Darkness closed around Dirt as he receded farther into the temple, leaving him blind. All he could see was the outline of the doorway, the dim light from its green outline illuminating only the first few feet of stone inside. The rest of the temple interior was a complete mystery.
The skeleton passed through the doorway, walking calmly. The blue fire in its eyes glowed against the black as it walked straight toward him, flames drifting left or right with its footsteps.
Dirt’s screams caught in his throat, where the terror roiling inside him choked him like fingers squeezing his neck.
The blue fires stopped a few feet in front of him and their light illuminated the skeleton’s face and chest. The pale white bone and golden robes lost their color even as they filled his vision, limned in perfect darkness everywhere else.
Dirt whimpered through clenched teeth and let out a squirt of urine. He was so scared it felt like pain inside him and his mind could only barely process what was going on. “Save me,” he moaned, but the muscles in his mouth were too frozen to pronounce the words correctly.
The skeleton reached forward and traced its finger across his chest, so hard it left a stinging line of pain. It gripped his face, squeezing his cheeks with bony fingers that dug into the clenched muscles of his jaw. It turned his head, looking at his face from different angles. It released him and lowered its arms, then just stood there watching him. The blue flames of its eyes flickered and danced as it stared, unblinking.
It had no real face. That was the worst part of its silent, unmoving stare. It had no expression, nothing to indicate what it thought or wanted. Dirt had no idea if it was driven by curiosity or hatred. Or perhaps hunger. How could he tell?
“Please let me go,” he begged. He could hardly speak.
The skeleton didn’t react. It didn’t twitch or tilt its head or anything at all. Just remained perfectly still, like the dead thing that it was.
“Callius, Socks, Mother, anyone,” Dirt whispered. He struggled against the force that held him and only succeeded in loosening the vines, which began to sag and unwind and fall off him. They’d been so tight in some places he was sure he had bruises.
The skeleton turned and walked away. Dirt’s eyes struggled again to get used to the darkness but as they did, he began to see parts of the temple’s interior as the skeleton’s gaze fell on them. Here, a collapsed pillar that had a statue carved into the front half, no longer identifiable. There, a standing wooden chair next to two broken ones. The ground was littered with debris; shattered bits of stone, traces of old dirt and grime; decayed things he couldn’t identify. Trails of bare stone told him that the skeleton walked regularly in this place, although the air was so still and dead that Dirt didn’t think wind ever came in to blow things around.
It stopped in front of a wide altar, a huge rectangular stone carved along all the front and sides with patterns and figures only barely visible in the gloom. The top of the altar was littered with old scrolls, alongside countless implements that Dirt recognized—a decanter for sacred oil, a ritual athame, precious gemstones, chalk, figurines of gods and spirits, sheets of lead and a stylus, all carefully arranged in perfect order. There were even fruits, so decayed and ancient that the gentlest touch would turn them to powder.
“What do you want with me?!” shouted Dirt, finally able to get a little control of himself.
The skeleton ignored him. It carefully opened a wide scroll, gently winding and winding the ancient paper from reel to reel until it found the section it wanted. Dirt could barely make out complex shapes and symbols, all magical in nature. He knew that too, somehow. He must have known human magic once, in the ancient life he’d lost.
A massive boom echoed through the temple, so loud it left Dirt’s ears ringing. The very stones shook as bits of old mortar turned to sand and drifted down in quiet streams. The skeleton raised its head from its reading and turned its gaze out the doorway. It rolled the scroll back together and lifted the athame. The knife’s blade curved upward, sinuous like a snake and long as Dirt’s forearm. The skeleton lifted a golden wine-cup with the other hand and turned toward him.
“No!” Dirt shouted, struggling as hard as he could against the invisible hand that held him. The skeleton stepped in his direction, knife at the ready and leaving no mystery what was about to happen. Dirt forced his mind to calm down, forced his body to relax, forced himself to inhale mana. His inner self clashed violently against his physical reactions, the terror and hesitation and desire to flee fighting his own will. But it was overcome or die, and Dirt overcame.
He inhaled mana, almost surprised to find he could. With exactly three seconds to figure out how to strengthen his body against injury, Dirt tried to make his skin like wood or stone, strengthening it like he strengthened his muscles for a jump.
