He heard the thunder of Gariath’s footsteps before he felt the thick claws wrap around his throat, hoisting him aloft. His head swam, ringing with the twin cacophonies of his magic headache and the force of Gariath’s blow. Through eyes rolling in their sockets, he could barely make out the great red and white blob before him.
‘There are no more Rhega,’ Gariath snarled. ‘Your breed saw to that.’ His roar was laced with hot, angry breath that would have choked Dreadaeleon had he been able to breathe. ‘And now you want to piss on their memory with your weakling, filthy magic! SIMPLE?’
The boy’s shriek was caught in an explosion of sand as Gariath hurled him to the earth. With the pain echoing through his body in bells of agony, the vicious kick the dragonman planted in his side seemed nothing more than a particularly bloody comma in his furious sentence.
‘There are no more Rhega,’ Gariath repeated, ‘just so.’
The dragonman might well have been a ghost, so faint were his footsteps, so hazy his outline in the wizard’s eyes. Dreadaeleon tried to speak, tried to choke out a query as to what he had done to deserve such a thrashing, an apology of some sort, or perhaps just a plea for help as he felt something growing smaller within him, deflating as air escaped him without returning.
He had no more mind for questions or pleas, however. The dragonman’s shape faded in the distance as he stalked away, his footsteps now silent, as was everything else. The world became numb, all sounds fading before the ringing in his ears.
All but one.
It was faint at first, a slow and gentle lilting of the wind, a voice carried on a stiff breeze that he could not feel. Slowly, it grew louder, searing his ears as it began to drown out the ringing in his head.
So familiar, he was barely able to think, caught between the symphony and chaos murmuring through his brain. I’ve heard it before, I know.
It grew closer and stronger, something between a hum and a purr, escalating to include a faint whistling and breathless gasp. Soon, it began to tinkle, as though it were a gem of sounds being cut into tiny, euphoric crystals.
A song without words, he thought, so pretty. . so pretty. .
His body was numb now. It no longer hurt to blink; the fact that he could not breathe no longer worried him. He lost himself in the song, agony forgotten as he listened to the delicate voice.
Ah, I remember now. He nodded weakly to himself. From the boat. . it’s calling to me again.
And he let himself be called, slipping away into darkness. His vision went blank, eyes closing so that nothing else in the world would matter, not even the shadow creeping over him and the cold, pale hand reaching for him as he lay motionless in the sand.
YOU, TOO, SHALL HEAR
‘She is speaking so clearly now.’ Had he any nerve left to be shaken, Lenk certainly would have lost his at the near-orgasmic bliss with which the Abysmyth sighed. His courage, however, was long devoured, vanished under the flocks of Omens who gnawed incessantly at the body parts strewn across the ground. They shredded with their teeth, slurped long strings of greasy meat into their inner lips, all the while chattering their graces over the bounteous meal they had been served.
‘We hear Her,’ they chanted between chews, ‘and so are we blessed. We hear Her.’
The Abysmyth, in response, shook its colossal head.
‘But there yet remains no virtue in hearing Her name echoed by the choir.’ Slowly, it fixed two great empty eyes upon Lenk. ‘And you? Do you hear Her, my son? Have your ears been freed?’
‘Don’t answer,’ the voice inside his head uttered, ‘it wants an answer.’
‘Why?’ he barely managed to gasp to his unseen companion.
‘It is an abomination, and like all abominations, it knows it is nothing. It is a preacher, and like all false preachers, it craves validation. It does not belong in this world. It needs a reason to exist.’
‘And we,’ Lenk muttered, ‘are that reason?’
‘No,’ the voice replied, ‘we are the reason it dies today.’
‘You keep saying that, but how? How do we kill it?’
‘As we kill everything else.’
Lenk’s eyes drifted to the armless man dangling from the Abysmyth’s claws, his eyelids flickering, straining to stay open through the pain long enough to mouth his silent plea to Lenk: Kill me, kill me, kill me. His wordless chant was like that of the Omens: repetitive, droning, painful to hear, or to imagine hearing.
‘Can we-’
‘He is lost,’ the voice interrupted callously, ‘he is of no use to us, either.’
‘But we can’t just-’ Lenk attempted to lift a leg to move forwards.
‘We shall.’ He felt it go numb under him.
‘I don’t-’ He tried to tighten his grip on his sword.
‘We do.’ The weapon felt like a lead weight, useless at his side.
‘My son,’ the Abysmyth gurgled with an almost sympathetic inclination, ‘do not fear what your eyes behold today.’ It held up a single, webbed digit and shook it back and forth. ‘For the eyes are what weaken you. Through ears, you shall find your salvation.’
‘No …’
The word came too softly from Lenk’s lips, his own voice paralysed with fear as he watched the demon’s arm crane up to its dangling captive. It pinched one of the Cragsman’s meaty legs with two massive fingers, rubbing it between the digits thoughtfully.
