The Serpent and the Shattered Sword, page 22
And to die.
“Your orders?” he asked.
“Follow the bells,” she commanded, fixing her position in the saddle of her horse, and coming upright to ready herself for the ride ahead. “I fear the worst is ahead of us. Be ready.”
With an eager nod, her subordinate set to commanding the men in the forward march ahead. Desiring to take up the tail end of the column, with no part of her eager enough to take the lead, Zahra waited for her soldiers to pass.
“It’s not too late,” Rinley said, keeping her from raising her arms to crack the reins. “We can still go back.”
“I could’ve turned back long ago,” Zahra said, keeping her gaze cast to the dirt road beneath her horse’s hooves. “But she’s still out there.” Looking to Rinley from the corner of her eye, she did her best to betray the pull of the sheyde within. “And I’m going to save her.”
Zahra pulled her horse ahead of Rinley’s, following the last column of her men away from the forest.
“Stand beside me or get out of my way.”
Chapter XI
The Only Way Out
“YOU’VE GOT TO be joking me!”
There hadn’t been a moment’s reprieve for either Flynn or Emile as they slogged through the stagnant bog water that rushed over their knees. It was a viscous slop of grime and algae, gathering in pools that clung to the innumerable reeds and cattails shooting up through the dingy, oily surface.
“I mean, of all the places we could’ve gone. Of all the ways in you could’ve taken... ‘Hey guys, here’s a great idea: let’s wade in through the swamp so that, when we get where we’re going, we’re soaked, and miserable, and tired, and–’”
“By all that’s good, give your tongue a break already,” Emile said, snapping back at Teora’s incessant complaining about nothing he could remedy. “It makes me wonder if Alira fell, or if she just needed to get away from you.”
“Listen!” Teora yelled, sloshing her way forward through the mire. Thankful were the remainder of the group as the catching of her foot beneath the surface commanded her attention in the intermediary.
Emile looked to Flynn, just off his left shoulder, for a bit of reassurance and civilized conversation. “Is she always like this?” It wasn’t so much a question as an inference, having dealt with her incessant complaining in Périzieu.
And Chantilles.
And the entire boat ride to the Ile.
Even the hour, give or take, by Emile’s estimate, since they’d been navigating the marshlands, she hadn’t stopped.
“She even talks in her sleep,” Flynn replied, trying his best to keep his voice to a whisper, to not to startle Teora behind him.
“I don’t know if it’s a miracle or a curse that her tongue hasn’t swollen to fill the entirety of her mouth.”
“I heard that, you know!” Teora interjected.
“I didn’t doubt it for a second.”
Emile noticed the tingle on the back of his neck, the tell that Kaata had something to say and was forcing her way through the rage in his mind to get to the fore.
“You know,” Kaata began, exhibiting a sly smile as she found a comfortable point to recline in the shadows of his mind. “There are two of you here.”
Go on.
“Well, all I’m saying is that if you drown her and leave her here, we won’t have to listen to any more of this racket.”
We could, he thought, doing his best not to laugh at Teora’s expense. But then again, maybe she’s the only thing keeping the shadows of this place away. His mind went quiet as the goddess in his head tried to digest his opinion.
“You’re not wrong.”
“What’s she saying about me?” Teora gave Emile’s shoulder a shove, having worked her way past Flynn to take an undesired place at the King’s side.
“There’s no better time than the present,” Kaata said.
“I can’t tell her that,” Emile said, his thoughts escaping the confines of his lips.
“Can’t tell me what?” Teora asked, spinning him around to become the center of his attention.
“Allow me?” Kaata asked, earning approval from Emile to take his autonomy for the moment she needed to correct the boisterous Fate. His eyes ran over red, but the aura was held back by the veil of mist surrounding them.
“I wanted to drown you,” she told Teora. “I’m sure that, even if Flynn didn’t, whatever creatures that lurk beneath the surface would help me and put us out of your misery.”