The skeleton held the golden cup against Dirt’s chest and scored the blade along his skin. The cut was subtle, far harder to feel and resist with mana than a punch or kick, but Dirt set his entire being to the task. The skeleton pressed harder and harder and Dirt’s will resisted, rising from that place within him deeper than thought.
The ritual knife lowered unbloodied and Dirt breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He could survive this. He just had to keep all his blood in, and fight or distract it long enough to run out. And figure out how to get down from hovering in the air.
“Just tell me what you want,” said Dirt, his voice shaky and trembling. “Maybe I can help.”
It didn’t react. When it wasn’t moving, its perfect stillness made it seem like Dirt had imagined the whole thing, like it had never moved at all. The flames in its eyes were just lamplights, its robe just a curtain in a room with no wind.
The skeleton waited and stared longer than a human would. Dirt could feel that inhumanity, feel how wrong it was. Fear and revulsion melted together inside him to form something that he could only process as suffering, and still it watched, unmoving, unblinking, only an arm’s reach away.
Another boom shook the temple and this time a stone bigger than he was fired out of the wall, slamming into the floor and cracking in two as it slid halfway across the room. More light flooded in to illuminate that corner of the temple, but in that cavernous space it still wasn’t enough to see properly.
The skeleton turned to face the hole and the cracked building-stone rose into the air and quickly flew back over, where an invisible hand held it together and shoved it into the wall again.
The pressure on Dirt’s body loosened and lowered him just enough to get one foot on the cold stone floor. He forced his mana into his muscles to make the sparking, burning power give him all the strength he could muster.
Dirt twisted violently to shake off the invisible fingers that held him, flailing and punching in every direction. The chains loosened further, lowering him far enough to jump forward. He leaped toward the skeleton.
The skeleton was so light that Dirt almost went right through it. He grabbed its skull and several ribs as it disassembled around him, and using his momentum as he fell forward, smashed the bones into the ground. The fires in its eyes went out as everything shattered. Bits of bone and cloth flew in every direction and clinked loudly along the floor as they bounced and slid.
Dirt scrambled to his feet and ran for the doorway, hoping there was nothing in the darkness to trip over.
Bone slid across stone behind him and he glanced back to see the skeleton already reforming. Before he’d gone ten steps it was back how it was before, other than some new tears in its decaying golden robe. He ran with wolf-speed toward the doorway, but it wasn’t enough. Two paces from the threshold, the invisible hand closed around him again.
This time it held him in the doorway as he struggled to break its grip. The skeleton clacked across the stone floor until it was right behind him.
Dirt looked out desperately at the handful of dryads waiting just outside the corpse-pile. Callius and Dawn were gone, but Home was watching with an expression of such complete anger he almost didn’t recognize her.
A square building-stone from some other place was already flying through the air and slammed into the side of the temple, knocking free another part of the wall. Dirt decided they were trying to open it so they could see in and save him, not collapse the whole thing. He just hoped they knew what they were doing.
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When the dryads outside saw him in the doorway, they froze and no more boulders came.
The skeleton kept Dirt facing outward as it walked up behind him, stopping close enough that if it had breath, he’d feel it on his neck.
It drew Dirt’s knife from its sheath under his left arm and before he could react, a sharp pain blossomed halfway down his ribs on the right side. Dirt screamed as the skeleton held the golden cup under the wound and collected the blood that dripped down.
Then it held his own knife against his throat, perfectly still, and waited. It was a threat—he was certain. Back off and leave the temple alone, or it’d kill Dirt right now. Dirt strengthened his skin in that spot, making it as tough as stone. It’d never cut him if he knew it was coming, right? That knife was sharp.
Realizing the nearest tree was still close enough, he spoke directly to its mind. It was the one who’d made most of the dryad corpses in that pile outside, and he said, “It won’t cut me again. Do what you need to do. When I can get free, I’ll get away.”
The tree couldn’t talk back, but putting words in the part of its mind that he could read was trivial for them by now. “We cannot risk it,” it said.
“How can its magic even beat yours in the first place?” Dirt asked, trying not to grow any more desperate.
