They were not dead, though. A few were, a few were close, none were truly alive. Collars of iron were shut tight around their throats, hanging by chains hammered into the wall. The green of their skin, the yellow of their eyes, all color was swallowed whole by the hellish red light that permeated the very stone.
She felt something brush against her shoulder and whirled about. Bleary eyes stared back, a withered hand groped the air blindly. The Gonwa looked shriveled, consumed, like a waterskin with a slow leak. It was muttering something, in no language she could understand.
She stepped closer. The Gonwa continued to grope the air, even as she stepped past it, unaware of her presence, barely aware of his. Her eyes were drawn to the collar, to the brief flash of color in the iron circle. A red stone, glowing brightly, positively brimming with crimson life.
“It’s how they did it, for the record.”
Dreadaeleon’s eyes were on the collar of another Gonwa, barely alive, a sac of flesh resembling a wet frock drying more than anything that ever walked or talked. He tapped the red stone, which chirped to light brightly.
“The stones, the netherlings wore them, the males,” he said. “It alters their magic somehow. Usually, there’s a price to pay, something in the body that has to be burned. They didn’t pay it. Thought it was the stones. Had it wrong. Doesn’t negate the cost.”
He reached into his pocket and fished out another stone on a thin black chain. It twinkled, growing brighter the closer it got to the stone on the collar, the two glowing like a pair of soft, bleeding stars. The Gonwa let out a groan. Dreadaeleon frowned.
“The price is still paid,” he said, “just by someone else.”
Behind her, a scream erupted. A Gonwa writhed, hanging limply from its collar, only enough energy left to let out an ear-piercing wail. The rest of it went somewhere else, wherever Sheraptus and his stones were. What was left was something that was a few drops of blood, a few shallow breaths, and a lot of useless flesh.
“Open their collars,” Asper said. “Open those up. I’ll. . I’ll get water and. . and. .”
Dreadaeleon looked up. “And?”
“And I have to do something,” Asper shot back. “They’re alive. We know Gonwa. We have to help.”
“How? The collars are welded shut,” Dreadaeleon replied. “And there’s not a creature here left that I would call a Gonwa. There’s barely enough material to make two whole ones out of what’s left.”
“They aren’t material, they’re-”
“Still, doesn’t make sense.” He scratched his chin. “These are all advanced decays: muscle consumed, blood drained.” He pinched at a stray fold of flesh where a bicep should have been. “Burnt up, like kindling. For them to be this far advanced, they would have had to been casting spells all day and all night for months. But they haven’t been. They’re reckless, but not that reckless. These are being repurposed for something else.”
“Stop it.”
He glanced over to Asper, looking utterly confused at her horrified expression.
“Stop talking like that,” she said. “Like they’re things, like they’re. . materials. They’re people. Living people, Dread.”
He looked from her to the creature before him, back to her and shook his head.
“Not anymore.”
Callousness on the battlefield was something she was used to. Emotions could easily get someone killed, as could sympathy. She had hardened herself to that long ago, told herself it was necessary that her companions act that way, that they step over bodies and calmly ram their weapons into the chests of the enemies who still lived.
But to see this, to see someone so cold, so callous, so blatantly not moved by the sight of dozens of creatures being eaten alive before his eyes. .
Asper had no words. Asper didn’t want words. And Dreadaeleon stood, humming thoughtfully, as oblivious to her horror as he was to everything else.
He snapped his fingers. “Oh, obviously.”
Almost everything, anyway.
Before she could say a word she didn’t have, he was off, disappearing into another shadow at the far side of the room. She hadn’t even noticed it amidst the red light, only barely felt the urge to follow him. But he was still Dread, still the boy she knew.
And so, as dozens of bleary, blind eyes stared blankly at her, she walked past the gallery of sagging flesh and drained blood. Trying to ignore it. Trying not to hate herself for doing so.
The walls of the cavern grew rougher the farther back she went, in crude contrast to the smooth and worn walls of the previous chambers, like they had been gnawed away instead of carved by anything natural. They were bigger, cruder, and much, much darker.
“Dread?” she called out. “Where are you?”
He didn’t answer. Not her, anyway.
“Amazing.”
A faint whisper. A faint word. One she had a distinctly uneasy feeling following.
But she did, and as she did, a light grew at the end of the tunnel. It did not beckon, though; it glowed far too dim, far too harsh, far too purple for that. Rather, it warned, threatened, told her to take her friend standing before it and go. But whatever it said to her, it did not say to Dreadaeleon.
He stood at the center of it, a shadow within a shadow, staring up into darkness. What exactly “it” was, though, she wasn’t entirely sure.
It stretched out like a bruise upon creation, an ugly patch of purple and black that expanded in ways that made her eyes hurt: too high, too wide, too malformed. It was as though someone had simply jammed a jagged knife into the air and started twisting it and this was what bled out from existence.
It twitched like a living thing set in the vast iron frame that surrounded it. From the twisted metal rods boxing it in, hooks extended, piercing the vast nebulousness that it was, drawn taut in its chains, holding it wide and open, like a portrait on display.
No, not a portrait, she thought.
Portraits didn’t move.
In the bruise, the blood, she could see them. Images flashed with schizophrenic sporadicism inside it, as though it tried to see everything all at once. Here, it showed a forest with great, black columns for trees rising against a sunless sky. There, it showed long, quadrupedal creatures capering through shadow, laughing in the darkness. Here, fire and forges and the shattering of metal. There, the barking and howling of warcries and chants.
And everywhere, in every vision, in every space there was not darkness, were the netherlings. Thousands of them.
It was no portrait.
It was a gate.
“This is it, you know.”
Asper didn’t ask, didn’t even look at him. She could not bear to hear the answer, she could not tear her eyes away from the sight.
“It answers nearly everything about them, the longfaces,” Dreadaeleon continued. “Why no one’s seen them before we found them, why they don’t look like anything we’ve ever seen, why they have all those Gonwa back there.” He clicked his tongue. “And what they’re doing here. They were the first, the expedition.”
The vision in the gate sharpened, intensified, swept across a vast, plantless field beneath thousands of iron boots, over a sea of long, purple faces gathered in a cluster, up to thousands of blades held in gauntleted hands, thousands of eyes white as milk, thousands of jagged-tooth mouths open in silent, shrieking war cries.
“This,” Dreadaeleon said, “is the army that will follow.”
“Why. . why didn’t they bring it with them?” Asper asked, breathless.
“Obviously, this. . gate, however it works, it doesn’t have enough of whatever it needs to let more in. The Gonwa can keep it open, but not enough to let the rest of them out.” He hummed, scratching his chin. “Still doesn’t explain how they got here in the first place, though, without any sacrifices. . unless, of course, Greenhair was right.”