoved up your nose?’ The grandfather chuckled. ‘If it means there’s one less dead body on this island, I won’t object to it.’

‘You were the one to tell me she was going to kill Lenk!’ Gariath snarled in response. ‘If she hasn’t already, she’s still planning to.’

‘And if she has? Then what?’

‘You’re the elder. You’re supposed to know!’

‘My point remains,’ the grandfather said. ‘What do you suppose happens when you find the humans again? Given it any thought?’

‘By following him this far, I’ve found Grahta and I’ve found you. That’s a start.’

‘But where is the end? Will you just go chasing ghosts your whole life, Wisest?’

He glanced up, regarding the elder with hard eyes. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Grandfather?’

He blinked and the elder was gone. He turned about and saw him perched on the lip of the ravine, staring down the river.

‘I want you to know, Wisest,’ he whispered, ‘that what you find may not be what you’re looking for.’

Gariath raised an eye ridge as the elder’s figure quivered slightly. The sunlight seemed to shine through his body a little more clearly, as though golden teeth seeped into his spectral flesh and devoured his substance, bit by bit.

‘So much was lost here, Wisest. Sometimes I wonder if anything can really be found. But the scent, since you mentioned it …’

There was reluctance in Gariath’s step as he walked toward the elder. ‘Grandfather?’

‘This place was not dug,’ he said. ‘Not by natural hands, anyway.’

‘What?’

‘Suffering was more plentiful back then,’ the grandfather replied, his voice whispery as his body faded briefly and reappeared in the river. ‘Swift death was the sole mercy, and a rare one, at that. Many more died in agony … many more.’

‘Back when?’

‘We didn’t want any part of it,’ the grandfather continued, heedless of his company, ‘but maybe that’s just how the Rhega are destined to die … not by our own hands, our own fights. What is it we were even fighting for? I can’t remember …’

Gariath stopped and watched as the elder trudged farther down the river, growing hazier with each step. Every twitch of the dragonman’s eyelid saw the grandfather fading more and more, leaving a bit of himself in each ray of sunlight he stepped into and out of.

Gariath was tempted to let him go, to keep walking that way until there was nothing left of him, nothing heavy enough that he would have to drop, nothing substantial enough about him that could ache.

He watched the grandfather go, watched him disappear, leaving him in the riverbed …

Alone again.

‘Grandfather!’ he suddenly cried out.

The outline stopped at the edge of a sunbeam, all that remained of him being the single black eye he turned upon Gariath. The younger dragonman approached him warily, head low, scrutinising, ear frills out, wary.

‘Grandfather,’ Gariath asked, barely louder than a whisper, ‘how long have you been awake?’

‘For … quite some … no! No! You won’t send me away like that!’

This time, when Gariath noticed the elder beside him again, he was defined, flesh full and red, eyes hard and black. The elder gestured farther down the river with his chin.

‘Up ahead.’

‘What?’

Gariath glanced up, saw nothing through the beams of light. When he looked back to his side, the water stirred with a ripple and nothing more. The grandfather was up ahead, trudging through the river, vanishing behind each beam of light.

‘What’s ahead?’

‘A reason, Wisest, if you would follow … and see.’

Gariath followed, without particularly knowing why, save for the urge to keep the elder in sight, to keep him from fading behind the walls of sun. With each step he took, his nostrils filled with strange scents, not unfamiliar to him. The chalky odour of bone was prevalent, though that didn’t tell Gariath much; he doubted that he could go anywhere on the island without that particular stink.

Thus, he was not particularly surprised when he spied the skeleton, its great white foot looming out of sunlight. It was titanic, the river humbly winding its way beneath the dead creature, flowing with such a soft trickle to suggest it was afraid the bleached behemoth might stir and rise at any moment.

Gariath found that not particularly hard to believe as he stalked alongside it, ducking beneath its massive splayed leg, winding between its shattered ribs, approaching the great, fishlike skull.

His eyes were immediately drawn to the massive hole punched through its head, a jagged rent far wider than the smooth round sockets that had been the creature’s eyes. Its bones bore similar injuries: cracks in the ribs, gashes in the femur, the left forearm bent backward behind a spine that crested to challenge the height of the ravine as the right one reached forward.

