"We should leave soon."
Ragnvaldr blinked, hands stilling over the thick-hewn fabric he had been mending.
"What?"
"The morning would be ideal," said Enki. He tapped his lip rhythmically, deep in thought. Once. Twice. "The sooner the better. We don't have much we need to carry. Anything too heavy for you can go to the hound-"
"Enki." His expression was inscrutable. The fire painted his face with shadow, swallowing up his features. "Why would we leave?"
Three times. Four.
"Enki."
Enki's eyes snapped to his, sharp as steel. "I found something in the woods. It could only be from the depths. I incinerated it before it could do much, but the village is done for. Probably this whole forest, soon, if we dawdle long enough. It's best to cut our losses—"
"What exactly did you find?"
The priest's lips pursed. "A rat corpse. It was taken over by some strange fauna. Not natural."
"You're sure it was a corpse?"
"You think I wouldn't be able to tell it was a corpse."
"But was there nothing else?"
Enki glared. "Does there need to be anything else? You know how bad this could get."
"It could."
"So," he continued, teeth gritted, "you would be a fool not to flee."
"Did you tell anyone?"
"Of course not," Enki snapped, "What would be the point? They're already dead. You know that too."
"How do you know we can flee at all?" Ragnvaldr replied. "If they're as good as dead, we may as well be too."
"I am alive," hissed Enki, "and you are alive, because we keep our wits about us. And we know when to abandon lost causes."
"Is this a lost cause?" Ragnvaldr asked.
Enki shot him a deeply unimpressed look. "Don't tell me you're getting notions of... heroics."
"The leader is strong," Ragnvaldr replied slowly, "she is wary. She's as cutthroat as us. Their hunters outnumber any party we've ever been in."
"She doesn't trust you. None of them do. If they had the chance they'd have us executed. Burn us at the stake, probably."
"They've left us alone for this long. Even when the girl does magic in front of them. I think," Ragnvaldr paused, "the leader would not have let us go so easily if she didn't see value in our presence."
"We owe them nothing."
"We could be stronger together."
"That didn't help the first time with your village, did it?"
Ragnvaldr's eyes flashed. "I do not wish to leave this place, Enki."
For once, Enki held his tongue. At least momentarily.
Ragnvaldr let out a long exhale. "You are right, of course. About the first time. It did not help." He leaned back in his chair, hands tightening over his knees, the fire carving the lines in his face even deeper. "But I am tired. Moving, running. It never changes anything in the end.
"The first time it found us, my people were slaughtered. My family cast to worms. So I went to the dungeons to die." He met Enki's eyes. Enki held his gaze unwaveringly.
"But I lived. And now it lives inside of me, too." With one large hand, he gestured, casting a flickering shadow across the room. "As it does you. Neither of us should be alive."
Enki snorted. "So now it's our duty to lay down and let death take us."
Ragnvaldr shook his head. "I cannot speak for you. But I do not live for just my own sake."
He cast his gaze sidelong at the door, past which the girl and Moonless slept curled up in their own cot.
"I do not wish to move, because it would follow us. Winter always comes for the harvest eventually. It is not something that can be outrun; it must be endured. If we can live through it, she can as well."
The silence stretched long and impenetrable.
Ragnvaldr reached through the space between them to rest his hand on Enki's own. "I want to live through it with her. And you."
More silence. Then Enki leaned back in his chair.
"Have it your way." His voice was raspy, barely over a whisper. "It's too tiring to fight with you over it."
Ragnvaldr squeezed Enki's hand briefly, then let it rest loosely in his palm.
From behind the door, two softly-padded feet shuffled carefully on the floorboard, their owner hesitant, listening. As silence fell over the room, they quickly retreated back down the hall.
—
Two bladed weapons pointed through the dark at vital spots; a seldom-used short sword, and a well-handled, rugged ax.
From the shadows two pairs of eyes gleamed. One sunken and sallow. One adorned with scars and hardened tissue. At the side of the latter, a wide-eyed pair glimmering with alarm and fear.
The larger man spoke first. "Identify yourself."
The smaller man's lip curled. "I doubt that would mean much to you."
"Are you a threat?"
"Are you?" His eyes drifted over to the girl clinging to the outlander's side. "A whelp wouldn't be the first companion I'd bring down to these dungeons."