“We had no idea it was here. It hides even its gap in the Many Connections. Some believe it has been here since the time of the Gardener, concealing itself and gathering power to thwart us.”
All during this short conversation, the skeleton held him aloft in the doorway with his knife at his throat, the fine edge touching his skin so lightly he wasn’t sure if his protection was working. But once it saw that no further stones were being slung at its dwelling, it receded into the darkness, pulling Dirt backward.
The interior of the temple didn’t hide the tree’s mind from his sight, thank Grace. He told it, “It hasn’t killed me yet, so there’s something it wants first. I’ll live for at least a little longer. It might even just let me out after a while.”
“It is an abomination. If it corrupts you we must bury you both. We must save you before that happens,” the tree told him.
“I understand,” said Dirt, even though that was a lie. “If I get out, do you think you can destroy it?”
“Now that we know it is there, destroying it is trivial. We await only your escape.”
“How?”
“Many ways at once, friend Dirt. You taught us many things and now we have learned anger.”
There wasn’t much more to say to that, and speaking to the tree’s mind across that distance took more of Dirt’s focus than he wanted to spare. He needed to listen to every sound, feel every tiny movement of air on the invisible hairs on his skin, watch for every flickering shadow.
The skeleton pulled him through the air back to where he’d been before, a short distance from the altar at the back of the temple. It ignored him again, leaving him hanging there as it returned to its reading. It fixed the wall without loosening its grip on him or looking up from reading the scroll.
Dirt wasted no time waiting, however. He needed light and he knew of only one way to get it: Fire. He hadn’t shared Socks’ mind when the pup had made fire, but he’d been standing right there. He just had to figure it out.
A field of little sparks, that was the key. Not one big fire. Lots of little ones. He decided to make one spark first, just a single tiny little spark before he tried anything else.
He quickly realized he couldn’t do it like shaping wood. The spark needed to appear in the air, not grow out of something. There was nothing to reshape, nothing to communicate with and order to be different. All he had was the memory of fire, its brightness and warmth, its hunger and threat. The smell of the smoke as it swirled around them, the heat sizzling on his skin as the flames had gotten closer and closer.
Dirt released most of the mana he’d been holding, since he only wanted a small flame. If he accidentally made a big one, the fire might kill him before the skeleton got its chance.
It was still ignoring him, but it wasn’t reading from its scrolls anymore. It seemed to be hurrying as it took up blood from the golden cup in its finger like a quill and began writing on the floor, large shapes and letters that Dirt couldn’t see well enough to read from over here.
Dirt took the trickle of mana inside him and compressed it, then tried to move it out of his body. It wouldn’t go. The more he struggled to get it to leave so he could try and ignite it, the more stubbornly it stayed inside him.
It was in his mana vessel, he remembered, and his mana vessel was part of him. He couldn’t exactly tell his arm to walk away, either. No, he needed to tell it what to do from inside him. Without lighting his insides on fire.
The faint skritch-skritch-skritch of the skeleton writing on the stone with his blood grew increasingly distracting. The empty sheath was lighter now, too, which felt wrong. His blood tickled as it slowly dripped down his waist and onto the side of his thigh and he thought he could even smell it, the earthy scent filling his nostrils like a wolf’s. The cut on his ribs stung more as time went on, too, as if to remind him he should still be terrified out of his wits. Well, his knees might be trembling with fear that his body couldn’t fully expunge, but his mind was clear.
He focused his will on a spot in the air a few feet from his face, although it was too dark to try and pick an exact spot. He let his thoughts quiet down and reached deeper inside himself for his wisdom, his active will that still remembered how to do all this.
Dirt’s thoughts became no more than a meaningless chant—fire fire fire fire—as he withdrew into his very soul, trying to speak from that place and command the mana.
The skeleton stood and walked over to him. It didn’t pause to regard him with its dead, unmoving skull, however; this time it jabbed the cut on his ribs with its finger to loosen the scabs and held the golden cup to gather more ink.
Dirt looked away and refused to meet its gaze, if it had a gaze, lest it somehow realize what he was trying and take steps to stop him. He squirmed at the discomfort of the skeletal finger in his cut, but didn’t whimper in fear or pain.
