A Crater Short Story
By S. D. Howarth
Mellar’s whistling grated on my nerves. Not because of the atmosphere, or the location, or even the tune. He was just shite at it. Every single lift down and it was the same bloody tune. It was beyond irritating and I realised my subconscious had been harbouring the urge to hurl him into the shaft for some time.
“Quit it.”
“Huh?”
“Desist, or you’ll force me to feed you something blunt.”
“You wish, darling. What if I pick another one?” He caught the look I gave him out of the corner of his eye and shut up. I waited and his lips puckered as though for another tune. My hand moved. Grinning sheepishly, he spread both hands and hooked his thumbs onto his belt. I released my pistol and let out a long breath, expelling my irritation. It wasn’t entirely him, or the lift, or travelling up to the back of beyond without an army. It was everything. Maybe I’d been doing this too long. Mellar give me a considering glance and cleared his throat.
“What?” I snapped.
“I think you’re being unreasonable, your holiness.”
“Are you making me reconsider shooting you?”
“Hah, no, but we have been on the trail for a while. I appreciate The Order’s pay, Topan, but we are beyond your city empire and denying a man the right to whistle is just mean.” Giving him a flat stare I received one back. “I agreed to guide you to Mid Rim, Investigator. That was over a day back.”
“We are Mid Rim, why do you think the lifts descend? As I suspected, there’s a highway inside the caldera wall. For a mountain guide, you can be thick.”
“Piss off.”
Exasperated, I held out my hand, palm up, fingers raised to form a dish. I stabbed the middle. The Hub. “Crater city and the environs with the surrounding lake, you loathe.” He grunted, I suppose it was better than his fucking tune. I tapped my palm heading towards my ring finger. “Farmsteads, factories, foundries for the iron caterpillars sprawling to your new frontier with its coal. You make plenty of coin guiding folks, don’t you?” He gave me a ‘what the fuck are you on about look’, but he deserved my lecture. I tapped an arc on my ring. “Mid Rim. The iron mines and forests. Guiding those caravans and lumber trains between settlements is risky. Isn’t it?” Mellar’s disinterest evaporated, and he jerked his nose to my fingertips.
“Your order has driven many vampyres and other beasts into the higher wilderness. We clash when monthly caravans return hub-wards. If that interests you, why head here? No one lives on the High Rim. The air thins and the weather’s abysmal. You’re lucky we’ve missed the avalanches.”
“The mine is here for a purpose. The location matches the rumours where something dark forms. We spent two weeks climbing up, I bet you that bonus we cover the same distance down in as many days.”
“Then what? Of course it’s fucking dark, it’s been abandoned for centuries. Call it ancient history. Call it a mistake by the founding fathers, or haunted—who gives a fuck? You’ll never persuade folks to work here. You are wasting your time and I mean it about the bonus for entering here.”
“Yes, I doubt inners will live here and you will receive your coin.” I tapped the middle of my hand. “Civilization is here, twelve hundred ovoid miles of avarice and flaw.” I circled my finger around my hand through the middle knuckles, touching my callouses randomly. “Rumours exist here. And here. And here. Mid Rim, where industry wishes to flourish on roads of iron and stone. Where merchants seek their fortune, yet fear to tread. Why?”
“You’re asking me? Now? By the Seven Gods, Inquisitor, either you trust me, or don’t? No-one knows what’s happening.” Mellar’s voice rose, and the first flush of anger ruddied his nose in the lantern light. “Not one body has been found. The last incident was a column of militia from Low Crag. If they took off, they are still running. I heard in Bend before you hired me that vampyres are also scarce. Can you tell me if something connects them?” He flicked a lopsided sardonic smile my way. “No vamp’ bounty, makes the rimfolk unhappy, ‘specially when high and mighty inners come calling.”
“Unhappy as folk vanishing without a trace?” I could also be sardonic.
Our little cuboid world lurched, and something overhead gave a strident crunch and echoing screech. There was a rustle, then silence as we undulated. I exchanged a grim look with Mellar and shrugged. Conversation forgotten as we wouldn’t be progressing by lift. Still, we weren’t falling which was always a relief.