Towards what, though?

The great dead thing, when it had been slightly greater and not so dead, had stopped with its arm extended, skeletal fingers withered in such a way to suggest that it had reached for something and failed to seize it.

He stared back down the ravine, noting the cut of the rock: too rough to be wrought by careful tools and delicate chiselling, too smooth to have been made by any natural spirit. Rather, it was haphazardly hewn, as if by accident, as though some great thing had fallen …

And was dragged, he thought, looking back to the cracked skull, or dragged itself through until …

‘This land is not our land. Not anymore.’

Gariath looked up and saw the elder crouched upon the fishlike skull, staring at the rent in the bone intently.

‘This island is a cairn.’

‘Those dark stains upon the rock,’ Gariath said. ‘They are—’

‘Blood,’ the elder answered. ‘Flesh, spilling out, sloughing off, tainting the earth as this thing’s screams tainted the air when it dragged itself away from the weapons that had shattered its legs and broken its back.’

Gariath looked to the gaping jaws, the rows upon rows of serrated teeth, the shadows cast in the expanse of its fleshless maw.

‘What did it scream?’

‘Same thing all children scream for … its mother and father.’

He did not ask if they had come to save their titanic offspring, did not even want to think what kind of creatures could have sired something akin to this tremendous demon. He knew he should have looked away, then, away from the mouth that was suddenly so pitiably silent, away from the eyes that he could see vast, empty and straining to find the liquid to brim with tears. He tried to look away, forced his stare to the earth.

But it was impossible. Impossible not to hear the cries of two voices moaning for their mother. Impossible not to wonder if they had died screaming for their father. Impossible not to see their eyes, so wide, so vacant, their breath vanished in the rain. Impossible not to—

‘No.’

His fist followed his snarl, striking against the skull and finding an unyielding, merciful pain that ripped through his mind, bathing vision and voice in endless ringing red.

‘Why this, Grandfather?’ he asked. ‘Why show me?’

‘I have heard it said,’ the elder replied coldly, ‘that all life is connected.’ His laugh was short, unpleasant. ‘Stupidity. From mouths that repeated it over and over so that no one may speak long enough to point out their stupidity.’ He crawled across the skull, staring down into the skull. ‘It’s deaths that are connected, Wisest. Never forget that. One life taken is another one fading, one life gone and another one vanishes because of its absence. Each one more horrible, more senseless than the last.’

‘I don’t understand, Grandfather.’

‘You do, you’re just too stupid to realise it, too scared to remember it.’ He stared down at the dragonman, eyes hard, voice harder. ‘Your sons, Wisest.’

Gariath’s eyes went wide, his hands clenched into fists.

‘Don’t.’

‘They died, horribly.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Senselessly.’

‘Grandfather …’

‘And you would so willingly follow them. A senseless, pointless, worthless death.’

No reply came this time but a roar incomprehensible of everything but the anger and pain melded together behind it. Gariath flung himself at the skeleton, scaling up the ribs, pulling himself onto the spine and leaping, vertebra over giant vertebra, toward the skull.

The grandfather regarded him quietly before he tilted just slightly to his left and collapsed into the rent, disappearing into shadow.

‘You brought me here to mock me? Them?’ Gariath roared, approaching the cavernous hole. ‘To show me this monument of death?’

‘A monument, yes,’ the grandfather’s voice echoed from inside, ‘of death, yes … but whose, Wisest?’

‘Yours …’ Gariath snarled, leaning over and into the hole. ‘AGAIN!’

The elder gave no reply and Gariath did not demand one, did not have the sense to as he was struck suddenly, by the faintest, lingering memory of a scent, but recoiled as though struck by a fist. He reeled back, blinking wildly, before thrusting his face back down below and inhaling deeply, choking back the foul staleness within to filter and find that scent, that odiferous candle that refused to extinguish itself in the dark.

‘Rivers …’ he whispered.

‘Rocks …’ the elder replied.

‘A Rhega died here,’ he gasped.

