XXIV.
Vagari breached the surface of the water, gasping for air while flailing his arm out to grasp at anything solid. Quickly he found purchase, discovering himself to be in the exposed hollows of the ship’s lowest deck. He dug his claws into the rusted steel and crawled one-handedly back into the erupted hull. Vagari threw himself down upon the rusted metal, breathing harshly as the last of the foreign dread faded from his body. The haunting feeling was gone as soon as the air filled his lungs, a notion that made Vagari question his reality even more. Had he truly felt it, or was it just another hallucination, one brought on by the need to survive? ‘What makes her so special…?’ his dead friend’s voice repeated in his thoughts, a question he still didn’t know the answer to. “Perhaps there is no answer?” a chthonic voice rung out, as deep and cool as the ocean depths. “Does it truly need one – the justification?”
Vagari snapped to, raising his free hand up to use the last bit of his strength to douse the creature in flame. He hadn’t seen it in his desperate rise to the surface, the archdemon floating in the water above, only the light. It was then, as their gazes locked, he realized that they were one and the same, that the light had been the demon’s eye. “Don’t waste your strength, brother…” Esh suggested weakly in Vagari’s mind. “You have nothing to fear. Eating you won’t save me now.” The great demon was breathing its last, Vagari realized, slowly lowering his hand. All the same, Vagari kicked away, pushing himself into a corner on deck, the furthest he could get from the dying monstrosity. Esh only laughed, sending ripples and bubbles out around its bloodied head. “Do you flee from all the bodies in your wake?” the creature mused, somehow finding humor in its own demise. “You may not be my kinsman as I had first thought… Ours stood proudly upon the vanquished – the bones of our honored dead as you might say. Don’t look so surprised – your mind is loud and its walls are thin.”
“Did you… save me?” Vagari asked in confusion. “Did you send me those visions?”
“I had no part in any visions,” Esh answered, sounding offended by the suggestion. “I simply followed the mental ramblings of a madman. Thought to myself, you aught to look into the eyes of that which you’ve slain. I do.”
For a brief moment there were silence between them as Vagari tried to piece together the demon’s game. At first he thought that perhaps it was vindictiveness that drove the creature to seek him out in death, that it was dying so it might as well take him with it. That wasn’t true, Vagari realized, seeing it now as it was, breathing shallow, quick breaths before him. It was afraid and didn’t want to die alone. “I’ve forgotten how it feels,” Esh admitted in thought, seeing or sensing Vagari’s realization, “to be remade, sculpted anew. I can feel the strings tugging, pulling me home to Her, to the Mother. Blessed Nintu… I. Am. Afraid! You… I’ve touched your mind, brother. You are not like us… Do you remember? Will it hurt?”
Vagari stared in shock at the great beast, quaking with dread on its deathbed, and couldn’t help but feel some semblance of pity for it, even after all the harm it had done. It seemed that BP’s nature was rubbing off on him. “I remember,” Vagari told it honestly. “It will, yes, I’m afraid… I don’t remember much, but I remember that. I remember the pain, even when time seems to have faded all else.”
“I suppose it should,” Esh said with an attempted laugh. Instead it only choked up a glob of blood that spilled free from its mouth, tinting the already tainted water black as sin. The monster wheezed painfully as it floated there in agony and fear, awaiting the swiftly approaching end. “My little taste of freedom was utter sacrilege, after all. She has never looked kindly upon her wayward children… But, there are none as wayward as you, is there? Not even the Misborn would attempt what you’re about to do. Do yourself a favor, us all a favor, brother, and toss your vengeance aside along with that tome. The pain I will feel will be pleasure in comparison to what awaits you.”
“And what awaits me?” Vagari asked flatly. “I’ll bring an end to this… hell, even if it kills me. No one should have to live in a world with things like you – or me for that matter.”
“Is THAT what you seek?” Esh pressed, its mental voice dripping with amusement. “You wish to save this world? Dear me, you’ve always been an ambitious one, but now you truly are mad, aren’t you… Do you honestly think that that is what awaits you across my domain – salvation? What awaits you… One last spite for killing me: I’ll take that answer to my grave.”
