Chapter Text
They both climbed up the hill. Vincent’s claws dug into the sod and pulled him upward.
Thwack, thwack, thwack...
The wet slapping grew louder as they neared the top. Slade scaled the climb much faster than he did. In fact, her movements reminded him of the lizards that used to scurry along the walls during the summer. She elevated herself with just as much ease. But Vincent was not used to his form, so he took longer to reach the top. When he did, she silenced him before he could say anything and pointed.
Thwack...thwack...thwack...
It was unnecessary however, because he would not have had the words to describe what he saw. Large boulders dotted the hills at the base of the mountains. One of them stood erect like a sentinel near the bottom of the hill.
Thwack...thwack...thwack...
And the ground surrounding it was stained blue with kelta blood. A hundred or more mutilated corpses sprawled across the grass, all kelta, slain where they stood, their guts spewed across each other as if they had been detonated from within. One lone beast remained standing, alive. Gashes tore through its flanks and the flesh on its snout hung in ribbons. Vincent could see the green muscle quivering underneath the loose-hanging strips.
It stood by the rock, panting and hyperventilating, its jowls flaring with each breath. Then it pulled back its head, swung, and slammed it against the stone as hard as it could. Thwack...blue spray streaked across the stones. Thwack...a strip of flesh fell from its cheek. Thwack...several of the creature’s teeth popped out. It fell to the ground keening in torment, kicking where it stood. Then it stopped moving. It was dead.
“What in the hell...” Vincent breathed. He stopped when he saw the look on Slade's face. Whether she was conscious of it or not, she had her teeth bared at the slaughter before her. She, like him, had no words.
The kelta that had been flogging itself to death twitched. Its legs began to run in place as if its body remembered flight, they swept the grass and kicked at loose stones, turning the creature slightly. There was no mind behind the movement, just the memories of galloping. A lump began to move in the creature’s stomach and the whole body convulsed, the legs kicked faster and faster, until they practically flailed. Foam of saliva and blood gathered at the creature's maw and dribbled.
The beast's corpse arched its back, and a line ran along its underside, opening its torso and exposing its ribcage. The individual ribs broke away from the center and began to open like the teeth of a maw, spreading the kelta wider and wider until its trembling legs formed an X. When the ribs resembled the teeth of a Venus flytrap, the air erupted with the same horrible scream that seemed to contain both human and beast. The creature’s organs vibrated with the yowling. Vincent threw his hands to his ears to block out the deafening sound.
Then it abruptly stopped. The ribs closed, the line retreated, and the flesh mended itself so that it looked like the kelta had never been bisected. Moments later, it began to breathe again. It stood on its legs and looked around, terror in its amphibious eyes and equine features. It made as if to run away, but only traveled a few short paces until it stopped in place, as though its legs had been nailed to the ground. Trembling, it turned around and walked back toward the rock. There, it gazed into the stone and began to repeat its ritual of brutalization: Thwack...thwack...thwack.
Vincent muttered a silent profanity at the sight, at the act of self-desecration. It flailed its head against the stone until there was a crack. The side of the head where the creature had struck was now deformed like a deflated football. It dropped to the ground shrieking and yelping with convulsions, eyeball dangling from its socket. He expected it to stop any moment and die, but it remained alive, keening in misery, thrashing because it could do nothing else. He couldn’t take it anymore.
“Jesus, do something!” he hissed, “put that damn thing out of its misery!”
But Slade was already a step ahead of him. “Stay here” she said, withdrawing a handle from her belt. As she descended the hill, a blade began to materialize from it. Splotches of darkness coalesced into a black scimitar at least four feet long. Colors swirled the surface as if the blade itself were constructed of frozen oil rather than tempered metal. Other than the manner in which it appeared, the weapon had a rather bland appearance. It lacked any elaborate runes or glowing symbols that were often associated with magic, nor was it garnished with any decorations.
As she approached the kelta, the creature emitted a series of horrible shrieks as the bones in its chest twisted and broke. It choked, spewing blue bubbles from its mouth and nostrils. Slade brought the blade high into the air and cut diagonally. There was a soft wet thud as the scimitar cut through flesh and hit mud. For a few seconds, the kelta’s decapitated head gaped for breath before it stopped moving altogether. A spume of blue spilled from the creature’s stump.
Vincent realized he had been grasping a handful of sod. What in the hell had just happened? His immediate thought was “rabies”, but no disease he could think of could cause the grotesque transformations he had witnessed. No virus or bacteria would cause bones to shift or flesh to mend.
“We need to go,” he whispered, “we need to get the hell out of here.”
But Slade was not paying attention to him. She was staring at all the corpses scattered across the grass. When Vincent saw why, he felt a chill. Although they were long dead and he could smell their decay, the kelta had their heads raised. With sallowed cheeks and sunken eyes, their corpses stared at the kiolai, as still as statues. Their lips were contracted with rigor mortis, exposing their gaping teeth to the air and yet their heads stared as one, drawn to Slade like metal to a magnet. Their opened maws looked like grins and appalment.
One of them began to vibrate, its equine head rattling and quivering as if a high voltage current were being forced through it. Its mouth dropped open, frozen in a silent scream. Slade didn’t wait to see what would happen next. She swung, liberating the vibrating head from its corpse. She became a swirl of dancing ebony, moving with grace and efficiency as she swung her weapon, mowing the field of heads like grass.