He felt the rent beneath his grip, felt the roughness of it. This was no clean blow, no gentle tap that had caved in the beast’s skull. The gash was brutal, messy, cracked unevenly and laden with jagged ridges and deep, furrowed marks.

Claw marks, he recognised. Bite marks.

‘A Rhega fought here.’ He stared into the blackness. ‘Who, Grandfather? Who was it?’

‘Connected,’ the elder murmured back, ‘all connected.’

‘Grandfather, tell me!’

‘You will know, Wisest … I tried so hard that you wouldn’t, but … you will …’

A sigh rose up from the darkness, the elder’s voice growing softer upon it.

‘And the answer won’t make you happy …’

‘Grandfather.’

‘Because at the end of a Rhega’s life … there is nothing.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘All you are missing, Wisest … is darkness and quiet.’

‘Grandfather.’

Silence.

‘GRANDFATHER!’

Darkness.

His own echo returned to him, ringing out through the skull and reverberating into the forest. It seemed to take the scent with it, the smell dissipating in his nostrils as the sound faded, dying with every whispered repetition as it slipped into trees that had suddenly gone quiet, leaving him alone.

Again.

That thought became an echo of its own, spiralling inward and growing heavier on his heart with every repetition.

Alone. Again, again, again.

No matter how many spirits he found, how many rocks he stomped, how many soft pink things he surrounded himself with. They would leave him, all of them, leaving him with nothing, nothing of weight, nothing of meaning.

Except that word.

‘Again, again,’ he whispered, smashing his fist against the bone impotently with each repetition. ‘Alone again and always … always and again …’

‘Again …’

It was not him who spoke this time, nor was it the grandfather’s voice. It certainly was not the scent of either of them that filled his nostrils and drew his head up. His lip quivered at the odour: pungent, iron, sweaty, familiar.

Longface.

The creature appeared farther down the ravine, black against the assault of sunlight, but unmistakable. Its frame was thick, tall, laden with the contours of overdeveloped muscle and the jagged ridges of iron armour. A thick wedge of sharpened metal was slung over its shoulder as a long-jawed face scanned the rocks. He recognised the sight immediately, his eyes narrowing, lip curling up in a quiet snarl.

Female.

‘And again and again and again,’ she snarled, her voice grating. ‘Until you tell me what I want to know, you green filth.’

‘Shi-neh-ah! Shi-neh!’ the creature at her blood-covered feet spoke a language he did not understand. ‘Maw-wah!’

At a glimpse, it resembled something akin to a bipedal lizard … or it had been bipedal before both its legs had been crushed. It now strained to crawl away on long, lanky arms, leaving the sands of the cliff they stood upon stained red. Over the corpses of other creatures, identical to it but for their severed limbs, split chests and lifeless eyes, it crawled towards Gariath.

It caught sight of him, looked up. Its yellow eyes were wide, full of fear, full of pain, trembling with a life that flickered like a candle before a breeze. It reached out a hand to him, opened its mouth to speak. He stared back, anticipating its words to the point of agony.

They never came.

‘I don’t have time to learn how to speak your language.’ The longface seized the creature’s long tail, hauled it up with one hand. ‘You have exactly two breaths to learn how to speak overscum!’

‘MAW-WAH! MAW-WAH!’

The sounds of its shrieking mingled with the sound of claws raking against the sand stained with its own life, straining to find some handhold as it was hoisted up by its tail. Gariath saw its eyes wide as it looked to him, saw the pleading in its eyes, the familiar fear and pain that he had seen in so many eyes before.

‘RHE—’

One breath.

Her thick blade burst out the creature’s belly, thick ribbons of glistening meat pouring out. She paused, twisted it once, and dropped the creature. The blade laughed a thick, grisly cackle as it slowly slid from the creature’s flesh.

Gariath continued to stare at the creature’s eyes, at its mouth. He saw only darkness. Heard only silence.

‘Hey.’

It was the sheer casualness with which she spoke that made him look up to the longface. Her expression was blank, unamused and only barely interested in him. She slammed the blade down, embedding it in the sand as she dusted blood-flecked hands together.

‘They come in red?’ she asked. Narrowing white eyes at him, she snorted. ‘No. You aren’t one of them, are you?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘You want to fight, yeah?’

