Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (41 page)

Things didn’t seem to last there.  That was the Whisperland’s curse: nothing
went
untarnished.  Decades passed in that realm while only weeks went by in the solid world, but the darkness of the Whisperlands corroded
everything
, living and otherwise.  It
decayed material things,
caked the brain
,
and soiled the soul.

He cautiously
moved
deeper
into the chamber. 
Blood welled up
beneath his feet
when he stepped on the thick carpet
.  He stepped away. 
Even w
ith everything else he’d been through, for some reason he didn’t want that crimson filth on his boots. 

H
e approached the murals. 
They all showed a spider – the spider,
his
spider
, an
enormous a
nd
pale monstrosity ready to burst with young
.  She
devoured cities.  Mounds of humans fell before the creature's
onslaught.  In the murals she wa
s vast,
a
legged insectoid moon.  Buildings and monuments collapse
d
beneath her.  People,
their faces pale with horror, fe
ll into dark rips
made
in the earth by her monstrous razor limbs.

It can’t be
, he thought.
 

He stepped away
from the murals and moved on.

He
went
deeper into the Black Citadel.  Nothing challenged him.  He had the feeling nothing would.

Cross
passed through cold chambers filled with ice wells and
shattered bone masks
.  He saw blood runes on the walls and floor, half-completed sculptures of man-beast symbiotes and
gigantic
insect
skulls. 

The inside of the Citadel was vast, much larger than it should have been, but he’d learned long ago
not
to trust
anything he saw in
the Whisperlands.

He
knew he
was near the Carrion Rift, the place where the obelisk had fallen.  He could feel it. 

Only the living are lost
.  That was
what
the Eidolos had told him
, the knowledge he’d need once he breached the Citadel and faced its masters
. 
It had
told Cross
he’d understand
what it meant
wh
en the time was right, and that it c
ould mean the difference between failure and success. 
Only the living
are lost.

The air
was
colder the further he went.  He walked through drifts of grave dust, and the stone halls
grew
darker. 
T
he muted light from the hanging braziers dimmed. 
B
urning fog
covered the floor
.  Cross walked slowly, careful to keep his distance from the bladed walls. 

Everything was deathly still.  He tightened his grip on his
sword
as he passed crossroads that led to bone-dry rooms. 
Everything
was cold and dead.  He
selected
a corridor
at random, and walked down it
.

I can’t have escaped notice
, he thought. 
They know I’m here.  They’re toying with me.

He’d made a mistake.  He had no idea how to find the entrance to the Carrion Rift, or if
he could be sure the Obelisk
was
truly
in the
Citadel
. 

Maybe I should have circumvented the Citadel, and looked for the Rift itself. 

Only the living are lost.

Cross pressed on.  He passed hanging cages filled with cadavers long sucked dry of their blood and fluids.  He
tasted arcane fumes in the air
;
they were intoxicating, and he
shook
with need.  Bodies had been submerged in pools of formaldehyde, and he
saw
workshop chambers populated by half-constructed automatons. 
There were
rooms filled with sarcophagi and swords.

Cross’s anger
mounted
the further he went
.  He was nothing to the masters of this place.  Azradayne and the Shadow Lords had no fear of the man who wandered the halls of their lair.  He was insignificant, not even worth challenging.

The
shadows
deepened
. 
After a while
he
could barely see
.  He held his blade steady, ready for something to leap out of the darkness at any moment
.  H
e used it to
probe the
ground and
the
walls
. 

We search.

Only the living are lost.

Cross walked on.  He was not afraid.

Shapes bled
into view
.  The s
ilence melted into the sound of distant fires and the echo of alien birds.

He
came to
a wooden bridge decorated with bones
. 
The bridge
spann
ed
a deep chasm. 

He was no longer in the Citadel.
 
He
’
d found the Carrion Rift.

Cross looked around. 
T
he Black Citadel
was behind him, with
its
bladed halls
and
piles of bones and its utterly dead smell.  He stood on
the edge of
a plain of smashed black ice and oily stone.  Purple mist curled against the ground.  The sky was dead black.

The Rift lay before him, a massive rent in the dark earth.  Green and black fumes filled the depths of the canyon, roiling poison smoke filled with vague shadows and monstrous calls.  The walls were broken and
jammed
with jutting bones and gaping holes.  Mounds of smelted quartz formed a crude ledge near
the
iron-chained bridge.  Massive skulls – likely Doj – decorated the poles
support
ing
the chains.  The bridge rocked and creaked in the acid breeze.   A path paved with glittering black scales led to the bridge. 

