18 - The Rain Wyrm
Shortly after the crowd had turned on Byron, when the people who made it had still been standing upright, Syatt had felt the sensation of magic. It had slowly risen in intensity to a reality-bending crescendo as the tables and those perched on them were thrown to the roof of the grand pavilion by an unknown force. The feeling he’d had at the alleyway was magnified a thousand times; weightlessness, serenity. A sense that everything was in its perfect order even as he and all those around him were wracked with heaving and vomiting. A deadly rain of debris had fallen, and Cass’ head was knocked backward to collide with his own. He fell, the impact dimming his vision as his nose leaked blood. He’d been at the mercy of the crowd, which was mindless, and could only remember the first part of the terrible stampede, of falling under feet and bodies.
Everyone lucky enough to flee had already done so, trampling and screaming and leaving trails of smoke in their wake as Syatt lay beneath the compromised pavilion. He regained consciousness on the ground beneath the weight of a large, foul-smelling man. Syatt initially thought that the man had pinned him purposefully until he felt his dead weight. He squeezed out from under the unresponsive bulk, and when he tried to stand, felt a sharp pain in his leg and lay back down in the grass beside the dead man. Looking down at his feet he saw a long splinter jutting up the side of his calf, largely superficial. He was wracked with an incredible sense of deja vu, as if suddenly recalling a landscape he had dreamt of his entire life but had never remembered until then- a wet, muddy swamp. For a moment he was there. A sense of calm and understanding somewhere in a newly accessed pocket of his mind, not sinister but also not harmless- a void of nothing, and Syatt knew then that magic was dangerous. It was a frightening place to be, because once there at that void, consequences no longer mattered. Life and death no longer mattered and love as they knew it, as they knew all things, was nothing but a human triviality.
He looked out on the ruin before him and saw an enormous worm push itself out of Varnabas skin and split him in half. He watched as the coiled black tendril burst through his corpse- the man who’d been alive just that afternoon in the alley falling away like a shredded husk. As the magic ebbed, Syatt both did and did not see the creature as a monstrosity. There was an understanding that it was simply a variation of life, a part of the all.
Something, either adrenalin or the magic, had so far kept him from any serious pain, but as reality closed in on him and he felt the power begin to fade he also became aware of the injuries he’d sustained. The back of his head throbbed, and his brow, nose and upper lip were painful and swollen. His ribs were sore, but he didn't think any were broken. Only a few torches remained lit among the twisted bodies but they showed him a field of destruction all around.
The trampled grass and dirt was slick with blood and vomit. Bodies of the dead, wounded and dying lay scattered and writhen atop one another. Sparse, shrieking prayers and cries of help. A noxious aroma in the air. The tables had collapsed into strewn heaps of splintered wood, one of them lay smashed to pieces dangerously close to where he and Cass had been standing moments ago. At least he thought it was the spot. The hilltop looked like a completely different place than the one they’d run up clasping one another’s hand.
He couldn’t see her anywhere, and hoped desperately that she had somehow escaped. Syatt could hear the support beams holding up the pavilion's sloped roof groaning. A section had taken extensive damage. One of them jutted downward at a precarious angle, threatened to fall at any moment, and the tiled roof sagged downward. Errant shingles fluttered to the devastation below where the fleshy, insectile mass of the creature remained in the same location where it had hatched. It seemed immobile despite its wiggling nubs of legs, but the sleek, blue-spotted neck that slithered up from the body was incredibly long and agile. The mouth on the end of that neck would intermittently spray a deadly liquid all around it.
He sat up and leaned over his calf, gritted his teeth and carefully pulled the long wooden splinter out from the bottom as the wound leaked. He heard the sound of the liquid rushing up the neck of the worm, then another splash as it was emitted. Faint cries of people. Sizzling. He turned and covered his mouth with one arm and choked on the noxious fumes as they wafted over to him from the bubbling oily substance the monster spat. He stood with effort, made his way a few yards half-crawling over bodies and was forced to sit again as pain shot up his leg.
He watched as the thing lowered its sleek black head to feed on a corpse. It found the body of the cultist who’d leapt in front of Brother Byron and was stabbed. Its enormous mouth engulfed her upper half and began to suck on the body. Syatt could hear the same noises that he had in the hair-eater's shrine, like frying bacon, but this time on a massive scale. It was a cacophony of sizzling and popping, and when the mouth opened again it was louder. The lower half of her corpse fell from it to the ground with only a white nub of spinal column poking out from the liquified gore. The toxic saliva dripped and splattered to the packed earthen ground of the pavilion and smoke swirled from the places it had landed.