Vagari exhaled harshly through his nose at the creature’s gall. “Wouldn’t you rather spite Her?” He suggested. “I want to end this – end her! Tell me what I need to know to do that!” Vagari exclaimed, freeing the tome from its cloak bindings before thrusting it forward with both hands. “I have it – the book that started it all! This… This will undo it! I can feel it. Help me do it, Esh. Defy her one last time, and help me set this world right!” The great dragon’s glowing eyes pulsed at the sight of the tome. It’s lids then narrowed the burning glare into thin strips as it scanned the figure carved into its stone cover. “Spite her, spite you… Brother, I’m quite unsure whether there is a difference,” Esh said solemnly, it’s mocking tone all but drained from its voice alongside the blood from its body. “There’s a power within your broken shell – some familiar thing hidden even to you. Hidden within your fractured mind is the answers you so desperately seek, I am sure of it. Poetic. But, let me tell you this, brother; there is no undoing it, no sealing that which has been opened. The seals are broken, now and forever… There is no going back. But, you can end it, walking the road you’re on.”
“How?” Vagari pleaded. “How do I end it? The Being of Light, can she… use the book?! Can she end it?!”
“Oh yes,” Esh seemingly confirmed, one last musing chuckle on its voice. “If an end to all the woe and ruin is what you seek, brother, then yes, they can. It will be an end to ends.”
“I don’t understand,” urged Vagari. “What do you mean?”
“No, you really don’t,” the deathly leviathan said, its mental voice fading as its body began sinking beneath the water’s surface. “We’re all machines in the Mother’s war, brother… all but you, it seems. Abandon your pursuit. Live. Your world has ended, brother. Let it rot away and build something new from what was left behind. Turn around. Delve no further into these things; things a broken thing like you cannot possibly understand. That is my kindness to you and my spite for Her: live a mortal life and forget all aspirations for things greater.” Esh paused, but only for a moment before saying, “I thank you for sitting with me, despite your hand in my demise… but she calls to me now,” murmured the dragon, its death-rattle escaping the water in a surge of bursting bubbles full of noxious fumes. “I feel the strings tugging… and I remember our oath: we rise to her command, and sink by it… But we shall always be remade to rise again… Lo and behold how the Earth shall tremble…”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Esh was dead and gone, sunk below the waves with any answer it may have had drowned with it. Vagari stared at the tome, at the devilish visage of ‘The Mother’ carved into it. Her, Vagari thought, tracing the figure with the point of his nail, the haunting figure of his nightmares. If he had gained one thing from his encounter with the monstrous Esh, it was a confirmation of his fears – that she was the enemy. The Mother brought ruin to the world, remade him into the creature he was today – but failed, somehow, to do what? Replace him? Break his mind wholly? Enslave him?
Vagari shifted his gaze to where the great dragon once was. Esh had thought him one of them, a brother, part of their cabal before realizing something was wrong – that he was ‘broken’. Was he supposed to become a demon too? Some soulless thing to act out the Mother’s wrath upon their unsuspecting world? If so, what happened to stop that? And what of the ‘power’ it spoke of? Did it mean figuratively or literally? Both? Vagari hissed and stowed the book back into the folds of his cloak. In truth, he had come away from the encounter with more questions than answers, and with the validity of them all in subject. Esh was a demon and demons lie. It knew how desperate he was when it infiltrated his mind, stole his memories and motives. It could have just pieced together a story to manipulate him. But to what end? It was a creature of spite, so maybe just to seed doubt and confusion?
Vagari spat a curse at the indecision – torn between trust and mistrust. Logic, reason, and experience urged only one thing: a grain of salt with the demon’s tellings. He couldn’t trust it, but he couldn’t dismiss it either. All he could do was press on. Aiming to do just that, Vagari turned away from the waters edge and made to venture back into the bowels of the ship. No sooner than his second step forward there came a sudden and loud metallic groan that was mimicked and echoed all throughout the area. The rebounding sound said only one thing: the bones of the ships had been released.
Vagari, warn and wary, looked around with a newfound alertness to his rapidly shifting surroundings. The water was no longer calm but lapping angrily at the cracked hull with a growing restlessness. Waves began rising higher and higher before crashing down, spraying him with acidic mist, and with them the ships as well. The dead hulk let out another mournful groan as it rose and tilted with the waves. It seemed that the storm brought about by Esh’s accursed velleity lingered still, feeding into the waves rising fury. Thunder cracked and a bolt of enduring pneumatic energy split the sky as amaranth lightning, painting the colliding ships in an eerie rose light.
