* * *
E xiting the Abyss was far gentler than exiting the Warded Ways, but sometimes it was still a hard landing. I didn’t have any of the awful vertigo I’d grown accustomed to when dropping out of the Warded Ways, but the sudden stop in forward momentum was enough to put my stomach in my throat. The immediate impact that followed didn’t help matters. Gaia hadn’t exaggerated about it being a hard corner.
Even though I’d been expecting something, the room was still black as night. The stony surface beneath my cheek was a wall, or possibly a floor. It took me a moment to realize I was still standing. So it was a wall. Gaia had left me flush against what felt like stone and water and dirt. I blinked my eyes, but still no light came.
Something whispered in the distance as if it had just grown aware of my presence. I tried to listen, and the sound grew louder. What I thought had been a whisper became a hiss. What I thought had been a hiss became the slow scratch of a claw on stone. I was still blind, and I hoped the sound was the Utukku and not something else.
I had a matter of seconds to decide whether I would raise a light, or shout a greeting, or simply wait for them to discover me.
I decided instead on a combination of all three. The incantation came first. “Minas Illuminadda .” The greeting came second, though I didn’t know how effective it would be. “It’s Vesik! Uttuku’s friend from the Royal Court of Faerie. I fought alongside Hess in the ruins of Falias.” The incantation had finished forming a small ball of light by the time I finished speaking. It looked like swirling flame in the darkness, but the pale white of a sliver of moon. The rhythm of the slithers and scratches on the stone didn’t change. Nor did it grow louder. I understood why as my eyes adjusted to the light of the incantation.
A battlefield ghost, with more sentience than it had any right to have, dragged a shattered rifle in his right hand, the bayonet scraping the stones. It shouldn’t have made a sound. Something was wrong. For that matter, it shouldn’t have been underground, and by that point, I was fairly confident we were underground. The ghost swayed back and forth, closing on me. Its eyes never left mine. The crown of its head passed through ghostly roots that had forced their way between the minuscule cracks of the stones overhead.
I could reach out with my necromancy, but if this ghost was a trap, that might well be the end of me. Someone with either more power or more knowledge than I had had sent a ghost not so unlike this one into the shop. My other option was to flee, wrap my fingers into Gaia’s once more, and run screaming into the Abyss. But I knew that wasn’t an option, no matter how much I was tempted to reach into my backpack once more and grab that cold dead flesh. I gritted my teeth and sent my aura rocketing toward the old ghost.
Before my aura touched it, I already knew it wasn’t natural. Its bayonet shouldn’t have been able to spark across the stones. Something else was at play, and as soon as I made contact, it all became clear.
A knowing began, not the life and love and regrets of a soldier fighting for something he believed in, fighting for people he cared for, or even an unlucky bystander from that bloody age; instead, I found the tangled remnants of a werewolf, masked and bound against his will to be what amounted to little more than a diversion.
I didn’t see much into his past, but I felt the sword blade, felt the attacker physically change the clothes he wore and place the old Springfield rifle in his hand. If I hadn’t been nauseated, I would’ve laughed when I realized it had been a modern bayonet duct-taped to the barrel.
Once I knew it was there, the threads of his binding were easy to see; a malignant, red and black miasma, just a tiny darkness behind the golden glow of his soul. I reached out with my aura and burned it away. I didn’t much care which side had bound this werewolf or for what reason. He was in pain, and he needed to move on.
I wasn’t sure exactly how long the process took, as sometimes when my aura was intertwined with something else’s, time vanished. A moment could become an hour or an hour a moment. I heard the ghost’s whispered “Thank you” as the dark magic faded from his soul, and his entire being began to fade in turn. The vision of auras, and incantations, and utter darkness, gave way to the creatures now standing at the other end of the corridor.
* * *
Only when the mutilated ghost had gone did I feel the horrifying weight of the dead above me. The halberds of the Utukku gleamed in the light of the illuminada incantation. One of them raised a blade with her right arm, pointed at me, and spoke sharply. But I couldn’t hear it.
All I could hear were the stuttering screams of the dying above us, the likes of which I hadn’t felt since Gettysburg. I summoned a shield as the first Utukku charged at me, but the electric blue power short-circuited in an instant, failing me as if it had been struck by a great power.
I frowned as I fell to one knee, the impact jarring my bones as the nearest Utukku threw her halberd to the side. It clanged against the wall. That seemed like a remarkably sloppy attack. My vision dimmed, turning into a tunnel. I wasn’t sure if it was the dying light of my incantation or the rapid onset of a loss of consciousness. Either way, the room went black. The rapid thunderclaps of cannons firing back to back shattered the stillness around me. My mind felt as if it were drifting from my body, lost in the Abyss, while my physical self was gently pulled through a stony corridor. A whisper wound its way through the screams, too real to be my imagination, but too distant to be real.
“What’s wrong with him, Hess?” the voice whispered. “Something’s wrong. That barrier wasn’t supposed to attack our allies.”
“I don’t think it was attacking him,” a familiar voice hissed. “That thing that was in here with him, I don’t know what it was. Take him to Utukku. Get him to the Fae.”
The thunder of gunfire and screams of the dying silenced the whispers once more.
It felt as if I’d been dragged across the rocks for a day. I wasn’t sure if I still had my shoes or my backpack, and panic cut through the pain inside my head as I realized I wasn’t even sure if I had the hand of Gaia.
“He’s waking up,” the first voice said.
I wanted to tell them that I had always been awake. But had I?
“Get him into the light,” that familiar voice said. Hess’s voice. But she was supposed to be in the Obsidian Inn. What would she be doing in Antietam? I tried to ask that very question, but my mouth wouldn’t move.
“By the gods,” a new voice said. “What’s wrong with his hand?”
“It’s the flesh of a gravemaker,” Hess said. “We need to wake him, for this could be bad for everyone here.”
The gentle dragging grew into something more frenetic. My heels bounced off the uneven stone, and it felt as though my shirt had been torn as it was pulled across jagged rocks. The solid darkness around me slowly, painfully, brightened.
“Over the threshold,” Hess shouted. “Clear the way!”
I heard someone bark a protest, but the sharp crack of flesh on skull silenced whoever had spoken. Glorious light stabbed into my eyes. The thunder of cannons and screams and gunfire slowly faded. Not as overwhelming, but still a constant cacophony that felt not so far away.
“Hess?” I managed to cough out in a shaky voice.
“Damian,” Hess said, and I felt a gentle pressure on my left shoulder. “Can you understand me?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Can you tell me how to get to the armory?” I squinted into the light, just barely making out the outline of her reptilian face. “The tour guide said there was an armory around here.”
Hess patted my shoulder. “Yes, yes. Rest now.”