“Oh, that’s intelligent,” Teora replied, sticking her tongue out at Kaata, who tried to reach out for it but caught nothing but a handful of fog.
“Mist,” Flynn said, laughing to himself.
“Not now!” the others hollered in unison, spurning the Lochlannion’s attempt at breaking their tension.
“What do you think that’d do, huh?” she asked, staring into the soul of the goddess through the eyes of the king. “Trying to drown the Fate of Water... I’d just drain every trace of it from this bog before the rest of my air escaped me.”
“Then why haven’t you done it already?” Kaata asked.
Silence.
Ignorance.
Realization.
Kaata stared as Teora was led to her own understanding. Their suffering through the trials of the marsh could’ve been assuaged if only she hadn’t been so enveloped in their present predicament and used the power with which she was charged.
“You can’t blame me,” Yvella said, forcing Teora to the rear to avoid the embarrassment.
She had no desire to intervene. Kaata was right, and using her own mind to solve problems was something the Taitapian would need to learn. “It’s been a thousand years, and hands have forgotten the feel of Nautilus. Yet where it sleeps, I do not know. Besides, you know where we are. I couldn’t risk it. Not without–” she swallowed hard. “Not without something hearing it.”
“The weapon of the Waiata line,” Kaata said, reliving a memory that’d lay dormant for a millennium. “How is it you remember it?”
“I don’t know,” Yvella replied, stating she’d only remembered the name as recently as the boat ride from Chantilles. “When I left the Heaven’s Fall in pursuit of Ardyn, she handed it to me–the first Fate of Water, and I gifted mine to her in return.” Her fingers traced over the shaft of the trident she’d unslung from around her shoulders. “But she was with me when it was lost.” Yvella placed a palm to her head. Her mind split in two. “At least...I think so.”
“The further we go, the more we’ll uncover,” Drea told them, joining her sisters, having taken Flynn’s autonomy. “For now, get us out of here. I grow tired of these marshes.”
A simple nod was all it took for Yvella to upend her trident and force the waters of the marsh apart, bringing a journey of hours to precious minutes as they escaped the lowland and found their way onto raised ground.
Out of the secreted warmth beneath the waters the Fates, regaining their autonomy from the Illuri, were assaulted. A fall wind, stiff in the evening, moved over the rows of dense trees and down into the open clearing. On their shoulders fell the passing of the season, colored leaves broken from tired branches, cast to the ground to be forgotten by the world until the first light of spring.
But to be forgotten was to have purpose, for the last breath of their lives was to be offered to the ground to nourish the life which followed. Fresh growth, defended from the harshness of winter by a blanket of death and decay.
“Get these damned things off of me!” Teora swept over her shoulders as Emile and Flynn set to collecting errant bark and branches, piling them together. The steel grind of Étincelle called the flame, engulfing the collection of brush in its power.
And slowly it pushed back the night, and its cold. The three found themselves around the rising fire, with their trousers and boots dried by Kaata’s Flame, within the hour.
Though any other time it may have been a reprieve, pleasurable even, to have sat and engaged one another in song and revelry, Emile hadn’t forgotten they were amid the Ile of legend. A notorious, dark fable that lent a dose of foreboding and a sense of urgency.
Disregarding their objective—a descent beneath the world’s mantle to find a lost companion—Emile’s eyes, and those of the others, couldn’t help but dart around the open clearing. The whispers on the wind sang through the dancing of the trees, and the knocking of wood against itself brought them to life. Life, on a ground teeming with such a darkness and the blood of ages past.
Leaving the fire behind, they walked briskly to keep ahead of the fading light until they stumbled upon a ruin Emile had been told was an old Tallieri gatehouse. Its guards had long since been driven off by a forgotten cult, and for reasons lost to the shadows, it had never been reclaimed. Every boat that tried had floundered, and every set of boots that reached the shore was claimed by the marshes.
