He was Rhega. He was the last. He died here, atop the last of the demons.
All for humans.
If he was still a creature burdened by thought, that one might trouble him.
He hauled himself onto Daga-Mer’s helmet. The world moved slowly beneath him, he could feel the tremors from each stride reverberating up into the creature’s skull. He could see the red-tinged mist of the beast’s breath, hear the thunder of the heart.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
The pale thing. Skin scarred by lightning. Eyes wide and white. Not a frogman. Still alive. The Mouth. Looking at Gariath.
“This is for the faithful,” the Mouth said, clinging to the twisted horns jutting from the helmet. “This place, this is where I belong. You should leave. So should I. But Mother Deep, She spoke and I. . I. .” He looked up at Gariath solemnly. “If I could see her once more, my daughter, I would-”
He stopped talking. A head cloven from shoulders would do that.
The body plummeted to the earth. The Carnassial watched the body bounce off Daga-Mer’s knee and fall into a pool of blood below. She sniffed, looked to Gariath, who settled a scowl upon her.
“Oh, like you were interested,” she said, snorting.
They advanced on each other, snarling, and were sent grasping for the helmet’s horns as the beast’s head shifted beneath them. Daga-Mer groaned. The beast had finally taken notice of them.
No time to deal with the Carnassial, Gariath thought. He had to finish this quickly. He took the waterskins in hand, tried to angle himself over the helmet. Daga-Mer’s lower jaw was considerable. One good swing, he thought, and he could send both-
A boot struck him hard against his head.
That’s what he got for thinking.
“We’re in the middle of a fight here,” the Carnassial snarled. “Don’t you look away from me.”
Her boot shot out again. He shifted his body to absorb the blow. That might have been a good idea if she hadn’t instead found the spearhead. It tore into him, through him, the tip jutting out the other side of his flank. He bled. Profusely. He felt pain.
A hand shot to his side. The waterskins fell from his grasp, plummeted below to splatter in useless silver stains on the earth.
The Carnassial grinned, hefted her massive blade with a free hand as breath, blood, and vomit leaked from his mouth. It shone dull gray against the sky for but a brief moment. Then, all was black.
A tremendous webbed claw fell from overhead, like a tree falling. It lazily came over the helmet, scratched the Carnassial like an itch, and tore her body, snarling and shrieking, from the rusted metal. The blade slipped from her grasp, clattered upon the helmet and slid down to Gariath’s waiting claw.
He heard her cursing. He heard her screaming. He heard her bones breaking as Daga-Mer’s hand closed upon her. And then, he heard the sound of a pimple bursting.
He could think only of the sword in his hand, the metal under his body as he slid down Daga-Mer’s helmet. One hand was upon the horn, slipping. One foot sought purchase in the eye slit of the helmet. He kicked, the rusted metal bent beneath his foot. He snarled, releasing the horn and catching the eye slit. He bled, his muscles straining as he pried the slit open and clutched the sword.
The hell-light blinded him. The beat of Daga-Mer’s heart was in his ears as he stared into a bright-red eye. For one fleeting moment, he saw a red pupil contract, the light abating long enough for him to see his own reflection.
When he looked at himself, he was smiling.
As he raised the sword.
And thrust.
The demon that was a mountain was neither in that moment. The titanic abomination, the immovable creature of flesh and bone was lost in a spurt of blood and the sizzle of an envenomed blade. The blood that burst from its eye was lost in a great stain of steam on the sky.
In the scream that followed, in the scream that echoed across creation, Daga-Mer was something loud and wounded and agonizingly mortal.
The demon’s head snapped back. Gariath was sent flying through the sky. His wings flapped wildly, trying to regain purchase against the wind. In the end, all they could do was guide him into a patch of kelp that took him and rejected him in a bend of leaves, tossing his bleeding body back into the ring.
He staggered to his feet, breathing heavily. He reached for his wound, gasping. He began to head toward the mountain, limping. And trying his damnedest not to smile at what was going on.
Daga-Mer’s scream split the sky apart. His feet tore the earth into pulp. His body was a twisting wind of light and flesh, flailing wildly as he groped at his wounded eye, thundering across the sand as he fought to keep on his feet.
Beneath him, demons were crushed, frogmen were sent flying, netherlings were ground into the earth. Faith and fury were forgotten, everything giving way to Daga-Mer’s pain. Longfaces who had never spoken the word suddenly screamed for the retreat. Frogmen screamed pleas to a titan too tall to hear them. Abysmyths raised their hands to him, as if to soothe him with whatever words they could utter before being crushed underfoot.
And Daga-Mer continued to stomp, continued to scream. He groped at his helmet, claws digging under it, pulling. It came free with the squeak of bolts and shriek of metal, the grafted rust torn free with scathes of flesh hanging from it. He tossed it aside, pawed haplessly at his eye to no avail.
It was gone.
And in its place was a gaping void from which a bright light poured like blood from an open wound. A great hole that swept across the battlefield.
And settled upon Gariath.
The dragonman stopped smiling.
The dragonman started running.
As Daga-Mer’s mouth gaped open, as Gariath’s legs pumped, and the demon and the sand screamed in harmony.
THIRTY-THREE
Before he even knew he was alive, Lenk could feel her inside his head.
“Look at me.”
He didn’t have much choice. Down here, his will was not his own. He could breathe under the water. His steel floated beside him. He could not blink.
None of this boded particularly well.
Brief flashes of red lit up the darkness. In each flash, he could see the stain that was Ulbecetonth blooming like a flower out of the gate, growing bigger. A mass of tentacles and flesh and eyes. So many bright, yellow eyes, winking into existence like stars giving birth. But he only knew these as fleeting things, he could not take his attention from the great jaws in front of him. Pristine white teeth, jagged sharp, a mile long, twisted into a great white smile.
“I would have let you go.” Down here, her voice was clear, crystalline shards thrust neatly into his ears. “Knowing everything-the kind of creature you were, the children you killed, the murderous thoughts in your head-after all of that, I would have let you go.”
He could not speak down here. She didn’t will it.
“But you defied me. You hated me too much. You came here, to a land that wanted you dead, just to stop my children from coming to me.” The jaws cracked as they twisted into a frown. “Did you delude yourself with lies that it was all for someone else? To save the world?”
Another flash of red light, like lightning. He could see the great bowl that this place had been: the drowned ring of seats, the banners floating like kelp. It had been an assembly once, where they had gathered to worship her, to feel the warmth of her presence. But now it was cold but for the light flashing from the Aeons’ Gate.
“From what? From feeling the same devotion, the same peace my children did before you came into their lives?”