The Silver Tower (The Age of Dawn Book 3) (7 page)

He nodded back at her and she couldn’t help but feel her skin prickle at the strange glow in his eye. He wasn’t the easy going prankster she remembered growing up. A lot had changed in him over the last few months. She couldn’t blame him though. She probably still wouldn’t have been able to speak if she had to endure what he had. She hoped in time he would open up to her again and his wounds would heal. He was cold and quiet, like a great divide had formed between them. Walter seemed to be the only person he could begin to open up with.

She sucked in the humid air, directing her focus back to dinner. She crinkled her nose as her stomach moaned with hunger. The deer snapped a length of purple flowers from the ground and started chewing with a dull crunch. She exhaled slowly, allowing the force of the Dragon to flow into her fingertips. They were hot with its chaos, begging for release. She pressed the force of its chaos back up her arms, wrangling its fury in her mind.

She imagined a bow, much like the one she used with her dad, and it sprung to life in her hands in swirls of molten fire. She knew she didn’t need that though and it vanished in wisps of smoke. She popped her head above the bush and raised her palm up beside it. An arrow of flame slowly extended from her palm and hovered in the air. A second later, it hissed through the air, passing through the deer’s neck and the tree behind it as if they were as light as air.

The deer fell to the ground, wildly bleating in pain. Nyset rose from behind the bush and three more flame arrows burst to life beside her head, zooming through the air and into the deer, putting it out of its misery.

“Nicely done,” Baylan said, putting his wizened hand on her shoulder.

She took a deep breath, pressing down the urge to cry. It was never easy killing anything but those Death Spawn beasts. This creature was innocent, just going about its day and trying to live out its life in peace.

“Uh, thanks,” she said wiping the beginnings of tears from her glowing eyes, doing her best to hide it from Baylan. “Let’s eat, shall we?”

She turned around, letting the Dragon melt from her veins, scanning for Juzo. “Juzo, think you can lend us some of your strength?” she asked, followed by a sniff. He wasn’t by the tree anymore, or anywhere for that matter. “Juzo?” she shouted, hands cupped around her mouth to project her voice.

“Do you see him?” she asked.

“No. I swore he was right behind us,” Baylan said, adjusting his red sash. They both looked at each other with growing concern. Nyset hurried to the tree where she last saw him and Baylan followed. A hard gust swirled down through the trees, ruffling bushes and shrubs, blowing debris into her eyes. She spun around, not seeing any sign of him.

“Maybe he went back to camp, seeing the majority of the work was done,” Baylan suggested.

“Or maybe he went hunting for something more to his liking,” she said, her lips forming into a disapproving frown.

Nyset turned around, heading back for the deer. “I’ll get to the quartering then. Keep an eye out, would you?”

“Certainly,” Baylan said, fingering his silvery dagger’s hilt.

She parted bushes and weaved through shrubs with leaves the size of her body. The deer’s tongue had flopped out the side of its mouth and one of its legs twitched. Something closed over her with a squishing sound, casting the world in green.

“What—” She placed her hands on the green walls, fibrous veins running across them. She tried to lift her foot to move and it was held in place by something clear and sticky. Realization crept over her with mounting horror.
Sand Buckeye!
There was movement to her right. Red tentacles slithered towards her in syrupy motion from a hole the size of her fist.

“Baylan! Baylan!” she screamed, her mind blank and hands wet with sweat. She could hear him pounding on her green prison from the outside. The tentacles hovered before her, tiny holes at their pink ends sucking air up and down her body. The tentacles snapped around her wrists, pulling her arms wide with vicious force and tearing something in her shoulder, causing her to shriek in pain. They encircled her ankles, spreading her legs and another wrapped tightly around her neck. She started gasping for air, her eyes bulging and lips trembling. Baylan was yelling something, but she couldn’t make out what it was.

“Baylan! Help!” She managed to get out before the tentacle clamped down tighter, cutting of her breath. Another tentacle hovered before her face, then started prying her lips apart, forcing its way into her mouth.