"I found her here."
Enki said nothing. The expression of contempt on his face spoke for him - if it were up to him, he'd have left her. He kept his mouth shut.
"What are you doing with that?" asked the outlander, gesturing to the gray corpse between their feet. Its toothless jaw hung slack. A fat mound of worms wriggled where its tongue used to sit.
The sallow man scoffed. "I was hoping to create a companion to bolster my chances." He looked down at the corpse with contempt. "Seems the spell failed."
"You are a witch?"
"If you'd like to call it that. Though make no mistake." He eyed the outlander with a vicious gleam to his eye. "Make one wrong move and I'll blow off your limbs."
Despite this, he looked bedraggled beyond his usual appearance. His breathing was ragged, his brow shimmered with a sickly sheen of sweat. It seemed he hadn't been lying about the failed resurrection, for it had left him clearly exhausted.
The girl watched from the outlander's side with wide eyes. In her white-knuckled grip she clutched a dagger - a tiny, pathetic thing, only suitable for use by children. The sight of it would have made Enki laugh, if it weren't for the outlander's presence.
"You should come with us," said the hulking man. "Our chances together are better than apart."
The briefest flash of surprise flickered across the fair-haired man's face, followed by an incredulous sneer. "Really now? You seem to be doing just fine with your current companion."
"Let me rephrase." The tip of the ax blade swung towards him, illuminated by the flickering torch. "Come with us now. Or be struck down."
The fair-haired man's eyes followed the point of the ax. He licked his lips. "That's more like what I expected."
The next few minutes of walking were curt, devoid of words.
The stench of old flesh permeated the air, putrid and stagnant. The cracked stone underfoot was wet with mildew. Darkness ever-present pressed in on their single torch. Growing. Growing. Eating the light little by little.
The outlander stank of death and blood. It soaked every inch of him, from the rust-splattered pelts which hung from his shoulders, to the undersides of his blunt fingernails, the corners of his mouth, the dimly-lit jagged bumps of his teeth.
Enki considered the possibility that he was being held hostage by some sort of cannibal. Or some torture-driven fiend like that deformed groundsman on the first floor. He really was out of capacity for spellcasting. The last of his opium had been used up hours ago.
Finally the outlander spoke. His voice was heavy and accented. "What supplies do you have?"
"Nothing much that would be of use to you," Enki replied.
"Why are you down here?"
Enki rolled his eyes. "Prophecy."
The outlander was silent.
"I am seeking particular answers to my questions. No place on the outside held anything noteworthy. I came down here expecting not another living soul. Why are you here?"
"I am looking for a man being held here," replied the outlander, "to kill him myself."
A brutish answer for a brutish man. Enki was unsurprised. "You are aware any prisoner that's being kept down here is more than likely long dead?"
"I have to make sure. He is no ordinary man." His pale eyes flashed. "He is the devil."
"And how does your little companion factor into this equation?"
For the first time, genuine hesitation glimmered in the outlander's eyes. "I... found her. She was locked in a cage. When I'm done with my task, she will be brought out of here. To the surface."
Enki scoffed incredulously. "'When you're done'. Just like that?"
"I did not expect to come across her. My plans changed accordingly."
The girl did not look up at the mention of herself. Her wide-eyed gaze kept to the floor, sunken into their sockets.
She was nothing much to look at. Truly, Enki expected her to die of starvation or an infected wound or some such fate long before she'd ever see the light of the outside. Whatever the outlander was thinking, taking her along, he was deluded or foolishly noble. Or both.
Enki felt no real reason to protest. He could appreciate the pragmatic value of simply keeping around a body as a meat shield, no matter how slight.
They were approaching a doorway. It gaped, an open mouth, the darkness beyond it stretching like the gullet of some strange, terrible beast.
—
Their plunge deeper into the dungeon wore each down slowly; in temperament, in body. Ragnvaldr stared longer into the shadows, stone faced, unblinking. The girl shivered in her scant robes. Her eyes were glassy and empty.
Enki felt the silence, the stench, the unyielding pressure sand down the edges of his mind eventually. Shadows flickered at the edge of his vision, just out of focus.
