He couldn’t feel the agony of his shoulder. Not even when the Deepshriek’s other head swept down and sank its teeth into his skin.
He was aware of it, of course. Of the fangs clenching in his flesh, of the pus bursting in its mouth, of the violent thrashing of its stalk as it pulled something from his shoulder. He was aware that the creature’s smile was curling up over something wet and sopping in its mouth. He was aware of the blood and the fact that he should be screaming.
But screaming was for men with voices to call their own. He was a man with a sword and a voice in his head that told him how to use it.
And he listened.
He swung without a word. It clove through the beast’s neck before it could even drop his shoulder. The creature’s head went flying, his flesh still lodged in its mouth. Blood wept from his shoulder.
“Not much time,” the voice said. “We have to strike soon.”
“Before there’s no blood left,” Lenk replied as he hefted his sword.
The Deepshriek was flailing, face twisted up in rage as it tried to find breath to curse him. Its scream welled up in a bulge beneath his grip, threatening to burst. He swung, the head flew, his grip faltered. And the Deepshriek’s fury was voiced in a wordless, quavering wail on a shower of black blood. The gray stalk flailed wildly for a moment, spraying the blood across the water, before going limp.
The shark beneath his feet ceased to struggle, ceased even to move. It bobbed lazily in the water, responding not even to the sword Lenk jabbed into it to keep his balance.
“Good,” the voice said. “We are free to strike now. She is coming.”
He looked to the pillars. Another arm snaked out, caught the other pillar and began to pull. A great mass of hair, tangled like kelp, wretched little fish and eels weaving between the massive strands, rose from the depths. Lenk caught a single glimpse of an eye, bright and yellow and beaming with hatred as it looked upon him, bathed in the blood of the Deepshriek.
“Through the eye. A solid blow, before she can pull herself out of the gate. It will end her.”
“She will die.”
“Our duty will be fulfilled.”
“And everyone will be all right. .”
The voice said nothing.
Not until he looked over his shoulder.
“NO!”
He was aware of her voice, aware of her backing away, her bloody hands and bone knife a poor match for the netherling’s jagged spear and the bodies left in her wake.
“No, no, NO. Remember your duty. Remember, this is to save her. Turn away now and she dies, regardless, and so do you.”
He was aware of the chill in his body subsiding, of the pain returning. But still, he stared and watched as Kataria made a desperate lunge at the longface. Her knife found the gap in the female’s armor, bit deeply. The longface accepted it, like a fact of life, and lashed back with her shield, knocking Kataria to the earth.
“Listen to me. LISTEN. Reject me now and you will never again know me. You’ll die without me! The world dies without you! Without us! We will stop her, together.”
A black boot went to Kataria’s belly, pinning her to the earth.
“We can save the world.”
A spear was raised and aimed over her chest.
“We can save her if you-”
He was aware of the darkness.
And then, he could feel everything.
The wound in his shoulder, the blood, the pain, the cold of the water, the fear, the wailing inside his head, the great emptiness beneath him slowly filling as something reached up from the darkness to seize him.
These were problems for men with perspective, men with nobler causes, men who had gone so far into the light they couldn’t see the filth they stepped in anymore.
Lenk had simpler problems. And a sword.
It wasn’t reflex. It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t easy to pull himself from the water and rush toward the netherling. It was bloody. It was painful.
He struck the netherling with his good shoulder. It still hurt. They tumbled to the ground in an unpleasant mess of metal. His sword found her armor, grinded against the metal. The tip found something softer and bit. Then, he pushed until they were both bleeding and lying upon the floor.
Only one of them moved. And then only with Kataria’s help.
“I came back for you,” he groaned.
“You want a kiss or something?” she all but spat at him as she tore her belt free.
“Well. .”
“No.”
“Oh.” He winced as she tightened her belt around his shoulder as a makeshift tourniquete. “I don’t think that’s going to help.”
“Better ideas?”
“No, it’s a good one. But I was talking about-”
“AKH ZEKH LAKH!”
The longface came charging toward them, leaping over the body of a venom-doused Abysmyth. Her feet never struck the floor. A tentacle the size of a tree trunk swept out of the darkness, snatching her into the air and twisting her warcry to a desperate scream as it dragged her beneath the waves.
From the shadows the tentacles came, snatching the longfaces from the stone. Dragging them screaming into the air, crushing them in fleshy grips, pulling them from darkness to darker.
And all pain was drowned, all agonies rendered moot as the water erupted and Ulbecetonth rose.
“Yeah, that,” Lenk grunted.
A child torn from the womb of hell, she came into the world pale and screaming. The shadows slid off her body in tears, as vast and cold as any of her statues, reluctant to leave her as she loomed over the waves. Barnacles and shells grew in clusters upon skin so pale as to be translucent. Coral sprouted in pristine, rainbow-colored rashes across her body. Creatures of many legs and many eyes crawled across her, into the shadow of her navel, across the slope of her breast, into and out of a mouth gaping wide and lined with bone-white sawblades.
Lenk felt his eyes fleeting across her in unblinking flashes, unable to look at any part of her for long, unable to turn away. His gaze was fixed upon the bright gold of a single eye not by his own choice. It burned with such hatred that it commanded his attention, demanded he look at it until he could see how he was going to die reflected in its gaze.
Her mouth grew wide, her shriek the sound of a thousand drowning maidens that sent the tears of shadow and the many skittering fiends falling from her body.
And Lenk felt himself moving.
“Come on, come on.” Kataria had both arms around him, equal parts propping him up and hauling him away. “We have to go.”
“We can’t.” Reflex. His voice, even if it shouldn’t have been. “We can’t run from this.”
“I said it and I meant it,” she snarled, “but I thought we were going to get the tome before it happened. Now we run.”
“We can’t. She’s limitless,” Lenk said. “Down in the chasm, I saw her. She’s under the island. She’s the blood of the land. We can’t outrun her.” He looked into Kataria’s eyes. “Not both of us.”
“That’s not what we’re going to do,” she said, pointing to a nearby archway. “We’re going to run to that. We’re going to keep running. We’re going to go somewhere else and hide there until we can figure out something else.”
“We can’t do that,” he said. “Neither of us makes it out unless. .”
“Don’t use that word if you’re going to do something stupid.”
“Too damn late for that.”
He tore free from her grasp, took off running before she could grab him again, threw himself into the water and disappeared beneath the darkness before she could scream at him and make him think just what the hell it was he was doing.