There were maybe thirty feet between Syatt and the creature. He couldn't fully stand up. He had been slowly pulling himself back with his arms to make more distance, fearful that it may spot him. He didn't think its neck could reach him but had a feeling that a stream of the burning liquid could. Not wanting to find out, he inched back slowly and quietly. Other than the moans of the unseen and conscious wounded, the pavilion was eerily quiet. The thing's long neck moved and rotated hypnotically like a snake he had once seen, charmed by a man with a flute on the river landing.
He was thinking of that memory, and thankful that some human will to survive was still moving his mind to action when he saw someone appear from the other side of the pavilion. He blinked in disbelief. It was Alma Bryde dressed in armor, and she weilded a sword and shield. She was sneaking from behind the creature as it fed, her shield arm raised and the sword pointed toward the ground in her right hand. Syatt first dismissed it as an effect of the magic. He wondered if he had perhaps summoned her, if she was even real.
Someone else put an arm around him and spoke close to his ear. “Come on. Can you walk?”
It was Cass, and relief flooded him. He turned to her. A bruise covered the left side of her face and blood ran from her forehead, but she seemed otherwise uninjured. Syatt nodded that he could, and stood up again and walked a few feet before she froze and lowered him down with her terrified eyes looking past him. The creature had stopped feeding, and now its pod-like head hovered and appeared to watch them. They ducked down in the grass, held eachother and watched the next tense moments unfold.
Alma moved toward it and readied herself to strike, and it had either seen or sensed her. Its neck arched and its head quickly turned, reared back. The mouth opened to a grotesque chasm of gray and pink. Syatt could hear sizzling, gurgling from within its arched serpentine neck. He closed his eyes and buried his face in Cass's shoulder, not wanting to see Alma meet such a horrible end.
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The deadly liquid popped and sizzled. He waited for her screams, but when he opened his eyes saw her throw her smoking ruin of a shield aside and slice up the things neck with a great upward swing of her blade, the motion fluid and smooth. If the monster felt pain it did so in silence. On the sword's trip back down it curved and severed the majority of the neck from its brown, wriggling body, and the neck collapsed. Ferocious sprays of blood spurted from it and lesser pumps ran down and pooled on the convulsing mass below. It was as red as any mammal's lifeblood. The insectile legs quivered madly and the mass of its body swelled and deflated and swelled again. A large spurt of the black liquid bubbled up from the death wound.
***
Alma backed up, choking, and her next movements were not as graceful. She removed the smoking tatters of her left gauntlet and rushed forward with both hands gripping the hilt as she stabbed repeatedly into the quivering mass near the front of the thorax. She leaned into it with the whole of her body, stepping aside for the occasional spurt of the acidic liquid. The blade plunged into its strange flesh over and over, with Alma hoping to fatally injure any vital part of its unknown anatomy with every plunge where she thought a heart might be buried. On the final withdrawal of the sword she slung the blood from it in a great fan and then staggered backward looking at the thing, all around her as if just happening upon the scene. The monster’s drooling mouth and coiled neck lay dead on the ground, sizzling and smoking in a pool of its own leaked saliva.
She circled around it as it continued to twitch and spasm, and as she came upon the back side was horrified to see an orifice at the end of the thorax in the process of dilation. She watched as it opened and sent forth a mess of organic matter with a liquid that smelled to her of olives. A large, oblong, translucent pink blob was pushed through and plopped from the thorax along with another rush of the liquid. Alma hopped back at the spreading gore.
An egg, her first thought. Please, gods. Please just let this be over. As she readied her blade once more, she saw at the last instance what looked to be a human hand pressing against the membrane, breaking through it soon enough with little resistance. Her grip on the hilt tightened, and another hand joined it and tore open the rest of the way. A naked humanoid figure appeared to her in the mess. An intestine-like tube ran from the man’s mouth to the things orifice, coiled slack around the soft shell of the egg. Why Alma hadn't poked it full of holes before it ever had a chance, she did not know, but she was glad she hadn’t.
