57 – Nothingness

Ward steeled himself, gritting his teeth against the stench of the filthy corpse. He’d been dead just a few minutes, but Nevkin had smelled like a carcass even before death. With dread and the conviction that he had to do anything he could to try to help Haley, Ward reached into that slimy, lukewarm mouth and wrapped his fingers around the tongue, pulling it straight while he lifted the knife in his other hand. To his amazement, as he tugged on the cold, wet thing, it kept coming. With wide, horrified eyes, he pulled it free, leaving behind a trail of glistening, blood-tinged saliva on Nevkin’s lip and chin.

As Ward fought an involuntary gag, Grace observed, “Looks like it doesn’t like being part of a corpse.”

Ward grunted and stuffed his knife into his sheath. He stared at the length of strange, silvery flesh in his hand. Was it silver? Flesh? Some kind of weird, magical blend? The tail end wasn’t like any sort of anatomical tongue, at least not as far as Ward knew; it had four hooked barbs trailing out of the bulk of the silvery meat. “I can’t believe I’m gonna stick this damned thing into my mouth.” As he muttered, he looked over at Haley’s still, pale figure, and his resolve hardened.

“Rinse it!” Grace pointed to the healing tonic he’d left in the grass beside Haley’s body.

Ward nodded. “How do I even activate it?”

“Mana, I guess.” Grace peered at Nevkin’s corpse. “The mana-well! Where is it? Wasn’t he holding it?”

Ward tucked the creepy, too-real feeling tongue into his pocket and looked around, scanning the scene of his scuffle with Nevkin. He saw Haley’s sword and walked over to it. As he picked it up, he caught the faint gleam of blue light from the corner of his eye and spied the mana-well in some tall grass down the hill by the fence. He jogged over and scooped it up. “It’s a lot dimmer than it was.”

“Well, that spell he cast couldn’t have been cheap. I can’t believe Haley’s sword absorbed it.”

Ward lifted the sword, turning it left and right with his wrist. It looked the same to him, though he thought maybe the dark, jagged runes were a touch blacker—deeper. Did they heat the metal when they absorbed the magic? “Is that what it did? Did it get hot?”

Grace was back by Haley’s body. “Seemed like it to me. Haley dropped it in pain. Come look at her hand.”

Ward grunted in the affirmative and then began hiking up the hill, only to have his attention grabbed by a faintly glowing cloud of luminescent mana motes drifting up out of Nevkin’s corpse. “How does a dirty bastard like that have anima when Haley has none?” He peered at Grace, where she knelt near Haley, and, for the hundredth time in just a few minutes, wondered what she was hiding. She ignored him, staring down, her eyes hooded beneath her pale brows. Ward crouched by Nevkin’s stinking body and reached his hand into the cloud of motes, still holding the mana-well.

Just as in the catacombs, the tiny motes practically swarmed the dense orb of metal, and its glow steadily intensified. Meanwhile, Ward closed his eyes and focused, trying to calm his mind and draw some of the motes into himself. He felt some, but not many, enter his flesh—tiny, cold tingles that raced up his arm to the nape of his neck and then shivered down his spine. The sensation faded all too quickly, and when he opened his eyes, the mana-well seemed to be finished, too.

Ward carried the brightly glowing orb over to Grace and sat beside Haley’s left shoulder. He set the mana-well on the grass between them and fished the silver tongue out of his pocket, grimacing at the tacky, dried fluids on the cool metal-flesh. He was reluctant to waste the healing draught, but he felt better about rinsing the thing with it than he would with plain water, especially since it would be going into his mouth. He shuddered, remembering how the thing had taken root in Nevkin, ripping out his natural tongue in the process. “God, I wish there was a better way to do this. Another answer…”

“There’s not, Ward! Don’t waste more time!”

“What the hell is your deal? This isn’t like you.” Ward drizzled the healing tonic over the tongue as he spoke, rubbing with his fingers to clean it as much as possible.

Grace didn’t answer the question but said, “You might need another one of those. I mean, depending on how much that tongue helps you with the spell.”

“Ah, dammit.” Ward sighed and stood, trudging back toward the horses. “I need my grimoire, too.” A minute later, he was sitting back down, book in hand, another two healing tonics—the last ones he could find in Haley’s saddlebags—on the grass beside him. Every time he glanced at Haley’s body, he felt a wave of despair and guilt, and the only thing that was keeping him from breaking down was the idea that he was doing something. Even knowing, in the back of his mind, that things might not work, that the tongue might not be enough to help him cast the spell, or that the spell would fail, he was able to push the reality of her death into a corner of his mind as he worked.

Ward gripped the cold, flexible artifact in his left hand and carefully drew the mana-well over its surface, trying to recreate the circumstances that had triggered it for Nevkin. “I don’t have the damn box. I left it in the catacombs. What if it needed those glowing gems to activate—” His words died in his mouth as the tongue throbbed and twitched.

“It’s working!” Grace hissed.

