After a good week’s rusting, it didn’t seem the gears would ever start to churn, but under the oak’s protection, we found safety long enough to set ourselves right, and once that fire roared, no wind could put it out. With that light and a little direction, our practice carried on through evening and deep into the night. One change to our approach was enough to make all the difference, not only to upturn our odds, but to give the motivation to keep climbing.
Spent to cinders, we used all of the day until the next rushed in to be burned with same fervor. Cordella, through both of our diligence, taught me new uses for my natural aptitudes while I assembled the machinations that would best use hers. Every second of every hour we put to use until we couldn’t any longer because we never knew when that time would come.
After that point, no matter the effort we put in, no more of it would be wasted with worry. We didn’t need to cover our blind-spots so long as we had each other’s in clear sight, and no longer did we fret over every detail—all that could and would go awry—but what we could count on. Crossing off items and narrowing the list, we could use what was left to weave a plan, and to each of our pleasures, we would have equal place in it.
We didn’t know how long the storm would cast its cloak over the road ahead, be it for days or weeks to come, but if once before there had been rip in the seam, it was a matter of time before we saw the next, and before that day came, we pledged to see every moment before it in a new light. Instead of uncertainty, the rain would come to represent opportunity. For as long as the the sun stowed away, we readied ourselves for its return.
So distant from our thoughts, we had hardly noticed it stall—not halt, but slow enough to convince us that we might tempt fate a for a second time. True to our accord, we gathered our things and set out, this time in good spirit. Morning now, we had our worst days behind us, and the rest of this one ahead; it was up us what to make of it.
Hurdling across the plains that second time, we were nervous what my try to stop us, but already our travels were considerably improved. Escalus, given a week’s reprieve for the first time in his life, was better rested than ever, and the ground had ceased to bind his feet. Granted, the path wasn’t without its pitfalls. A constant mist had wet our skin since departure, and a thick fog settled in where the rain used to gather, but what was a little haze to those cold daggers?
Sooner than before, we wandered past the teeth and into the mouth of the swamp, fearing again that her tongue might come lashing, but with bated breath, and too much time spent holding it, we came to and crossed our previous turning point. Water collected at our ankles, but not past.
We were through, but we couldn’t drink to it yet; that way-point marked the end of an ordeal and the genesis of another. Whatever line we crossed, whatever invisible threshold, separated the shell from the core. The world outside it might have been freed, but the inside churned with the distilled force of what lay at the root. Immediately, it was warmer on this side than than the other, and the sky, as we came nearer to the source, devolved to madness. It swarmed with purple plasma as clouds spun off like whirlpools from a greater disturbance, and the weather was just irresolute. Our hiatus was interrupted with intermittent downpours and pelting sprays lasting seconds and never from the same direction.
After enough stress and strife, we ceased to wear it on our faces, but it was a lot what we opposed. Wherever and whatever it stemmed from possessed phenomenal power, rival even to the arch whose bellows sent us clear across the whole of East Circadia. It was too little time to process, let alone learn from the first experience, but we set out full tilt to the next landmark. At our rate, no matter the time we set aside for personal growth, the loft of our goals had far outpaced us.
A thin string, a pair of shears, and two towns hanging in the balance, but there was more on the line than that. Had we understood Samara, then what started and spread from Kaldris was a hairline crack, and were we to fail here, it would become the fault line. Then, there was our omen—looming accompaniment to whatever beast we thought ourselves up to conquering, and we sailed on regardless. Not that fear was absent from our thoughts; we were petrified, but the gravity, the magnetic pull on our moral compass had locked us in. It didn’t matter much then, our perturbation, because we’d unwittingly entwined ourselves in something momentous and twisted such that something so fundamental as our next step was out of our hands.
For the time being, the best we could do was enjoy the trip—at least what we could stomach of it—until it came to a close, and the players would be forced to take the stage. Behind the mist-gray curtain, we didn’t notice ourselves on set until our near collision with the first rancid hut, standing on one leg to the menace in the skies. I couldn’t avert my eyes of the carnage: a roof torn half-asunder, its innards spilled—thrown from the open cavity. It didn’t bode well, both for the missing inhabitants and for the village located not far beyond, but as long as it was abandoned, it might still serve us.
I produced the lead. This was as much a stable as any other I’d fashioned over the years: fence posts, a rogue tree, and in one desperate instance, a spare room at the inn. He’d do just fine. I pat the horse’s head and hit the ground toe first, though it would quickly work its way up to my ankles. With him secure, we had only ourselves to worry about as we embarked into the monsoon.
Between the fog and the thinnest sheet of rain, we could only use what was a few feet in front of us to orient ourselves, but pushing past a few more war-torn homesteads, they started to cluster, and we knew we stood at the epicenter. I gathered myself. The more we saw, the grimmer it seemed. A great many huts were completely dismantled by the unfaltering mix of draft and downpour, and many more were close to buckling. Mochada was wasting, slowly turning to mud with each cloudburst. When the next picked up speed and my mind with, a valiant urge crossed my mind—to throw open the nearest of doors and usher out her residents, but a sinister worry stayed my hand. What would I find? Knowing what Drysdan had undergone, and had they not already succumbed, the people of Mochada were straddling the line.