But she was not moving fast enough. The corpses tracked her. Some of them began to shamble, crawl toward her slowly, dragging their entrails behind them. Others began to stand up, wobbling on the stiffness of death, their heads shaking like rattles. One of them began to stumble forward, testing each precarious step, moving almost mechanically. Then it brayed.
The sound sent chills across Vincent’s skin. It was the sound of human being, a human voice transplanted into the vocal cords of a bovine. It was a voice that did not belong in those amphibious bodies. Yet as it tumbled its way toward Slade, wearing a rictus of agony on its atrophied face, a hybrid vocalization called out. It teetered forth eagerly like a playful animal, its neck opening up to reveal a gnarl of flailing tendrils. But Slade sheared its head from its body and it fell where it stood. But more of them were coming to life, dragging behind their twisted innards in defiance of death, and braying at Slade like lost sheep. They were slow at first, easily felled by her ebony blade. But the problem was they did not stay down.
The heads she had severed were crawled across the ground like turtles, propelled by fingers of rent tissue that hung from their necks. Their muscles reached out to the nearest stumps they could find and reattached themselves. Nauseated, she brought her weapon down like a cleaver and clefted one in half. Tubules of green flesh flailed like flames and crawled up her blade. Startled, she slammed her weapon against a rock several times to shake it off. The flesh grew up the blade like moss, wrapping around its ebony and reaching for her hand, deflating the skull as it did so. Suddenly, the blade dematerialized, and the ribbon of flesh fell to the ground.
Vincent had to do something, he had to help somehow. But before he could think of anything, he heard the bray of a sheep right beside him. He had been so fixated on the fight below that he hadn’t seen the abomination that had crawled up toward him from the side. The creature was shambling in his direction too quickly for him to react.
Swearing, he got up and tried to run away but he tripped over his tail and fell on his back. In a moment, it was upon him. He cried out as it stepped on the folds of his wings. A line began to open along its abdomen, revealing a mouth of ribs and releasing the stench of fermenting carrion. Gagging, Vincent brought his knees up and kicked as hard as he could at the creature’s chest. It stumbled back a few feet, releasing his wing.
His fingers grasped for the shryken on his belt and tried to unbuckle it. But adrenaline electrified his nerves and made his grasp tremble. Before he could wield it, he was forced to kick out at the creature again. But this time, he aimed too low, and it caught his foot between its ribs. It closed around his ankle, trapping it between two “teeth”. He felt the cold wetness of decay squirming around his toes. Screaming, he kicked up at its face with his free leg, dropping the shryken so that it bounced down the hill. His foot tore gashes in the creature’s torso as he felt the ribs tighten around his ankle until it was on the verge of breaking. The pain quickly became unbearable.
Desperate, he hurled his weight backward and they both tumbled down the hill. His back and elbows struck rocks as he fell, and his trapped ankle twisted with excruciation. But the tumble broke him free of the creature’s grasp. Fueled by the adrenaline still pumping through his veins, he pushed himself up and limped away from the creature while it flailed along the ground.
His eyes darted left and right, looking for the metallic glint of the dagger, but he didn't see where it fell. But then he saw Holan. The massive beast was bellowing and straining against her tether. Her stamps shook the ground as she bucked. Perhaps she sensed her master was in trouble.
Vincent jumped when he heard the kelta cackling behind him. It got back on its feet and was now shifting toward him like an eager pet. He limped toward Holan, staying clear of her rampage, moving until she was between him and the horror. She growled like an oversized polar bear as the creature neared her reach. Swinging her massive head, she sent it stumbling back. It began to circle her. He knew it was considering her threat, but not once did it break its gaze from him. It leered at him with a rictal grin while the gaping maw on its torso drooled with blood, the ribs tickling the air like the legs of some insect.
Smoke began to rise from over the hill, carrying with it the scent of charred flesh and burnt grass. Vincent wondered what the hell Slade was doing, but he could not help her unless he released Holan. She had tied the beast to a nearby tree with a length of drake gut. The rope frayed the bark from its trunk as Holan pulled with her entire weight. Under that much force, there was no way Vincent could hope to loosen the knot. But there was a carabiner at the end of the rope linking it to her saddle. He would have to mount her and unbuckle it. But how in the hell he was going to get near her was another challenge. She was a massive beast and she was going crazy. One unintentional kick would have turned him into a sack of broken bones. But he was running out of options. If the kelta had seen him and come after him, then others wouldn't be far behind.
Holan pulled against the tree trunk as if she meant to yank it out of the ground. She took angry swipes at the kelta whenever it came near. Vincent waited for an opening, until she stopped moving enough for him to grab hold of her. He grabbed the stirrups. He didn’t wait to see how she reacted, but he braced himself, expecting to be thrown off, then pulled himself up the massive flank. Holan reared back and he found himself dangling, holding onto the saddle for dear life. Then she brought her legs down and stamped the ground. Pain shot through his shoulders as he was almost thrown off.
Swearing, he ducked under the drake gut, which was as taut as a cable on a ski lift. Shaking, he fumbled at the spring-loaded carabiner, his claws slipping against the metal. Holan reared again and he grasped the saddle. When she came back down, he slammed his snout into the hard leather, his sinuses flaring with the scent of chlorine. Shouting a profanity, he wiped the blood from his nostrils and tried again. The spring latch came loose, but it was under too much tension under Holan’s straining. As soon as she reared up again, the tension slackened and he unhooked the carabiner from the metal loop it was attached to and tossed it aside.
