The Shadow Realm (The Age of Dawn Book 4) (5 page)

He was running alongside the river, for how long he couldn’t say. The beast was snarling behind, always around the corner like a bloodhound on the hunt. The broken Breden sword was sore in his palm. His short hair and face were crusted with blood. He wanted to vomit at the thought of how many had to die to produce this much of it. The valley of skulls flattened out further down the river into waving hills. Something caught his eye on a flattened mass beside the river.

There was a nude woman there, protectively holding her arms over her breasts. Her knees were pressed together, hiding her sex. She had luscious blond coils of hair, flowing over flawless milky skin, caressing her shoulders and slipping between her breasts. There was something deeply wrong here, but he felt drawn to her like a Rot Fly to dead flesh. He took a step forward, a bloody foot slipping on a skull.

“I love a good woman,” a man’s voice said. “It’s been too long. A woman, here?” The man wore the pearl Milvorian armor of the Tower’s armsmen, streaked with pinks. He held a wicked halberd at his side, waving blade tinging off the grinning skulls as he lazily dragged it towards her. “You’re beautiful.” He discarded his weapon and tossed a dented helmet to the skulls. The woman opened her arms in an embrace, round breasts inviting him.

“No! Wait!” Walter called, uselessly reaching from the bloody riverbank.

The armsman ignored him, or didn’t hear him. He fell into her arms, body sagging against her, pressing his face between her breasts. She held him up as if he were made of sticks, unflinching at the weight of all that armor. She placed an ivory hand over his neck and worked her fingers into his blood-matted hair. Her soft eyes regarded the armsman, the inklings of a smile spreading across her lips.

“What is this place?” Walter blinked and rubbed his eyes, grinding the pommel of his sword into his temple. He opened his eyes, gasping and springing back a step, splashing into the warm blood again. His breath caught before he could say anything. To speak might alert it. Maybe it hadn’t seen him. Where did the beast chasing him go? Maybe it found something easier to catch.

The beautiful woman had become a nightmare. Her head was a wolf’s and her body was contorted into an unnatural, sinuous shape. Bones showed through her skin, pulled tight as a drum. Her elegant hand around the armsman’s neck had become a giant’s, tipped with gleaming obsidian nails. The armsman remained there, nuzzling himself in its pelt, surrounded by enormous breasts swallowing his head.

There was a mark on the side of the man’s neck, like a tattoo or a brand. He slitted his eyes. It was in the shape of a figure eight. Did he have one too? He reached back at the same side of his neck, fingers jumping at the scar when he first felt it. He tentatively reached back again, running his fingers over its shape. It was there, just like the armsman’s.

“What is this?” he barked. Anger took him again, dashing the fear that fought to seize control of his body.

The armsman screamed as the beast twisted its paw around the man’s head, its nails digging into his skull. His screams became shrieks of agony. His head was snapped around the wrong way, arms and legs flailing at his captor. His head was then torn free in a shower of dark streaks.

“Shit. Shit!” Walter ran, daring to look back. The wolf was a blur, almost on him; its bloody mouth spread apart, beady eyes hungry. It growled and Walter dropped to his knees, stabbing up with his sword in two hands. Blood splashed up from the river onto his chest and down his pants. The beast lunged over his head as his sword cut a long gash under its jaw. It had almost ripped the weapon from his grip, left his fingers and wrists aching .

The wolf rolled over and over before falling with its big tits up and poking out of the river, looking like stones and diverting the blood’s flow. Its long muscular arms twitched as blood spurted out from under its neck, adding its own blood to the grisly river. A tongue lolled out from the wound, long as a sword and wide as a bowl. It didn’t look real.

“Fuck,” Walter breathed, and wiped his sword on his pants, trying to clear off the blood and only making it worse. He started laughing at the gesture. “What am I doing?” He didn’t care anymore.

Everything hurt now. The tendons in his fingers felt torn and stretched. The wounds in his ribs and back were throbbing hammers. His knee popped and clicked as he walked. There had to be a way out of here, somewhere. The river was flowing and merging with something else. He just had to keep following it.