He wasn’t sure why he nodded.

‘That’s fine,’ she said again as she sat upon a rock with a grunt. ‘Just give me a moment.’

He wasn’t sure why he waited.

‘What are they?’ he asked, at last.

‘Those Green Things?’ she replied with a shrug. ‘They don’t have names, as far as I know. They don’t need names.’

‘Everything has a name.’

‘You?’

‘Wise—’ He paused, grunting. ‘Gariath.’

‘Dech,’ she said, slapping her shoulder. ‘Carnassial of Arkklan Kaharn, chief among my people, the netherlings and—’

‘I know what you are,’ he replied. ‘I’ve killed a lot of you.’

‘No fooling?’ She grinned at him. ‘Yeah, I’ve heard of you. The Ugly Red One, they called you. You cut open a lot of warriors, you know. I knew a few of them.’ Her lips curled back, the grin evolving from unpleasant to horrific. ‘You’re good at what you do.’

‘You’re calm about that.’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ she asked. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to kill you, but it’s not going to be personal or anything. It’s just what I do. It’s what you do. Just like dying was just what those warriors did.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Yeah, I don’t blame you. A lot of overscum have trouble understanding it, which is why they’re always rushing around. They don’t know what they’re supposed to do.’ She gestured to the eviscerated lizard-creatures. ‘Take These Green Things. We got plenty of them back at our base. Slaves. Some of them try to fight against us, some of them pray to some kind of sky-thing, some of them beg for mercy, some of them try to run, some of them talk about how things were …’ She looked up at him. ‘And some of them cry. Big, slimy tears come pouring down their faces when we kill one of them. That’s what baffles me.’

‘They mourn.’

‘Why?’

‘To honour their dead.’

‘The dead don’t care.’

‘They do.’

‘You talk to them?’

‘Sometimes,’ he replied.

‘Huh … well, they shouldn’t. What do they got to ask for once they’re dead?’

‘Honour. Respect.’

‘You and I both know that’s … what’s the word? Shnitz?’ She shrugged. ‘If you believed that, you wouldn’t have watched this ugly thing’ – she kicked the eviscerated corpse – ‘do what he did.’

‘He didn’t do anything. You killed him.’

‘Ah, see, this is where the overscum stop learning,’ she said, smirking. ‘You all talk about death like it’s a sole decision. It takes two to die. The person with the sword does the least amount of work.’

He furrowed his eye ridges.

‘See,’ she elaborated, ‘these dumb things are quick. I only caught them because there was no other place to run.’ She gestured to the river rushing beneath the cliff. ‘Now, when I grabbed one, the others could have run away. They all stood and fought, though. They made the decision to die.’

She looked up at him disdainfully. ‘You could run now, too. I’ve killed plenty today. I can kill you later, if you want.’

‘You could run, too,’ he replied.

‘No, I couldn’t. There’s nothing for a female but death. I kill or I die.’ She spat on the ground. ‘You?’

He stared at her, unblinking. He closed his eyes. Darkness. He inhaled sharply. Quiet.

‘Nothing,’ he replied.

‘Didn’t think so,’ she said. She rose from the rock, pulled her blade from the sand and slung it over her shoulder. ‘You ready, then?’

He nodded. She furrowed her brow at him.

‘No weapon?’

‘Unnecessary.’

‘Don’t know what that means.’

‘It means—’

‘Don’t care, either.’

She howled, iron voice grinding against jagged teeth as she rushed him. Her blade came out in an unruly swing, adding its metal groan to her roar as it clove the air, hungry for Gariath’s neck, or torso, or head. A blade that big couldn’t be picky.

He ducked, more from reflex than desire, and dropped to all fours, meeting her rush with horns to her belly. It was impossible not to shudder at the blow, not to marvel at the rock-hard muscle he pressed against as he shoved, driving her back only one minuscule, agonising step.

As he extended his last weary breath, his muscles giving out at the futility and his mind fighting hard to remember a time when this had been easy, it was impossible to think of a reason to keep going … and even more so to keep from listening to her long, loud laugh.

‘Come on,’ she whined. ‘How are you going to kill me this way?’

