Like most of the exterior of the island, the mouth had already been picked clean by scavengers. The roof sloped down into the distance, almost as far as they had walked from the ship. Water glinted at the end, just before the roof touched down into the sea.
There were holes overhead, perfectly circular, in the roof of the mouth. “The work of bone worms,” said Eric. “Much too high up to climb safely. Let’s get as close to the water’s edge as we can.”
“That’s where we’re going? Ruby asked, voice trembling as she looked into the dark. “Where there’s bone worms?”
“Bone worms might frighten you, but they’re fully harmless to a living person,” said Eric. “The largest creature they have a chance at killing is a rat, and they wouldn’t do it, because they don’t have enough bone on them to make the killing worth it.”
He grabbed Ruby by the shoulders and picked her up, lifting her over a sinkhole she almost stepped into. “Careful of those,” he said. “Dark water, full of sharks and wolf eels and sea spiders. But once we’re in the tunnels, there won’t be any dangers.”
He hadn’t let Ruby go yet; there was a chasm in the ground right in front of them. Instead he tucked her under his arm and took off with a running start, leaping over it.
Bozo just swam across. “Scavengers have no interest in fighting,” Eric continued, as Bozo shook himself off. “Some might have defense mechanisms, but they’ll only use them if you threaten them. Even the talking ones are quite nice.”
“There’s talking scavengers?” Ruby asked. Eric let her go, and she patted Bozo’s nose.
“Aye, the bathyvir,” said Eric. “They look like giant isopods crossed with dinosaurs, but they’re a kind people, and only eat food that’s either rotted or fermented.” He peered back the way they came. The little entrance he’d cut was like a pinhole of light now. Had a silhouette obscured it for a second? He helped Ruby to her feet and started marching again. “The real danger will come from any other treasure hunters that may have reached the island catching up to us, and the brain matter itself.”
Ruby winced. “Is it poisonous?”
“No, no,” said Eric. “I’ll explain once we’re up there. It’s easier once you see.”
They reached the far side of the cave with no difficulty. Water separated them from the roof of the mouth for about ten meters, but the ceiling was closer than that.
“Onwards and upwards,” said Eric, with a slight smile, as he forged a ladder out of ice. “I would say ladies first, but it’s safer if I lead.” He crouched by Bozo and tied a rope into a harness around his forelimbs, then he started to climb. Ruby swallowed, and followed after him, leaving Bozo whining on the ground until Eric pulled him up after her.
The titanic creatures of Undaina rot slowly, for their bodies are formed partially from magic. The upside to this is that there was no rotting smell. The downside is that the interior of the head was fleshy. Once they got past the bone, the texture of the cave was dry and leathery, the color of jerky, except for veins of glowing aqua that made the flashlight unnecessary for the most part. Bozo kept stopping to chew on the walls.
It was a tight fit, and Ruby thanked the gods that despite all her many flaws she was at least not claustrophobic. The tunnel crawled this way and that, with no real pattern, and frequently it was crossed by others. Usually they were small enough that they were impossible to enter, but now and then Eric had to make a decision.
“How do you know where we’re going?” Ruby asked.
“I don’t, strictly,” said Eric. “But I know what we’re looking for. As long as we keep going up, we will eventually enter the brain, and from there, we can learn where on the island the Red Anemone actually is.”
Ruby nodded very seriously and mentally prepared for the worst.
They reached the brain sometime later; she didn’t know how long it had taken, only that she was less tired than she would have been the day before. The tunnel opened out into the base of the skull, with brain matter all around her. It had sunken to the floor, creating a labyrinth of wrinkles.
The material here was…weird. It was less flesh than the tunnels below, and more elemental energy, which here manifested as walls of crystal that were much like ice, but not. Ruby stared into a pane of crystal, and saw that it was transparent, laid on top of a layer of something else with a strange texture, like wood grain or fingerprints, though she could not tell if it was wood or flesh. Ruby thought it might be green, or it could just be the light filtering through the elemental crystal. It seemed to move the more she looked at it, forming new shapes, until she thought she could see a panorama, things below the ocean and above it, all made up of lines and whorls like a van Gogh. It was a great whale, tangled in battle with a leviathan, a magnificent beast of ice blue, the last true dragon and her true father, and its neck was a glorious mane of blood red tendrils, ever changing form; fur, feathers, flowers—and it was then that the whale leapt and bit her father’s neck, and he bled, and great drops of blood rained down on the ocean, poisoning the water and at the same time spawning new life, and out of it crystalized the flower, retaining the memory of its shape in the instant before it was torn from His flesh, a Red Anemone—
“Stay close,” said Eric, tugging her arm. Ruby let out a gasp, looking all around. She’d forgotten where she was, who she was. There had only been the hydra, and the whale, and the great Leviathan. “The brain of a magical creature so large and so powerful, well, parts of it are still alive. Replaying memories. You could literally get lost in its thoughts.” She looked back at the wall and saw that it all had been no illusion; the image of the Red Anemone was frozen on the surface of the ice like a television, but it was slowly degrading into lines like fingerprints, fading back into the brain matter below.