Something shiny stabbed into the green wall, which was tough as leather, slowly carving a hole in it. Baylan’s mouth appeared in the small hole. “Use the Dragon, Ny! The Dragon!” he screamed. How could she have forgotten? The tentacle in her mouth worked its way into her throat and she started gagging. She chomped down on it, squishing sour liquid around her mouth.

Six flaming discs materialized in the air, hovering and bathing her face in their deadly warmth. They flicked from side to side, slicing through the plant’s red vines with ease. She yanked the vine from her neck and pulled the other out of her throat. The tentacles attached to the plant writhed on the ground, slopping with viscous goo, pulling back into the dark hole from where they came. She made two discs slice smoking lines into the verdant walls from top to bottom and then cut across the top. Her eyes glowed with red brilliance and she easily pulled her foot from the entrapping ichor, peeling it apart and stretching with a snap.

Baylan’s hand reach into one of the blackened cuts and started pulling open the makeshift door she had cut. It pulled apart and he got out of the way as it crashed onto a shrub. She let the Dragon dissipate, leaving her with the weight of its exhaustion.

“Ny! Are you okay?” he stammered, offering his hand through the rectangular door.

“I think so. A bit shocked more than anything.” She took his hand and stepped off the hewed section of plant. Baylan looked her up and down and started helping her peel the segmented vines from around her wrists and ankles. She scraped her boots on a sharp rock, working off the sticking liquid. “Never thought I’d end up almost becoming a plant’s dinner.”

“I had no idea they could get so big,” Baylan said with fascination, sticking his head inside the Sand Buckeye and peering from side to side. “I’ve never heard of them trying to eat humans. An interesting specimen, indeed,” Baylan said, rubbing his hands together, his eyes pulling into a smile. “It must be documented,” he said rifling through his bag and getting out his notebook.

“How did I miss this?” she asked, her hands on hips and looking up at the bulbous plant. It was almost as big as a room in the Lair, clear liquid oozing in sheets from where Nyset had cut through its sidewall. It twitched from side to side with a slight roll and they both took cautious steps back. It started retreating into a hole in the ground, shrinking down and compressing its body as it slinked away.

“Incredible!” Baylan said, clapping his hands together.

“That explains why I didn’t see it,” she said with a nod. She grabbed a glob of ichor from her hair and started ineffectively flicking it onto the tall grass as it stuck to her fingers like honey.

Nyset thought she would have been as interested in the plant as he was if she hadn’t almost been its dinner. It was surely something she would never forget. It was much older than the babies she had first seen in Midgaard. They were cute, this was nightmarish. She turned back towards the deer as Baylan’s charcoal pencil hissed away, the beginnings of a sketch forming on the page.

The deer stared up at her, its big black eye open with the surprise. She formed a flaming dagger in her hand and began to quarter the deer, just like dad taught. It was a breeze with such powerful weapons, cutting through tough tendon and ligament with ease. The singeing fur stung her eyes and burned her sinuses as she cut, cooking the flesh.

They wouldn’t be able to use all the meat before it spoiled, so they would only haul two flanks back and leave the rest to the animals. It seemed like a waste to Nyset. To kill such a big animal that had taken so long to get to that size, only to feed them for a couple days was foolish. Some things in life just weren’t logical and that was alright, she reminded herself.

There was no sign of Juzo and no trace of his ever being there as far as Nyset could tell. The sun was setting and they had to assume that he had lost them and went back to camp. If she found he’d just up and left them without a word, he would get a piece of her mind. It would be hard to trust someone who can’t even stick around long enough to watch your back during a hunt. Walter always seemed to be eying that sword of his, maybe something to look out for. She didn’t want to acknowledge the likely reason for his disappearance, but it kept bubbling up in her mind. Juzo had likely left to do some hunting of his own.

I
t was just
like Juzo remembered it. Dark, dry, and still as a rotting corpse. He stared down at the twisting stairs, winding their way into the cavernous cylinder, into the depths of the Tigerian Bluffs. Here once again, like a Rot Fly to necrotic tissue. He wasn’t sure why he had come back, maybe wanting to dredge up some old wounds, perhaps if it was a profession he could make an honest living from it. Juzo didn’t feel like there was much honesty left in his blood, but he was trying to make an effort to change that.