It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. He remembered shrugging off blows like this before. Yet her first came down upon his neck and sent him buckling to his knees effortlessly. She made a clicking sound of disapproval, which he noticed less than the second strike she delivered. It was an intimate blow, all three metal-bound knuckles of her hand digging into his red flesh, finding a tender, affectionate spot between his shoulder blades.

Not possible. His thoughts ran wild, leaking out of his mouth as he hacked wildly, I don’t have tender spots.

His spine disagreed. His vertebrae rattled against each other, sinew bunched up painfully at the force that ran up his back and into his skull, sending brain slamming against bone and sending body crashing to the earth.

That’s never happened before …

That it had happened should have shocked him. It was difficult to feel shock, fear, pain, anything. Every scrap of consciousness was devoted to keeping his eyes open, to resist the urge to sleep into darkness, though he didn’t know why. At least if he fell now, he wouldn’t have to see the long, purple face leering down at him.

‘You’re doing it wrong.’ Her voice was clear and sharp as a knife.

Funny, but he hadn’t expected there to be a right way to die. The fact that he had been doing it wrong did explain a lot. He might have mentioned this to her, had his throat not been swelling up.

‘It’s fine for us to do this, you know,’ she said. ‘But we’re netherlings. We come from nothing. We return to nothing. We live. We breed. We kill. We die. This is all there is in life.’ She reached down and tapped his red brow. ‘Note that third part, though, about the killing. That’s important.’

Her throat loomed over him. His hand would just about fit around it, he figured, but it trembled, refused to rise.

And why should it? he asked himself. Whatever your body knows, you didn’t. Now you’re both done. There’s nothing left.

‘But overscum are supposed to have bigger things on their minds, yeah? They talk to invisible people, spend their whole lives hoarding bits of metal instead of making them into weapons; they do stupid stuff like plant crops and store food and leave it all to wailing whelps who did nothing to deserve it. Point being … you’ve got reasons to scream, don’t you?’

His breath came in shrill whispers, leaking through a closing throat, just enough to breathe, just enough to think.

Kill her and then what? What’s left? Kill more, kill more, live in death. Die, live in nothingness … but with nothing to think about, to speak about, no one left to disappear.

‘But that’s what’s so fascinating to us. To Carnassials, that is.’ She glanced over the cliff. ‘And some males. We’ve never seen this before, a breed that worries about so many stupid things and lives in complete fear of whatever invisible thing they talk to and is concerned with things other than breeding and killing. It’s like … watching ants. That’s the correct animal, right? Yeah … ants that run around and cling to every little piece of dirt like it’s the greatest piece they’ve ever seen, even as a thousand more lie around. Take that piece away, and what do they do? Some grab new ones, but most sit there … like you.’

And how much dirt have you been clinging to? Grahta, Grandfather, the humans … they’re all gone. How much more can you pick up?

‘You’re not going to get up, are you?’ She rose up, took her sword in both hands.

This won’t be so bad.

‘No more dirt, huh?’

No more hurting; no more being alone.

‘Too bad.’

She raised the weapon, angled the flat edge of it at his throat. It would be messy.

No more rivers; no more rocks.

‘Hey, maybe you’re right about the whole invisible thing, yeah? If so, I’m sure you’ll see your pink friends there with you by tonight.’

No more anything … It’ll be so great …

‘Anyway …’

‘SHENKO-SA!’

He blinked. Those words weren’t said by the longface. That shrill, shrieking sound didn’t emanate from her, either.

The loud, angry roar as she staggered away, clutching at the arrow embedded in her side, however, certainly did.

Gariath was almost afraid to look across the river, afraid that he would see the pointy-eared one. If she had placed the timely arrow and saved him, he resolved he would die right then and there, hopefully taking her with him. He was prepared for that possibility, prepared for the idea that it might have come from nowhere and given him an opportunity to take one last breath before lying down and dying.

What he saw, however, he was not prepared for.

Not Rhega, but definitely not human, the creature stood, tall and covered in green scales, at the other side of the river. His long, black bow was in a powerful, clawed hand. His body, ringed by black-and-red tattoos, was tensed and muscular. Behind his long, lashing tail, more like him – more reptilian creatures – stared at Gariath with broad, yellow eyes down long, green snouts.