“Reckon they fed the ferrets?” he smirked.
“They’d need to be big fuckers to haul this mine crate up and down. Ogres perhaps, or worse. Are you hankering for a stroll?”
“We may not have an option. The timing’s bad as I dropped one before the clatter.”
“Gods! Not your guts again, that will attract things. I’ve been making regular prayers on your behalf for two days since we passed through the gorge. Could you not stick a rock in it?”
“Don’t be daft, do you want a lump of ore pinging around in here?”
I tapped the scuffed blackwood sides of the swaying chamber and conceded he may have a point. Stains and tiny scratches merged in mottled abrasions. Either it was damn hard stuff to resist mine workings, or this deep had irregular access. That much that I could discern in the lantern light.
“Stay, or go?” He pushed, breaking my thought. He withdrew a thin neck-slicer and poked at the seam between two close-fitting boards. Good luck prying them out I considered and looked for options.
“Deliberate, or accidental?” I tossed back to make him pause. The squeaking of his blade was grinding my nerves worse than the whistling.
“Either. We’re going down with a light load, so either a failure or someone pulled a lever.” Steady dark eyes bored into my own. “The hatch?”
“The hatch, better anchorage. I’ll proceed first.”
“I’m wounded.”
“Not as much as anyone near your arse. If we don’t remove the rumoured cultist threat, Crater will revolt.”
“Ha, what’s new. Four riots this year with iron and food shortages?” he muttered as he cupped his hands. Bracing himself, he waited for me to climb up him to the hinged square furthest from the gate. As our faces became level, he yawned. The utter bastard. I could taste, never mind smell the spiced crab he’d wolfed before our descent. Unable to resist, I kissed him. A light one, brushing my greying beard into his stubble. A mockery of a distant memory.
“What if it’s trapped?” he asked, pulling his head away.
“A little late to ask? Let’s crack on.” Leaning hard on his shoulder, I heard him grunt as I stretched, scrabbling for the chill iron. My fingertips brushed it before I clamped in a wanker’s clasp.
I screamed. Jerking and shuddering as though possessed, he dropped me like an anvil, his face ghost-white. An inopportune colour when two miles underground. After several seconds, I whooped in a breath and laughed, the pains in my back and arm fading as my voice rolled around the chamber and up into the shaft. Oops.
“Bastard! You diseased godfucker of a bastarding bastard. Your order will always be bastards, worshipping that whorish bastarding bitch!” He paused, lost for breath, his face flushing like ink spilt on parchment, darkening the weather-lines on his narrow face. It was a stupid thing to do in the dark when we may not be alone, but I laughed louder.
For once in maybe half a dozen occasions over thirty years of service, the rumour and location whispered into my ear for coin proved true. We found the last remains of a dark temple. Unknown hands had carved and caressed stone into angular forms when smoothing the contours. To civilise the rock. They’d also directed the seepage trickling in patters and streams on the walls towards the lift shaft in a neat central channel. It suggested habitation continued deeper and perhaps my superiors were wise to be cautious. To send me.
The tunnels here were older than the spent seams of iron, copper and coal a mile above and suggested a worrying organisation of labour considering we could breathe almost normally. I estimated we’d descended five miles below the High Rim entrance. More worrying, it was as cold as a brisk winter’s day. The earth gave off no heat and perhaps rimworkers were right to complain mine-work was cold work. Why?
Someone. Something. Some party, had made a deconstructive effort to collapse the tunnel leading to the portico we glimpsed in the swaying light of rolled glow globes. Once, might be the fickleness of age. Three separate locations suggested efficiency, or someone failing to drop the outer sprawl onto the subterranean temple.
Only the central collapse concerned me. The furthest I could see through an irregular gap led to an elaborate anticline, with a short flight of steps to the void. Half the roof had come down but tumbled into an airway instead of forming a final blockage. Once we cleared several large boulders, it would be navigable. The first rockfall we’d encountered took a quarter hour to clear. Backbreaking sweaty work, with every second an eternity as stretched nerves waited for the assault which never came. It never became easier trailing after obscure hunches, but I knew we were close to the source. I could taste the tension. We eased the smaller rubble aside with deft scrapes of shovel and gauntlet. A caress too kind for this place.