Along the way they found a beast - some strange hound with ruby eyes glowing from the dark. Ragnvaldr managed to tame it with scraps of rotten meat. It was [uncontrollable] in battle, but the others enjoyed its company enough - it mostly stuck to itself, wandering at the edges of the hallways. The outlander seemed sure he could keep control of it. Enki acquiesced responsibility, and the probability that it would one day frenzy and rip its owner's face off, to the outlander.]
Enki had reservations about how many feral beasts [tarried] their party. There were benefits to traveling with such company, however. The ogrelike prison guards which had given him so much trouble to maneuver around fell to the outlander's blows. He eliminated them with brutal, yet cold efficiency.
In the spoils of such battles, the outlander occasionally recovered pieces of mold-crusted bread or meat pies from the guards' persons. He always gave them to the girl first, then Enki. Enki would complain if he ever saw the outlander take anything for himself, but it seemed the brute would continually abstain. Instead, he dragged the cadavers round the corner, outside the girl's view, and devoured them with a ferocity Enki could only identify as madness.
His jaw would unhinge to accommodate the amount he pushed down his throat. The remains of the guards, their bloated gray skin, patchy hair, milky white eyes, were all shredded into unrecognizable piles of red flesh.
Ragnvaldr seemed to lose all sense of self whenever these fits of furious devouring overtook him. It didn't even seem much like hunger - some other primal instinct surging through him. His eyes went black, pupils swelling like a starving animal's.
He seemed to have no qualms putting on such a grotesque display in front of Enki. He supposed it was a good call on the outlander's part; Enki's stomach was, at this point, rather iron-clad. He only examined the sight with passive curiosity.
"Does it fill you?" he asked when the outlander had returned to himself, kneeling among the scraps of flesh and bone on the dungeon floor.
The outlander sat and considered. Blood and grease shimmered at the corners of his mouth. "It fills me enough."
Enki glanced at their surroundings. Metal bars corroded with rust, tangles of chains dangling from the darkness of the ceiling.
"Who do you suppose was meant to be contained here?" he pondered aloud. "If this place was indeed meant to be a prison."
"Animals," came Ragnvaldr's reply, kneeling on the ground in a pool of red. "Those less than human."
—
"You're sure it's him?"
The outlander's gaze was frigid. "Of course. Who else would it be?"
He was chained before them to the wall, mottled with bruises; unkempt blonde hair black with blood, clearly having marinated in his own filth for gods know how long. Le'garde. His pale white throat split ear to ear by a gaping slash of crimson.
Enki did a cursory check on the body. Newly cold — the life had only left him within the past few hours. A sick joke which provoked no laughter.
So this was the man they had both come so far to see. The figure of prophecy. The shining crusader. A bereft corpse liquifying in his own armor.
Flies buzzed around them. The dungeon air was stagnant, putrid.
"So this is it." Enki said finally, staring at the pile. "After all that pomp and circumstance, some inbred guard just cut his neck."
"This was... not how it was to happen." gritted the outlander.
Enki raised an eyebrow. "How was it supposed to be, then?"
"I was..." Ragnvaldr rubbed a hand across his face agitatedly. "I was to avenge my family."
"Well, your family is avenged," Enki said flatly. He gestured at the cadaver. "He's dead."
"So it seems." All of a sudden the outlander's face seemed hollow. Enki had never seen him with anything less than an aura of dogged determination, but now his eyes were dull and distant. The fire within him, stubborn as it was, had finally been snuffed out.
Behind him, there was the sound of hesitant footsteps. The girl. Enki had nearly forgotten her presence. She stepped from behind Ragnvaldr's legs, inching towards the cadaver but stopping short a couple feet. Her face was wan, gnawed lips pressed into a thin line.
Trembling, she reached a pale hand to Le'garde's. It came to rest upon his bloodied knuckles. There was more than fear in her expression. Something strange like sorrow, like recognition. She knelt at his side as if in prayer. Tears shone unshed at the corners of her eyes.
The sight seemed to move Ragnvaldr, soft-hearted man he was, out of his stupor. He stepped forth, avoiding the corpse's dangling limbs, and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. She leaned into the touch, not taking her eyes off the body, but a bit of the tension left her.
In the dark of the damp prison cell they stood in silent eulogy, bearing twin expressions of [graveness].
