And It Arose from the Deepest Black (John Black Book 2) (13 page)

22

I reached the pines at the base of the valley wall, climbing between large rocks, making my way up.

Behind me, Omicron wailed, so close that the pine needles shivered in the foul-smelling wind as I cringed against a boulder, expecting his massive jaws to clamp down on me and end the farce of my fight. When they didn’t, I kept moving. I needed something. Some way to kill Omicron. Because that’s what I really wanted to do. Kill. That meant going up, despite the fact that I had no idea what I intended to do when I got there. Look him in the eye, just before he devoured me? Maybe so. Anger is an interesting motivator.

I wasn’t far into my climb when the earth exploded behind me, dirt and debris kicking up in a huge cloud, accompanied by a deep curtain of sound that I felt more than heard. I shielded my eyes, and covered my mouth and nose so I could breath in the sudden wall of dust. Coughing, I pulled myself up the hill, trying to escape the billowing mass. For several minutes I struggled to get higher, to a place where I could breathe. And see.

What the hell was that?

As I reached a flat section of rock, the air cleared somewhat, and I gasped, both from the effort of the climb and to bring something other than dust into my lungs. The slab of rock jutted upward at an angle, so I followed it until it ended at a platform just above the slowly dissipating cloud.

There, I stood on an outcropping, my feet just inches from a drop of 100 feet, maybe more. And below me, only a short distance away, Omicron was splayed on the valley floor.

My cut had felled the monster.

Oh my God. I did it!
I laughed. “Ha! Take that!” I even did a little dance. I was positively gleeful over what I’d done. Little ol’ me. Taking out giant creatures. The overwhelming desire to kill my foe was a drug, and I was high on it.

Had I severed some important ligament, made it impossible for the Gorgol to walk? It was the only thing that made sense. But he was down, and that was all that mattered. I laughed again.

At the epicenter of the dust cloud, I saw movement. Omicron’s head turned and he looked up. His glowing amber eyes seemed to latch onto me, and he began to pull his massive forearms underneath his body. Then, with obvious effort, he pushed himself off the ground.

It wasn’t over. Omicron was trying to stand.

Laboring, clearly favoring his left side, Omicron rose. The massive scales of his back approached the height of the rocky ledge where I stood, then continued to rise. His head went up and up, eyes still locked on me.

Where moments before I had been standing above my enemy, now the Gorgol towered over me, staring down with what seemed to be a deep and painful hatred. Where moments before I felt tall, now I felt, once again, my true insignificance in comparison to the creature.

It was hopeless. I’d given it my best try and, while my cut clearly hurt Omicron, it was a manageable injury. And without a sword, I wouldn’t be dealing another such blow any time soon. The Gorgol was simply too big.

That was the sensible side of me.

The other side of me roared. “Come on! Come on!” I wanted to fight. I wanted more.

Omicron puffed up, filling himself with air. Then he howled directly at me, a near-deafening sound that hit me like a certain red car in the snow, from a day so long ago that now it seemed like a dream. His massive jaws hung open, the stench of his breath washing over me.

I had a moment to wonder to myself:
Where did you come from, Omicron? How old are you? And for God’s sake, when was the last time you brushed your teeth?

Still bellowing, Omicron made his move, lurching face first. His head rushed toward me at blinding speed, mouth open, tall spiky teeth moving to surround me, devour me.

Moments away from being eaten by a giant monster, I yelled in defiance. I don’t remember what I actually said, but I like to think it was something grand.
Chew on my bones and spit out my blood if you must, but damn you to hell and bring it on!

Defiance aside, at that very moment, I suddenly learned to fear my powers. What good would they do me in an unwinnable situation? Sluice out of the way of the teeth? Still Omicron’s jaws would hold me. What about when I was swallowed? Writhing around in his stomach acids until my powers gave in and I finally expired? That sounded remarkably unpleasant.

So that’s why your breath is so bad, eh? Dead, rotten people like me inside you.
I imagined some future prey, also staring into Omicron’s maw of death, smelling my foul remains. I pitied that person. I seriously doubted that I smelled very good alive at that moment. Dead, I was certain I’d produce a stench that would, well, wake the dead. Maybe that was a good idea. I could save myself.

I thought all of these things, things a person shouldn’t be thinking milliseconds from death or massive, prolonged agony. And still I shouted back at the beast, like a tiny mirror image of him. A giant monster descending with huge open mouth, and a tiny monster — that’s what I felt like — mimicking his fearsome expression.

The mouth opened wider, coming for me. Time flowed slowly, strangely.

I had to do something. I pushed. I mean that I tried to use my ability to move objects to push Omicron away. That, friends, was the saddest of all jokes. If the Gorgol even moved an inch, I couldn’t tell.

The teeth came closer, blazing fast in real time.

I pushed again, this time on Omicron’s mind.

And…

It might have worked. If I’d had time. But Omicron’s mind was
big
. Maybe not excessively complex, but it was no small thing to delve into an alien mind and try to revise its thinking. I didn’t know where to start. And I had no time to experiment. Deep within him I sensed something — echoes of ideas or feelings. But I didn’t know what to change, what switches to throw, so I stabbed randomly at his mind, flailing in my rage, but missing any real target.