The old feeling came back, knotting his stomach into a ball of loathing. The emotion bubbled up his throat like searing acid, one he thought he’d never feel again. The terror of disappointing the master slipped over his neck like the hangman’s noose. What would it be this time? Partial flaying perhaps? Spikes driven through the hands? Dagger in the gut? No, he’s dead. He had killed Terar.

We killed him,
Blackout hissed.

“Yes,” Juzo whispered back. He rested his hand on Blackout’s hilt, vibrating with energy. He took a breath and started leaping down the old familiar stairs, terror cinching around his gut like a vice with each passing step, the stone growing ever colder through his boots. His legs were working mechanically, still remembering the location of each unevenly spaced step, skipping over snaring roots and shattered sections of stairs.

He arrived at the bottom of the stairway, standing before the long passage of crypts. He took a step and the old torches burst alight with their sickly green flames. How those torches knew to light when he approached had remained a mystery to him, and he thought it always would.

He clenched his fists and his bladed teeth ground and scraped together. He closed his eyes for a long moment and opened them, scanning for the familiar glow of magical objects. Terar would always be shit of the realm in Juzo’s book, but he did teach him how to use his abilities. That was one of his redeeming gestures, but it wouldn’t have stopped him from making him taste Blackout’s kiss again.

The iron sonces glowed with a faint blue along the walls and everything else grew dark in comparison with his magical vision. Further down at the end of the hall, leading into Terar’s chambers, two round figures sat perched on stone columns. Their eyes were wide, black holes in the hazy cloud of blues surrounding their arachnid like lower bodies. Reapers
.
How could he have forgotten about those? Without Terar here, Juzo wondered how they’d react to his presence. He supposed there was only one way to find out.

He marched through the archway and into the long hall, ancient crypts gaping open on either side. His hand wrapped tightly around Blackout’s hilt, tendons rising out from under his forearm with his steely grip. His heart beat like a hammer around his missing eye, like it was being gouged out again for the first time. His boots echoed through the passage with each step, nostrils flaring open with frantic breaths. He winced at his pounding heart, lips curling back to reveal his jagged smile. His red eye dimly glowed, intermingling with the green sheen flickering over his sunken cheeks.

He stopped half-way down the hall, looking at the statues staring back. The Reapers were still as felled trees, incredible mouths on their abdomens yawning open, wide enough to swallow a man in a single bite. The top half of their bodies from the waist up were humanoid and female, dark skin glittering with magic, the outside lined with a spiked carapace. Their heads had six long horns jutting out in all directions, sharp as blades at the ends. Juzo let out a long held breath. This was good, just as long as they remained where they were.

Something caught his eye to his left, glowing bright with magic. He forced himself to release his crushing grip on Blackout. Juzo walked into the tomb, parting cobwebs, thick dust motes fluffing into the air. A sword was lodged in mortared stone, stacked sarcophagi on either side. Juzo stepped closer, curiously eying the blade. The memory of the Northman he had killed here came rushing back. This was the dead man’s weapon. He let his magic vision fade and his night vision returned. The walls were still covered in the man’s blood spatter.

That adventurer had come to the wrong place. The darkness was his domain and no other’s. Juzo planted his boot on the wall and gripped the long sword in both hands. He gave the wall a hard kick and pulled the blade free, stone dust puffing into the air. It was well crafted, heavy and made for killing blows.

Juzo strode from the tomb, long sword held loosely over his shoulder. He started towards the main chambers again then paused after a few steps. Something didn’t feel right and he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. He paused again, listening intently. It was quiet. The familiar screams of people being mercilessly tortured was replaced by the occasional rumble of the volcano and ancient stones dislodging from the cavern’s ceiling. Maybe they had found a way out? Maybe an honest soul found their way down here and freed them?