“So, now that we’re in the brain, could we just…get the information we need from anywhere?” she asked, tearing her gaze away from it.
Eric shook his head. “Memories are stored in specific places. We have to find the newest ones. They’ll be toward the front of the brain, small crystals growing from the wall. Let’s keep moving.” He moved along, patting Ruby’s shoulder. “You must look, without getting caught up in the vision. Concentrate on something else. Practice your water shaping, perhaps.”
Ruby tried, but it took her a few tries to gather any water from the environment; it was all bound up in ice, or flesh, and she wasn’t nearly practiced enough to extract water from substances or change its state. It was only when she finally had enough for a good ball that she remembered her blue rod and mentally kicked herself over it.
The walls around her reflected herself, slapping her forehead, tugging her hair, wincing in embarrassment, crying into her hands. Bozo whined.
Eric didn’t seem to notice. He had gone on a ways while she was distracted. Ruby saw a beautiful woman that she didn’t recognize locked behind the ice, gesturing for him. “Wait,” she said, running after him.
He turned to the side, and she thought she’d caught his attention, but then he said, “stay back!” and drew his saber.
Ruby didn’t stop in time and slammed into a wall of ice and fell on her back. “Ouch,” she muttered, rubbing her face. The walls around her reflected her fall. “Why’s it showing me?” she muttered angrily.
“Ruby?” he called, but she saw him running away from her, sword in hand, slashing at nothing.
She tried to follow, but it was futile. “Why, why?” She banged on the wall in front of her. Bozo howled.
Color-shifting tentacles crept in around her reflections from every direction. “You have a strong affinity for this place.”
Dusk.
Bozo started barking, and Ruby held him close. “Hello, Dusk. It’s nice to see you again?” Her voice tilted up into a question because she wasn’t sure she was seeing him. She looked around for him but couldn’t see him anywhere in her physical space, just the tentacles creeping closer in the reflection.
He laughed his alien laugh. “Rather bold, after poisoning me.”
“I didn’t know it would poison you,” said Ruby.
Dusk imitated the sound of clicking one’s tongue. “You knew it was a possibility. I gleaned your thoughts when I touched your blood. After all I did for you.”
Cold flesh touched Ruby’s temples, and suddenly he was there, grasping her head in his hands. She saw him reveal himself in the reflective wall in front of her. He towered over her, but his arms were so long he did not have to stoop. His outer layer was no longer mimicking a coat, just a writhing mass of tentacles trailing to the floor, each tipped with a claw. Bozo leapt for him, but Dusk grabbed him around the midsection and slammed him against the wall. The crystal pulsed red from the impact, reflecting his pain.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“Don’t hurt him!” said Ruby.
“You chose this thing instead of me?” Dusk shook his head. “Though I suppose that’s a bullet dodged for me.” He started to squeeze her head. “Do you have any idea what my kind do to duplicitous little brats like you?”
He enunciated the words carefully as the tentacles from his mouth stretched down to Ruby’s face, scratching her skin. He grew dark, and the crystals all around grew dark to match him. Only his hands and his face retained color, burning bright red in the gloom. Then he dug his thumbs into her temple, and Ruby screamed. “You have many enemies,” he hissed. “One of them is in your head already.” A stygian figure appeared in the blackened walls, with the outline of a crow. Ruby started crying. Her heart was racing, as if she were having a night terror now, while awake.
Dusk let her go, and she flopped to the ground. His slow, halting voice droned on. “Unfortunately, I cannot eat you, toxic little thing that you are. For my part, I will carry on. The Anemone is close at hand. Soon I will have it. And you? The people who hate you will be here soon enough.”
He dropped Bozo, and Bozo ran to Ruby’s side immediately, shielding her with his body as he growled up at Dusk. He laughed his alien laugh and stepped into the darkness, disappearing into the black.