There was nothing else I could do. Physical push, no. Mental push, no.

In my mind’s slow motion, the teeth surrounded me, the mouth closed over me.

And I had lost my sword.

Realizing the futility of it all, my anger flipped backward, away from Omicron and onto me.
What the hell is so special about the sword anyway? I’ve only trained for, like, six minutes. How could I possibly be any good?

But I knew that wasn’t the point. Pip trained us on techniques, I think, mostly so we didn’t cut ourselves or drop the damn heavy swords. Which is essentially what I had done. Only, I’d left mine jutting out of Omicron’s right leg.

In our hands, the swords were more than swords. How else could we slash a truck to pieces? How else could I have injured the Gorgol so badly? It didn’t even matter that my sword was metal. In my hands, it became something more.

Just like the bel
t
.

The belt.

It was the dumbest of all possible ideas. To attack a 200-foot monster with a leather belt.

But it was my last hope.

In the infinitesimally small space between the thought and the moment when Omicron’s jaws would close around me, I reached down, flicking the buckle on my well-worn belt with ease. With a smooth motion, I whipped it from around my waste and brandished it overhead in one hand, aiming straight into the soft internal tissues of Omicron’s open mouth.

The belt was not a belt. The belt was solid. It was sharp. It compressed into a fine-pointed thing, almost a spear. A sword-spear.

And in that blink of an eye, Omicron’s teeth dug into the rock around me, shearing me, my new weapon, and about a quarter ton of stone off the top of the outcropping. Swept up, inside the monster’s mouth, I pushed forward. Somehow, miraculously, I wasn’t impaled on one of those teeth, but instead managed to squish myself into the wet, putrid, slimy space between Omicron’s tongue and the roof of his mouth.

My sword-spear stabbed upward, penetrating more easily than my real sword had cut through the outer flesh. Deeper and deeper the belt went, and I began to realize there was a warmth coming from it, like an electric current. Still it went deeper.

Then, like closing the circuit to a battery, the current hit something powerful, and the warmth and energy increased tenfold.

Immediately, I felt it.

Pain.

I could feel the Gorgol’s pain.

Confusio
n
.

An unnamed emotion, raw and powerful and true.

Anger.

Fear.

The ideas, the feelings, were like clouds of mental energy, and I felt my mind hopping from one to the next to —

LOST.

MOTHER.

HOME.

What the hell? There were no words, but still the ideas rang through my head. The crying rage. LOST. MOTHER. HOME.

What did it mean?

The spear thinned and grew and penetrated farther. Slowly, I was skewering the brain of the beast.

The pain and confusion and fear increased. And so did the three words, more passionate, more urgent. LOST! MOTHER! HOME!

Was this Gorgol lost? Beyond all belief, did this 200-foot-tall monster have a
mother
? Where was its home? The sea? Somewhere else?

Suddenly, the feelings spiked. The pain and confusion turned to desperation. Omicron was dying. I was killing him. And yet he repeated, softer now, like echoes fading into the distance. LOST. MOTHER. HOME.

I thought of ants and gnats and flies and mosquitos. Was that all we were to a Gorgol, human insects? Sometimes a pest to be swatted, but normally not even that. How often had I trampled an anthill without knowing, or stomped some unsuspecting bug by simply walking or running or playing? Was it possible that none of Omicron’s actions had been fueled by malice? Was it possible he just didn’t pay attention to something so small and insignificant as a human being? But we human beings fought back. I’m certain I would notice if a legion of ants suddenly opened fire on me with little ant machine guns.

But when insects do attack, what do we do? How exactly do we respond to swarms of gnats or bees or mosquitos? By trying to kill them all, before they hurt us again. I thought of my sword, sticking out of Omicron’s leg. I was the mosquito.

The bloodlust waned. My rational mind started to return.

What was I doing? I was killing him, and he was lost. I was killing him, and he was seeking mother. I was killing him, and he was seeking home.

More than anything, I realized just how little I could possibly understand about the Gorgols. What right did I have to kill Omicron? Maybe Jake Weissman was right, after all.

In my hand, the sword-spear pulsed with warm electricity, delving ever deeper into the delicate tissue of Omicron’s brain.

No
. I tugged, pulling back.
No.

From my primal cave deep inside the creature’s mouth, I suddenly felt the entire world falling. Well, not that. Omicron was falling, with me inside. His energy had hit a critical point. The wound in his leg, in his brain. He was falling.

No!
I pulled on the belt again.
No, stop it!

But we fell, and fell, and fell. And then we crashed, a tidal wave of mass propelled by gravity into the harsh and unforgiving earth. Inside the beast’s mouth, I was cushioned from the initial blow, pressed between Omicron’s tongue and the roof of his mouth, until his jaws fell open and I tumbled away, surrounded by another massive cloud of dust.

I rolled to a stop, covering my mouth and nose, needing air, looking for a way out. But my energy, too, had been sapped. I cowered, hoping the air would come soon.