Once we shifted the detritus, we moved onto the principle obstructions. Higher than a man, there was no way we could move them stacked as they were. Sorcery was a lost art to humans, and a banned one to non-humans. I knew about the latter more than most, I’d hunted and executed enough until the scant few who embraced their dark art abandoned their obelisks and fled.
Working in silence, I wondered who’d performed the sabotage while we spread alchemical cutter paste with iron scrapers. We’d both lugged the canisters on our backs down the lift shaft, through winding passages and perspired up too many hogs backs to count. Silent of activity and barren of workers, the only noise was the echo of our laboured breaths. Every so often I felt his glance, but I kept my own counsel.
Crater was the pits, and we were well outside the arsehole, yet a million souls depended on the sanctuary and sanctity The Order provided. Twice that including The Rim. Archaic traditions married pragmatism, racism, religion and secular control. It could have been a paradise if humans controlled everything. We didn’t, only the base of the bowl and we needed the resources on caldera cliffs.
The land was ours, the skies a mystery and the depths the domain of every other denizen we sought to purge. There lay the problem to pardon the pun. For each mine we had to fight, scheme and betray. We had numbers, factions, but older creatures existed, whose survival depended on their cunning, speed and skill. Where people expanded and innovated; they dug and grew stronger. My thoughts turned as dark as to what might exist through that doorway as the paste etched its way to the heart of each boulder. Gods, it was diabolical stuff. We backed off a hundred feet just to gulp in breaths of foetid air, the acrid taint a barrage on our senses.
“I’m not liking this brain-fart of yours, Topan. I presume you’ve a plan beyond crawling into dark holes?” Mellar groused, tossing his scraper aside. I’d been smarter and left mine jammed in a crevice between two boulders. Taking care to tilt my wide-brimmed hat back with the back of my gauntlet, I saw his eyes crinkle at the crash of rock, shattering across the smoothed tunnel floor. Pings and pops followed in a discordant symphony of echo and vibration, with dust clouds holding onto their coattails.
We backed off another dozen feet to a widening in the corridor as though the dust cloud was alive. In reality, the particles could still contain active cutter and it could eat through us from the lungs outward. Neither of us chanced it, as there was no way either of us could haul the other back into daylight. A swift jerk of blade in flesh and that accompanying moment of white-hot agony wasn’t what either of us sought. Not this far from the light. I owed Mellar half his payment on purpose to maintain his vested interest in my return. Only the dead trusted another fully.
“It is what it is,” I shrugged. I’d needed a guide through the mountains. He was reliable muscle, with a passing familiarity with the area where the secluded adit overlooked the clouds and sheer cliffs down to Mid Rim. If I was guessing, things, he wouldn’t know the story of the mine, would he? People talked to the Caravanserai Guild, and it was slow, profitable work, built by decades of word-of-mouth business. I’d chosen him over two younger men and he’d earned my coin.
Yet someone was down here. Mellar’s lack of curiosity was odd now we’d descended. He’d gave me a slow nod and offered his price with nary a question, nor quibble in Bend. Someone had lit the lantern and disabled the lift and opened the hatch on every lift below. If disused, the chains around granite counterweights would have rusted long ago. Someone had applied the brake on the passage far above. A quiet and cunning sort. What was I missing on top of the delay? The climb down to the next lift had knackered us, yet we’d seen no-one. No spoor. Nothing. I looked hard at him and his humour faded.
We worked well together, knew the moves and survived the risks. That was it. We’d been deliberately exhausted. Exposed to claustrophobia and the humid depths. The caress of the unknowable as the earth pressed down. An invisible and inexorable threat, just like the cult. A day in the mine acclimatised me to the air becoming so stuffy, breathing was like swimming. So why the sidelong glances? Expose and trap us? I heard a coin drop. Not us, me. Had the rumours of a distant cult been a ploy? Shit.