----------------------------------------
Bozo did his best to nudge Ruby into action, prodding her with his nose, giving her little nips. Even though he drew blood, she would not come to her senses. She just lay there, crying, even as the wounds on her face healed. He could do nothing more besides call for help, and he howled.
Another howl answered. A familiar howl. Oh no.
A pair of glowing eyes appeared in the dark, very far apart. Bozo could sense the creature in the dark, feel the shape of its body with the sensitive organs in his nose. A huge sharkhound,1 much bigger than Bozo had ever been, body scarred all over with signs of battle. This beast had bullied him all his life; Bozo was the runt of his litter and the monster had made serious efforts to eat him. The night that Ruby saved his life, he’d been injured by this one. His enemy.
And on his back was some woman. She gestured and a light shone down on Bozo and Ruby, making him blink. “Surprise, Achlydes,” said Callisto. “Bet you thought you’d seen the last of me? I can see you’re indisposed, must’ve run into our mutual friend, hmm? Well, I’m in a hurry. Tell me which way he went, and I’ll let you live.”
Ruby said nothing. She didn’t even look at her. Indeed, she hadn’t moved, except to shiver, and likely didn’t even realize someone was here.
Bozo whined. He understood, after some effort, that his master was fighting another battle, somewhere else, with whatever thing it was that visited Ruby at night, that Dusk had summoned here in the dark.
Callisto growled. “I see you’ve got yourself a little runt. Not much of an upgrade from Bob.” She spoke loudly, trying to get Ruby’s attention. “As for me, I fed those old junkers to this big boy, and he’s well hard.” She patted the monster’s flank. “If you’re gonna keep giving me the silent treatment, I think I might just let him have a snack.”
Bozo glared up at her and growled. He barely understood the words that humans used, and in his mind he was still as large as he’d always been. So he couldn’t accept that he was the one being threatened; he thought she was threatening to feed Ruby to the monster.
“Go on then Bingus!” Callisto shouted. “Tuck in!”
The monster leapt, and so did Bozo. They clashed in midair. Bozo’s weight wasn’t enough to do anything to the monster—Bingus—but his jaws clamped down on its upper leg, shredding through skin and blubber even as Bingus’s momentum dragged him through the air.
Callisto shouted in frustration and started wacking Bozo in the head with a broken rod, red sparks trailing from the tip with every strike. “Let go! Let go!”
Bozo refused, glaring up at her with all his hate, and squinted one eye as he tried to concentrate on two things at once. It took a herculean effort, but he formed a small lump of ice on the tip of his nose and hurled it at Callisto’s head. She yelped and fell off Bingus’s back.
Bingus spun around, looking for his fallen master, and Bozo dug in his claws and arched his back at the same time, tearing off a chunk of his leg. Bingus howled, shooting twin blasts of hot air from his gills, and now his attention was back on Bozo. There was no way he could get at him with his teeth; a sharkhound’s neck is too short and inflexible, so he slammed his leg against the wall and the both cried out in pain together, over and over, until finally Bozo was forced to let go, dizzy from the blows to his head.
“It’s over for you now!” Callisto shouted, and Bozo turned to see her raising her rods overhead, conjuring a violent aurora of red and green over Ruby’s body. Bozo took off like a cannon shot, not even noticing the chunk of his tail fluke that Bingus had just snipped off, and slammed into the small of Callisto’s back, nose first.
Pain exploded across his face. Callisto went flying. Her rods split apart and whatever working she’d been trying to effect shattered, bolts of red and green flying in every direction. Bingus roared as one of them struck him in the face.
----------------------------------------
> Girasol’s bar was starker red than ever before, the light harsher and dimmer at the same time. It looked like a painting, red ink on black paper. The crow woman was stringing up Henry’s dead body on a Saint Andrew’s cross made from the remains of the pool table. Morgause was already hanging from another cross behind the bar, her head sat on the bar itself, a peaceful expression on her face.
>
> Eric was there now too, impaled to the wall, and she could hear Bozo whimpering from somewhere she could not see. Fenetre had not moved from the floor.
>
> “You can never stop,” said the crow woman.
>
> “Stop what?!” shouted Ruby. She never understood this part when she was awake.
>
> “Being a burden,” said the crow woman. “You drag them down, you hurt them by being weak. You’re frail and disgusting.” She tightened Henry’s bindings and leaned him against the back wall. “If you were a real witch he would still be alive.” Ruby winced.
