Shard, page 7
part #2 of Cruelly Made Series
The shadows slide over the interior of the tunnel and seem to grasp the bars of the gate like fingers. I touch a bar with my fingertip. The shadows continue their slow, velvety dance.
ScatheFire had said he heard the Blight’s song. Did the Blight dance for me? Was it already inside me, gnawing on my sanity?
My Aether isn’t reacting, though. Not even a twinge. Nothing except the usual prickly discomfort like an itchy sweater.
So how does the Warden herd the bigger Blightlings into the arena? Transporting Blightlings to the main arena in the Capital for the trials is dangerous business. When the Blightlings come in, the entire path is cleared. Extremely strong, enchanted and blessed crates are used, the Blightlings are collared and bound, and it’s just a big deal. The general rule on can we contain this Blightling is if the Blightling can still walk and still has skin, it can be contained.
But the worm? How had the worm been shipped anywhere? BlightWorms aren’t just extraordinarily powerful, they are big.
And how does he sort and herd the Blightlings at the bottom of the Pit? An elaborate system of some kind of reinforced panels? But what could possibly have restrained something like the Ball Blightling? You would think if there’s anything that could create a barrier between Blightlings and everyone else, the military would have it.
But clearly there are ways to contain and manage Blightlings beyond just stuffing them in a hole in the ground.
The shadows curl around the bloodstains and gashes on the wall.
I press myself into the gate. Something inside me expects him to come walking up that long slope and try to spank me through the bars of this gate.
The Blight must be playing with me. Preying on me. Trying to lure me down there.
“Of course he’s down there,” I tell myself under my breath. “Or what was him.”
He’s an Imperial Mage. He’s a Fell. If anyone could survive and need rescue… it would be him…
That’s crazy talk, and I know it. There’s no rescue. You get taken by Blightlings, everyone prays you die real quick. That is the best kind of rescue you can hope for.
“Heart.”
I jump and spin around.
Smoke stands very, very close to me.
“What did you say?” I ask, breathing hard.
“I’ve been talking to you for a solid minute,” he says, tone flat.
I put a hand over my heart, still gasping as if some kind of spell had been broken. I look back at the tunnel.
“What are you doing?”
Do I tell him about the shadows? No. I can’t let them think I’m cracking up—and I’m not cracking up. ScatheFire had said he could hear the Blight’s song. Well, I can see the shadows. The Blight won’t sneak up on me as long as I’m not dumb enough to let it. “Thinking about ScatheFire.”
Smoke doesn’t even blink. His short hair drifts around his temples in a haze. He’s got eyes the color of ashes. “It’s probably better if you don’t.”
“He was the closest thing I had to a friend,” I say, annoyed. “I’ll grieve him if I want to.”
“That is how the Blight will consume you,” he says. “It preys on your softness.”
I snort. “Then why are Heart teams the most powerful teams?”
“They are also the most likely to perish when their Heart fails them,” he says, tone acrid.
“What do you have against Hearts?”
“They’re overrated and dangerous.” He snorts and looks at the arena. “Look what a half-stable Crystal battlemage can do. Hearts are a waste.”
“Sounds to me like you just don’t like the idea of a Heart,” I say.
His expression doesn’t change. “I do not like the idea of being told who I will love, and that there is magic that will compel me to love someone so fiercely that if they are lost, I will be lost too, and that I have to protect that person from horrors we all face because they have to be kept soft and pure.”
“That isn’t how a Heart works,” I say. “And Hearts don’t have to be kept soft and pure. That’s just a rumor.”
“But your softness is how the Blight will get to you,” he says coldly. “The Blight knows you want ScatheFire back. It will feed on that. Stop entertaining it.”
He walks away.
Well. That’s… harsh.
But maybe he’s right. This place has damned floating balls of Blight. I can’t assume the regular rules apply. Because nobody has ever told me Blightlings can fly.
Hammer shouts at one of the grunts and shoves him into the ground. The other guy jumps up, grabs his pickaxe, and swings.