Why weren’t his wounds healing? He could feel the Phoenix in his chest, buried deep and inaccessible. But it was there, he knew it. The Dragon was there too, eager to be set free, but something was blocking it. It was like an Equalizer, but much more powerful, pressing their powers into a great chasm.

Walter stopped to catch his breath. He closed his eyes, pained with the burning of blood. The faces of dying men and women screeched across his mind. Wails of pain and cries of mercy echoed around their images. They were the faces of men and women he remembered from the siege of the Silver Tower. The faces of those he had failed. Their faces exploded all around into plumes of blood, screaming and streaking red all around.

It felt like he was sinking through a hole in the ground. His legs were filled with a sudden weightlessness.
Where am I? So many men and women have died because of my selfishness. Their deaths are on my hands. Because of me. Because I didn’t make the necessary sacrifice earlier. All those bodies and souls. Their weight crushes me. Their blood is on my hands.

His mind grew suddenly quiet and the visions of the dead faded into a sheet of black. A droplet fell through the abyss like passing through honey, impossibly slow, twinkling like a star. Within the droplet were shards of light, reflecting what might have been the sun.
What is that?

His own voice answered him, but he felt like it was coming from someone else’s mind.
The last tear you shed as a man.
It finally struck the black with an echoing splash, sending shimmering ripples of violet light across the darkness. The voice continued and Walter listened, transfixed by the beauty of the pulsing light.
When a person has experienced the most severe suffering one can bear, so deep they split from their original concept of the self, their empathy and compassion dies.

The world became the river of blood, filling his vision with shades of red. He saw faces disconnected from bodies drifting through the river, mouths split apart and eyes sockets shrouded in shadow. Their expressions were crystallized, some in a permanent frown, others in stark horror.
These are merely droplets in the sea that is the world of the living,
his voice said in his mind.
They are a mere inkling what it is to come in the future. They plead for help from the other side.
Their faces swirled around and around in his vision, seeming to come from the infinite depths.

A screeching tore into his ears and his eyes snapped open, the visions dashed away. A stout beast shaped like a jellyfish slithered towards him. Its upper teeth scraped along the skulls and ripped them from the ground. It didn’t seem to have a jaw or a set of lower teeth. It had white, innocent eyes on the sides of its rounded body. Adjacent to its eyes were curving horns tipped with blood, casting doubt on any shred of innocence.

Walter charged with a roar, tears streaming across his eyes and blurring his vision. The beast snarled and Walter ran up its body as if it were a small hill, careful of its long teeth. He punched its plate-sized eye with one hand, sinking his fist into its gelatinous structure. His hand latched onto the edge of its eye socket and his sword arm went to work hacking lines of red from its back. Blood spurted out of the wounds as Walter jabbed with his sword.

The beast rose up and threw him into the air, tumbling. He saw its body flash past, wide and as long as a street. He had only seen its head. As he rolled through the air, he slashed at something else and felt his sword cutting through flesh. Then he was falling back to the ground head first, directly into a yawning mouth as wide as a door, lined with stalagmites for teeth. He sucked in hot air, its mouth falling open. Waiting.

He reached his arms out, both hands rigid around his shattered blade. He writhed in the air and twisted his body. He managed to slide alongside the closing mouth and cut a long streak down its side before falling between a pair of black eyes. The wide mouths snapped at him from every angle, missing him by a millisecond. He could only make out the white of their teeth, framed in by flitting shadows. He landed on something fleshy and was jolted off, tumbling in the air again. His grip was like iron on his weapon.

The ruby skulls met his back, bouncing and sliding down a mountain with unstoppable speed. He dug his heels in, pressed against them with his free hand. He felt his palm rip open, finger popping as he tried to hold onto a bony knob. The skulls were merciless, beating his muscles and thudding into his bones. He collided with the mound of them and rolled over on his side, weightless in the air. A long, terrible second later, he fell into liquid.

He pushed himself up, moaning, baptized in blood. He was in a lake of it, stopping at his ankles and stretching as far as his eyes could see. There were strange looking rocks in it. He blinked, seeing they weren’t rocks but bodies. Bodies everywhere. Interspersed between them were swords, spears, and shields, abandoned.