Holan surged forward with Vincent clinging on. She plowed into the shambling kelta with her massive head and sent it flying. The creature landed like a bag of sticks and the beast gave chase. He felt his stomach lurch as she reared up and came down like an avalanche, stomping the abomination under her trunks until it was a mass of quivering green pulp.
She dug into its corpse, and spread it like jelly across the grass, pounding it into the grit of the dirt. Then, in a few leaping strides, she scaled the hill and bounded across the top. Vincent had to grip with all of his strength to keep himself anchored to her back. Her galloping whipped him around and he felt his legs lift from her saddle and slam back down.
The land around the stone spire looked nothing like it had a few moments ago. Slade was surrounded by a ring of steaming bodies and scorch marks. The acrid smell of burnt flesh assaulted his senses and he could see something covering her body, but he could not tell what it was. Holan was moving too fast for him to get a good look. The entire world shook under her gallop, all he could see was a blur of quaking skyline as she pounded her way through the kelta, crushing bones under her feet. Stars danced across his vision as the beast twisted violently, thrashing him from side to side. He was unable to see when Slade flung herself onto Holan’s side and climbed up. Whatever it was that had coated her form, it was gone now.
“Move!” she shouted, pushing him back toward Holan’s flanks.
He scooted back and held on, ignoring the stabbing pains in his shoulders. The beast wheeled around toward the incoming herd of malformed kelta, but Slade stopped her and turned her toward the pass. They were retreating. She brought Holan to a stop and shouted something at him, pointing to a silver kelta. No, it was not silver. It was the kelta that had chased after him earlier. After mending itself from Holan’s attack, its foot must have found the shryken. Slade hung deftly from Holan’s side and grabbed the handle. The metal retreated into the hilt and freed the shrieking abomination. Then she sheathed it and thrust the handle into Vincent’s palm.
“Stow it!” she barked.
Shaking, he shoved the blade into one of the pockets and held onto the saddle. They fled onto the trail leading toward the Devourer’s Domain. It was narrow, overgrown with shrubs and it wound around jagged protrusions. At intervals, Slade would stop, grab some spikes from the bags on Holan’s flanks, and drive them into the ground and walls. She moved without saying a word.
Sparks flew as she hammered the spikes into crevices, nooks, and crannies. Then she mounted them with cubes similar to the ones used to ward the waypoint from the storm. When Slade activated them, Vincent felt invisible flux lines spring forth. A subtle gust of force blew toward them, and he saw a few pebbles roll. She would repeat this process several more times before she had no more spikes to plant.
They took a right at a fork until they came upon a wide berth. There were several benches made of crudely carved stone as well as a fire pit, a camping spot that had not been used in a long time. Vincent noticed the path continued ahead, but Slade did not follow it. Instead, she dismounted and asked him to do the same.
“That will hold them off long enough,” she said, “are you well?”
He carefully lowered himself from Holan’s flank, wincing with pain as he put his feet on the ground.
“Jesus...no,” he said, “one of them f*cked up my ankle. I-sh*t!” He winced. “I don’t think it’s broken but...I probably sprained it.” He stumbled over to the bench, slid his tail over the top so he could sit down.
“Let me see,” she demanded.
She brought over a rock for him to prop his foot up on. When he raised it, he saw a band of dark bruises crowning his ankle. “You will heal. Keep it up here.” She got up and dug through Holan’s supplies. She pulled out something wrapped in burlap and slowly unraveled it until it exposed the end of a waxy tan block. Without warning, she pressed it against the bruise. He uttered a stream of profanities as she traced the ring, leaving behind a residue of the waxy substance.
“Just use that stuff Xalix gave me,” Vincent said.
“For a wound like this, it would be a waste. Do you understand how scarce the Triasat bloom is?”
“No, I guess not,” he admitted. He gazed back toward the path as if expecting the kelta to come stumbling through it at any moment.
“What are those things?” he asked, “what in the hell did we just encounter? I’m not very familiar with your wildlife so correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the freak show we just witnessed is not normal kelta behavior. What in the actual hell are those things?”
“I do not know.” She wrapped the block in the burlap and stowed it on her landrider. “If I had a channeler’s eyes, I would be able to know their nature.”
Vincent thought about Tuls and what he said about the malevolence he could sense in the air. “Do you think they’re all right?” he asked, “Tuls and the others I mean. They’re traveling right through that storm’s path.”
“Do you think the blight of the kelta has relation to the storm?” Slade asked.
“I have no idea,” Vincent said, “that’s why I’m asking you. Look, whether or not you believe I come from another planet, you can’t deny I’m pretty much clueless about what the hell is going on. So, you tell me, can a storm do that? Does your world have a history of malevolent storms that mutate wildlife?”
“No,” she spoke sternly, “to my knowledge, there is no recollection of any such thing. I have never encountered creatures that refuse to die no matter how much they are dismembered. Nor have I heard of a storm that corrupts life. And yet these events give me a greater urgency to return to Meldohv. As for the relos, they have Tuls with them. His eyes will be a great ward to them.”
“Okay...” Vincent said, “so what now? What’s your plan?”
“Are you able to walk?” she asked, “I will show you.”
“Here, give me a hand,” he said. When he saw her confused expression, he clarified. “Can you help me up?” She grasped his hand and pulled him to his feet. His ankle throbbed with pain, yet at the same time he thought he could detect a tingling from the waxy resin she had spread.
She led him up a short, winding trail. He kept glancing over his shoulder for signs of the kelta and listened for their uncanny braying. He heard a distant howl and knew it came from one of the creatures. Slade’s ears twitched but she didn’t stop walking. Perhaps she thought they were still far enough away.