“Hello?” one of us called, and then the other, hoping for a head to poke around the corner—some sign that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Not every house was so derelict; a few remained on their bowing knees, and without a second thought we’d stand at their steps in the vain hope that we’d hear them stir.
“Should we?”
“Best not. We’ll do what we came to do and break down doors after. If it’s at all like Kaldris, then they’re not in the mood to be bothered without some very good news.”
I heeded her advice, though only that I deprive myself of seeing what lay across the door.
For a duo strapped for time, we spent a lot of it scouring to no avail. We didn’t know what we were looking for, and unlike the mine, it didn’t present itself to us. There was no path, no hill to tumble down, and most crucially, there was no crystal spotlight to tell us when we’d made it. In these conditions, we wouldn’t know a lead until we hit it us in the head, not that it would stop us from shoving our noses in the mud. Then, after another cold sweat, the fever broke from the umpteenth time that day, lifting away the worst of it and bringing still to the battered burrow.
We arched our necks this way and that, but it wasn’t the breakthrough either of us were looking for, and the only thing we saw with any clarity was the same dismal place we tried to ignore. I should’ve been thankful for the lull—a chance to hear my thoughts—and while I was at first, it didn’t take long for it to settle in the way it used to.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
It starts with a deep chill, a tingle behind the ears that moves like a wave from the neck down. It has to be wrong, you plead with yourself, another look back to see if your mind was playing tricks, but what your eyes couldn’t find, your ears heard clear as day: nothing. I’d lived it too many times already, a whisper-less city crumbling at my feet, the evidence lining the grooves of my boots, and it still gripped me the same way it always did. Too late. Again.
“Call me what you like, but I think I prefer the mine if I’m being quite honest with myself. These clouds won’t make up their mind!” she hissed, blowing the spray from between her lips. “Your thoughts? Kaiser?”
“How do I keep letting this happen?”
“Letting what happen?”
“It’s the same every time. Cornika, Thorwell, Crodmill—they were just like this by the time I’d found them.“
“Don’t say that. We don’t where these people have gone off to, so don’t go filling any gaps.”
She was right, and I knew better, but the wheel was already bumping along; every jolt and turn brought searing pain from the wounds yet to close. That wasn’t the end of it. By the light of the new, the old became visceral again, and finally, I realized the two weren’t merely similar. Another chill rattled my spine. Were this the third, how many more archs could there be? Samara called them an affliction, but how far had the rot spread if the lesions ran from here to Abdera?
I considered telling Cordella, but it wasn’t the right time, and there was no point giving my mind the munitions to run rampant when it did fine job of it without. Fortunately, something else grabbed my attention. Amidst the still, the sound of lapping water carried through mist. If Mochada sat along a bank, then that was our lake. By all means, it was the last place we needed to look, but if it offered an escape from the macabre, then it’s where we were headed.
Cordella trailed, not noticing I’d left her side, but she found me there soon enough just outside of the bulk of the town. There it sat and swayed, crawling the legs of the pile houses and cypress trees, and at the closest edge of it, a dock. A little wooden wharf, braving the high water, but what drew my attention was the silhouette at the edge. I brushed my hair from my eyes, soaked and grown long since leaving Abdera, but there the figure remained.
I held my breath, waiting until she came to my side.
“You’re sure it’s him? And you’re sure we’re ready?”
Typically, that was the question I’d be asking. Certainty was a privilege for the dead and the dying, and I wasn’t ready to die, but while I wasn’t a notoriously confident man, I wasn’t afraid either. When I looked at him again, I didn’t need to consider. I marched, and I ignored the rustle and squish of my pounding feet. Even as the dock’s wooden planks lead out from the turf, I didn’t mine the squeak and squeal.
He paid no mind,staring, still heavy on the water. My weapon swayed in my hand as I approached.
“Pestilent things. I should’ve known better than to think they’d forget the scent. How did you find me?”
“Since I’m still owed from last time, I’ll tell you how this is going to work. We ask a question, and you answer it. Does that sound fair?” I was emboldened by his silence, both in tone and volume. “What is your name?”
His hand clapped against his leg. “Damn mosquitoes, swarming faster than I can swat them down. Their persistence would admirable were it not so pointless.”
“We’re not here for you to waste our time. I asked you a question—answer it or turn and face us.”
He laughed to himself. “We’ve played that game, and we know how it ends. Why should we bother to play it again?”
“You’re alone,” said Cordella plainly. “You can play the part as long as long as you like, but it’s still an act. With the both of us healed, you don’t have a cat’s chance in hell.”