When the figure cleared the muck from his face, Alma nearly fainted. It was Varnabus. He reached in his mouth and pulled out hand over hand a pink and gray organic rope until it fell from him with the olive smelling liquid still running from it. He threw it aside and collapsed back into the egg wall, then pulled himself out of it, coughing and gagging. Alma stood back, staring at him. It was Varnabas, covered in mucus and fluid, but appearing much as he had in the days before his abduction. Her sword dropped from her trembling hand. After a while he sat up with his head in his hands. Sparse, wet, gray hair hung in threads. When he looked back up his voice was almost a whisper. "Alma?"
She knelt next to him and stared into his eyes. Finally, she reached a hand out and poked at his bare shoulder, preparing for her hand to slip right through. "Varn?" she whispered.
"Oh gods, Alma. I pray you ain't a vision."
Tears welled in her eyes. "Well, that makes two of us. Damn.”
He stood up slowly on wobbly legs and she helped him, the muck dripping from his body. Quickly he put his hands over his nakedness when he realized. "Oh, gods," he muttered. "Alma, I apologize."
She just looked at him. Finally she laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "Nothing I ain't seen before, Varn." she said. "And right now, I must admit that I am un-scandalized by your ding-dong.” She surveyed the groaning beams above them. “We need to leave,” she told him.
***
In the barren streets of Yartha's east side, Byron felt a single drop of rain on his bald head as they marched him along.
“Did you feel that?!” he cried. His wrists were shackled behind his back and a Yarthanguard led him roughly forward.
“Feel what, warlock?” came the growl from behind him. They were seasoned soldiers. Men, all of them, and they wore steel armor with long red capes from the shoulderguards. Byron had rarely seen the regalia worn out of ceremony. They were taking him back across the river to the Towers, to what sort of fate Byron was uncertain.
“He’s right,” one of them said, flabbergasted. The drops began to come faster, larger. They dinged against their steel plates. The air was suddenly very humid, and they looked up to see the starless sky filled with silent lightning that forked across its expanse and illuminated massive, dense, fast-moving clouds, "Gods," one of the guards exclaimed. A low, steady rumble of thunder followed. Morning never really came, and the first significant rain in over two years began to fall over the City of Yartha.
“I told you!” Byron shrieked, and began to hop up and down in his chains. He howled in glee. “I told all of you!”
The rain began to fall steadier, pittering at first, and soon it became a steady torrent against the brick streets. They’d all stopped there in the sudden downpour, astonished eyes, mouths agape. A smattering of cheers and some shocked laughter rose from the group of soldiers, but the guardsmen leading him remained silent and stone-faced. Byron turned his face to the sky and howled.
The guard behind him pulled the chain on his shackles hard enough to sweep him from his feet, his long legs kicked at the dampening street as he was brought back up again. He was given a swift smack in the jaw with the guard’s chain-gloved fist. “Calm down. Now,” he commanded. “Draw attention to yourself and you will wish you hadn’t.” He narrowed his eyes at Byron’s bloodied smile. “Do you understand? Nod your head, yes.”
He did, and they continued on. Byron lifted his face and closed his eyes as they walked. He smiled as the warm rain washed the dirt from him to run down his neck in rivulets, and with it the blood that had been drawn from the corner of his mouth. His captor grabbed the chain between his wrists and began to lead him forward again. Gentler, Byron thought. The clouds moved swiftly overhead, dense and gray.
The timing of the rain could not have been better. It will possibly save my life, he thought. “Go ahead and take me wherever you mean to take me,” he said to them, sputtering the rain that had collected on the fuzz of his upper lip. “I hope that you can in good conscience take your godsend to the gallows, however, if that is where we are going. The elemental deities are real, gentlemen, and I am their chosen. They watch you as we speak. Hyne watches you. Consider your next actions very carefully.”
No one answered him, but neither did they reprimand him. They trudged along through the storm toward Velias Bridge. On the way they passed crowds of revelers who scattered at the sight of the Yarthanguard. It came to Byron that they were not revelers at all when he heard the mob far down East Current Street. Other regiments of Yarthanguard stopped to exchange hurried information with Byron’s party, on their way to somewhere else in a rush.
There had been an uprising, the details of which none of the guards would disclose to him. Byron kept a careful watch for his followers in the faces of those they passed; he still had hope of a rescue, but no one recognized him. The chaos at present overshadowed his miracle, and his followers were nowhere to be seen. They set out onto the bridge in the sunless dawn with the warlock sulking in his wet robes.