>
> “Everything that happened here was your fault,” she went on.
>
> “It’s not your fault,” said Fenetre. “None of this is your fault.”
>
> “She dragged you all down!” The crow woman shouted. “You died because of her!”
>
> He turned to look at the crow woman. “You have to forgive yourself.”
>
> The light in the room suddenly went green, and the dream dissolved away in emerald fire.
Ruby awoke as a wave of green washed over her. She felt like garbage, but it was almost like a spell had been broken. She was back in the brain tunnels, and the walls were lighting up again with pale blue light. There was carnage all around her, so much blood. Bozo let out a cry of pain and joy and desperation all mixed together, and she saw that he was covered in blood too. Sobbing, she threw her arms around his neck.
A deep growl shook the ground. She looked up and the other sharkhound came into focus for the first time. It had a burn on its face across its eye and a bloody chunk missing from its leg, but it was taller than a horse and twice as long, and growling at her, ears laid back, ready to pounce.
In a moment that felt like she was possessed, Ruby quick-drew the water rod and fired off a bolt that forged itself into an ice cold hand. It gripped the sharkhound by the wound in its face just as it charged, and it slammed its head into the wall, then its wounded leg collapsed and it fell, sliding along the ground towards them. Bozo took off like a shot, digging his teeth into the wounded leg, then like a crocodile, he fell into a twist, and popped the injured leg clean off at the elbow joint.
“Who?!” Callisto rose up from the ground, hair smoking, and Ruby squeaked in surprise. The girl was looking much worse for wear, but not dead, as she’d expected, though she did have on an improvised eyepatch.
Callisto leveled the broken red rod. “Who are you, Achlydes?”
In a panic, Ruby blurted out, “Hi I’m Ruby!”
“Stop taking the piss!” Callisto snapped. “You’ve been nothing but the bane of my existence since we picked you up! You're a curse! You’re a fuckin’—” she shook her head in realization, “A fuckin’ op from the clan heads sent to destroy me!”
Ruby blinked, far too sleepy for this. “Huh?!”
“Don’t be coy, I know what’s what!” The rod started sparking violently, like a lawn firework just before the explosion, “Old man Lelantos wants to eat kids from other clans now, don’t he? I’m to take your place as the sacrifice aren’t I?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Ruby, trying to sound calm.
“A lie if I’ve ever heard one,” Callisto said. “Well, I won’t go gentle into that good night, lass. You’ll have to kill me first!” The rod erupted in a stream of sparks that fused together into a sustained burst, like a welding torch.
Before it reached Ruby, she shot out another forged hand, Trying to seize the rod from Callisto. The water steamed and broke apart into little cubes that faded to nothing, but Ruby poured more magic into it and it held its shape, and it started to draw the flames into itself, and soon the red-pink light was flowing down the length of the water-hand and into the blue rod itself. Callisto snarled and raised the green rod, touching it to the hand to dispel it. But the void in Ruby’s soul seemed to surge out along the lines of power, and even the disruptive green magic was devoured. The two rods drained of color, and the blue rod became shimmering and iridescent. The hand grew large and black, and loomed over Callisto.
She screamed. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed.
Before the hand could even touch her, it too collapsed, and so did Ruby right afterward. It had all just been too much, too fast.
Bozo curled up against her as the world faded away. She heard a voice call her name, and the sound of lumbering steps against bone. The last thing she saw before she passed out was the face of a gigantic insect.
> Ruby looked down at Fenetre, and he looked up at her. They were alone together in a pool of red light. There was nothing else but blackness. She was breathing hard, and the sound was muffled, as if she were wearing a mask.
>
> Fenetre was nailed to a St. Andrew’s cross, and Ruby was holding a bloody hammer in her taloned hands. “I did this,” said Ruby.
>
> “No,” Fenetre shook his head. “You just think you did.”
>
> “I’m holding the hammer!”
>
> “You could never hurt me,” said Fenetre. “Maybe you think you have. But the things you hate about yourself don’t matter to other people.”
>
> “I’m holding you all down!” Ruby shouted, tears pooling in the glass of her eye lenses. “A sick girl is just dead weight!”
>
> “You’re not dead weight,” said Fenetre. “But even if you were, we would choose to carry it.”
>
> Ruby’s heart skipped a beat. She tore off her mask and screamed.
----------------------------------------
1. Bozo’s ancestors had been bull sharks; this one was descended from great whites.