“You need a name for those things,” Vincent said, “they aren't kelta anymore...so we should probably refer to them as something else. 'Afflicted' maybe?”
No answer. She led him out onto a small stone balcony built into the cliff-side, which provided an unfettered view of the interstice thread.
“This is the observatory overlooking The Devourer's Domain,” she said.
Vincent wiped his eyes, trying to clear them of the orange haze that seemed to blur his vision. But when they failed to clear, he realized what he was looking at was actually thousands upon thousands of maloger cilia floating in the air. From this distance, they were like hairs bobbing gracefully along the canyon’s vastness, distorting and weaving as they neared the thread’s gravity. Gusts of wind caused them to undulate like aquatic plants swaying in the sea. He followed them down into the canyon until they disappeared beyond darkness. A shadow hid the bottom from view, but ambient light from the cliff on the opposite side of the canyon began to cast the horror beneath in relief, hundreds of feet below the thread’s arch.
When he realized what he was looking at, he nearly stumbled backward. He thought the large triangular protrusions were enormous rocks that had broken free from the cliff face and crashed into the canyon. But no, they were not rocks, but beaks, some of which were nearly a story tall. A grotesque organism of mottled gray flesh spanned the canyon’s floor, more massive than anything he had ever seen. It clung to the rocks like cancer, a mass of mouths and tissue, malogers merged with other malogers. Partial beaks rotted from disuse as though they were as expendable as the stalks of a Venus flytrap.
But the main horror of the organism resided in the middle. Vincent could only describe it as a gargantuan ellipse of teeth and bone. Mouths resided within mouths and malogers resided within malogers, several organisms fused together to become one: The Teramin Devourer. The other day, he had seen one of these things snatch a bird from the air in the blink of an eye. What in the hell was this thing going to do when they brushed up against one of those cilia?
“You have got to be sh*tting me,” Vincent muttered without inflection, “we are going to cross that?!”
How many times had creatures of colossal proportions been depicted on television or in stories? How many movies had rendered some Lovecraftian horror whose scale could not possibly exist? The creature from the sea who terrorizes a city, gigantic spiders which tear their way from the crust of the earth, monolithic sandworms which rose from the dunes to devour cities. All those creatures of fiction should have prepared Vincent for the Devourer. Yet they did not.
It was hard for him to say why seeing the aberration in the interstice filled him with dread. Perhaps it was the subtle nuances of its movement, the occasional twitch of teeth, or the excretions that ran down its side. Or perhaps it was the hint of sulfur which occasionally rode the air. Or perhaps it was the silence of the creature itself; fooling observers into thinking it was simply a feature of the land on which it grew.
“That creature down there is my plan,” Slade said.
There was another bone-chilling howl in the distance, but it was hard to tell if the creatures were getting closer or not.
“We will...” She gazed toward the other side of the thread and frowned. “I see. Our plans have changed, but not much. The crawlers the relos spoke of have built their nest over the Teramin entrance.” She pointed at a wall of clay and mud that obscured a path on the opposite side of the canyon. She placed a finger on her snout and began to grin. “I see. My plan was to draw those creatures out onto the thread. Holan moves faster than the Devourer can strike. But the 'afflicted', as you call them, do not. They will become its food. But, because the nest will take time to destroy, I will have to subdue the Devourer itself.”
“This is...it's just insane. Let’s just ditch those things and go find another way. They move slow as hell, there's no way they can catch us.” At this, there was another howl. Vincent thought he felt the vibrations in the rock this time.
“Listen to me,” Slade said, “if it has not been obvious by now, you are no longer a simple prisoner. For reasons I am not at liberty to divulge, I must get you to Meldohv. Your immunity to the Bane means everything. Besides it is my prerogative to take care of the threat these creatures present before they threaten a village. I have slain a few of them by scorching them. It was the only way they seemed to die, but I cannot maintain the flame of Calimere’s Light for long. Its heat is not meant for prolonged battles. Therefore, our only option is to lure these creatures onto the Devourer’s thread.”
Another deafening roar shook the air. There was no doubt about it now, those things were getting closer. How many of Slade’s wards had they broken through? Vincent looked down at the monstrosity in the interstice. Its sheer size made him feel dizzy with vertigo. At the same time, he didn’t want to wait until the shambling horrors caught up with them. He could still see the frantic look of terror on the kelta’s face as it was compelled by something to mutilate itself. It was being tortured.
Vincent had flashes of his own transformation, hints of unending agony. He thought of the Stalker, who had followed him for days before finally snatching him. It broke his bones, rent his flesh and created something new out of his body. He didn’t want those creatures to catch him. His skin crawled at the thought of what they would do.
“Okay,” he said, “fine. This is insane, but I don’t want those things to get anywhere near me.”
When they returned, they found Holan circling the site in agitation. When she sensed her owner nearby, she brayed pathetically and trotted over, chuffing in agitation. Slade searched through her belongings and pulled out a large jar wrapped in thick fabric. She removed its top and withdrew a dozen or so spherical stones dripping with oil. With haste, she tore apart several lengths of fabric and started wrapping them. She left a good length of slack on each stone and tied a knot, forming a tail she could use to fling them.
“What are those?” Vincent asked.
“Flying stars,” she said. When she saw his confusion, she clarified, “they are bombs. Left over from a previous job.”
Vincent didn’t even know how to react. She tucked the flying stars into the bag, leaving their tails hanging out.
“I see, you’re going to throw bombs at it, trick it into eating them? Blow it up from the inside out?”
