“Greenhair?”
“Someone else had to have found them,” he continued, ignoring her, “someone else had to have let them in. And in exchange, they. .” He sighed. “Ah. Demons. Undying. More fuel, obviously, to let the rest of them in. It’s brilliant.”
“It’s. . horrifying.”
“It’s revolutionary. There are all sorts of theories out there about how the same power that lets us bend light to create illusions could be used to hide entirely different worlds. But they were wrong. The priests had it right all along. Heaven, hell. . and something else, entirely.” He chuckled. “It’s amazing.”
“It uses people to work.”
For the first time, he looked at her. And even that was just a sidelong, dismissive glance.
“You just don’t understand.”
“Of course I don’t understand,” she snapped. “Not this. . thing. I don’t care about that. I don’t understand how you can look at it and not think of the Gonwa, of the suffering, like. . like you’re impressed with it.”
“It’s a gateway. An opening into another world. How can you not be impressed?”
“It’s not just that. The stones, the Gonwa, everything. People are dying and all you can think about is the stones!”
“Because they transfer everything! The physical cost! The toll! All the prices of magic! With it, I can-”
“It’s you! I don’t understand you.”
“Convenient,” Dreadaeleon said with a sneer. “Do you not care about me, either?”
“How the hell would you draw that conclusion?”
“Process of elimination, numbers,” he replied, voice as fevered as his eyes were as he thrust both upon her. “Lenk and Kataria. And for the past few days, you’ve positively fawned over Denaos like. . like he’s. .”
Asper held her fist at her side, held her gaze level, held her voice cold and hard. “If you try to guess, I will break your jaw.”
“And what? I don’t get to know? But he does?” He gestured wildly back down the cavern. “I’m the one with the power, I’m the one with the intellect and you’d rather share your secrets with some thuggish, scummy thug?”
“I don’t. .” Asper stammered for a reply. “I didn’t. .”
“You did. Because that’s how it works! Lenk and Kataria. You and Denaos. And what does that leave me? With Gariath?”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“THEN TELL ME HOW IT DOES,” he screamed back. “Tell me how I’m supposed to figure this out when no one tells me anything and I have to figure it out on my own! Tell me what I’m supposed to do to. . to. .”
She watched him, spoke softly. “Go on.”
“No.”
“Dread-”
“NO.” He held up a hand, rubbed his eyes with the other. “Forget it. Forget everything. Look. .” When he looked back, she saw a weariness that he had kept hidden from her, a dullness in the eyes growing worse. “You want to help the Gonwa.”
“So should you.”
“I want to. . find out about this and keep however many netherlings from coming forth and killing us all, so yeah, similar goals.” He pointed down the cavern. “We can’t free them all. Not without the stones. The netherlings are heading to Jaga, to get more fuel or to kill something or. . what. We can agree that stopping them from doing. . this again is a good thing, I assume?”
“Right.”
“Then our best bet is to go there. To find Sheraptus and stop him.”
“Him,” she whispered.
“All of them,” Dreadaeleon said, turning to leave.
They walked out in silence and suddenly, Asper found herself more aware of the boy. Or rather, more aware of what he once was. He seemed diminished, as though more had left him than just air with the last outburst. He walked slower, paused to catch his breath more often.
But every time she would look behind, every time she would open her mouth to say something, he would look at her. The weariness would be replaced with something else, a quiet loathing, and she would say nothing.
The thought never left her, though. And so she didn’t even notice the netherling corpse until she tripped over it.
Don’t remember it being there, she thought. Denaos could have moved it somewhere a little more-
She tripped again. Another corpse stared up at her from the ground, a dagger jammed in her throat.
There definitely hadn’t been two of them.
“Hey.”
She looked up. Denaos definitely hadn’t been clutching a bleeding arm when they left. The rogue snorted, spat out a glob of red onto the floor.
“We should go.”
EIGHTEEN
Should’ve punched him.
Gariath looked down at his claws, made fists out of them. Big hands. Strong hands. Probably would have left a good-sized dent if he had swung and meant it.
Yeah, he thought. Probably would have taken. . what? Eight teeth? Maybe twelve. How many do humans have? Could’ve taken at least half. He snorted, unclenched his fists. Definitely should’ve punched him.
He’d have deserved it, of course, for reasons other than being weak and stupid. Gariath might not have been Shen, Gariath might not have known much about Shen, Gariath might not have even considered himself all that scaly. But the insinuation that the Shen were beasts made him feel something.
Something that didn’t immediately make him want to punch someone.
Though the acknowledgement of that feeling did make him want to punch something, though the urge came far too late.
In the end, though, simply breaking off when neither human was looking and leaving had been the better decision. Not as satisfying as a punch, of course, but there would be no questions, no queer looks, no one wondering what might have been bothering him.
When a creature can kill something twenty times his size, he does not admit to having his feelings hurt.
Not without immediately eviscerating whoever heard such a confession, anyway. Leaving and skulking off into the coral, unnoticed and unquestioned, just seemed a little easier.
Still, he noted, it probably wasn’t too late to go back and break the human’s leg just on principle. Maybe break the pointy-eared human’s leg, too, to make it fair.
He thrust his snout into the air, took a few deep breaths. Salt. Fish. Blood. Quite a bit of blood, actually. But none of it blood that he knew. Nor flesh, nor bone, nor fear, nor hypocrisy. No humans nearby at all.
But something was.
Something not human.
As good as any scent to follow, he reasoned, and if it would get him out of the coral, so much the better. And so he followed it, winding through the jagged coral, between the schools of fish passing amongst the skeletal forest, tearing through the kelp in his way.
The forest opened up around him, coral diminishing, sand vanishing and giving way to stone beneath his feet. A road stretched out behind him. Somewhere, on air that wasn’t there, he caught a vague scent. One that was almost familiar, but far too fleeting. He snorted; scenting anything was difficult here. The air was too thick for odors to pass through.
Not that that mattered.
The road stretched both ways. And what opened up before him was far more interesting.
Netherlings.
Dead ones.
They lined the highway like banners, rising up into the heavens on either side, held only by the tethers about their wrists, swaying with a sense of lurid tranquility violently contradicted by the state of their bodies.