The one in front raised his hand, regarded Gariath through his single yellow eye, and spoke.

‘Inda-ah, Rhega.’

‘What?’ he breathed.

‘I knew it! I knew it!’ He looked to see the longface pulling the arrow free without wincing, as though she were simply scratching an itch with a jagged, biting head. ‘Xhai said you all got up when someone started mocking you! I didn’t believe her!’

He swept his stare across the river again. The creatures were gone; nothing but greenery remained where they had once stood. Perhaps he had imagined them; perhaps they hadn’t ever been there …

But that arrow on the sand, covered in blood, was impossible to imagine. And it lay there now. He looked from it to the longface staggering toward him, dragging her weapon.

Good enough.

‘I didn’t think it would work. I owe Xhai a—’

If she saw the fist coming, she didn’t move away.

A possibility, Gariath conceded, but one he was willing to accept as he and his arm rose as one, his knuckles connecting with her chin and sending her head snapping back. She was all skull – that much was apparent from his aching fist, if not her conversation.

She, too, was ready to accept. She accepted his punches as he followed with two more in rapid succession, feeling bones shake, but not break, under his fists. She accepted the ground lost as he drove her back. She accepted his horns again, accepted the broken nose as he drove his head against her face.

Only when he stepped back, waiting for her to fall that he might end it with a foot to her skull, did she refuse to accept. She pulled her face back up to stare at him, neck creaking as she did, teeth flashing in a grin that had only grown more wild as blood from her spattered visage dripped over her lips.

‘Yeah …’

She came howling again, no concern for strategy, position or anything but the imminent and immediate desire to bring her blade swinging up to lop off his head. A moment of nostalgia swept over him at the sight of such recklessness, followed by a moment of swift panic as he saw the blade just as eager as her, sweeping up towards his head.

He caught it on his wrist, the metal gnawing at the metal bracers there. She drove the blade harder, straining to chew through and cleave his hand from his wrist, his head from his neck. He pushed back just as hard, reaching up to place his free hand on the edge. It was an effort tinged in blood as the weapon bit into his palm, making his grip slick as he shoved back, but an effort that sent the blade swinging wide and leaving her open.

He wasn’t sure if he was roaring or laughing, didn’t bother to think which it might have been, just as he didn’t wonder why his muscles suddenly felt so easy, so strong. There was blood on the ground, blood in his nostrils, anger in his veins and a purple neck beneath his claws.

Good enough.

He clenched, clawed, heard her gurgle as her blood seeped out over his palms, blending with his own. He refused to release her as she groped at him with one hand, dropped her massive, suddenly unwieldy weapon to punch at him with the other. Blows rained upon his head, one after the other. He felt the agony, felt his skull want to crack, but refused to succumb to either.

Instead, he swung his body to the side and she followed, like a purple boulder. Releasing, he sent her crashing into the ridge. The earth cracked before she did, but she stood there, bleeding from nose and neck, murder flashing in her eyes, breath coming hot and hateful from between jagged teeth.

‘That’s it,’ she snarled, ‘that’s it. This is how it’s going to happen. This is how it has to happen. From nothing, to nothing.’

‘And no one will remember you,’ he uttered. ‘I won’t leave enough of you for it.’

‘Fine, that’s just fine,’ she gasped. Her hand slipped behind her belt. ‘Good to know you’ve got a plan. Thinking ahead, grabbing your pieces of dirt …’ Her hand whipped out, sent the green vial spinning toward him. ‘STUPID!’

He had smelled it before she pulled it out, recognised it. Poison, the same that had felled Abysmyths, ate their flesh like fire ate paper. He wasn’t sure if it worked similarly on things not demonic, but he was hardly willing to see for curiosity’s sake.

He darted aside; the vial smashed against the rock and he felt a few sputtering instances of pain as droplets spat out and licked his back. His flesh burned; the scent of it sizzling filled his nostrils. It hurt, he admitted as he clenched his teeth, a lot.

‘QAI ZHOTH!’