“Close...but no,” she said, “a hundred mouths competing for food would make that unpredictable. Simply throwing them would not guarantee the right maloger would snatch them. Come here...you must sit at Holan’s front and control her.”
“Right...I don’t know how you expect me to do that.”
He pulled himself up, wincing as he twisted his injured ankle. There was a sucking noise in the air and suddenly, Slade was behind him.
“What...wait what?!” he exclaimed, “how did you do that? You were standing right there a moment ago.”
“I have a sister ring tethered to Holan’s saddle,” she tapped at a leather pocket in the saddle. It had been sewn shut but Vincent could see the outline of a ring. “I have its twin on my hand. I can ‘pull’ myself to it and instantly traverse short distances. It is how I escaped the shryken.”
“Teleportation,” Vincent shook his head and gave a nervous laugh. “Of course. You defy gravity, so why not?” Another screech pierced the air. “Okay...I don’t know how to control this thing.”
“Listen well...it is not complicated. Place your hands on the reins like so.” She reached around to manipulate his hands, placing them onto a long leather loop whose ends disappeared into the fur around Holan's neck. It was physically attached to the animal by means of carabiners that clasped into large ring piercings embedded into the beast's fat. “Slap the reins down once to command her to go or to walk faster. Slap three times in succession to gallop. Pull the right side to have her turn right and left to have her turn left. Pull both to have her slow down or stop.”
Vincent felt the cord tug beneath his fingers. As somebody who only traveled by means of automobile, it felt completely unnatural that he was expected to steer a living creature Holan's size.
“Okay...slap once to go, three times to gallop, pull back to stop. Left and right...are left and right.”
“Grip the handle when you are not controlling her,” Slade said, pointing to a long, wrapped rung near the front of the saddle. “But keep the reins in your hands.”
Doing so was easier than he expected, he was able to hook his thumbs around the handle while still gripping the cord with his fingers.
“And do not sit,” she said, “move your legs back here and plant your feet into these pockets. You will find two handles for your feet. Grip them.”
Vincent did as he was told and tucked his feet into the pockets until he felt two thick bands tuck up into his arches. Shuddering, he closed his feet around them, a motion no human would ever be able to do. Now, he had his knees on the saddle and he was hunched over Holan’s shoulders as if he were riding a motorcycle. She had him take a brief moment to practice. He whipped the reins against Holan's neck and she began to move forward. He pulled to the right. There was resistance at first, but she turned her head in that direction and began to walk toward it. He pulled left and she did the same.
Maneuvering her was nothing like operating a machine, it was a creature with its own will and that only compounded all the doubts he had about this plan. Holan could disobey him if she wanted, toss him off and stomp him into the ground or she could simply do her own thing and not pay attention to him.
“You grasp the concept well enough. This is our plan...” Slade spoke with deliberate haste. “When those creatures break past my final wards, you will lead Holan as fast as you can onto the thread. You must stay as low to her as possible and if you can, stay away from Devourer’s ‘touch’. Holan is faster than it can strike but if you need to turn, she will slow.”
“What do you mean its 'touch'?”
“The orange hairs it uses to detect prey.”
“Again, this is insane,” Vincent said. They were both going to die.
“All I need you to do,” Slade said, “is to keep her moving. That will be enough. Holan's 'sight' is not limited to what is in front of her as ours is. She will see the maloger's attacks coming and will react accordingly. You just need to hold on. When the creatures are slain, I will need to be prepared to attack the Devourer. You will gain speed, I will launch from Holan’s back, break free from the thread’s gravity. Then, I will dive down and fling the stars at the Devourer’s center.”
Vincent shook his head and muttered a stream of profanities. At Slade’s direction, he moved Holan back down the trail until they came upon the fork. He could see no sign of the kelta, yet every now and then, he heard their horrible cry shake the rocks. He pulled the reins right. Holan chuffed a few times before turning right and heading down the weaving path, crushing the overgrown trail under her feet. Loose pebbles scurried like miniature avalanches as she plowed with her massive trunks.
He noticed several old nails hammered into the stone at various points along the trail, along with remnants of rotted wood. Perhaps they used to hang signs during a time where the Devourer’s Domain could still be traveled. But he did not have time to think about it. He thought he heard the cackle of the creatures’ eerie braying somewhere behind them. It gave him a new sense of urgency.
Finally, the trail widened into a long straight path toward the interstice thread. It rose into the sky like the lift hill of some strange rollercoaster. He pulled the reins back and brought Holan to a stop. The light beyond the pass called out to him, beckoning him to bask in the sun’s rays. But he knew the horror that lurked below the rising arch, he was walking right into its jaws.
His trance was interrupted when Slade asked him to move forward. They moved closer and closer to the rising surface until suddenly he felt the gravity shift toward Holan’s front. Automatically, she cantered ‘down’ toward the thread’s surface and landed on it. After the few disorienting moments it took his mind to adjust to the new gravity, he now saw the thread as the “ground” and the path they came on as the “slope”. A good length of it was still flanked by cliffs on both sides, yet Vincent could see the orange streamers of the Devourer dancing peacefully.
“Do you have any last words?” he asked, putting on a pair of goggles that Slade handed to him. The ebony blade flashed back to life in her hands. Several more howls shrieked through the air. She held her blade out to her side and a black liquid poured forth from the bottom of its hilt. It had the consistency of tar and yet it swirled with brown undulations as it coated her arm. Vincent thought he could detect a chill emanating from the strange substance.