‘And so do I grant two gifts today,’ it continued, keeping a giant black pupil fixed on Lenk. ‘To you, the deaf, I grant the gift of hearing.’ With a thick, squishing sound, the eye rotated back to the pirate. ‘And to you, the misled, I offer you this gift-’
‘No.’
Lenk spoke louder this time, but without conviction, his voice little more than a tiny pebble hurled from a limp wrist. Such a projectile merely bounced off the Abysmyth’s leathery hide, unheeded, unheard.
‘For no God you claim to know has ever bestowed upon you this quality of wisdom.’ Against the sound of the leg being wrenched free from its socket, the sound of paper ripping, meat splattering, the Cragsman’s shriek was but a whimper. ‘Where are they now, my son? Do they hear you, even as you scream? Even as you beg?’
It shook its head with some grim mockery of despair. It rolled its fingers, twirling the severed limb like a daisy petal before tossing it aside, adding to the Omens’ sun-ripened buffet.
‘They don’t hear you. I hear your suffering, my son, as does Mother Deep.’ Its eyes brightened. ‘Ulbecetonth hears. Ulbecetonth grants you this mercy. .’
With a gentleness not befitting its great size, the creature’s hand took the man’s head in its palm. It bobbed up and down, weighing the organ as though it were a piece of overripe fruit, pregnant with juices. Then, in the span of a belaboured groan, the creature’s talons tightened over the man’s skull as its jaws parted and uttered a final pair of words.
‘Through me.’
Lenk found not the voice even to squeak at the sight. The creature’s arm jerked, stiffened, sank claws into flesh and dripped thick, viscous ooze from its palm. The slime, like a living thing, swept up with an agonising slowness, seizing the man’s face with grey-green tendrils, seeping into nose, mouth, ears, eyes until all was nothing more than a glob of moist, glistening mucus.
‘Rest, now.’
The Abysmyth laid the Cragsman out before it with an almost reverent delicacy, staring down at the body with eyes that yearned to express pity through their emotionless voids. The ooze, as if in reaction to the demon, pulsed once like a thick, slimy heart before sliding off the man’s face, uninterested, to pool beneath his head.
It was the expression on the man’s face that finally drove Lenk to collapse. He fell to his knees, not with a scream, but a slack jaw and quivering eyes that could not look away from the Cragsman. Dismembered, tortured, drowned, the corpse wore no fear upon his face, no anger nor any mask that the young man had seen upon the face of death.
Upon the undisturbed sand, beneath the shade of a tree swaying with the quiet song of a breeze, the Cragsman stared up at the endless blue sky with closed eyes, a slight smile tugging at his lips.
‘This is the sound I remember,’ the Abysmyth gurgled happily, remorseless, ‘the sound of mercy.’ It ran its massive hand over the man’s face, a sign of benediction from black talons. ‘And to you, my son, She grants the gift of tranquil oblivion, through us, Her children.’
‘Endless is Mother Deep’s mercy,’ the Omens chattered in agreement.
‘Mercy?’
Lenk’s own voice sounded blasphemous in the stillness, echoing against the empty sky. Slowly, he drew himself up from the sand, body rigid and shivering, cloaked by a cold the sun would not turn its eye to.
Such a sound did not go unnoticed. The Omens paused in the midst of their feast, glancing up with bits of pink and black stuck in their teeth, bulbous eyes quivering. The Abysmyth’s great head rose, fixing two white eyes out towards the sand.
Two blue orbs stared back.
‘Mercy is a purpose.’ Lenk could hear the words coming from his mouth, but could not hear them in his head. ‘You have no purpose,’ the last word was forced from his lips like a spear, ‘abomination.’
He took a step forwards and the Omens scattered, white sheets in the wind as they flew up to the safety of the tree. Behind the net of leaves, their spherical eyes peered out, watching, unblinking, horrified.
The Abysmyth had no such reservations.
‘What would a mortal know of purpose?’ It rose up, matching Lenk’s step with a thunderous crash of its webbed foot. ‘A fleeting light in a cold, dark place, quivering and then snuffed for ever, your purpose is only to receive Her infinite mercy.’ It stepped out of the shadow, a blight upon the sky and sand. ‘Your purpose is to hear Her.’
‘Our purpose,’ Lenk felt the urge to pause at that word, but his mouth muttered regardless, ‘begins with you.’ His sword was up and levelled at the beast. ‘Where is the tome?’
‘Tome? TOME?’ The Abysmyth howled, scratching at the side of its head as if pained by the very word. ‘The book is not for you to see, my son! Its knowledge corrupts, condemns! I won’t let you fall to such a fate after all I have suffered for you.’ It stomped again, petulant. ‘I won’t!’
Only when it stepped into the sunlight, a great stain on the world, did the extent of its suffering become clear. Its wounds pulsated with its rage, the sickly green ichor gnawing at its flesh, carving deeper furrows into its skin and baring masses of bleached white bones and innards that resembled beating patches of dark moss.