My hand moved of its own volition, snatching the butt of my flintlock from my hip and dragging the hammer back with a deafening click. Mellar’s eyes widened in resignation and became huge as my arm drew up. I fired. He threw his glow globe. A grunt and a flash as I punched out in reflex. The pistol missed. The bastard elongated around my shot. Elongated! I saw the flash occur as though in slow motion as the lead ball slammed into the wall behind him and sparked orange and blue filaments. Our shadows danced. Fuck, he was close—way too close! Then I screamed as a hammer-blow crashed into my side, slamming me into the wall. Words formed on my lips, but the coppery tang of my blood bubbling cut me off with the suddenness of a noose. Darkness enveloped me, my light snuffed away like a candle.
Thwack. Thwack. Hard slaps nearby returned me to the land of the living. I pried at my eyes, but only one worked. That would be enough. Head buzzing and breathing shallow, I moved my arm through the dust. Soft, like a hand into a velvet glove and touched bruised contours. I rotated my eye on the noise which disturbed my enforced slumber and saw Mellar slapping the flames chewing through his right knee with my gauntlets. Ha! My wild swing had flicked the globe and the vicious contents back on him. How I hadn’t gone up in the inferno as he poleaxed me was a miracle to which I could only credit the great lady.
Why wasn’t he screaming? In the fading embers, I saw him for what he was. A vile image burned into my eyeballs past the smoke and leather and charred flesh. Brittle-looking, more like rotten wood than meat. Grey, the grubby colours of stone. Mellar wasn’t a human.
“You never were good at keeping tabs in these mountains of ours. Your precious religion never cared for anything beyond Crater Lake. The Hub will learn their mistake. The Darkness will see to it. We’ve prepared for a century while feeding the edifice. Learning the masters’ desires, while your holier than shit attitude stagnates throughout your inbred squabbling surface dwellers. Stifling change. The world beyond the rim could grind you to dust and you’d still be unchanged. Crater is no volcano and we’ve barely begun scraping a path to the light.”
“I can’t believe I kissed you!” I snarled, my mind whirling at his admission as my body sought an out. He might be right, as it explained the frigidity I felt from the unnatural cold. I reached under my chest and clasped the hilt of my short blade. Felt the warmth as my feet sought purchase.
“Is that what bothers you? You small petty man,” he scoffed as his face contorted into a long venomous sneer. He became taller, more feral until his head brushed the tunnel roof. His eyes glittered golden, all seeing.
“A shifter, for how long, heathen?”
“Long enough to remember our cozy night trapped by the blizzard in that old tower. Our progeny are destined for greatness when Darkness ascends.” He gave a malicious smile which vanished as I rose. Light illuminated the tunnel, reflecting his sudden fear back into his iris. “No! That’s not fair!”
“Inquisitor to the Lady of Illumination, not investigator. Your clan of wriggling bottom feeders slipped up.” I raised my long dagger as though wagging a chiding finger and the golden spine with its sigils irradiated a garish orange light. Faith suffused the tunnel. Blooming. As I prayed, pouring forth my cant, he diminished. For all his physical prowess, he seemed smaller, unable to face the light, the glory of my mistress in melic radiance.
He cursed, his words unintelligible, and we cast together. A hammer of purity punched from the tunnel roof into his head, blasting eyeballs and brains over my feet as he flopped limp with a wet splat into the puddle of dissolved rock. I looked down, expecting to see a steaming hole through my chest. To my incredulity, I remained intact. Being the practical sort around miracles, I gulped in a deep breath, grimacing at the stench and lurched to retrieve my gauntlets.
I bless my equipment, yet for one reason or another, I’d neglected on buying the gauntlets with hustling before a storm to meet the wagon train into Bend. Crater city is sheltered by distance, yet the rising land and Rim mountains are brutal when the weather turns. It made a seasoned guide a necessity and Bend has plenty, being a major trading town. A soldier worships the God of War, or in rare circumstances, the God of Healing. I’d sought knowledge instead. I’d needed to find logic in the world—answer every why. It was a mutual marriage of convenience. My sect within The Order needed rid of corruption and I needed a cause, which I hadn’t realised at the time. I became the hammer on their anvil. Common, utilitarian and effective.