“Attend, Cordell,” Slade said as the black fluid continued up her arms, “face forward and I will let you know when to go. Remember...three slaps...then hold fast.”
She grabbed several of the flying stars and hung them from her mouth. Sighing, Vincent lowered himself to Holan’s shoulders until he felt her fur tickling the underside of his snout. They were definitely going to die. Unlike before, where the thread seemed to be rising up into the sky, it now seemed to be sloping “downward”. At his back, he heard another scream echoing off the rocks and found he could not figure out what he dreaded more: Those creatures getting to him or Slade giving the order to “go”. Knots clenched at his stomach in anticipation as he heard the first bray of the corrupted kelta.
“Be ready...” Slade said, speaking around the stars hanging from her mouth, “they are within my sight, but I wish for them to get closer...we need to bait them.”
Vincent cursed to himself and tightened his grip. Holan kicked at the ground, obviously sensing the creatures closing in. Their brays echoed across the cliffs to his ears but now he heard a new sound come from the abominations. They still sounded like pitch-shifted cattle, yet their cries began to break apart, scattering into a ratcheting stagger. It sounded like laughter. He could hear the wetness of their strides and smelled the decay of their flesh. And along with the cackle of sheep, he heard something different. A few of them wore the voices of men. They bellowed with human vocal cords despite their resemblance to both the amphibious and the equine.
“Go!” Slade commanded without warning.
Vincent uttered a profanity, slapped the reins three times and clutched the rung as hard as he could. Holan swayed her head, reared up and launched forward with such acceleration, he could feel the lurch in his stomach. Every kick of her stride increased her speed and he felt himself sliding back, pushing against the arches of his feet until it felt like his soles were going to split. The walls echoed the cadence of her massive gallop as the wind rushed past his face, drawing saliva from his mouth. Pain ached around the rings of his ankles, but he forced it to the back of his mind.
In seconds, they exited the pass and the air seemed to pop as they raced out into the open. Wind roared in his ears as it buffeted him from all directions. Holan's strides seemed quieter on the open arch, yet he could feel the vibrations with each impact. She was fast, faster than he could believe. Unhindered by obstacles, she coursed across the smooth thread as if she had no care in the world. Even with his wings restrained, he felt the air trying to catch them trying to throw him off the enormous beast. And then there came the quakes.
He felt them rather than heard them and knew without looking, that the Devourer was attacking. The thread’s gravity confused the buoyancy of its web-like streamers, making some of them “float” away from the surface. But somehow the massive conglomeration of mouths was able to manipulate the ribbons and force them to probe the air, looking for prey. There was no way to avoid them and when Holan tore through the orange haze, Vincent could see the shadows of massive tentacles thrashing toward them.
The wind drowned out the crack of flesh against the thread, but he could feel it. He tried to cry out, but wind filled his cheeks and dried out his throat. Electricity seemed to surge through his muscles and fill them with adrenaline. Holan galloped across the cylindrical arch as several explosive concussions rocked the thread. Vincent half-expected it to shatter under the force of the assault. If one of those strikes landed, he would be dead before he had time to register it.
As Holan pounded across the thread, the world turned underneath as if it were a giant treadmill on which she ran. The only hint Vincent had that they had crested the apex was when he saw the cliffs rising up to meet them. They were covered with hundreds of pockmarked clay spires and columns. From those holes trailed hundreds of white webs that ran down the cliff and wrapped around the thread before disappearing into dirt. Threadcrawlers, agitated to life by Holan’s galloping, poured out of them like maggots and began to wriggle toward them. Slade crawled forward, leaned in, cupped his ear and shouted.
“Turn right!”
Vincent pulled on the right side of the reins and at first, he didn’t think Holan was obeying him. But then the world began to orbit them both, the thread becoming the pivot upon which the sky and ground turned. He could feel his legs and wrist straining as the beast turned, turned until the sky was at his back and a wall of flesh rose up to become the new horizon. Hundreds of gasping beaks gaped at them, breathing their putrid smell of bile. The circle of teeth in the middle seemed to yawn. Stars filled his vision as Holan continued to turn. It was not sharp or sudden, yet somehow the g-forces were causing blackness to come over him. He strained with all his might knowing that if he let go, it would all be over.
Finally, she pulled out of the turn and his vision began to clear. He raised his head just enough to peak over her fur. Now the thread carried them over the bottomless ambient pit that was the sky, and under the Lovecraftian monstrosity that lurked “above”. The Devourer was carrying out a vicious assault against the shambling creatures who had ventured onto the thread. Giant tongues of gray leapt out from the beaks “above” and swatted the shambling horrors like flies. Four or five them were devoured for every strike, but they kept pouring in. As he got closer, he saw something new among the vile creatures.
Holan’s strides made the world quake in front of him, making the details of what he saw uncertain. One of the creatures appeared to have risen up and stood on two legs. It walked along the thread like a drunken person, shambling because of its odd broken bones. A maloger tentacle came crashing down and Vincent thought he saw it go under, but when the tentacle retreated, it was still standing. It was looking at him and smiling. As its comrades fell around it, the creature stared at him with a rictal grin and sunken eyes. It did not appear to be aware of the carnage around it or it simply didn't care: It only had interest in him. Not Holan, not Slade, not the wall of mouths which was killing its kind, but only him.
It was a beast with the head of a horse, the features of an amphibian, and the decay of death. And it was grinning at him. Holan’s galloping made it quake around his vision, yet he thought he saw it do something, a gesture which did not make any sense considering the context, a gesture which for reasons he could not fathom, sent a slight chill across his skin. But before he could focus on it enough to be certain, it was snagged by the maloger and devoured.