He started again, tripping over something heavy and squelching under his boots. He barely caught himself, getting a leg underneath him before falling, almost running himself through with the sword. He recovered with a sharp breath, sword held before him, knuckles white and hands sweating against the hilt. The volcano groaned, sending a low hum over the hall. A rivulet of dirt started raining down. He wheeled around, finding only the flickering torchlight. He looked down to see what had almost caused him to run himself through and finding a maggot riddled corpse. His boot was covered with decaying skin and stringy flesh. Then the smell hit him like a hard slap. He must’ve freed it from its fleshy prison. He wanted to pinch his nose and blow the noxious odor out, but knew it was too late for that now.

“Fuck me,” he said, exhaling slowly to calm his nerves. Terar’s dead torturers lay strewn about the hall ahead, three other bodies in dark, twisting shapes. They were the ones who had attacked him last time, trying to avenge their fallen master. He wasn’t sure if they were brave or foolish. What he did know is that they were only maggot food now, likely deserving what fate befell them.

Something started in the distance, stones tumbling on the floor, skittering along the columns and hissing like thousands of tongues. The Reapers, ancient defenders of Terar’s chambers, were moving, slithering down their stony perches towards the passageway.

Juzo froze and his hands wound tight around the Northman’s sword, the tip of the blade trembling. They were fast, much faster than they should have been. Their legs were encased in hard shells, long as a man, clattering onto the floor at the end of the hallway. Their bulbous lower bodies were so wide that they couldn’t squeeze down the hall together and resigned themselves to walking in a column after trying. Their hissing grew into a fury, booming like the Lich’s Falls. Their eyes hummed with a dim glow, the color of urine.

“Shit!” Juzo raised the Northman’s sword behind his head, muscles taught like a bowstring, and hurled it as hard as he could at the first Reaper. The sword spun through the air and almost fell short, if not for the Reaper’s speed. Instead, it buried itself up to the hilt above its gaping maw. The Reaper screeched and fell onto one of its pincers. It yanked the sword free from its hairy abdomen, wielding in its spindly human arms, blood spurting out like liquid snakes. Its chest heaved out another ear piercing screech, its round breasts thrust out.

Juzo’s eyes went wide as the beast charged, its incredible mouth spreading like a chasm, the sword drawn to strike, massive legs scoring deep lines in the walls and dislodging torches. Juzo didn’t remember drawing Blackout, seeing it clutched in his hand, dimming the light and cutting through the air, intercepting its sword slash. Blackout clanged into the Reaper’s sword and blood sprayed from its sword onto his face, hot as boiling water. He twisted his body, avoiding the bite of its abdomen, bathing his skin in its slick humidity.

He rolled into the wall, back crashing against it as one its arachnid legs impaled the stone, sending a shock wave through his body. Its abdomen crashed down upon him, mouth drawn to swallow. Juzo kicked and his foot connected with its lower jaw, the force of his leg pressing into it, the only thing keeping him from being crushed. Its mouth snapped and bit like a bear trap, pressing him further into the wall. The Reaper uselessly slashed the air with its blade, too far way to cause harm. It raised one of its legs into the air, stabbing and attempting to impale him. Juzo turned his body sideways, the spiked tip of its leg crashing into stone beside his head and raining dust into his eye.

“Help,” he said through gritted teeth.
Help.
He
directed the thought at Blackout still tight in his hand. His eye wept and he blinked the clumping dust out of it.

Feed,
Blackout said in his mind. Juzo felt the blade had a deep longing for these beasts, a hunger that had been long overdue. The leg in the wall pulled free and another came after it, he hunched his back over, leg slamming into the wall above his head, stone bits raining down the back of his coat and along his skin.

Juzo stabbed up and Blackout joined him, lending its own ferocity to the blow. The blade plunged through its chitinous leg, in and out twice before the creature withdrew it, hot blood bubbling down into his white hair. Its body pressed harder, legs poised behind it, forcing itself upon him. Its mouth was snapping, its red tongue as wide as a saddle hungrily lapping at the air. Juzo slashed at the tongue, sword bouncing and tearing through its spiny teeth, cutting through a big chunk of tissue. It recoiled and stumbled back into the one behind it, humanoid hands curled into angry fists.