I raised my dagger and peered towards the temple, squinting and probing with my senses. There was something, an eerie hollow dread I couldn’t shake. Shit, he’d sacrificed himself for a summoning—the cunning bastard had reached out to his unseen master.
Then I felt it. I shook, and that was before I saw a tiny mottled octopus on four stubby legs crawl out of Mellar’s neck where the flesh still sizzled. I stamped, swallowing bile. I wasn’t taking a chance with the sickening sensation I experienced, as I’d done that and been played like a harp. What could dim my goddess? Piss-poor perspicacity for an inquisitor. For me.
From the depths of that dark entrance, a cry echoed until it roared like all the hives of hornets in the land released together. Darkness exploded between those all too close columns, swerved over the partial collapse and split around my blade. I felt chilled to the marrow as the light dimmed to a pitiful mockery of its former self. I spun on my heel, coat billowing as the ground tremored and ran as the glow globes died. My only illumination was my dagger, irrepressible and enfeebled.
I scooped up both pistol and smoking gauntlets and barrelled down the passage, past the unworked rich rider of coal we’d come across when having a breather. It extinguished a cheery flicker of reflected light out as I wheezed past, skidding and sliding through turn and syncline. Adrenaline clutched my weariness and wounds and flung them behind as mouth gaping, my heart pounded, and legs pistoned.
The pitch of the roar shifted, becoming pure malevolence as I fled through crossroads and side tunnels, past abandoned carts and hurdled discarded tools. Hidden eyes followed my every move, boring into my back. I caught glimpses of pursuit out of the corner of my eye, but with the dark drawing in, they were distant flickers.
My subconscious ran amok as I hit my second wind, seized it in a vice of determination, clenched my teeth and bit. A promise of unstoppable despair caused frosty tendrils to seize my spine and compressed my bladder in unadulterated fear. The short blade became the symbolic fragment of my goddess—a spark in the dark. Her residual touch might save my soul and if she so desired, my life.
Whatever followed me, Crater, and The Rim was unprepared for it. My temple and The Order hadn’t faced something of this magnitude. Black, white, purple and blue, the old and young of humanity needed warning. I stifled a sob, feeling powerless as my second wind faded and the pressure increased on my trembling steel, with just the sigils glowing. The lift appeared, empty and lit by the lantern we’d dimmed. I could have sobbed a prayer to luck itself if I’d the wind.
Wheezing, gasping, I tottered on rubbery legs as it lurched to a halt. I heard the crack of the brake being released and redoubled my pace. Snails passed me as I saw it rise, inch by painful inch. The blood roared in my ears as it ascended. I wasn’t going to make it! I hurled myself on, willing more speed, throwing myself at the opening, punching out my arms to grab the gate—and missed. My pistol flew inside as my armpits rebounded on the threshold. My tattered gauntlets snaked through the dust where we’d stood, fingernails gouging. No! I clutched nothingness in a despairing grip and plummeted, spent. My hat flew off, and I caught a brief flicker of it spinning end over end into the shaft as I somersaulted. Shit, I’d see it again soon enough.
Pain. A bastard motherfucker of a pain seized both my wrists as I swung dumbfounded and dragged me upwards. I became a howling human pendulum a foot beneath the dusty floorboards and an inch from spreading my nose on the centre beam. A pale face, with a halo of dark curly hair the colour of midnight smiled down with the warmth of a winter blizzard.
I half expected my hands to explode from the force of her grip as elongated teeth and red featureless eyes turned my bowels to ice when she licked her lips. A languid curl and twist of promise. When terrified beyond your wits, this isn’t a sensation to relish. Like a babe, she hauled me into the lift before the rock face smeared me flat. Like said child’s toy, she deposited me under the still open hatch with a chaste kiss that had my cheek prickling and my cock tingling against my thigh.
I blinked, face now burning like the searing pain when thawing from frostbite. My hand darted for the gun, seeking reassurance in empty arms as I shuddered away. Her touch, sent my soul writhing. I took in a deep shuddering breath, summoning professional civility and holstered the flintlock. I missed my hat. It surprised me I had the energy to conceive such inanity.
“Lady Jezebel, fancy meeting you. My thanks, your timing was impeccable.”