“I’m surprised it took this long for a fight to break out,” Smoke comments.
“The prisoners here aren’t the kind of idiots who get arrested for bar brawls.” Blood watches the fight as they tumble through the dirt and crystal garden. “These prisoners were the artists. Open-faced hammers to the skull with an audience isn’t their style.”
“Did some research?” Smoke asks.
Blood cocks his head to the side. “Where I was born, the degenerates aspired to end up in the Pit. But they could never manage it, because they were just common criminals.”
“Who would aspire to be in the Pit?” I ask, aghast. Rot snorts agreement.
Blood shrugs. “Fools who like to think they’re meaner than the Blight.”
The Aether Mages move to break up the fight, but the Warden stops them.
Hammer grabs a chunk of crystal and swings at the guy with the pickaxe. Except Hammer’s not too bright and grabs the chunk in his full palm, and a sharp edge slices into his palm and blood spurts everywhere.
“This guy was a criminal mastermind?” I sigh.
“He’s here,” Rot agrees, also sighing.
Blood pulls forward with an elegant gesture, and the stream of blood droplets swirls around him like he’s the center of a very strange spindle.
I give him a sideways look.
“What?” he asks sweetly.
I sigh. Show-off.
Hammer surges forward and rams into his adversary like a bull. They slide through the dirt. Hammer rears up and bashes down with the chunk of crystal.
Splat
The sound of the other prisoner’s head getting hammered open like an overripe melon startles even Blood. His chain drops to the ground in a second, smaller splat.
I cover my mouth with my hands.
“I’ve seen guys get their heads caved in with rocks,” Rot says quietly. “It usually takes a few more times.”
“I’ve seen guys get their heads caved in with hammers and it usually takes at least three good swings,” Smoke murmurs.
I had made the chunk of crystal that could do that to a skull. Terrified, I shoot a glance at the Warden.
Hammer’s hand is still in what’s left of the guy’s skull, like he’d shoved his hand into the worst cookie jar ever created. After a shocked second, he yanks back.
Schollllorpppp
Bits of the other person come along. An eyeball dangles off the edge of the crystal bludgeon.
Someone pukes. Then someone else pukes. Then Hammer spontaneously pukes.
Into the guy’s caved-in skull.
Hammer jerks his head to the side, realizing although the skull now looks like a bucket, it is in fact not a bucket. He drops the crystal bludgeon.
I look at the buckets of crystal chunks.
Dear gods, what have I done?
8
Crystal
“What now?” Rot grumbles as Aether guards show up.
“Time to dance like good little trained dogs,” Frost informs us with a grin.
“School doesn’t start for another few weeks,” Blood says dryly.
“Let’s go,” Frost says, still grinning.
Well, shit. What’s next? A demonstration of some weapons they’d made with my conjured crystal? Frost is pretty pleased with herself.
The morning is already muggy and the swamps in the distance have given the entire compound a fetid stench. A few very determined flies try to burrow into the corners of my eyes.
By now the path to the training arena is familiar. I can already smell Blight and blood. We’re not taken into the lower salle, but led up some stairs into the stands.
Behind me, Rot mutters and Smoke whispers to be quiet. I touch the small of Blood’s back, sensing the tension and worry knotting in his muscles.
We come out into the stands. Instead of visitors in the observation box, they’ve set up a large valance over two of the lower benches, and there’s a cluster of about fifteen people. I recognize the Warden. I also recognize some high-ranking members of the military, a few very highly-ranked nobles, a Researcher, and…
the Atrament Fell we’d met on the lower level.
In the arena is a Blightling that had once been some kind of bovine, but is now a shambling, gelatinous creature that periodically bellows a tortured moo between snuffling around in the sand. Military Aether Mages in full battle armor stand around the arena while an assortment of the prison’s Aether guards and regular foot soldiers ring the arena a bit farther back as a second line of defense.
What the fuck?