This was all well and good, but their torchlight was dwindling. It was time to act. Enki crouched to the corpse's level and lowered his hands to the corpse's pale chest. The flesh began to burble.
"What are you doing?" came the outlander's voice, raising slightly in alarm.
"Nothing you need to worry your little head about," Enki muttered. He had honed his abilities at their last stop at a hexen table - this time, there would be no failure.
"You're..." the outlander's voice sharpened with a dawning realization, "You're not going to..."
"It won't be a true resurrection. It probably won't even be his soul in there."
An enormous hand closed around his wrist. "Stop this!"
"It'll maximize our chances for survival. You'd pass up the opportunity to create a proper shield?" Enki snapped. The spell pulsed at his palms, itching beneath his skin. It would be so easy to redirect its force at Ragnvaldr - press his hands against his rugged chest, make his intestines burst from his stomach. Dark magic always craved unleashing, implored its user to let it wreak destruction. But it would be a waste of a valuable party member.
He instead stubbornly kept his fingers to Le'garde's desiccated ribs, watching with satisfaction as they drew back in a mockery of breath.
The cadaver's eyes slid open. They were dead and unfocused, translucent like fish eggs. Ragnvaldr stumbled back. The girl let out a wordless, terrified noise.
The ghoul's torn throat tensed as its head rose from its chest, mouth slack, necklace of dried blood stark against his pale skin. Slowly, it began to stand.
The outlander moved before Enki could even register. Lunging upon the dead man, he bashed fist after fist into Le'garde's rotten skull. The head caved like an overripe fruit. Gray matter and flesh splattered across the floor, the stone wall. The girl screamed.
"What are you—?!" Enki snapped before he was cut off by pressure on his windpipe, the outlander lifting him easily off the ground by the neck. His face was contorted into an animal's snarl.
"My wife," the outlander rumbled in that brutish voice, so hoarse and twisted with pain, "my son. Dead by his hand. Everyone in my village, gone. He deserves to die a thousand deaths each worse than the last. And you bring him back?"
He threw Enki to the ground, where he unceremoniously toppled to the stone floor. Enki choked for air. A hurting spell hissed on his lips but it was interrupted by the outlander's heel crashing into his ribs, sending another shockwave of force through his body. The cell walls spun in his blurry vision as the outlander towered over him. The intimidating curve of his war-ax loomed overhead.
Enki waited for the blade to come down. It never came. The girl stood in front of him, shielding him with her little body.
Her face was turned away. But he could see Ragnvaldr's pale eyes flickering between expressions - hesitance, concern, rage, boiling hate. Strange emotions to grace such a stony, outwardly unemotive face. It seemed words were on the tip of his tongue.
He didn't get the opportunity. The cell door behind them, left unlocked in the confusion, creaked open.
A terrifying presence had entered the room.
—
Ragnvaldr set out on that day's hunt with new eyes.
On the edge of the sky the sun hung pale and yellow. Shadows crawled across the ground, filtered through the shifting canopy. The snow had begun to melt, leaving dampness in its wake, exposing scant brown patches of foliage.
His hand tightened around his spear. His bow was slung over his back; he had long since learned his lesson about bringing only one weapon, and today, he expected to run into more than the usual entourage of prey.
Distant snapping noises rang from up ahead. There were twigs being broken underfoot; something heavy and quadruped. There was something strange about it - an intermittent sound; a slow, hollow thumping like the steady pulse of a drumbeat.
Ragnvaldr approached on even footing through the trees. Despite the extra weight, he barely made a sound. He was used to carrying it carefully.
In the clearing was a buck of tall stature, wide branching antlers, by all accounts a proud creature. But its stance was all wrong. Its front legs bowed, its hindquarters staggered. Its great head wobbled around in a dazed circle.
It lurched forward.
A sickening crack rang out as it rammed headfirst into the tree in front of it, embedding itself partially into the bark.
It repeated this process with stilted, mechanical movements, prying its horns from the well-abused trunk, only to drive its skull forward once again. Each time the branches quivered, dislodging a scant number of leaves.
On the wind, there was the heavy stench of iron. The site of impact bore a red stain, embedded with shards of bone and fur and clots of flesh. Blood dripped down from the buck's flared nostrils, from the base of its loosened antlers; it did not flinch as liquid rolled into its eyes.