“Grand Inquisitor, Luthir Topan, forgive my imposition, but Baal awakens.” I would have laughed at her dry formality, here of all places, but I didn’t have it in me. Not after experiencing the thing below. I leaned against the wall and started. It was no small relief to see the light on my blade brighten and the lantern flutter on the ceiling pivot. Jezebel stared, and I was thankful to see her eyes become mithril mirrors. Instead of pupils, I saw my blade reflected. “This concerns all races. Unchecked, it will envelop everyone for an eternity of unimaginable despair.”
“Wouldn’t the long-lived like yourself appreciate mankind being consumed? This Old One, Baal—is the Darkness?” I took no particular pains to conceal my incredulity.
“Yes. I am here by choice. My choice, Priest. My coven, my race, will not become mindless pawns. If we do not stand together, that will be our fate, before being consumed. Assimilated and eradicated from existence.”
“A nice thought considering our not insubstantial differences. The tunnel, was you?”
“Yes, I failed. It was too strong.”
“Fuck.”
She was a cool one, and I could not remain to stand. I could feel the world pulling me down. I slid onto my backside to sit on my holster. My eyes became heavy and the last thing I saw was the sigils of Pansoph fading from my blade as vampyric eyes scrutinised me, then the rock face beyond the opening.
“Wake up!” Her voice came from far away. I moaned as her boot probed the side of my chest. It didn’t take much imagination to feel the enmity behind the pain. My backside ached of sitting on my pistol, but I felt fewer aches than I may have expected, so I couldn’t have been out long.
“What is it?”
“The Baalim are coming,” she bit her lip, but there was nothing sensual in the mannerism. No obvious diabolical deception. She peeked over the gate and flicked a sideways glance my way. “We have a few minutes at most.”
“Right.” My mind whirled, too gummed for melancholy. I moved my leg and decided I may as well reload. “Do we have a truce?”
“For now, yes. We can arrange a concord later if we get out.” He eyes emitted a glow like coals and I gulped. I rammed the ball down the barrel and felt my wrists sting. I muttered a prayer and checked under my cuffs to see dark weals in the angular shadows. She sensed the movement and my surreptitious shield prayer and rolled a throaty chuckle to my ears.
“It appears we are not compatible. A simple touch between us remains unclean. You are not the only one with trust issues, Inquisitor. Self-righteous purple-skinned bastards like you have hounded non-humans for millennia. You reap what you sow, but this entity is as old as the land and its minions will not drag my brethren down with your kind.”
I grunted. I couldn’t disagree with anything she’d said and my clever plan to sneak in for a preliminary look had unravelled. I looked at her, small beautiful and determined and shook my head. We were almost a match in our arrogance and failure.
Only a Vampyr would wear a silk ballgown in a mine and not appear stupid. Her lip curled, and she wriggled her fingers. I saw flesh through the charred burgundy velvet and that answered one unasked question. With a sigh I stood, fingering my ankh and split my gaze between the hatch and the gate. Neither inspired confidence as the sounds of pursuit reached us. Form an alliance with a devil to fight a different hell. I shuddered and not from the chill.
She moved in a blur, a feral hiss bursting from her throat as shadows loomed. Her punch sent one figure and the gate back down the shaft. I struggled to see the Baalim as darkness and shadow undulated in misshapen humanoid form. They dwarfed Jezebel who’d stand five-foot-four when not in heels to match my six-foot and the shapes were a head taller than me.
I lashed at one squirming past her and it snarled as it came into proximity of my nimbus. I seized the imperceptible hesitation and thrust my blade in its throat and twisted. Jezebel spun on one exquisite leg and buried her heel in the amber eye of a creature launching itself from the roof. I chanted at the one following to blast globs of brains and flesh over both combatants as she struggled to extricate her foot. She gave me a look. A look to wither a man. Sighing at her dress, she pivoted, throwing the corpse into another pair clawing inside.