The Atrament Fell stares at me. He’s seated at the edge of the valance, closest to us, and in proper light, he’s both impossibly handsome and repulsive. His cheekbones are so high it looks like they got shoved up by his eyes by two hands, and his chin stretched downward, his forehead swept up and back—it’s a strange arrangement of facial bones that sends a shudder through me.
His eyes are two black pits with tiny corners of white framing the impossible darkness. His hair is black, unbound, and so long it actually trails on the ground behind him, sort of drifting and shifting like a shadow, like Smoke’s hair moves on its own. He’s unbelievably pale—paler than Blood, but in a different way, as if there could be shades of pale.
Blood’s pale in a way that suggests he’d once been alive. Atrament is pale in a way that he was never alive.
He nods at Blood. “Hello, again.”
Blood’s fury activates his Fell thread.
The military and nobles don’t seem too upset by the presence of a mysterious Atrament Fell. In fact, one Colonel present looks up from his wine and says, “You know each other?”
“We’ve met,” Blood grates out.
“Indeed.” Atrament somehow succeeds in sounding dry, disinterested, and smug all at the same time. The edges of his long hair twitch on the ground like cat tails.
There’s a spread of fancy food and wine, and one of the nobles—a young man with a rapier at his side that I recognize from court but can’t remember his name—has a little fluffy dog wearing a jeweled collar on his lap. He pets the dog with one hand and sips his wine with the other, watching the tortured Blight-bovine in the arena.
The Researcher is sitting next to Atrament, and the Warden is plucking grapes, and everyone is chatting like it’s a fucking hunting party.
My Fells look lost and uncomfortable as they stand under the valance. Rot tries to push himself into a corner of the tent, Blood seethes with disgust, and Smoke, simply by virtue of being Smoke, does his best to fade out of awareness.
I look at the Researcher, smile my absolute best courtly maiden smile, and then shove my bare foot between his hip and Atrament’s. “Excuse me, I really must sit, and this looks like the most comfortable spot.”
The Researcher looks confused. “I—”
“Please?” I ask sweetly. I can be a real sugar-tongued bitch when I need to be. I lean closer to him, studying his strange, pale eyes. He’s a lot like the Warden. What is it with the people in this place?
Then again, why can I suddenly conjure permanent crystals? Why is the sky blue? Why can I sense the Fells? Why did I like getting spanked by ScatheFire? Why is an Atrament just sitting there with hair like a nine-tailed cat?
I’m not trying to seduce the Researcher, because I’m grimy, barely washed, and wearing my prison rags. The loose neckline of the prison rags dangles open around my neck. He doesn’t bother checking out my tits. Atrament, on the other hand, is admiring them with frank interest.
Good. So he does have a pulse.
Atrament answers for the gob-smacked Researcher. “Of course, Lady Crystal. Wherever you will be most comfortable.”
His inflection is…wait.
Was Atrament born noble?
A noble Fell?
The Researcher scoots over, and I spin around and drop my ass next to Atrament before I get dizzy on shock.
Sitting next to him doesn’t help much. His magic tingles against mine like a scratchy sweater’s little hairs getting caught on everything, and there’s another, vaguer sensation of my Fells pulling and shifting. They don’t like this and want me to get away from him.
“Are we going to get started, Warden?” the Colonel who seems in charge of this asks. I know him, I’ve met him a dozen times before. I hadn’t served in his regiment, though. He spent most of his time back in the capital. Not so much time on the front anymore, and from the tummy pulling against the buttons of his uniform, he’d been enjoying his time in the Capital.
“It looks very tame,” the noble with the dog on his lap says, pausing long enough in his morning wine to actually speak. He gestures to the Blightling in the center of the ring, still snuffing around in the dirt, finding things to crunch on and eat.
It did seem very tame, but Blightlings could seem harmless until provoked.
Is it eating the little shards left over from clearing the arena? There are glints and glimmers on the sand. We couldn’t possibly have gotten all the little fragments, but is this Blightling seeking out the pieces and eating them?
It didn’t seem to be having any effect on the Blightling. Small favors.