Once it resumed its work, Dirt resumed his. He imagined fire, he dreamed of it, he filled every part of him with knowledge of flame. Then he could feel it. It was time.
Dirt didn’t speak or even think a word; instead, the truth of fire arose from the place deeper than thought and in the darkness, only a few feet from his face, a tiny spark burst into flame, burned brightly, sizzled, and died.
The skeleton turned its blue-fire eyes up to watch him, but when he didn’t move or react it went back to ignoring him and drawing on the ground with his blood. His eyes were still adjusting to the darkness, but he thought he could see a dark circle on the ground now, wider than he was tall, scribed in dark ink. The skeleton was filling in the words and key sigils in the proper places. It was almost done.
Dirt gathered all the mana he could this time. He felt in his bones that he’d only get one chance at this, one chance to defend himself or die. Rather than give the sludge-like terror in his heart any more room, Dirt willed himself full of resolve. No fear. Discipline and sincerity.
The skeleton stood and turned to face him again. A chair emerged, floating out of the darkness, and rested with its front feet on the edge of the circle. A second chair floated over to rest on the opposite side, facing in.
Dirt floated forward as well, but he waited to launch his attack, unsure if this was the right moment.
The skeleton sat on one of the chairs, its arms folded politely in its lap. It wasn’t carrying his knife anymore, and a final drop of blood from its finger dripped down and plinked faintly on the ancient wood beneath its boney lap. It lowered Dirt onto the chair on the other side of the circle, forcing his body into the right shape to sit.
All the while it held perfectly still, dead and silent except for the flickering blue flames in its eye sockets. Dirt struggled against its unseen hand, but it gave no reaction of any kind, nothing to indicate that it cared or was even aware of his resistance.
That was no good. He wanted a reaction, something he could use to find the right time. It pressed him down onto the chair, which he found cold and hard and unyielding.
“What are you doing?” he asked, dismayed that his voice was still shaking. He sounded weak, but he wasn’t. He was a wolf in front of his prey and his heart was full of fire.
The skeleton just stared, empty and dead. Together they waited in silence, long enough for Dirt to think no signal would come and he should just attack now. In the empty quiet, he thought he heard a faint rumble outside, distant and deep.
Blue fire from its eyes dripped like liquid down its skull, running across its teeth and falling from its jaw onto its collarbone and ribs below. The blue flame made long threads of light, two long, connected strings that ran all the way down to the chair, pooled, and dripped from there onto the floor.
Dirt attacked. With a burst of will he demanded fire and the world gave it. A dozen white sparks ignited on the skeleton’s golden robe and Dirt fed them all the mana he could to make them burn hot enough to kill.
An instant later, Dirt’s command of the flames severed as if by a knife and the sparks vanished, leaving behind faint wisps of smoke that drifted on the unmoving air, round swirling shapes illuminated by the skeleton’s blue fire.
Once the dripping flames from its eyes reached the circle of blood, the whole thing ignited, casting the room into a steely brightness that revealed shape but hid all color. Dirt saw the interior of the temple, frescoed walls and painted pillars, benches and altars and much more, but he had no time to spare on scenery.
Instead he read the words on the ground and tried to remember the shapes and sigils and signs written there. TO RING AND TO STRIKE AMONG THE COUNTLESS FORMS, MY HAND IS A LIGHT PERPETUAL, MY SPIRIT ALWAYS IN POWER.
Dirt didn’t know any of the sigils or signs, which disappointed him; he’d lost those memories with everything else and the words of the circle itself gave him no clue what the skeleton was attempting.
The blue flames of the circle touched his feet but felt cold instead of hot, freezing painfully instead of burning. Two lines of flame rose up the flesh of his calf, up his thigh and across his hips, up the front of his chest and neck. Dirt screamed, the pain and terror overcoming his temporary resolve to fight.
Worse than the pain on his skin from the freezing fire was the way it twisted him inside, filled him with revulsion and disgust. He could feel it corrupting him, as if it was touching all his bodies at once and wilting them.
His screams took on a desperate, miserable note as the blue flames climbed up his neck, up his cheeks.
Then, with a sizzling hiss, they plunged into his eyeballs.