But they saw in each other a reflection into themselves. Something in the way Denaos stared, eyes firm and searching for no way out of this. Something in the way Dreadaeleon stood, pulling himself up on trembling legs and refusing to acknowledge the pain it caused him with so much as a wince.
And in that, they both knew that they would stay. They would save her, maybe die trying. She was worth it.
To both of them, each one realized with a sudden tension, a clench of fist and a narrow of eye, toward the other. A tension they had no choice but to bite back at the moment.
“There’s still longfaces down there,” Denaos said. “We circle around, slide down the dune, and make our way to the cavern at the back. If she’s not dead, she’ll be in there.”
“She’s not dead,” Dreadaeleon said.
“I know,” Denaos replied.
“Then why’d you say it?”
No answer.
Lying was a sin, after all.
FIFTEEN
I’m not ungrateful.
It was a resentful thought, as most of Gariath’s were. Thoughts were too flexible, they could be changed at any moment, so what was the point in using them?
You have given me much.
Words were much more solid. Once words were spoken, they were there forever, hanging in the air and impossible to ignore. Like scent.
Your eye, your hatred, my life. .
Gariath could not afford words here. Words were breath and breath was too precious to waste, where he clung precariously to slick, slippery walls by the tips of his claws. He needed it, as rare as it came, to keep clinging there, keeping himself from sliding down a vast and gaping darkness.
It’s disgraceful that I don’t just let go and let this be over.
Thoughts weren’t enough.
But if you accepted that, you wouldn’t be you.
He snarled, dug his claws in. The thick, fibrous tissue of the walls did not yield easily, but he felt liquid gush out from the scratches he carved into it, pouring over his hands. The floor shifted violently beneath him.
And if I were to do that, I wouldn’t be a Rhega.
The gurgling behind him became a low rumble as something boiled up from the endless corridor behind him, sending the walls shaking, the floor writhing as he clawed his way forward.
And then, what would the point of this all be?
He tightened his grip, sinking his claws in to the skin of his fingers, stomped his feet down to secure a footing on the writhing floor. He felt liquid pour out in great, spurting gushes. He dug the claws of his toes into the floor, felt the blood pool around the soles of his feet.
The rumble behind him became something louder that shook the walls and floors and ceiling and the dark, dank air around him. And Gariath could feel by the trembling, the sound of the walls contracting around him, the great lurching shudder that shot through them, that it heralded something much, much bigger.
You have to earn my death.
Thoughts weren’t enough.
But he trusted by the blood pouring over his hands and the great tide of bile rushing up behind him that he had made his intent clear enough.
A crack appeared in the darkness before him, quickly spreading into a great, gaping hole bordered by black, jagged spikes. In as much time as it took to blink, soft blue light poured in.
The flood of seawater came right after.
The dragonman released his grip suddenly as the seawater crashed against his chest and the bile struck against his back. For a moment, it seemed as though he might be crushed between the two liquid onslaughts. But the ocean was merely an ocean. The digestive juices boiling up behind him had an entire day’s worth of hate and fury at having a clawed obstruction lodged in a tender gullet.
And expelled him like an undigested red morsel on a cloud of blood and black bile.
He went tumbling helplessly into the vastness of the sea as the Akaneed’s jaws crashed shut behind him and its tremendous column of a body pressed forward. Its snout only just grazed him, but it was more than enough to send him flailing, bouncing off the beast’s blue hide as it sailed beneath him.
It would have been easy to let go, to drift into the endless blue and disappear. Maybe he would survive, maybe the Akaneed would live the rest of its life with one eye happily, maybe they would kill each other later. But “maybe” was a human word indiscernible from human thought: easily twisted.
He was Rhega.
That was why, as the serpent’s tail passed beneath him, he reached down and seized it.
A tiny red parasite on the beast’s great bulk, Gariath fought to hold on against the twisting tail, against the wall of water, against his lungs tightening in his chest. Here, claws sunk into the flesh of the creature’s tail, he couldn’t even see where the beast’s head was, the vast road of writhing blue flesh disappearing into the murk of the sea.
Such a sight would have been enough to make him consider letting go, consider the wisdom of fighting a snake the size of a ship, consider if such a thing could even be killed.
It would have.
If he hadn’t already seen it from the inside, anyway.
The Akaneed’s throaty keen echoed through the water as the beast shifted beneath him; tiny as he might have been to it, he had not gone unnoticed, his crimes against the beast had not gone unremembered. That thought gave him pride. Pride that was quickly overwhelmed by the burning need to breathe as the beast’s tail swung from side to side in an attempt to dislodge him as it abruptly shifted upward.
His lungs nearly burst along with the water as the Akaneed broke the surface, out of the world of water and into the world of mist. As vast as it might have been, as much reason as it might have had to kill him, it still needed to breathe the air like him. It was still alive, like him.
And you can die, he thought, like me.
That thought propelled him as he hauled himself, claw over claw, across its columnous body as it tore through the waves, cleaving a path of froth and mist out of the sea. The salt stung his eyes; he didn’t close them. It made his grip slip; he clung harder. The beast twisted, writhed, slapped its tail in an effort to dislodge him; he refused to let go.
You deserve to kill me, he thought. I deserve to die.
Pillars of stone appeared out of the mist, walkways of stone cast shadows against the gray mist overhead as the beast wound its way between them, slamming its body against the rock in an attempt to dislodge him. But stone could not stop him. Sea could not shake him. He continued to climb, to claw his way up the beast’s hide, leaving bloody tracks in its hide behind him.
But I don’t want to die.
And, with one more pull, he saw it. Rising high and sail-thin, tearing the sea apart, the beast’s great crested fin stood. He growled, tensed. .
And I’m not going to.
And leapt.
Not yet.
The beast roared and he felt its skull shake under him, just as it felt his claws upon its neck. His footing began to disappear beneath him, swallowed up by the sea as the serpent dove. That was fine. It was always going to be difficult. That’s how their relationship worked.
And so he drew in a deep breath and took the Akaneed’s fin in his claws as the world drowned around him.
Beneath the mist there was nothing but decay. Pillars of stone rose in a gray forest from the seabed. The shattered timbers of ships and their crumbled monolith statues littered the floor, leaves from the dead stone trees. The shattered hulls groaned as they passed overhead. The stone grumbled as they brushed past.