Ragnvaldr watched the sight without a word, barely taking breath. It was grotesque yet transfixing, hypnotic in the same way as watching waves crash on the shore.
Sometimes the animals they kept in his old village would go mad, from sickness, age, some unknown malady of temperament. They'd froth and seize, some driven to frenzied fits of biting and snarling. But most were just like this. Their minds would break down, and they'd simply lose themselves. It had always been Ragnvaldr's responsibility to put them down. After all this time, it seemed, this was still the same.
Carefully he walked forward, spear drawn at the ready. Whether or not the buck noticed him, its movements did not cease. Its eyes were dark, empty.
He aimed for the back of the head. The flesh between its shoulder blades, splotched black in strange patterns. He swung.The beast's knees buckled and it slumped forward as the spearhead pierced its skull. It hit the tree with a wet thud. The spear met no resistance; its eyes remained open and glassy and full of nothing. Ragnvaldr held it until there was no movement. The buck's legs eventually stopped twitching.
Yet something strange happened as the spearpoint withdrew.
Slowly, impossibly, the body began to move again.
Cursing in surprise, Ragnvaldr let the spear go. He half-expected the buck to get up, totter around like a newborn fawn. But he was mistaken - it wasn't the body that was moving, but the area at the back of the neck.
Squirming in the open muscle, like worms feasting upon a corpse, nested a wriggling clump of vines and roots. They were a putrid shade of bile, an unnatural color unlike any of the surrounding fauna. In the center of the mass was a bloodshot, rapidly moving eyeball.
The plants wiggled and pulsed, recoiling from the light as if the sun bleached the very life from it. The buck's corpse shuddered, front legs twitched. Slowly, the cadaver began to drag itself away.
Ragnvaldr drove his spear into the back of the buck's head, past the brambles into the eye's soft white flesh.
An unearthly screech hissed from the pocket before the trembling vines went still. The buck's limbs fell limp and did not move again.
When Ragnvaldr withdrew the spear, it was smeared with viscous yellow liquid. The air stank of rot and peat moss.
Abandoning the corpse, he walked back the way he came, stumbling along the foliage.
—
Darkness. Jostling movements, the rough scratch of leather hide against his nose.
Enki faded into consciousness one piece at a time, each sensation drawing him farther from the brink. They weren't pleasant sensations, naturally. The pounding of his own pulse and the incessant itch of skin. Insects circling overhead, some landing occasionally on his face.
He came to in a strange room lit by flickering torchlight. The walls were barren of chains or cell accoutrement, instead populated with plentiful bookshelves dotted with scrolls, some stuck haphazardly in, some scattered on the floor.
The girl sat across the way, the hound she'd taken such a liking to circling in the opposite corner. She was curled on her knees, rocking slowly back and forth. After a moment, she caught his eyes. She waved.
He tried to move his fingers. Pain thrummed up his arm so acutely it drew forth bile from his throat. He forced himself to swallow with a grimace. Beads of sweat trickled slowly down his temples, only to be wiped away by a damp cloth.
The edge of a makeshift bowl pushed against his lips, accompanied by a quiet voice. "Drink."
Enki swallowed. The water was turgid and lukewarm, but it whet his throat enough to let him speak.
"What—" he croaked. The effort to speak made his head throb. "--happened."
"When we were attacked by that creature, you were injured," the outlander said, more to the air than to Enki. His voice was quiet, surprisingly soft. "I tried to take you and flee, but when we circled around, the mines behind us had collapsed. The only choice we had was to go deeper."
"And where are we now?"
Ragnvaldr hesitated. "I am not sure. I believe... some sort of tomb. I came across strange statues. They were arranged in such a way that they might've been tampered with."
Enki closed his eyes, letting the blood swim behind them. So they might have another visitor in their hands? just wonderful.
"My arm," he rasped as the outlander wiped down his forehead again.
"The bone broke skin," the outlander replied, "it might be infected."
More than "might be". A foul, familiar smell hung heavy in the air - necrotizing flesh. His left side was on fire. Every time he tried to move his fingers, bright colors danced behind his eyes, pain arcing through his nerves. It burned like poison. Enki gritted his teeth.
"Have we any herbs?"
"None left. I looked around, but there were none to scavenge. I've been keeping the wound clean and dressed."