The one behind the wounded Reaper tried to push the one in front out of the way, but the leader slashed with one of its spiked legs, cutting a line across the human part of its body. The first Reaper turned back to Juzo, the one behind it screamed in rage. Blood rolled from the massive mouth of the lead Reaper, across its abdomen, sticking in curls of shaggy hair.

Juzo rolled to his feet, eye weeping with tears, Blackout held loosely by his side.

“I will break you,” he whispered.

Feed,
Blackout hissed.

The Reaper behind the front one snarled, reached with its pincher arm and clipped the head from the front one as if it were a flower from the garden.

“What the…?” Juzo said, shuffling back a step. The horned head rolled from its body, bouncing from the hairy abdomen and onto the floor with a thud. The front Reaper collapsed, its body sagging over, uncontrollably flailing limbs, streams of blood pulsing from its neck.

The Reaper behind it crawled over its slain brethren, legs and pincers dancing in the air. The humanoid head smiled as it advanced, and he smiled back. It seemed to have paused for a brief second at that, as though it never stood against another who was as unfamiliar with fear as it.

He and Blackout were one, darkness allied in its most insidious form. Its pincer flew at him, jaws open and ready to clamp shut. Juzo stood motionless, feigning the notion of one who’d given up all hope. The pincher started to close and Blackout went to work. Rapid slashes of dark whistled through the air, hewing the jawed part of its arm off. The pincher closed as it fell to the ground and the beast’s eyes went wide with renewed anger.

The arm leapt behind it, blood spewing from the gaping wound. It lunged forward with a ferocious bite and Juzo leaped onto its abdomen, hair thick as mountain dog’s and slick with oil under his boots. It punched with its long woman’s arm and Juzo easily dodged it and hacked it off at the elbow. Blood spattered into his mouth and he licked his lips, tongue bright with pink warmth.

Juzo’s eye burned brightly with hunger. The blood of this beast was like melted sugar, sweet and tantalizing. He was no longer questioning his reason for coming here. He had found it. He seized it around its narrow waist with one arm, swiveled around to its back, hugging it under its breasts as tight as a lover. He jammed Blackout between its ribs and out the other side, hand tightly gripping the hilt. The Reaper bucked and screeched wildly, trying to toss him back onto the hallway floor. It smashed its head back, trying to gore him with its many horns, skin squirming as its other arm raked through the wet in his hair. Every living thing had a vulnerability, he supposed. His was the lure of blood. Most others were Blackout’s edge.

He jerked its head to the side, gripping it under the jaw, exposing the angrily pulsing arteries along its neck. His mouth parted in a feral grimace and his mouth clamped over its neck, teeth sawing through midnight skin. The blood wept from the sides of his mouth in warm spurts as he drank and drank until he was near vomiting on its sweetness. The Reaper’s legs shivered, then crumbled and dropped its heavy abdomen to the floor. Juzo let out a long breath and let the lifeless head flop over its shoulder.

The sword pulsed with its familiar soul draining glow, the miniaturized Reaper pounding away from the inside. He wiped the blood from Blackout on the Reaper’s shaggy body and sheathed it.

The remaining torches burned in a soft hiss. All that screaming and crunching stone was giving Juzo a headache. He was glad to hear the silence return. He strode towards the door to Terar’s chambers and in one motion kicked the door open with a slam. It was empty. Terar’s body was strangely missing as was—Malek. He had forgotten about that man up until now. His first surrogate.

“Please stay there, please stay there,” a voice said frantically. Juzo wheeled around the room, Blackout drawn. Juzo held his breath, listening to the tap-tap-tap of the Reaper’s blood dripping from his coat. Terar’s chair remained just where he left it, toppled over and constructed of white bones.

Someone’s thoughts. He was hearing someone’s thoughts like Terar could hear his. Not the lower chambers, please stay up there, the voice said. He narrowed his eyes as he recognized it. It was Malek’s. Just what he needed, a third voice in his head to confirm his madness. He had gone this far into the pit of hell, why not a little deeper?