She rushed to him, not bothering to call his name, not bothering to shriek out in alarm at whatever had hurled him such a distance. She made no noise, save for the earth crunching beneath her feet and the words hissed between her teeth.
‘Don’t be dead, don’t be dead,’ she chanted to herself like a mantra, ‘Riffid Alive, don’t be dead.’
He might as well have been, lying in a half-made grave with the seared tree to mark it. Motionless, eyes closed, sword held loosely in hands, he looked almost at peace in his trench. So deep was the rent in the earth that she had to leap in to reach his body.
‘Don’t be dead, don’t be dead.’
Two fingers went to his throat; nothing. A long, notched ear went to his chest; soundless.
‘Don’t be dead, don’t be dead.’
She leaned closer to his face; his breath was cold and icy. Her eyes remained open, watering as the smoke stung them.
‘Don’t-’
His eyes opened with such suddenness that she recoiled. He rose from the ground like a living corpse draped in an ashen cloak. His sword was in his hand, naked and silver. His eyes pierced the gloom like candles burning blue. His stare shifted over her, merely acknowledging her presence, before he soundlessly pulled himself out of the hole.
‘Lenk,’ she all but cried after him, ‘are you-’
‘Not sure,’ he replied. His voice was like the sound of the embers beneath his boots. ‘Fight now.’
‘What fight?’
That, too, was answered as soon as she emerged from the grave.
MOTHER, WHY?
‘They won’t listen! They can’t hear You!’
Kataria’s ears twitched. A dozen voices, all choked and speaking at once, tone shifting wildly between each word.
‘I’ve tried! How I’ve tried! How I’ve suffered!’
Footsteps, embers crunching under massive, webbed feet.
‘But for what, Mother? They refuse enlightenment, deny You!’
The crack of ice.
‘Have I done nothing to show You my devotion? Is all my suffering in vain?’
Silence. The sound of smoke rising from the earth.
‘NO!’
The endless grey trembled and scattered, exposing the Abysmyth as a towering tree in the centre of the forest of frozen frogmen. The beast was alight in the gloom, eyes flashing wide and empty, talons wet with ooze, pulsing green ichor pumping in time with each staggered breath it took.
‘There’s. .’ Kataria paused to stare at the creature with ever-widening eyes, ‘more of them?’
‘More?’ Lenk swept the smoke for a sign. ‘Where?’
‘Behind us,’ Kataria replied. ‘Dead. Something happened here.’ She glanced from the demon’s wounds to a glob of the throbbing green substance on the earth. Not blood, she noted, not bothering to wonder what else it might be. ‘Probably whatever happened to this one as well.’
‘One or one thousand,’ the young man muttered, raising his sword. ‘We will clean the land of their blight.’
‘You think we can?’
‘You cannot,’ he replied sharply, ‘we can.’
‘We?’ She glanced at him, terrified. ‘Who’s-’
She never finished the sentence, her breath robbed from her the moment her eyes met his. Perhaps it was the cover of smoke, the angle at which she saw him or stress from the horrors of the battlefield that twisted her vision. She prayed it was, for she saw his stare burning brightly through the smoke.
Pupilless.
She tightened her jaw, turned away, resolved not to look again.
‘Then what do we do?’
‘Stay,’ he commanded coldly. ‘We kill.’
‘You can’t kill that thing.’
‘He cannot,’ Lenk replied, ‘we can.’
‘Damn it,’ she muttered breathlessly, ‘of all the times for you to go completely insane, why did you have to choose the moment when I might die, too?’
If the young man had a reply for that, it was lost in the scurry of boots on burned earth. He was up, a flash of silver and blue, carving a path through the endless smoke towards his towering foe. The creature, for its part, seemed unimpressed.
Then, suddenly, it erupted.
‘The Shepherd is ever tireless! Ever vigilant!’ It roared and the frozen frogmen quaked against the ice. ‘It is through his mercy that deliverance is possible! It is through the Shepherd that Her mercy is ever known!’
Lenk lunged, and a great black arm shot out, seizing him about the waist.
Whatever madness or courage had shot him into the beast’s grasp vanished once he was drawn close enough to look into the thing’s eyes. It gurgled angrily, its blank gaze straining to express the fury its voice could only hint at in disjointed harmony.
That seemed to infuriate it.
‘Do not fear, my son,’ it murmured, ‘for even as you strike at me, I am ever bound to forgive you.’
It craned its arm up, raising him high into the sky, as if to present him to heaven for inspection. Its talons pierced Lenk’s flesh, he felt his tunic shredding, five warm pinpricks painted his body red. He felt a scream burst from his lungs, but heard no reply.
‘It is your nature to fear the unknown,’ it continued, a deep, resonant bass leaking through its many voices, ‘but the Shepherd knows no nature of his own. His life is duty, and his duty is life.’
A ray of sunshine split the smoke, shining down on Lenk.
‘Through Her, I grant you this,’ it gurgled, tightening its grip, ‘my mercy and my duty. I. .’