Immediately, the remaining creatures seemed to drop in their tracks, reverting to piles of blood and bone. Slade ordered him to turn Holan again and he did so, bracing himself against the g-forces. As the remains of the terrors passed from his sight, he thought he saw their blood boiling before bursting into black flames. He had not expected them to be killed so quickly so he was unprepared for the moment he felt Slade launch from Holan’s back. Stars swarmed over his vision again, but he braced himself this time, his ankle screaming in protest.
When he felt the pressure leave and his vision returned, he saw the Devourer to his right and a black kite diving toward it. The weapon in Slade’s hand glowed red like angry iron as she descended among the thrashing tentacles. Then it grew to a blazing orange, which rapidly shifted into a yellow rod of light. In seconds, it was so bright, it could have been a star. Vincent could feel the heat even from hundreds of feet away. How was it that she hadn’t been vaporized?
He had no time to consider such questions. The maloger was vast and she was small flashing light that thrashed graceful arcs across its cilia. Though she was the one attacking, a majority of the beast’s many appendages still swung at Holan. One came dangerously close to landing a hit, striking only a couple of yards away. The wind alone seemed to smack him like an invisible wall.
And then there were the crawlers, as numerous as ants, now rapidly covering the thread. Individually, he doubted they would be a threat to Holan. Even twenty of them would have been easily crushed by the landrider. But there seemed to be a hundred of them pouring out like grotesque white leeches with legs. They lurked low to the ground, beyond the reach of the Devourer’s buoyant touch, yet they traveled with frightening speed. They were still a good distance away but he had to think fast. Adrenaline and desperation seemed to heighten his senses and numb the agony of his tired limbs.
To his right, Slade burnt tunnels through the maloger’s cilia, blinding its senses so that the giant tongues had to probe the air. Several motes of light broke off from her, fizzling as they fell. Like shooting stars, they flickered and winked. They struck the base of one of the tongues. Three bright flashes bloomed and the air slapped with their force. The maloger’s tongue fell in slow motion, severed from its mouth at the base. Then she pulled herself to Holan, reappearing immediately behind Vincent. Her hands dug into to his shoulder, covered with the black liquid. Unprepared for her sudden reappearance, he collapsed under her weight.
Without saying anything, she grabbed the reins and used them to steer Holan. Vincent ground his teeth as he held on. He could not take it much more, his muscles were close to failing. When it seemed like he was about to let go, Holan pulled out of the turn and was running back the other way, picking up speed, and then Slade launched again, using the momentum to lift up from his back and break free from the thread’s pull.
The Devourer’s cilia, severed by Slade and torn between two gravities, seemed to dance in the air like ribbons. They snagged on Holan as she plowed through them, dragging them along behind her. Vincent saw more flashes in his periphery and heard several more explosions. Chunks of severed steaming maloger flesh shot up toward the thread and began to orbit it like satellites, trailing rings of steam. They tumbled and leaked boiling fluid, turning the thread into a wet gauntlet.
Holan, somehow sensing the obstacles, dodged them. Vincent felt something in his back pop at the sudden motions, but he continued to hold on, locking his claws together so the beast wouldn’t throw him off. Slade reappeared without any warning, but he braced himself and began to turn her landrider. He felt hints of agony throughout his entire body. It radiated from his shoulders and ankles and began to stab his arms and legs. As Holan turned, it felt like he was going to be torn apart.
The next thing he knew, they were racing back toward the incoming crawlers. If Slade saw them, she must have thought the maloger was a bigger threat, because she launched from Holan’s back yet again.
I can't do this, Vincent thought, I can't take another turn.
He could feel the weakness of his new, untried, body. It was not prepared for this kind of battering, and neither was he. Yet underneath all the agony and all of the horror, he felt something else. His muscles were being shocked into living, his heart thudded against his ribcage, and the wind ripped past his ears. His mind raced with the implications of danger. Behind the terror lied a madness, a mania that filled his veins with vigor. It was thrilling. With the sky to his left and the gnashing maws to his right, Vincent appeared to be caught in the middle of two ideas: freedom and destruction. And it made him feel alive and he felt himself grinning like a madman.
He looked ahead at the swarm of crawlers, his lips winded and dried from the rushing air. He did not know why he let one arm go of Holan or why he reached down to his belt to grab the shryken. But as soon as he touched it, his ethereal form flared into existence, only perceptible to his senses. He wouldn’t be able to turn her, he was too weak. His muscles would fail, and he would be thrown off. Assuming he didn’t break every bone in his body, he would either be food for the maloger or for the crawlers. Slowly, without knowing what he was doing, he raised the shryken above his wrist. At that moment, his ethereal form seemed to merge with his physical form, raising its hand as he did. Then he plunged the shryken into his wrist and forced his will into the hierarchy.
Liquid metal didn’t simply pour forth from the blade, it exploded forth. It bloomed like a flower of mercury, coursing over his hand and crawling along Holan’s fur. It ran down her neck and formed a protective carapace. Five bumpy ridges rose from the shell-like, articulated digits and at the same time, Vincent could feel something in his palm, something warm and wriggling. He tried to lift a finger but it was hindered. As he did this, one of the ridges tried to raise up, but it was confined. Then he knew. He didn’t know how and he didn’t have time to think about it. But somehow, he was feeling Holan through the metal. The carapace was his “hand”, webbed and hardened.