As Vagari watched the ship next to him rise up high on the waves, until it was nearly above him, he decided it was well past time to take his leave. It was now or never, and he chose now. Vagari clambered backwards before turning about to scale the shattered steel of the former mess hall above and back into the ship. He didn’t rightly know where to run, so he just picked a direction and ran. Vagari found himself once more lost in the maze of hallways when the other ship struck. The two wrecks collided with such force it sent him from one end of the shadowed corridor to the other in an instant – an exceedingly painful instant. Vagari dragged himself to his feet just in time to be thrown again as the ship rose sharply in the water, defiantly returning to the surface. He didn’t wait to stand this time, instead choosing to bolt down the way on three limbs, clawing at everything and anything he could to keep balance. He ran, found stairs, climbed, and ran again. There was light at the end of this tunnel and Vagari sprinted for it. It burned red with the eldritch lightning, burned like… like the seraphim’s eye.
Cursing his luck, Vagari slid across the floor trying to stop himself from spilling out of the ruptured hull and into the maelstrom and the dying angel’s grasp beyond. He clung to a lip of jagged steel that dug into his palm as the ship teetered to its side on swirling waves. Blood spilled down his arm as he dangled in the open air, clutching the bundled tome tight to his chest. A horrible metallic cry rung out loud above the cracks of thunder. Whether it was a ancient colossus or the ships colliding with it as it desperately tried to wrench itself free from the whirlpool’s devouring pull, Vagari couldn’t tell. But, he could see that its attempt was in vain; the damage it sustained in the fight made sure of that. The archangel was hardly more than a half-torso, a shattered crown, and a mangled arm. All the alabaster luster the terrifying but beautiful machine once had was stained as red as the world around them, all but the silvered blood that once fueled it. The radioactive essence seemed to negate all color as it spilled free from its wounds, turning the water around it into a mirroring soup of quicksilver jelly. Its crimson eye blinked in and out with each pneumatic flash until finally it went out entirely as the great and terrible titan was swallowed whole, returning to its grave beneath the water’s surface.
Suddenly, the ship Vagari clung to settled sharply, tossing him through the air and away from it. He couldn’t even manage another curse before the wind was knocked out of him. It took a couple breaths for him to tell that it was the deck of another ship that hit him and not the icy depths, but the safety that offered him was short-lived. A bolt of the plasmatic energy struck the ruins, tinting the world a dark shade of pink while filling him with intense pain. If it had struck any closer, he was sure it would have killed him; as intense the fleeting agony was, for a second, he wished it had. No - it was no time to die, Vagari urged himself; no time to rest, no time to breathe! Vagari clutched the tome to his chest, surprised he had managed not to drop it once in all the turmoil, and ran with all his might. In the dead sprint, he quickly found himself at the far edge of the ship. He didn’t stop, or hesitate. He just jumped. It was a wingless flight, one with a violent landing as he felt something shatter deep inside him. He cried out in agony, but didn’t dare let it slow him down. Vagari hit the deck running, leaping from ship to ship as he went. He jumped and ran, jumped and ran, over and over until… Nothing. After the last jump there was nothing beneath him.
Vagari hardly managed a gasp before the cold water of the caustic lake hit him like a club. Suddenly the roars of the storm above and the crashing ships seemed far away, as dull and muted as the pain seemed to be in the icy darkness that enveloped him. Vagari flailed in the void, managing to come to his senses enough to turn about and find up. The booming flashes of amaranth were beginning to fade as the arcane death throes of the Leviathan Esh started to dissipate. Vagari kicked towards the dwindling light, unsure if he had the strength to make it without the inspiration the otherworldly dread had previously offered. This time there was no voice, no fear beyond that which was already in his heart. And now, to make things worse, there grew a large shadow above him, crossing into his path, threatening to bar him from breaching. But then something fell into the fading light, long and slender like a giant’s fishing line. It spiraled down towards him and he grabbed on. It was rope – BP had found him.