“No shit—” Again, Ward choked off his words as the tongue convulsed in his grip and began to writhe.

“Do it, Ward! Be brave! Put it in your mouth!”

“Easy for you to say!” He growled, but another glance at Haley’s pale face, with the now-dried blood streaks running down her cheeks, steeled his nerves, and Ward hesitantly lifted the artifact toward his mouth. It throbbed and writhed like a caught lizard trying to win free, but when the tail end with its four twitching barbs passed the threshold of his lips, they shot out and speared the flesh of his tongue. In a panic, perhaps because of the pain or possibly out of disgust, Ward tried to pull it away, but it was fruitless; the barbs were dug in, and the blood and saliva he coughed out made the tongue slick; it slipped from his fingers and dug further into his mouth.

Later, Ward might argue about what was worse: the pain or the horror. The idea that a thing was digging into his flesh, ripping his tongue to shreds, and slithering further and further into his mouth and throat was so awful that he couldn’t properly think of a way to describe it. It was something out of a horror movie—Alien or some Body Snatchers remake. It was a nightmare come true, and Ward fell onto his back, screaming and gargling blood as he tried to claw at the thing and pull it out, his earlier resolve blown away by the primal fear and disgust that had overtaken his mind.

He felt Grace beside him, pushing against his shoulder, turning him onto his side so he could cough and spit out the blood and bits of ripped flesh that used to be his tongue. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The tongue stopped digging; the pain faded, and, to Ward’s amazement, a pleasant, warm sensation radiated through his mouth and outward, into his head and neck and down to his chest. It felt amazing, like the really good stuff the anesthesiologist gives you before a procedure. “Holy shit,” he groaned, and his voice sounded funny in his ears—like he was speaking through an old-timey, cone-shaped megaphone.

“That feels good! You should check the hemograph!” Grace was squatting in front of his face, just past the hunks of bloody, torn flesh. Ward pushed himself up and away from the remnants of his tongue.

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“No time for that. Where’s my book?” Again, Ward’s mind rebelled at the idea that he was hearing his own voice, but he pushed the thought aside and scrambled back to Haley and his grimoire.

As he sat down and flipped open the book to the spell he’d gotten from Marshal Aldiss, Grace squatted before him, peering at his face. “You seem…fine.”

“It feels fine. Everything but my voice. No, I take it back. It's not fine, but great. I feel, shit, I feel almost like I did after the refinement potion.”

“The tongue…” Grace rubbed her chin, nodding slowly. “It must do more than just, you know, replace your tongue. It’s an artifact; maybe it’s enhancing you somehow. Maybe you should stop and do a reading on the hemograph.” Ward ignored her, and she leaned close, staring at the spell page with him. “Can you read it now?”

“Um,” Ward squinted and frowned. The words were uncomfortable to look at, but they weren’t bursting any blood vessels. They weren’t instantly giving him a migraine. “I guess so. They’re not pleasant, but, yeah, I can read them.”

“Maybe you should forget it—”

“Oh, shit!” Ward growled, looking up at her with a scowl. “You just wanted me to put that fucking tongue in my mouth! You didn’t care about Haley!” He shook his head, too angry to focus on the page before him. “You knew I wouldn’t do that—not for a boost in power; you knew the only way I’d do it was to help her. You conniving little—”

“Ward! That’s not true! You’re being paranoid! Listen to yourself! I just don’t want you to die, too!”

“You didn’t seem to have any such concern before I put this damned thing in my mouth!” Ward felt his heart racing, saw actual red pulsing in his vision, and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force the feelings down. Grace was babbling about something, but he couldn’t make sense of the words. Finally, after several deep breaths, he opened his eyes, and, rather than look at Grace and get himself worked up again, he focused on the spell, studying the motions he was supposed to do when he memorized the words. Grace seemed to have taken the hint and moved away, out of his line of sight, quiet.

Ward glanced up to the sky before getting started. The sun was still up—mid-afternoon by his estimation—and, though it was chilly, and the crows were cawing, the place felt oddly peaceful. The big house sat silent; the lane leading to the dark grove was deserted, and the wind had died down. “Haley,” he whispered, “if you’re there, if you can hear me, I’m gonna try this, but I want you to know I’m sorry. I should’ve done a better job protecting you. I should’ve lied about coming to face Nevkin and tricked you into staying in town.” He sniffed and sucked in a deep breath, then he began to do the movements.

As he went through the motions the first few times, he had to check the spell page repeatedly; they were far more complicated than either of his other spells. He felt his limbs were contorted and strained, his muscles and ligaments stretched to their breaking point over and over. The words felt strange and uncomfortable as he mouthed them, trying to repeat them to the beat of his heart. The experience was so strenuous and difficult that soon, he was sweating, and he threw off his hat and coat despite the chill.