It tilted its head, hesitant. Its eyes flickered once more as a twisted shriek tore itself from the creature’s maw.
‘I HATE YOU!’
The arm snapped down. Lenk hit the ice, shattered it, and descended below. He ploughed his grave with his body, shards digging into his back and flying up into the air. Even after he had stopped, he felt as though he were still falling, as though something else had torn itself from his body and vanished into the earth.
Through fluttering eyes, he saw the cold powder descending upon him, settling like a blanket, urging him to sleep. Even the sun still shone upon him. It felt warm; somehow, he knew he should have felt colder than he did.
‘What,’ he whispered, ‘what do we do now?’
No one answered him.
‘Can we survive?’
No one spoke to him.
‘I. . think I’m going to die.’
No one reassured him.
The sun vanished behind a blot of ink. His eyes snapped open once, wide enough to see the outline of a webbed foot the size of his head rise above his face. He blinked, and it was still there. Then he felt his eyes shut themselves and it no longer existed.
The world was dark.
‘From Mother Deep to child,’ it all but whispered, ‘from child to mortal. This is your mercy. Sleep now,’ its foot tensed, ‘and dream of blue.’
The demon’s body convulsed suddenly. A sparrow with a silver beak sang through the air, burying itself in the Abysmyth’s ribcage. It hesitated, flinching as one flinches at bee-stings. It heard the sound of feet scampering on ice, the sound of something humming a solemn tune, the sound of air parting before metal.
Another arrow struck it, embedded itself in the creature’s neck.
It lowered its foot to the ground, swinging its head about to survey the ice. Nothing but still, solitary bodies and frozen faces met its gaze, mirroring the anger it yearned to express.
‘How many times must we go through this?’ it gurgled. ‘How many times must I be scorned before I show you the unreasonableness of your blasphemies?’
Upon hearing no answer beyond the crack of ice, it hurled its head back and screamed.
‘HOW MANY?’
Kataria was hard pressed to choke back her scream as the creature’s fury raked at her ears. Something tinged its multitude of voices, a gurgling, shrieking squeal that sought to reach inside her head and sink audible talons into her brain. Pain, perhaps, or merely annoyance at having a pair of arrows lodged in its body.
That seemed to aggravate it.
She nocked another arrow and peered around the legs of a frozen frogman who scowled down upon her. The Abysmyth loomed like a tower with a poor foundation, swaying in the impotent breeze that tried to chase the smoke from the beach.
Up to that moment, she hadn’t even thought of trying to kill it.
Her plan had simply been to distract it long enough to dig Lenk out of his hole and drag him off to safety. However, as she stared at the creature, temptation manifested in the beast’s gaping wounds.
This did not seem like the demon she remembered. This was not the unholy terror that had held a shipful of men in terrified awe, not the creature that had pulled an entire harpoon out of its belly, unfazed. This demon, if it could still be called that, seemed weaker, wounded.
Mortal.
It whirled suddenly, swinging a colossal arm. Glass shattered and a thousand shards of what had once been a man, or something close to it, flew across the beach. Kataria, again, had to bite back horror as a fragment of what had been a face bounced twice across the ice, then skidded to a halt at her feet to stare at her with one eye frozen in hate.
Then again. .
‘Forgive the fury, child.’
Kataria froze instinctively; had the thing spotted her?
She dared a glimpse. The Abysmyth stalked towards her, sweeping its eyes across the blue stillness; the look of a predator with the scent of blood.
With all the casualness of a boy with a stick, it brought its arm down to crush another frogman. It pulled back a webbed fist, dark red splinters embedded in black skin.
‘You fear for my well-being, perhaps,’ it gurgled, ‘and that is good. But your fear is in vain. No wolf’s teeth can harm the Shepherd. Purple longfaces, they tried. They came out of nowhere with their iron,’ it scratched at a green wound, ‘their venom. But they could not stop us.’
Longfaces, venom, the words flashed through her mind. The tracks became clear, the other characters revealed. Absently, the shict wished that the creatures that had tormented this demon had decided to linger.
‘There is nothing to fear.’ The Abysmyth spoke with a poor facade of reassurance. ‘There are simply questions, questions that you must answer for yourself.’
Its head jerked away at the sound of ice cracking and Kataria seized her chance. Her feet were quiet as she slid out from behind the frogman, her pale flesh indiscernible from the gloom — she hoped — as she slipped behind another.
‘Who will remember you when you die, mortal?’ It continued to stalk towards her prior position. ‘Will your Gods take you to their elusive heaven,’ it levelled its gaze upon a frogman, ‘when nothing is left to bury?’
Its roar split the smoke as it charged, smashing frogmen underfoot, sending chunks of ice and sinew flying. With one great sweep of its hand, it crushed the frogman that had hidden Kataria. The creature’s eyes seemed to go wider, were that even possible, at the sight of empty blue earth, and it collapsed to its knees.