Enki took a deep breath and, with difficulty, shifted to look Ragnvaldr in the eye. The expression that met him was stoic and impenetrable, as always.
"You could have saved yourself," he said flatly. "Why did you take me with you?"
It was a moment before the outlander replied. It seemed this was a question he himself had been pondering, and still had no definitive answer for.
"You were injured because of me," he eventually said. "It would not have been right to leave you. You've been an invaluable asset to this party. Without you, we have less of a chance for survival."
Enki looked away. "Maybe that was true with both arms intact." He didn't know why he was arguing against his own survival - if the outlander wanted to, he could reach out and simply squeeze Enki's throat until he expired. But Enki was one to incessantly point out the truth to his own detriment, and he was tired. Deeply tired. "I'm just dead weight like this."
"This city is large. We'll find something for the infection in time."
Enki considered him for a long moment, and Ragnvaldr held his gaze.
"You're insane," he said finally, with no inflection. Ragnvaldr let out a huff of a chuckle, barely even noticeable.
"Sit me up. I need your help with something." Enki schooled his expression carefully as Ragnvaldr acquiesced. He refused to let any pathetic expressions of pain flash through; he had shown weakness enough.
Sitting up, he examined his arm tentatively. It looked about as bad as it felt. Swollen purple, splotched green, red, and yellow. Infection spread under the skin in thin black lines like spiderwebs.
"If you need me alive, I won't make it through the next day like this." Enki rasped. "Only so long you can stave off the inevitable."
Ragnvaldr was watching him carefully. Enki reached out and grabbed him by the clasp of his hide pelt — feeble as he was with rot and atrophied muscle, the outlander let himself be tugged closer. They stopped only when a hair's breadth remained between their faces.
"If you want me to remain so badly," Enki murmured, voice little more than a hiss, "you'll listen to me from now on. Understood?"
Ragnvaldr's gray eyes were wide and fixed on him. Silently, he nodded.
"Good. Now," Enki released his grasp and settled back upon the cot with a sigh. "Fetch me the bonesaw."
—
"These ones are fit for consumption, these ones are poisonous. You can tell by the shape of their leaves. Notice how the latter separates into three, rather than two..."
The girl nodded along to Enki's curt explanation. Hunched over and crouching in the dirt, she resembled more woodland animal than child.
Behind them, Moonless snuffled in furious circles, nose pressed to the earth.
"You may ask yourself, what is the utility of a plant which hurts you? To which I'd reply, you're not paying nearly enough attention to the ways your foes will try to strike you down, and thinking about how to strike first."
Enki bent down, grimacing at the hitch in his knees, and pinched the plant's leaves between his gloved fingers.
"Poison isn't just good for slipping into drinks. It can be made potent, shot through darts, applied to knives. A talented herbalist could bypass even that. Hemlock won't outright kill your enemy, but it may weaken him, and that's enough for you to take your opportunity and survive."
The girl stared at him owlishly, rocking slightly back and forth on her heels.
Enki raised an eyebrow. "Understand?"
The corners of her lips twitched upward as she flashed him a small, impish smile. She rocked faster.
He sighed. "I never know if you're listening to a word I say."
Moonless paused in her rigorous patrol of the area. She hiked up her leg and marked her territory.
The girl put her basket of picked herbs in the crook of her elbow. She was getting taller. Just slightly. But Enki noticed such things.
Soon she would no longer be the scrap of a child he'd met scurrying through the dungeons, barely able to hold her little dagger. It still hung at her side, in a scabbard the outlander cobbled together of hide and thread.
"We should train you in some better weapons," he mused.
The girl perked up and made a motion that resembled drawing back a bowstring.
Enki stilled. "Oh?" It could only have been the outlander who taught her. His lips pursed. "Show me."
Her eyes widened in surprise, then excitement. She grinned and dashed off in the direction of the training grounds.
The target was a notch carved in the bark of an old oak tree. Its trunk and roots were scarred with myriad marks, mostly of arrowheads.
The girl stood twenty feet away, bow drawn. It was of Ragnvaldr's making; he had refitted one of his old ones for her use.
She took aim. Arms steady, legs slightly bent. A perfect little copy of the outlander's stance. She chewed the inside of her cheek. Enki stood, arms crossed, and watched intently.