He kept getting caught in an awkward position, unable to make the transition between the fourth movement and the fifth before a lightbulb went off in his head, and he realized he was looking at the form figures wrong. He’d assumed they were meant to be performed from a seated position like the other spells he’d learned, but the fourth and fifth forms were too complicated for that. When he realized that, it all sort of clicked.

The first three forms were meant to be seated, the fourth was a transition, the fifth a standing position, and then the sixth a transition back to the ground where he’d finish with the seventh. All of that was for just three of the words, and then he had a similarly complicated dance for the second half of the spell. Once he incorporated the transition from the ground to a standing position, his movements became more and more smooth with each cycle, and, though it was hard work, the completion of the complicated maneuver became its own reward.

After a while, once he’d finally begun to feel the rhythm of the movements in conjunction with the cadence of the words of power as he silently repeated them like an inner mantra, he began to lose himself in the flow. He was so engrossed in his efforts, so lost to the thrum of power as the words reverberated in his core, vibrating his guts and tingling against his spine, flaring like strange, otherworldly stars in his mind’s eye, that he didn’t even notice the setting of the sun and the chilly frost that began to form on the hard ground and yellowed grass—on Haley’s poor, lifeless body.

“Ward!” Grace hissed, startling him out of his rhythmic flowing movements. When he opened his eyes, Grace flinched back. “I’m sorry! But, Ward, it’s been hours. What if it’s too late?”

“I almost have it,” he growled, and, again, Grace flinched, stepping away from him.

“Your eyes are blazing.”

“This spell is a lot. I can feel it—almost whole. Let me finish.” With that, Ward took up the dance again, no longer dreading the magic, no longer worried, only hungry to feel what it would be like to complete it. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled, and the sound penetrated his self-imposed mesmerization enough for him to wonder what sorts of wolves could be found in a world like Cinder. He’d just had the thought when he completed a recitation of the words in his mind, and he felt the spell snap into place, whole and ready to be released into the world.

Ward looked inward, studying the jagged, sharp angles of the spell in his mind, and he felt the taste of copper on his new tongue as some tiny vessels exploded in his nasal passage. He opened his eyes and looked up, pinching the bridge of his nose. “This spell might kill me.”

“Then forget it! What good will it do Haley if you kill yourself trying to save her? Maybe it’s not the end—having no anima! Maybe her spirit will linger here and, I don’t know, gather ambient mana until it can move on. What if—”

Ward growled, and his voice echoed over the moonlit, frosty slope as he chopped his hand in the air. “Are we just brainstorming fairy tales? We don’t know anything except this: a soul needs anima to move on. Like you said,” Ward pointed to Haley’s cold, stiffening body, “she has none. I won’t let her existence end here if I have even a tiny chance of helping her.” He turned to squarely face Haley’s body, gathering his courage, but Grace rushed toward him, grabbing his arm.

“Wait! You have two tonics! Drink one right before you cast the spell and keep the other in your hand to drink after!”

Ward frowned. “Do they work that way? Can I drink one preemptively?”

“I don’t know! It won’t hurt, will it?”

“I guess only in so much as it might be a waste.” Ward shrugged and stooped to pick up the two glass, cork-stoppered jars. He frowned as his eyes lingered on the mana-well. What if he didn’t have enough mana to complete the spell? “Should I hold the mana-well, too?”

“Yes! If you don’t have enough personal mana, the spell will fail. I think.” Grace sounded a little panicked, and Ward, much cooler of temper after spending several hours meditating and dancing, began to feel a little less suspicious of her. He grabbed the mana-well in his left hand, arranging the two healing tonics in his right. He tore the cork from one of them with his teeth and took stock. Was he really doing this?

“Bottoms up,” he grunted, tossing down the first tonic. It was slightly fizzy and lemony, but other than that, he didn’t feel anything special. Not wanting to waste a second of its efficacy, he clutched the mana-well tightly, looked at Haley’s body, and coughed out the words, wincing and crying tears of blood as they ripped their way out of his throat, “Bryve, Spirvak, Dhravek, Prakhun, Dhravek, Vrothun!” It felt like the words had roots in his guts, his chest, his brain. It felt like they ripped bits of him out and dragged them along as they flew from his mouth, rolling like oil over glass on his new tongue.

Ward fell to his knees, spewing blood like a fountain. His vision darkened as red tunnels closed in, but he stared at Haley’s pale corpse, watching, desperate to see if the spell would work. His ears rang, and he could hear the rushing of his blood, nothing else, as the words echoed and reverberated in the field, sending dead grass fluttering into the air, vibrating his bones, and making Haley’s still flesh quiver. Then they hit home, etching themselves like a brand on her pale chest, encircling the wound Nevkin’s knife had made. Just before the tunnel walls closed in, Ward saw Haley’s eyes snap open.

Ward tried to hold onto consciousness. He tried to lift the other tonic to his lips, but when his vision failed, and the world turned black, his body collapsed beneath him like someone had severed his every ligament. Darkness and silence swallowed him whole, and Ward drifted through the ether of nothingness.