“They look tame, young lord,” the Warden says. “But they’re very dangerous, even when they’re formed from docile origins like a dairy cow.”
Wait. The Warden had created this thing?
I’ve always thought that the Blightlings that came out of the Pit were just overgrown vermin and insects and the critters that came out of the dark. Or other prisoners.
The Warden steps forward and rings a little bell.
Attention shifts to the arena. I press my thigh along Atrament, ignoring the way he feels like lightening and coarse wool. His attention shifts to me even as his eyes remain on the arena.
I keep one eye on him, and one on the arena, and whisper, “Where’s ScatheFire?”
“You mean the ScatheFire Fell I saw with you on the second level?”
“You have a collection of them? Of course that one.”
“You know whereabouts he is.”
“I’m looking for something more specific.” This is a crazy conversation and Smoke will brain me if he overhears it, but Atrament dwells down there, so he’ll know about ScatheFire. Now, finally, maybe I can put this maddening nonsense to rest and get the Blight out of my head.
“You’re looking for me to tell you he is alive and unharmed and awaiting rescue? In which case, I have nothing to tell you.”
“So tell me something useful.” This guy is clearly someone’s noble offspring. Nothing about him suggests an actual age.
His eyes are just… darkness. A darkness that wants to consume me. A hot hunger that feels like breath on the back of my neck. My Aether scratches in my skin.
He says, “I just did.”
“You and I have a different idea of useful.”
“Considering my profession and your circumstances, that may be to your benefit.”
I should shudder, but I don’t.
I tear my attention away from Atrament. The gate’s opened up, and some Aether Mages—a team I’ve not seen here before—herds a naked, cowering man into the arena. Every time he hesitates, they flick him with frost and fire, sending him squealing and stumbling closer to the Blight-cow.
“Please, please!” he begs, holding up his hands in supplication to all of us as he spins around “Please! What have I done?”
The man is skinny, filthy, bruised, shaggy-haired, and clearly only has a few teeth left.
The Blightling moos.
“Please!” the man screams to us, staggering backwards from the bovine. “What have I done?!”
“That’s just a street beggar!” I get to my feet. “What are you doing to him!?”
“Sit. Down,” the Warden orders.
I whirl to face him. “That’s just some beggar you yanked off a street! He hasn’t done anything!”
“Sit,” the Colonel commands. The nobles look at me, expressions disdainful. The one pets his dog without missing a beat.
Now Blood stands. “You can’t do this.”
“Sit,” the Colonel growls.
Blood doesn’t budge. He’s riveted to the ground, trembling in rage. I step over the bench. Atrament snares my wrist.
“Stand. Down,” the Colonel barks. “That’s an order. Unless you four want to make your stay here permanent.”
Blood’s hands curl into fists. I snarl at the Colonel, “That is an innocent man. Why don’t you use one of the prisoners for this? They’re all doomed anyway!’
“You have your order, Mage!” the Colonel barks. “All of you stand down!”
“Sit,” Atrament says, tugging my arm with courtly gentleness.
I snap my wrist out of his grip. I shake with fury and grief. Magic roils around under my hands and the ground under me feels like it’s trembling. At least to me. Nobody else seems to notice.
We’ve been ordered to stand and watch this man die a horrible death. I can’t. I won’t.
Blood grabs me from behind and crushes me against his chest. “Don’t, don’t,” he rasps to me.
The Blightling moos, its attention finally focusing on the beggar.
“Don’t do this,” I beg the Colonel, Warden, everyone.
Blood holds me so tight I can’t breathe.
“Don’t, don’t, don’t.” He buries his face in my hair and tries to pull my head so I can’t watch.
I scream as the Blightling charges.
Rot makes a horrible moan and flings his huge arms around Blood. Smoke’s tendrils wrap around all of us. Fell thread pounds. I scream, pulling the magic up through myself, trying to protect us all from hammering grief of watching this. I pull on it like I’m pulling a net out of water, screaming as the Blightling’s bovine jaws open, and open, and keep opening.