So why now were we spared?
“Perhaps they fear our power,” Kaata told him, as they approached a toppled pillar that lay broken and shattered on the surrounding ground. “Far few are the Fates, and any spirits who linger here will remember the commanding might of the Fire Sword of Talliers.”
Behind the pillar was a sight they hadn’t expected to see. It was decaying and still seemed out of place for such an evil place as this.
“Is that what I think it is?” Teora asked, kneeling next to the beast, one whose chest was impacted by an errant stone lying beside it. With the prongs of her trident she peeled away the layers of its hide to reveal the smashed-in remnants of its carcass.
“But what’s it doing here?” Flynn asked, turning away from the creature, protecting his nose from the putrid smell of decomposing flesh. “It is a spider. But...”
“This island harbors many dark secrets,” Emile told him, leaving the skeleton of the creature to make his way towards the imposing, collapsing altar at the boundary of the clearing. “But this is a tell.”
“How so?” Teora asked, letting the pant of air fill her lungs as she’d jogged to catch up with the others.
“Think about it,” he told her, preferring to lead her to the answer rather than give it to her outright. “We’ve seen this creature before.”
Her feet stopped as she pondered it, an arm shooting into the air as she found success in the search of her memories–even for one as recent as this. “Estrada,” she replied. “The glacier. The spiders. Though this one’s larger. Much larger.”
“There’s no telling how long the ancient evils beneath our feet have drawn breath,” Flynn told her, resting himself against what was left of a broken pillar. “Alira told me of them once. The nameless things in the deep places of the world. Even Drea has spoken of the primordial beings that predated even the coming of Zeion himself.”
“Wait...wait...” Teora held up her hands, placing a finger against his mouth. “And we have to go down there?”
“Into the labyrinth,” Emile responded, running the edge of his cloak over the blade of his sword, polishing it into a golden gleam beneath a starburst sky. “That’s where we need to go.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Teora replied, stomping her feet like a young child whose parents denied her a purchase at a market stall. “Why can’t it be easy?. Who made being a Fate so difficult? Save a kitten in a tree? Nope, not us. Help an old lady cross a busy cart track? Forget about it.”
“Teora...”
“But, no. No! Let’s go to the worst places imaginable to find goddess-knows-what, all in the belief we might find our friend?” She placed two fingers to her brow, turning to Emile as she cast away the salute. “At your service.”
“You know,” Flynn told her, kicking himself back onto his feet, placing a warm hand against her shuddering shoulder as he passed. “You can still go home.”
“Ha! And leave the two of you down there alone?”
She pushed between the pair of them, the first to take the chipped stone steps up to the raised platform. She got well ahead, failing to notice the subtle wink Flynn gave Emile and the smile he got for his efforts in return.
But as the day must give way to the night, so too did Emile’s smile fall through the stone beneath his feet. What should’ve been the imposing, flat surface at the base of the altar was an open pit that led down into an infinite and imposing darkness.
The secrets beneath Talliers were open to the world, and the evil locked away was flushed with the air of the surface, beckoning it toward them.
Only, did something get in, or did it break out?
“There’s only one way to be certain.”
Without his consent, Kaata ignited Étincelle’s blade, its hilt beginning to thrum with a steady vibration in his hand. As the sound of his footsteps rushed outward with each strike of his heel against the steps, so too did they run back to him, testing their limits, or seeking their point of termination.
And as the stairs descended, his heart fell further into his stomach, its beat in rhythm with his cadence. Behind him, only steps away, but sounding as far off as the moon on a clear night, were Teora and Flynn.
Kaata, have you been here before?
It took the goddess a moment to respond, waiting for his thoughts to reverberate with the tone of his voice. “Never, though they spoke of what waited beneath in the hundreds of years we shaped this planet for the coming of humanity.”