Pain stabbed at his shoulders, knees, back and fingers. It urged him to lay down and fill his lungs with the awful blood. He sniffed and his lips trembled. He sheathed his sword, letting out a soft snicker at seeing the belt still intact. His pants were in tatters, showing more of his skin than they covered.

He wound his fingers into fists. Blood fell off of him in cascading sheets, thick and sticky. He screamed in agony, at the horror, at the gut-wrenching disgust of all that blood. He screamed and screamed, his voice cracking and throat tearing. He tried to scream it all away. All the blood. All the unburied dead. It felt like there was a vice in his stomach, clamping down and the screw ever tightening.

J
uzo grunted
, wiping a drop of blood from the corner of his white lips. He pressed his palm against his abdomen, snuffing out the threads that still burned on his coat. The edges of the wound tingled as the skin started to heal. New strings of skin pulled over the blackened flesh as if imaginary hands were sewing it together.

He stared down into the dead eyes, fixed and wide with surprise. A shiver coursed its way down from his neck to his fingertips. He must’ve had that exact same look in his eyes on more than one occasion.

She was pretty. She had straight teeth, a small nose, and plump lips ripe for kissing. She had innocent blue eyes, until they had burned with the light of the Dragon. She was someone he might have asked to join him for an ale. Maybe in another life, another world. She wore peasant’s clothes, threadbare and stained with the dirt of a hard day’s work. A black fly buzzed and landed on her parted lips. It sat there rubbing its tiny legs together, preparing itself for a feast of epic proportions.

The people of Helm’s Reach weren’t easy prey, most having been graced with the touch of the gods. This girl was no exception. Juzo had only been grazed by her fireball. He didn’t want to think what his gut would’ve looked like had it struck true.

Her upper arm lay propped against the sand-worn walls of a poorly built house, then draped across her chest at the elbow. The one-room house had a pencil roof, which sagged in the middle. Weeds bristled from the rotting shingles and a bird sang from a nest up there. It was practically its own forest, harboring insects of all kind basking in the late sun. The ill-fitting door creaked in the breeze, opened and closed for the seventeenth time. Thump. Eighteenth.

The houses on the outskirts of the city were a ways off from each other. Not so far you couldn’t see another man, but not so close you could make out the look on his face. Juzo kept his eye sharp, keeping watch for curious eyes. He pretended to be investigating a split board, rapping against it with his fist, just in case there were eyes he missed.

The sun hung low in the sky, pinking the tips of the far off Mountains of Misery. There was still snow up there. He had hoped to see it up close one day. He mindlessly tapped on the rotting board, wondered how long it would take to climb their peaks. They reached up further than his eye could see, stabbing through the creamy blanket of clouds above.

The woman had lived alone here. Hopefully, no one would come looking for her any time soon. Juzo had studied her for a couple days. He watched when she left the shack, when she returned, who she met, what she bought. The thoughts sickened him. He belonged in a stockade to rot in the sun, not at the side of the Arch Wizard. He had become what his parents had warned him about. Someone had to do the dark work, he assured himself, but at what price?

The girl moaned and rolled over onto her side, exposing the mess Juzo had made of her bluish neck. It would heal quickly enough. He felt the spark of her thoughts return, like a new star blossoming in his mind.

Where am I?
She thought.
Why am I so thirsty?
Her eyes found his, squinting like she just woke from a long nap.
Do I know you, mister?

Juzo closed his eyes and injected his thoughts.
You’ll join the others. Walk west for about three miles, long before the Grey Riven Foothills. Stay on the wagon path out of the city, head north at the skull tower and you’ll find a cave. The others will find you there.

What others?

No more questions. Go, don’t be seen, speak to no one. Clean up that wound.

She rose to her feet and started trudging through the loose dirt. Her big toe stuck out through a hole on a boot, the yellowed nail in dire need of a file. She absently wiped her neck, looked down at the blood, then back at Juzo. She sniffed her palm and wrinkled her eyes at the blood. She sniffed it again, her uncertain tongue lapped at the red smear. Her lips pulled into a smile and she started sucking at her palm.