I glanced up, my instincts working faster than my mind and saw a face in the hatch. I fired. A howl, a thump and scraping splatter as it tumbled between lift and shaft. No time to reload as another javelin’d inside and clobbered me before I could flip my gun. I owed my goddess another prayer as I careered into the back of the lift, somehow keeping my grip on the blade and pistol. I ducked and slammed the heavy butt into a kneecap. It shrieked so loud I felt blood run from my ears. I hit it again, and again, infusing myself with divine power. It howled, I smashed the fucker in the mouth, shattering its jaw and silencing it. Jezebel grabbed it by the back of the neck and tossed it out. No clatter.
More dropped, and we fought back to back. Each time we touched I felt nauseous, and she hissed. Bumping and twisting I stabbed, clubbed and chanted, but my strength was draining. I could not maintain the tempo as lean bodies piled around our feet. A punch felled me and only the flick of her hand into my hair kept me from a long trip downwards.
Another punch rocked me where Mellar had struck, and I toppled, lungs voided. I felt myself fade out as a figure pounced to tear out my throat. Eyes like coals drew me in; empty, merciless and I accepted it was my time. Jezebel darted in but darkness clamped fangs around her thigh. She shrieked, in pain and the anguish of having her gown ruined. Hammering its head, the vampyr twisted and attempted to drag herself forward and reach me. Instead, it punched a talon between the floorboards and pulled her backwards.
With a curse, she tore free her necklace and threw it at the roof as she barked something guttural. I stabbed. A last pathetic act of defiance. The lift shook as though caught in a hurricane. The weight on me vanished as stickiness gushed over my arm. Frustrated rasps and thuds swirled as everything went white to a clarion chime. Agony exploded, as though an unseen hand grabbed my life energies and sought to tear them away.
Her boot prodded me again, thankfully on my uninjured side. I rolled over and threw up, feeling weaker than a day old kitten. I knew the taint of sorcery and it repulsed me to my core. I hauled myself onto my haunches in a suddenly empty car and spat into the shaft to clear my mouth. Other than the small hole in the floor and patches of sulphurous scorching as though something had ricocheted around, it appeared we’d been ascending alone. I wiped my mouth and cursed. All the corpses had vanished, and I’d wanted a head as evidence.
I caught her as she fell, light, yet somehow solid and grimaced at the amount of thick black blood pouring over my coat from her leg. I could let the unholy bitch die. Be righteous as holy Pansoph decreed and my reputation dictated.
My goddess commanded me to cleanse the world of the impure, but I couldn’t end her. Not here. Still. I yearned to do it. The spell formed on my lips unbidden as I shook with indecision, frustration ripped across my face as I watched her breathe. A regular in, out of blood mottled silk. I slammed my knife into the boards and summoned light. Moving with a purpose, I tore free my neck-scarf, rolled and wrapped it tight around her thigh. Ignoring the smell was more difficult, and I felt my gorge rise as her blood stank like old coffins.
I sat when finished, applying pressure on the wound, using one paste eaten gauntlet as a pad and applying pressure while wearing the other. Idly, I fingered the shard of jewellery she’d used to save us. Felt the energies through my fingertips. I had a premonition and didn’t like where it led. I’d have to suggest it. Be the one to persuade her to darken our light, and grant mankind greater power for an unprecedented cost. For a moment, I felt lost, as sick as when she’d stolen my life force. I’d felt the pursuit, the wrongness below and couldn’t imagine how to stop it. It was not owing her my life that stayed me, nor humanities need, but a question. What the fuck were we fighting? I laughed until the jerk of the mechanism stilled my bitter tears.
Even exhausted, it took me a moment to drag her into the next lift and lower the battered one so I could stand on the roof. I imagined the things that almost killed us—the Baalim—as I fingered the vial on my belt. If honest to myself, I was glad to escape her taint. If I destroyed the lift, it’d delay whatever was emerging. It’d prevent a return in numbers for a counterattack as a trade-off but returning to gather the forces and resources would consume precious time—possibly months.
I didn’t have the time to spend and what fucking inspiration would prayer grant? Shit and shitter, two scales to balance fate and future. A bad hand to roll on, to temporise upon but I took the easy option. Call me a coward, but I cracked the wax seal and tipped droplets of cutter on the roof shackle, then the chain, before jumping to the passage and kicking the brake. I didn’t look back, I knew nightfall lay ahead.