Their conversation in his mind was enough to drown out the existential dread of the never-ending staircase before him. It was uncertain where his footfalls would find the base. After a time, even the sparse light from above was swallowed by the rising darkness, and he relied on Étincelle’s flame to see them to the bottom.
“By my reckoning, it was indeed hundreds of years. But as time is a human convention, I can only guess.”
And what was it like, living in the light of Zeion?
“We never knew, for he departed before our waking. His thoughts and the importance of our task were imparted into Aegill and Aten. At the opening of their eyes, they told us their minds were flooded with memory, those which were given to us at the time of our inception. Together, they saw the falling of the first sun, and the rising of the first moon.”
And the remainder of you?
“Woken one by one as we were needed. Earth. Water. Fire. Air. Only prior to your coming was the waking of those we call shadows–the void walkers.”
But if there weren’t elements, what purpose did a shadow exist to serve?
“They made you who you are. Réus instilled you with courage. Semera, with pride. Ardyn, with purpose, and Calos, with knowledge.”
Then Aten’s gift was life?
“It was. And Aegill’s, commanded by memory of Zeion, was free will. The part of humanity, and by virtue, himself, that he grew to hate most.”
So, Emile thought, it’s he who bears the blame for the breaking of the unity. Without free will, humanity would’ve remained as one.
“But it is not the decision of gods to break from the orders of their creator. The four who saw not the beauty of this world, but the betrayal and bitterness of the humans they poured their lives into. And with the gifts you were given, as they soured, so too did you discover the parts of yourselves you were never meant to find. The byproduct of their love for you: fear, vanity, insecurity, and naivety.”
The more they spoke, the clearer it became, though it was further complicated. Aegill’s gift was to bestow free will upon humanity, as ordained by Zeion, and still he became the creator who despised his own creation. And the longer he walked, the more Emile’s thoughts projected in the echoing of their descent.
As the last thought broke the plane of his mind, the heel of his boot struck flat ground. He stumbled off the last step, finding his footing as he realized he’d found the point of terminus. He aided Flynn and Teora down the last set of steps before all three were huddled at the bottom.
As Kaata’s light cut through the crushing darkness, they saw a sight no one should ever witness. Stone walls–if they could be called that–were covered in bones, ancient and preserved for some sickening aesthetic. Ahead loomed an imposing gate, draped in decayed vines and tattered moss. Where it should have stood closed, it hung hauled open, grasped and pulled outward.
Massive wrought-iron bars, as this as a hardened sailor’s biceps, clung to its hinges. Once black, they were now pale with rust. The damage wasn’t from passaging time, but from something waiting below. Something that wanted out.
Each Fate checked their armor and weapons, bracing as they passed beneath the broken archway. The message overhead sent an icy shiver down Emile’s spine, raising the hair on his neck. Even Teora hesitated, pounding Flynn against the chest before accepting her fate.
As the words left his mouth, Emile saw Kaata recoil in his mind. “Arrete. C’est ici l’empire de la mort.”
“And what does that even mean?” Teora asked, recoiling into herself as she clung to Emile.
“Stop,” Flynn replied. “This is the realm of the dead.”
Emile lifted Étincelle over Teora and nodded to Flynn. Together, they used Drea’s waning power to pull the gates further into the passage. Metal ground against stone, echoing down a corridor lined with skulls before fading into the dark.
“Well,” Teora said, throwing her hands to her hips as her ears rang from the noise. “Real smart, gentlemen. All I pray is that we didn’t wake–”
A shrill scream cut her off. Beyond human capability, it surged through them like a gale. Another followed, and another, until the wailing rose into a chorus. They had entered the realm of the dead, and by the sound of it, woke its army.
“I think it’s time we lost the light,” Flynn said, placing his hand against the stone wall beside him. He lowered his hammer, resting it on the floor beside his foot.
“Are you crazy?” Teora yelled in a voice hushed into an aggressive whisper.
“They’ll be drawn to it,” Emile whispered back, pulling the sword close. “Do you have a plan?”