Cross slowly stepped
forward
and looked over the edge. 

We search.

The Obelisk of Dreams would be below, in the depths of the canyon, but there was little chance he’d be able to descend and find it,
at least
not without magic.  He doubted his hybrid blade would
grant
him the ability to fly.

What, then?  What the hell am I supposed to do?

He looked ahead.  Dark shapes moved in the distance, silhouettes hidden
in
walls of grisly steam. 
They were giants
,
and they
haul
ed some
large box
es
or crate
s
.

Or the obelisk.  Shit.

He crouched
low
and stepped onto the bridge.  It rattled and shook, and for a moment he
gazed
into its
impossible
depths.  Stories told of the Carrion Rift being filled
with
deep channels of blood water and the half-submerged remains of cities destroyed during The Black.  Monstrous aberrations and mutated horrors lurked there, things that had never known sunlight or clean air. 

Cross carefully made his way across, holding
onto
the chain railing for support.
  The bridge pitched
and almost threw him over the edge. 
F
umes filled with acid whispers slithered
a
round him. 

One hand on the chain, h
e jogged
across
as quickly as he could
,
his eyes on the silhouettes within the smoke on the other side
.  He knew what
was waiting for him
.

Once off
the bridge
he ducked
behind
a low wall
made
of smoking dark ice filled with stone sediment.  The ground was cold and hard.  He waited, and watched.

As he’d feared, the giants beyond the smoke were Sorn: nine-foot tall humanoids with stony grey skin and mismatched steel and leather plate armor, short capped helmets and steaming thaumaturgic equipment, steam-driven hammers and
large
repeating pistols.  Each had a single yellow eye in the
middle
of a wide forehead
cove
red with
short horns.  The four
Sorn
moved in and out of the smoke
.  They circled
a twenty-foot wide hole in the ground
.  The hole
was uneven and jagged, like something had fallen from the sky and punched
through
the earth.

The Sorn shifted large c
rate
s and steel-rimmed boxes filled with
i
ron t
ools, welding torches, chisels and hammers. 
A
nother
broken
wall of ice granite
stood on the other side of the
hole
,
and
beyond
that
the world spilled into open dark plains. 

Cross watched the giants erect a trio of iron beams
to form
a pyramid over the hole.  Bolt guns punched thick iron nails through the metal and into the ground.  One Sorn wore a face-mask and used a massive acetylene torch to bind the tips of the
beams
together.  Another Sorn gathered lines of cable and a pulley.

They planned to descend.

That must be where the rip is
, he thought. 
The way back to the real world.  The place where they
’ll take
the O
belisk.

Something sounded in the distance
behind him
.  He heard
a
boom
ing sound,
like dropping bombs.  The dark sky rippled with twisted arcs of chain lightning.  He smelled the tang of ozone and rain, a distant
and
half-remembered memory from his childhood. 

Something was happening at the Black Citadel.

They’re looking for me
, he realized.  How they couldn’t have known he was there
already
was beyond him.  He felt sure the spider had been a guardian pet of the Shadow Lords, a minion or
a
marauder
in their service
.  And he knew it
had
s
een
him. 
Never mind that.  They’re looking for you
now
.  You don’t have a lot of time.

H
e
continued
watch
ing the
Sorn
from his hidden position
.  H
is body
was
tired and cold
, and
the hexed fumes
that
pour
ed
out of the Rift
made the air taste sick
. 

O
ne of the Sorn hauled
some sort of generator or engine towards the hole
.  Thick rubber tubes and hoses pumped translucent fluids into vibrating no
zz
les.  The device
sound
ed
like an airship’s turbines, and soon it filled the air with such noise it was impossible to hear anything else, even the distant echoes as the Black Citadel came to life.  The Sorn plugged pneumatic filters into the engine and
sprayed
pale grey
smoke
into the hole.  Cross guessed they
were
sen
ding
purifying fumes to make the air below less poisonous.

It’s now or never
.

He raced forward.  The grinding engines masked the sound of his movement.  He ducked low and kept
close to
the shattered walls
,
and
he
used
the
columns of fused mountain rock
for cover
a
s he
dart
ed between
the
crates.  He dug around near the top of
a
box until he found what he was looking for.  Cross stayed
low
and kept his breaths shallow and even so he wouldn’t be heard.