Protesting, she tried to buck it off, but it was partially encased around her and she could not escape. Vincent parted two fingers and allowed her feelers to stick through the metal. Then without knowing how he was doing it, he raised the ridges into sharp blades. Holan continued to protest, rearing into the air and slamming back down. His snout banged into the saddle, busting a lip. But he only felt hints of pain.
With his free hand, he grabbed the reins and tried to gain control of her. When that didn't work, he dropped the reins and reached forward, massaging between her shoulders. She was stubborn to calm, but he kept stroking her shoulder blades, unsure if the action would have any impact on the massive animal. However, she seemed to respond to his touch and consented to charge forward into the incoming crawlers. A trail of sparks glittered behind them as the carapace scraped the thread.
Slade reappeared at his back just as they hit the first wave. Vincent was immediately showered by bits of slug guts and grime as Holan bulldozed her way through the swarm. The crawlers who got in her way were either trampled to death or thrown up the carapace and sliced up by the blades. She crunched the vermin under her massive feet, leaping over them with pride, causing Vincent to strain at his handholds. But he could not be shaken off now, he was bound to her by the strange workings of the shryken.
A few crawlers managed to grip to her fur like leeches, but Slade hacked at them with her extinguished blade, cleaving their bodies in half. Holan swung her head like a scythe, cutting a swath of death among the vermin of the interstice. Eruptions of milky white bloomed all around them.
Holan managed to find an opening among the swarm, which she used to gain speed, enough speed for Slade to launch again. Vincent could “feel” the beast's muscles pulsing through the flexing metal which he had clasped around her like a giant fist. He felt his webbed fingers of argent gouge into the parasites, their bodies got lacerated along his fingernails and sliced along his bladed “knuckles”. It was carnage incarnate, painting the air and ground with the threadcrawlers' demise. Those that were dead or wounded were cannibalized by their brethren.
Vincent looked through the shower of carnage to track Slade. Her movements seemed to be growing slower and more tired, yet there were only five more tongues left. No, there were four. She was out of bombs and now she used her blade to attack. She spiraled along the tongue’s length, flaring her sword as she cut. The tongue collapsed; its base, smoldering. The mouth it belonged to appeared to quiver in agony as it wriggled its useless appendage. She pulled upward, allowing the remaining tongues to follow her, they tracked her movements, swaying like cobras.
When she reached the apex of her height, she pulled her legs and wings in, flipped, and dove straight towards them. Veering aside at the last instant, she carved an explosive incision into the trunks, spiraling around them. The sheer heat blasted the flesh apart with evaporated blood and steam, blowing out huge blisters until the maloger’s tongues bloomed like grotesque flowers of rent flesh.
Meanwhile, Holan continued her rampage of death among the swarm. It was like flocking sheep into a group before charging at them and bulldozing their gut-wrenching forms. Vincent’s arms screamed in protest. Every leap Holan made threw him into the air and slammed him back down. Every turn threw him toward one side or the other. Only the carapace, which was seemingly fused to his arm, held him onto the landrider.
She was frenzied. Like a horse that is compelled to trample a snake, she pulverized the threadcrawlers beneath her massive form, spewing the thread with their milky innards. She did not slow until the entire swarm had been annihilated. When she finally calmed down, Vincent stared around in disbelief at the carnage. The ground was littered with rubbery fragments of shredded crawlers and charred maloger flesh.
Catalytic exothermic reactions, caused by ruptured silk glands, caused a few of them to smoke. Had they really killed that many crawlers in such a short amount of time? Only a few seemed to wriggle mindlessly in the distance, but they showed no more interest in attacking. There was a sudden explosion followed by Slade's reappearance.
“Well...” she rasped, “it is done. How is–" She looked around at the carnage. “Well done,” she said before swaying unsteadily and falling onto Vincent's back.
A rain of flesh began to pellet the thread. Chunks the size of boulders flew past Holan. Without knowing how he did it, Vincent formed the shryken into a large asymmetric umbrella, that sheltered them from the incoming meteors of flesh. Pings resonated in the darkness like hail striking a bell. The acrid odor of burnt tissue crept into the carapace. But slowly the noise began to subside until they left them in silence, with nothing to hear except the sound of his own panting. He waited. The adrenaline began to leave him and he felt the toll his body took. Cautiously, he retracted the shryken.
Groaning, he shoved the unconscious Slade off his back and released Holan. He climbed down the creature’s flank, and carefully planted his feet on the ground. Crawler guts squelched under his weight and he held onto Holan for support. Then he turned to look at Slade’s handiwork.
Because he stood on the side of the thread, the canyon sprawled vertically before him, displaying a steaming mass of flesh and beaks. For the finale, Slade had taken a dive and made one final incision across the largest “mouth”. The heat of her blade had caused the flesh to explode outward, leaving a series of blooming flowers with petals of gray skin. His mind, dazed by the aftershock of his ordeal, failed to grasp at how much heat would have been required to cause such violence. Why did she bother to use bombs if her weapon had that much damn power?
Steam continued to pour forth from the Devourer’s maw and rise “horizontally” toward them, twisting and scattering in all directions when it hit the thread’s gravity. A smile began to spread across Vincent’s tired face and a small chuckle escaped from his lips, before blooming into full laughter. He had the sudden urge to throw up his hands and cheer, to utter shouts of triumph. But his weariness was catching up to him. So instead, he leaned back against Holan, slid down until he was sitting and simply stared at the carnage.
“Holy sh*t,” he croaked, “I guess I better not piss your master off.”
