Ahead, the passage opened into a churning nightmare. A swarm of xhoth, surged from the bowels of Theloch like they’d been called by Akareth’s destruction. Lyla spun, snatching my blade from my hand. With a brutal arc, she cleaved the first oneshe struck, ripping the spear from his cold grasp. She hurled it at another as it charged toward us, piercing his soft gills. He collapsed with a wet, writhing thud.
The carnage carved a narrow gap, just wide enough for us to slip through onto a vast stone platform. Beyond it, the sea assaulted the cliffs, bursting skyward with each crashing wave. The combined shrieks of Kraal and xhoth ripped through the air as they scrambled from all directions.
Lyla’s hand found mine, clutching me tight. She twisted to cover my back, her warning growl low and feral.
She was protecting me. Us. Every time a xhoth stepped forward, she spun, making sure she stood between us, but our enemies were closing in, spears raised and teeth emerging from peeled back lips. We were trapped. Too many had risen from the depths. There was no way out. Dozens of Akareth’s mourning minions were hungering to rip us to shreds, confused, hateful, and without a master.
We were going to die there… in the same place we were born... together and tethered by blood and pain. And Vidar had been sucked into it by the curse of his love for me.
“You have to go,” Vidar said. “You cannot fight with me pressed at your side.”
I threw him a chiding glare, my nostrils flaring. “You said we leave this place together or we leave his world together,” I reminded him.
He peered down at me, face covered in dark blood, and forced a weak smile. “I should think before I say such foolish things.”
Silence is a masterpiece
The end of all things
~Unknown
I took a deep breath, memorizing the scent of the world. Salt. Stone. Rain. Life. I thought I was prepared to enter darkness and never return. I was ready as soon as I saw those spears pin Vidar to the ground. Now it had all changed again.
The monsters of the depths bled onto the stone platform, closing in around us. Lyla released my hand and I could hear her tearing into her attackers behind me. I spun to see another one advancing with his gnarled spear. I released Vidar and I leapt at him. I unhinged my jaw and as I ripped his head to the side, I bit into the leathery skin of his throat, ripping and gnawing. His sharp fingers came up to wrestle me off him and, screaming my fury, I jammed my nails into his fleshy gills, grinding them deep until I felt the membrane of his lungs.
One last push for freedom would not make a difference, though. I knew that. We were about to be overpowered. On my own, I would have happily fallen to my knees and let myunfortunate fate befall me, but Lyla was there, still fighting. Vidar was there, fighting a different battle as he slowly began to lose strength. I could not let either of them meet their end while I still had an ounce of strength left in me.
It was chaos. Limbs and blood flew about in all directions. Perhaps there was some joy in cutting down Akareth’s sons in my last moments.
But it didn’t change the fact that the odds were against us.
And then the air shifted like Mother Nature suddenly decided to speak up against the madness. Ocean spray pelted my face, making the platform slick. A wall of fog rolled in from the sea, surrounding the stone cliffs like a giant, ghostly serpent coiling around all of Theloch. The commotion shifted and, through the smallest gap in bodies, I found myself staring at the hazy barrier at the faint shadow of something lurking beyond.
A bright burst of light exploded in the haze and with it came the familiar pop of a cannon. An entire row of xhoth fell like trees in a great squall, limbs flopping and breaking against the impact of heavy, iron ammunition.
I ducked when a second cannon fired into the fray, thinning the clusters of enemies that surrounded us. Looking toward the sea, I saw the sails of the Storm Weaver emerging from the white wall, tall and proud and riding the raging storm to come about like she was trying to wrangle it. Another flash of fire thundered through the air, cutting through the xhoth and hitting one of the obsidian towers. Fissures shuddered through the stone beneath my feet as the tower began to crumble.
Lyla took my hand once more, dragging me to my feet. I pulled Vidar against me, pained by the groan that left his lips. In the madness, the Kraal had begun slithering back into the water while the xhoth moved about in a frenzy, trying to avoid harpoons and cannon fire as they tailed us, reaching with their greedy hands. I felt claws on my back, tearing my shirt to shreds. I felt them cutting into my flesh and ripping at my hair, but I kept running. The shiprose and fell with the waves. Rain beat on my face like little pebbles. The stone platform beneath my feet was slick and uneven, but when we reached the edge of the cliffside, the waves lifted the Storm Weaver to meet us like Lune had granted us one last favor. We leapt through the mist of a crashing wave, xhoth clawing and biting at the air in our wake.
We landed on the deck hard. My legs folded beneath me and I rolled, losing all sense of direction. When I found purchase, I quickly looked around, searching for Vidar. I found him in the turmoil, limp and lying on his back. Quickly, I scurried to his side, the crew around us frantic.
“Vidar,” I said, cupping his face in my hands. His eyes were closed and his body lax. “Help!” I screamed. “Mullins!”
Mullins stumbled across the deck toward us and Meridan was close behind. Realizing Vidar wasn’t responding, Mullins lifted him up with a loud grunt, folding him over his shoulder and pushing to his feet. The man was lean, but when he picked up his captain, he looked stronger than a bull. He walked him toward the captain’s quarters while Meridan turned her attention on me.
“Are you alright!” she shouted over the thundering commotion.
I nodded, but part of me knew that was a lie. I stood, stepping back from the pool of blood that had gathered on the deck around me. When Meridan noticed, there was a moment where both of us assumed it was Vidar’s, but the odor of hemsbane was faint. Most of that blood was mine and I knew it.
Nearby, Nazario and Cathal had Lyla secured against the mast, hanging on to ropes for support as the ship swayed. She was on the floor, collapsed and so covered in blood, she looked like she’d been swimming in it. Men were shouting. The ship was rocking violently as the tempest raged across Theloch. Beasts from below clawed at the hull, scraping and shrieking their frustration. I wanted to go to Vidar, but my body was starting to fail me. My back started to burn like a red-hot rod had been dragged from my shoulder bladeto my thigh. I closed my eyes, wondering if that was the moment when it would all finally be decided. The moment that was out of my control, when Death stopped teasing me and finally staked his claim.
“Dahlia?” Meridan said, but her voice was far away.
Through slitted eyes, I could see the gray sky falling angrily upon us, chasing us from that horrid place. It began to spin and my legs grew numb beneath me. Meridan reached out, her fingers skimming mine as I toppled over. Before I knew how it all ended, the world had gone dark.
“I will look for you in every lifetime. In every body. I will love you in all of them, until the last star burns out in the sky.”
My eyes fluttered opened and I was fleeced of my dreams. Dreams that were untainted by Akareth’s touch and filled with Vidar’s voice. His smell. His touch. But then I saw him standing there, the corpses of Akareth’s sons scattered around him, his body battered yet unbroken. He’d come back from death once more, wielding his bronze cutlass like the terrifying menace I hunted for eighteen years.