So did the spinning blade that followed Dech’s screech. He remembered this weapon, the curved knife with its cruel, jagged edge. And it certainly remembered him, it seemed, as it sank into his shoulder and bit deeply, metal prongs slaking themselves on his blood. Pain racked him, coursing through his body in such excessive quantity that it screamed to be shared.

‘Gnaw, bite, gnash,’ Dech snarled as she took off charging toward him. ‘AKH ZEKH LAKH!’

He met her, muscle for muscle, fury for fury. They gripped each other about each other’s throats, turning, twisting, staggering as they fought for control for their respective tracheas. Gariath slipped his hands up, releasing her throat, seizing her by the temples. Her smile was momentary, lasting only as long as it took him to slip his clawed thumbs into her eyes and push.

He had heard her scream in fury and hatred, but the sound of her pain was enough to make him step away momentarily. It lasted only as long as it took her to lash out blindly, searching for him, snarling for him. He roared in reply, seizing her by the wrist, spinning her about and twisting it behind her back. His limbs worked in furious conjunction, his spare hand grabbing her by her hair, his free foot slamming onto her back, driving her to her knees, then her belly.

There his foot remained, wedged firmly between her shoulder blades as he narrowed his eyes, tightened his grip on her wild white spikes of hair and pulled.

Stubborn as the rest of her, it came slowly, hair clinging to her with such vindictiveness that scarcely any came off in his hand. But he did not stop pulling, as her neck craned. He did not stop pulling, as she screamed in panic and beat at his ankle in bloody blindness. He did not stop pulling, as he heard her flesh begin to rip.

By the time he stared down at a glistening red pate, a mop of crimson and white clenched in his claw, it seemed pointless to keep going.

He tossed it aside, taking only enough time to see that she had stopped moving, before turning away and looking back over the cliff. The other side wasn’t too far, he saw, and the scent of the creatures, their dead leaves and dry rivers, was still there, despite the blood seeping into his nostrils. He could keep going downriver, find a fallen tree or a narrow gap, and from there he could—

‘QAI ZHOTH!’

She struck him from behind, wrapping arms about his torso. Blind and scalped, nothing remained of her save arms and feet, the latter of which pumped furiously, edging him towards the cliff.

‘Nothing else, nothing else,’ she babbled behind him as he lashed out, seeking to dislodge her with an elbow, ‘there is nothing else but this.’

They staggered toward the edge, the riverbed and its sharp rocks waiting just below a surface of deceptively pristine blue. Gariath had no fear for that, no mind to think of anything but his enemy, thick in his nostrils, heavy on his back. He reached behind him as they tumbled over, seizing her blood-slick pate and twisting, tail lashing, wings flapping.

They plummeted, a brief struggle in the air, her shrieking, him roaring, until they finally righted themselves. She, the heavier in her iron skin. He, on top of her like a red anvil, hands wrapped about her face.

They hit the water in an eruption of red and white froth. Gariath, too, was plunged into blindness like his foe. But the battle was his, he knew, as she lay unmoving beneath him.

When the water settled and she lay beneath the water, skull neatly bisected like a rock, it was unnecessary to do more than rise, snort and stagger away.

‘Any happier now, Wisest?’ The grandfather was there, seated on the rocks jutting from the river. ‘Find a good reason to keep going?’

‘No thanks to you,’ Gariath snorted. ‘You didn’t tell me about them.’

‘Who?’

‘The creatures, the green things. They called me Rhega.’

‘You have not been called that before?’

‘Not by anything that looks like me.’

‘You said they were green, not red.’

‘Closer than pink,’ he growled. ‘Tell me, then, Grandfather, who are they?’

‘They are … lost, Wisest,’ Grandfather replied. ‘They will lead you to nothing.’

Gariath regarded the spirit for a moment. His eyes narrowed as he saw something in him. No, Gariath thought, it was at this moment that he saw through him. The spirit waxed, his shape trembling, becoming hazy as the sunlight poured through him. In this light, there was nothing to Grandfather, nothing hard, nothing blooded, nothing fleshy.

And Gariath turned his back to the spirit, stalking down the river.

‘Where do you go, Wisest?’ Grandfather called after him.

‘To nothing,’ he replied.