“Another one converted,” he said with a touch of pride. It was madness. What would the others think when they found out? Wasn’t it Baylan who had told him that it was prudent to do what had to be done, then plead for forgiveness after?

“What was that?” She paused for a breath, her mouth now scarlet.

Juzo’s heart skipped a beat, his fists knotting into balls. She shouldn’t have been able to hear his thoughts. Had she? It wasn’t supposed to work like that. Maybe there was something he didn’t understand. Had he fucked something up? Maybe, but more likely it was just coincidence.

“Nothing. Get going.” He lifted his chin in the direction of the cave.

Juzo let out a long breath, crossing his arms and watching the nameless woman as she stumbled away. She was a mirage in the scrubland, kicking up dirt inhaled by the wind. That made her his fifth surrogate. The new Tower would need more, hundreds, if not thousands of soldiers to stand against Asebor.

He peered at the plume of smoke endlessly drifting out to sea from the pillaged Silver Tower. He felt like he should feel sadness, anger, something, anything at the sight of that dark cloud. He had wanted vengeance and it felt good to have it, to watch Terar bleed. Vengeance was hollow though. It was disappointing, like expectantly cracking open an egg for morning supper, only to find nothing but rot inside.

A bright purple lizard skittered in front of his black leather boots. It raised a crown of thin flesh around its neck and hissed at him. Its wide mouth gaped open. Juzo smirked, raised his boot and rammed it down. The lizard crunched under his boot, its guts squirting out onto a rock. He stared at its entrails, which looked like a strange jam.

The Blood Eater’s he created were inextricably linked to him, their actions and will molded by his thoughts. They were much like he was once, under the control of Terar, though without the soul crushing abuse.

Baylan had said the Black Wynches controlled the Cerumal warriors through tele— telesomething. It controlled their thoughts, made them strike with coordination. It was exactly what he did with his surrogates. He brushed his skin, thinking a bug had landed on it, but there was nothing there. Did they use the same power?

“Telepathy.” He remembered. Was he like them? “No.” It felt weak coming out of his throat. It was a lie supported by rotting hay.

He vowed to be better than Terar. He would treat his surrogates fairly. He’d send them meals on time. “Meals,” He scoffed, shaking his head. He looked up from the lizard guts, slitted his ruby eye and watched his girl blend with the sand into the distance. There was no use trying to deny the truth of it. “Had to be reasonable,” Walter would have said. He had become the enemy.

A
n oily haze engulfed
the huddled buildings of Helm’s Reach. The square was cobbled and a churning river of goats were herded past Nyset’s station. Their bells rang and their throats bleated. The wood all around was swelling and smelly from the rain. The carpet of moss at her back glowed with a vibrant green. A mill house with enormous fins stood to her left, pushed by the constant breeze that drifted in from the Far Sea. Shutters from houses were propped open, dotted with anxious faces at the windows, who were eying her with unabashed curiosity.

“Who’s next?” Nyset smiled at the approaching girl. She was far too young, eyes downcast. Nyset should have immediately turned her away, but these were dark times. They demanded the help of every willing body.

Nyset rubbed the misty rain out of her eyes. She had set up her recruiting booth in the middle ring of Helm’s Reach with Vesla. She hoped the people here would be more apt to come by. Yesterday’s results in Dirt Bottom were nothing short of abysmal. Not a single person looking to join could touch the god’s essences. Today, the line was already more than they could handle in a day, winding around a bend as far as she could see.

Grimbald helped her with the construction of the booth. It was an oaken table with a sign raised up high at the front. Grim had wanted to spend weeks on it, making it perfect. She asked him to have it done in a day and he had delivered. It had coarse edges and visible nail holes. The sign read, “Join the Tower.” She had painted it in a crude red ink, knowing it didn’t much matter. Her presence was all that was needed. It wasn’t arrogance, she thought. It was self-awareness.

She glanced over at Vesla scribbling in a ledger beside her. She had shiny midnight hair that shone with hints of blue, straight and in a ponytail. Her eyes were a cherry-brown and her cheekbones were sharp. She had taken on the role of her assistant, but Nyset liked to think of her as a friend first. It was nice to have a budding friendship with a woman for once. They were both in their nineteenth birth years. She had always had trouble with connecting with other girls. She had never quite figured out why.

