We descended the stairway into the narrow corridor and found the water had risen to our ankles between then and when we arrived. Dahlia began to move quickly, supporting as much of my weight as she could. The truth was, I’d been stabbed worse. I could move just fine, but the amount of blood soaking my shirt was alarming. I didn’t have a lot of time and I believed she knew it by the way she was rushing us along like we were being chased by hounds.
“Do you still hear him?” I strained.
“A whisper. Vidar, I don’t know what’s happening. I feel… I don’t understand what’s real. Please, if I must leave you—”
“We are leaving together, Dahlia. We will leave this place together or we will leave this world together.”
“You will not leave at all,” said an ominous voice, penetrating my senses like needles piercing flesh.
Dahlia and I slowed, turning to each other as if to wonder if the voice was real, but that time, I heard it, too. The sense of panic buried under Dahlia’s typically stern and challenging gaze nearly stopped my heart. It was a strange feeling to know that a monster was afraid and that cold fear gripped me like meat hooks through my mortal skin.
Suddenly, the darkness fell upon us like a thick blanket, sucking the life out of my torch. Dahlia’s eyes, like those of a cat, glowed faintly in the pitch blackness… but so did others. First, I only noticed a couple, but then a dozen or so appeared out of the shadows, silent for a moment, but then their hungry breathing filled the passage. They moved in with such speed, I could not even will my feet to move before hands were gripping my body from all directions. Sharp, bony hands, cold as dead fish, tore me away from Dahlia. Her screams echoed through the hall beside me, but those ravenous sounds accompanied them. Sharp clicking noises, growling, and the gentle and eerie chirps of something deceivingly pleasant bounced off every wall around us.
When I was finally released, my knees hit the stone so hard, it sent shocks straight up through my body. The cold, wet rub of something slick coiled around my wrists, anchoring me to the ground. I tugged against it but whatever it was, it had no give. I might as well have been wrapped in chains.
From the swelling darkness appeared a faint and gloomy glow like candlelight in the mist. It lit up only the space in front of me. Eyes continued to blink and ogle from all around, watching like starving little scavengers as something moved forward from the thick shadows. A figure, tall and clothed in a long, thick great coat, a leather tricorn, and heavy black boots. As he entered the light completely, I could see that whoever he was,whateverhe was, had long been dead. Misshapen by decay, the pirate, too tall to be human, walked further into view, blackened eyes staring down at me as he cocked his head to one side with a hollow crunch. Like a corpse that had been left to dry in the sun, his gray skin stretched over his bones, tight and thin. Barnacles covered thick patches of his attire, weighing him down, and though we were not in the water, he was dripping as if he’d just walked out of the ocean. A foul, old smell filled my lungs as he neared like we were sitting in a tomb long forgotten.
“What the fuck are you?” I said through my teeth.
“Bone Heeaarrttt,” he spoke, his jaw opening to let the sound out, but failing to move with every word.
His voice was deep and strained as if it was just as decayed as his body. He lifted a hand, bony fingers twitching along the buttons of his coat and drawing his eyes like he’d just figured out he waswearing clothes. I tugged against my restraints, glancing down at my bound wrists to see lengths of fleshy strings tangled around me and fastening me to the grooves in the stone floor.
I’d survived many nightmares of my own and even more of Dahlia’s in our time together, but this? This felt too real.
Looking up, I realized the man was standing right in front of me, his form casting no shadow. He stooped to bring his face before me, his jaw opening again to show the absolute emptiness that lay beyond like he was nothing but a shell. Something dead, worn by something that was… more.
“Where is Dahlia?” I said through my teeth. “What have you done with her!”
Instead of offering an answer, his bony finger traced along the fabric of my shirt, settling over the hole left by Dahlia’s blade. I continued to stare into his hollow, endless gaze until he dipped his finger inside, churning it within the wound like a surgeon seeking a bullet. I roared in pain and anger before he pulled his finger free, bringing it up in front of him to stare curiously at the red blood that coated it.
“Only a mortal,” he said, that guttural voice just as unpleasant as it was the first time he spoke. “And yet you keep her gaze.”
“Akareth, is it?” I said, my body beginning to feel the weighty effects of blood loss. “It seems strange that a god has to tie a mortal man to the ground just to taunt him.”
His face gave nothing away. If my words had affected him, he did not show it. Staring, he brought his bloodied finger to his mouth and from that black void came a rotten-gray tongue, long and narrow. He licked it up the side of his finger, tasting me, and then adjusted his jaw with a dry crunch.
“You taste like fear,” he hissed, his voice carrying to every corner of that hollow space.
He stood up straight, his full height monstrous and unnatural, and then slowly turned, striding to the other side of the chamber. The foggy light followed him, illuminating the way until I saw her.Dahlia. She was lying on the ground, her hair a mess across her face like she’d been thrown there carelessly. Then, from the void, appeared two massive xhoth, their red eyes preceding their dark, beastly forms.
“Don’t touch her,” I snarled.
They glanced down at Dahlia’s unmoving body and crouched, one of them taking her arm and the other taking her head, tangling his long fingers in her hair and lifting her like one would a doll. Dahlia stirred, her eyes fluttering open. Blood colored one side of her head as if she’d been struck there and as she wavered, struggling to regain her sight, her eyes settled on me. I could not stand the way she blinked, her brows creasing as she fought to make sense of things.
“Dahlia,” I said, but before I say anything more, Akareth blocked my view of her.
“You will watch,” he spoke, his voice sounding like many all at once, each trying to speak over the other. “As will she.”
Surviving the dark does not end in lighting a torch
~ Unknown
When I was ripped away from Vidar, I thought it was all over, our hunt, our struggle, everything. I never imagined I would awaken again, let alone find Vidar before me, bound to the cold floor by the pulsating tendrils of some unseen horror. The moonlight trickled through the skylight, casting eerie shadows that flickered across the sacrificial stone table. We had been wrenched back into this chamber by an entity lurking just beyond our sight, and dread clutched at my heart. The air thickened with malevolence, and I knew, deep down, that escape was slipping further from our grasp.
Cold, wet hands gripped me, forcing me to look at Vidar. Blood soaked the side of his shirt and guilt spread like a disease inside me knowing that I’d been the one to pierce him with my knife.
“Vidar,” I whispered. “I’m… I’m sorry.”
