Herhands moved to his armpits, coaxing him to stand.“Fuck it.Slag the whole lot.Let’s just go.”
“No,”Isaac said.
“Comeon.Fuck the lot of ‘em.Fuck the treasure.”
Hewriggled out of her grasp, kicking aside a shattered pipe as he stood.“I’m notleaving.”
“Yourmission weren’t—”
“Iam not leaving!” He clenched his fists, broken glass falling from thelining of his robes.“He’s not going to scare me away.Not anymore.”
Zariastood up beside him.“It ain’t about fear, love.He’s your blood.”
“No,”Isaac replied.“It is about fear.It’s always been about fear.”
Shecocked a brow.
“I will not heed,” he continued, “a single one of his demands.This isn’t about my mission, myfather, or anything else.This is aboutme.He wants to be proud ofme?He wants to callmehis son?Oh, he won’t be proud much longer.Not when I show him exactly what histraining lessons have earned him.Not when I—”
Hestopped.While talking, he had turned to face her, and now he could see thatsomething moved at the entrance.
A pileof bone was spilling into the extraction chamber.He saw splintered arms,flailing legs, showers of vertebrae, all the loose pieces flailing along thefloor, hundreds of bodies scraping and clattering over metal with the viscosityof lava.Some of the cascades thickened into strands.Improvised tentaclesdragged the central mass.It slowed and solidified, rising like a wave,smearing itself across the pelvic bone of the colossus, like it was strugglingagainst its own undulating shape.
Allthis time, the bones of the necromancer had moved sloppily, like the personcontrolling them did not have proper training.
Why hadhe never noticed until now?
Isaacpulled away from Zaria, his boots crunching on the glass.He watched theformless ocean of corpses.They seemed to shy from his gaze.
“Oi!”Zaria shouted.“Fuck off!”
Thepile of bodies flinched.
Shestepped in front of Isaac, brandishing her axe.“Clear out!Make tracks!Beatyour bones ‘fore I do it for you!”
The massquivered, slowly leaking from the pelvis.
Isaacremembered the necropolis, how the ocean of bones had rushed around him.Thenecromancer had helped kill the wyrm.She had tried to communicate.Outside thedoors to this chamber, she had seemed desperate to prevent his entrance.
“Fuckoff, kinslayer!”
For amoment, all the bones slowed, leaving the pile of death as inert as a hunter’strophy.Slowly, with a whispering rasp, the mass churned itself back towardsthe bronze doors, the same way a slug might crawl through a hole.There was noattempt to speak.None of the skulls looked back at him.
Allthis time, the only thing the necromancer had been able to say was his name.
“Wait!”Isaac shouted.
Themass froze in place.
Hebegan to approach.
Thebones spilled back into the chamber.As he closed the distance, the engulfingmass spread out into a high semicircle against the pelvic wall, all the bonescongealing like a slick of oil across a table.When Isaac stopped in front ofthe wall of bodies, it flexed like a diaphragm.Slowly, a single stalk, toppedwith a skull, emerged from the churning layer.
“Father?”Isaac asked, raising his hand.
Theskull at the head of the stalk pushed its cheek into his palm.The bone wascold, dry, and brittle.It shuddered like a bug in his grasp.
“Isaac.”