“Ah, but on the contrary, I would say the odds are more than titled in my favor. Even more so this time than the last.” He straightened his neck. “My name is Asrael—but tell me. What use is it if it’s the last thing you’ll hear?”
In the time it took to share a glance with my comrade, he extended his arm out over the water, and before I could take another step, something bid me not to. Something unspoken, and for as long as it hung there, my breath was locked in its chamber. Everything fell still. The blue plane fell momentarily flat against the lake bed, ceasing the surf and causing the erratic drum of my heartbeat to ring clearer in contrast. At his behest, even the swirling clouds slammed to a stop. Then, it lifted. Like a scepter, his spindly arm scraped the sky, and all resumed.
The water, frozen a moment before, heaved and swelled with a vengeance, a full assault along the shoreline before it retreated back. It wasn’t bending on its own. There was shadow under surface—a growing black figure gliding under the ridges and pressing against the membrane. Like a bubble, it stretched the lake’s center as the surf sunk ten—twenty feet at its sides before finally giving way to its immensity.
First to emerge from behind the veil were a row of copper dorsal fins, clad in scale and webbing. I counted at least a dozen of them jutting, erupting from its back at every conceivable angles. Already it proved impossibly massive, and the rush of water to fill its place was the final testament for the feeble pier, rocking and slamming against its stilts. We fought to keep our balance as it began to bow, logs creaking once more before they snapped and splintered from the disturbance in the deep.
Shaken at first, Cordella remained rooted. I, on the other hand, though gripped by awe, didn’t plan on seeing the spectacle through. My sword clattered to my side as I hit the deck in a full sprint, jumping the newly formed fissures and bracing before the dive. Asrael turned just before we collided, but without time to react, could only hold on while we plunged.
It took us into welcome arms, a cold surge as we pierced the same depths from which the dripping demon rose. Even underneath it, as we sunk deeper into the pool and the light ceased to follow, his eyes burned the same spiteful red. And they didn’t drift. He had yet to unlatch his fingers of my gambeson, air spoiling faster in our lungs every second, and still he preferred a snide look to a desperate one. While I could only imagine it before, the rush of water had finally pulled back his cowl and given me the chance to see how closely my predictions rivaled the real thing. It was the face of an older man, to no surprise; time had eroded the sharpest points, but his angled features remained, and dark but graying hair billowed behind him.
Ultimately, my lungs were the first to relent, and once they began pleading, I had no choice but to break away and swim for air. I kicked hard against the bubbling broth until I breached it, gasping for air and choking on the moss and scum that had replaced it.
“What were you thinking Kaiser?! You’ve got to get out of there!”
Treading while I caught my breath, I spun to see the full breadth of the leviathan, shimmering from its advent. The ribbed fin I saw before ran the length of its spine and tapered off at its head, that too adorned by a crooked crown of bone and thorns.
Its silhouette resembled a whale’s, albeit sleeker, and it was more immediately stunning than its burrowing counterpart. Like a rapid patina, two-tone scales turned from dull bronze to a shimmering blue-green in the humid air, and from similar spikes as on its head draped a bright red curtain of algae. The rest of it defied description—not because its features were lacking—but because much it remained hidden by the surf.
Absorbed by the unveiling, I had forgotten in what dire straits I swam. I propelled myself to the embankment and clambered to get my feet above the coastline, putting distance between myself and the shore, though, behind me, the creature disappeared again.
“Are you ready?” I asked Cordella while airing my drenched mane.
Of course I am, though I’d appreciate if you stuck to the script.” She was already in place, her hands were tightly clasped and her heels dug into the wet sand. “Do you have any more surprises you’d like to inform me of?”
“But then they wouldn’t be a surprise at all! You said to make time; we never agreed on how.”
“Well, don’t let me spoil the fun,” she said, a smile and and roll of her eyes before I turned to recover my discarded blade.
The next phase was the trickier of the two, and how smoothly it should go was to be determined by what happened next. Poised at the water’s edge, I waited for Asrael or the titan to reemerge. I was prepared for either of two events, so when a third presented itself, I almost lost my footing. The leviathan had risen again, but not to bask or float; this time, following its head, its barnacled fins peaked from the lake. They weren’t what I expected of something aquatic, short and powerful. Rather, they were folded, and with each second that passed, they stretched nearer to the length of the shoreline. Carried by the unfurling of its massive sails, the prow of the mighty ship lifted aloft.
“That’s not—” I managed to stutter before the beast left me speechless. Its wings cocked at the apex, and for as slowly as they rode, they crashed to the water, and a sound like cannon fire thundered across the wake. It flew. Like a cloud, it rose slowly and smoothly, a waterfall careening from its curved back. Suddenly, my legs were stone, crumbling as I lifted my arms in a vain attempt to shield myself of the torrential deluge.
It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be, and yet, as the behemoth cast its pall over Mochada, my convictions were cast to flame.