Nyset silks were a bold red, impossible to miss in the gloom of neutrals. She was making herself a target, she knew. There had to be enemies here. They were all around, only miles from Helm’s Reach. The Death Spawn had to be badly weakened to have not yet attacked here. Unless they were elsewhere. What were they waiting for? She felt her throat tightening at the thoughts and directed herself back to the present.

The girl standing before her sniffed. She was staring at her, shuffling her feet and swaying from side to side.

“Sorry. What’s your name, child?” Nyset asked, tilting her head. The day already felt too long.

“Tesana,” she squeaked.

“And do you touch the Dragon?” She didn’t have time to waste with frivolous conversation.

“Oh yes, yes of course.” Tesana’s eyes lit up, glowing like dying embers.

“Alright then. Show me your best spell.” Nyset folded her arms and leaned back in the rickety chair. She loved the way her silks caressed her skin, even when sticking and wet.

Tesana took a few steps back from the table. Her lips pressed together and she lifted her hand into the air, an index finger extended. A sprig of fire danced on her fingertip, bright as a candle. Nyset frowned. Too young and too weak.

“You’ll make a fine apprentice, darling. Vesla will enter your name in the books.” She gestured towards Vesla, who flashed her a bright smile. It was a task that would’ve bored Nyset to death.

“Who’s next?” Nyset beckoned to a grizzled man with sunken eyes.

Nyset nodded at him as he stepped up to her table. “Hello,” her breath caught. His features startled her. He looked like her father, reminding her of home. It wasn’t him though. It couldn’t possibly be. He was safe in Breden with her mother.

“Are you alright, Arch Wizard?”

“Ah… yes. Fine. You’re touched by the Phoenix then?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll show you.” He casually reached around his back and drew a dull carving knife. Nyset embraced the Dragon, swirling fire in her veins. He held the stubby knife out to his side, reflecting the fire in her eyes. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I wouldn’t hurt you. I just want to show you what I say is true.”

She should have brought a few of the armsman with her, just in case. There were many people here, more than the two of them could manage. The man dragged his knife across his palm and the skin spread apart, spilling blood. A woman behind him gasped. He sheathed the knife with his other hand while his wound knitted together, bursting with the sky blue light of the Phoenix. “See?”

“Very well. Please step over here and my assistant will finish up.”

The man planted his bloody palm at the front of her table, leaning close. “It’s good to be scared. Never know where the next dagger will come,” he said flatly.

“Right.” She blinked at him, waiting for him to move along.

“Just a little advice for you, Arch Wizard.” He clicked his tongue. “Wouldn’t want to see anything happen to you.” He left a bloody print on her table and sauntered over to Vesla.

Vesla cringed away from him, then flashed Nyset a raised eyebrow.

“You left your blood on my table.” Nyset lazily pointed at it.

“Oh. You want me to clean that?”

She stared at him, looking into his grinning eyes and blackened teeth. He stared back, his cracking lips further broadening. She rose out of her chair, back rigid. Murmurs flitted over the crowd. A pair of pudgy men inched away from the booth and exchanged worried glances. “I’ll clean it,” he muttered.

Nyset took a deep breath, steadying her quivering arms. They had to respect her.

The man snorted and coughed out a wad of phlegm then spat it onto the drying blood. He frowned down at his work and tilted his head, his wrinkled neck skin creased with dirt. He started wiping it with his soiled shirt, smearing something brown into the blood. “Better?”

She crossed her arms, skin prickling with sweat. “Are you having a bad day?”

“What?” The man recoiled as if bitten.

“You seem to have a lot of anger.”

“I… you shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. We’re abominations.” He stammered, eyes wild.

Nyset saw now that his robes were once white in spots. He was a Purist, part of the group that believed that wizards were only here to enslave humanity. They believed that because of their powers, wizards should be put to death to end their bloodline. Most were orphans looking to be part of something, harmless mostly. They would be fed and clothed, maybe even touched. Perhaps loved for the first time. Some weren’t so harmless. Some had crucified one of Baylan’s friends and left his mutilated body before the Lair in Midgaard.