Her pale eyes went wide. Her finger flexed. The arrow pierced the air with a crack like a whip and thudded into the tree bark.
It landed three inches beneath the carved notch. A solid hit for a beginner, if imperfect.
The girl turned to Enki with an excited smile - but he was already looking away, hand clenching agitatedly on his jaw.
"It's just not enough time." He muttered to himself. "There's not enough."
The girl's face dropped. She reached to tug on his sleeve, but he pulled away. She let him go and stepped back.
He turned from her and stumbled towards the cabin. A river of agitated murmurs spiraling from his lips as he walked. He looked more bedraggled than ever before; stark bags under his eyes making his lack of sleep evident. Stretched thin by each rise of the sun, made old beyond his age.
The girl watched him limp to the door and wrench it open. It slammed shut behind him with a reverberating thud. The sound echoed through the trees, causing a rustling wave of disturbed wildlife.
She sighed and let the bow drop in her hands. The arrow was left forgotten, embedded several inches into the trunk.
—
Above them the sky was endless, and a sun that shouldn't exist shone down sickly rays. They trudged along the cobbled floor. The streets were lined with old buildings, long-abandoned pots and crates of old supplies.
They had found their way through the winding catacombs. Through the large, stone door that had reacted to the strange artifact they'd scavenged from that massacred village, only to reveal the strangest sight of all: a golden city, grand and towering, thousands of feet beneath bedrock and the ground above.
It was ancient, clearly. Had it been painstakingly buried, Enki pondered, or had it sunk into the earth wholesale? Perhaps it had simply appeared here. For places of import yearned to be remembered and hated to be forgotten, and had ways of manifesting themselves.
The girl's legs had given out, so Ragnvaldr carried her on his back. The hound shuffled behind them as usual, loyal as a trained pup. Enki had insisted for a while on walking on his own, but even with careful dressing and tight wrappings the blood loss had taken its toll; eventually he was forced to lean on Ragnvaldr's side to keep upright.
Even with the extra weight, Ragnvaldr didn't falter for a moment. He walked forth, unfazed, an unyielding wall of muscle.
They traveled in silence. The oppressive, looming atmosphere of the city drained them of conversation.
In the pale yellow courtyards there seemed not to be a single living soul, but they bustled with life nonetheless; as much life could possibly be attributed to their shade-black figures which drew no breath and shimmered in the air. Less than specters, mere impressions of long-gone souls, they paid no mind to the beings of flesh and bone passing through.
"Where are we going?" Ragnvaldr finally voiced the question that had been floating, wordlessly, between them in their exhausted silence. "What are we to do here?"
"The former we are to discover. The latter we are to decide." Enki was too tired to put much inflection in his voice. "You still wish to escape, do you not? Then you will find a way to escape."
Ragnvaldr considered him for a moment, unease palpable. "And you'll join us?"
Enki kept his gaze forward. "We'll see." He gave Ragnvaldr a sidelong look. "But I have no intention of dying anytime soon, brute."
They passed a smattering of residential buildings, a courtyard bustling with shadows, a large statue of Gro-goroth which Enki paused to take prayer at, and a winding labyrinth of alleyways. The city seemed a haven compared to the prison, seemingly without any hostile life, but one could never be sure. Enki refused to let his guard down, and Ragnvaldr's instincts were much the same.
Slowly over the horizon emerged a structure that towered in stature over nearly every building that had come before. A grand library, standing tall and haughty against the colorless sky, lined with pillars and ivy-covered walls. Just looking at it made Enki's remaining fingers itch. If there were scrolls to be plundered within its depths, there was knowledge. That would be the only thing leading their way forward through this accursed place.
"There." He pushed off of Ragnvaldr, to the latter's mild surprise, and began limping towards the building. He made it about five steps before catching his heel on a loose rock and stumbling violently.
The outlander caught him by the crook of his arm before he dashed his head on the stone.
"Careful, priest—!" Righting him, he chastised the smaller man, "Don't push yourself."
"I need not your help..." grumbled Enki without much venom. Lightheaded, he leaned back onto Ragnvaldr's arm nevertheless.
It was the first landmark of the city that Enki was truly impressed by, the only truly grand accomplishment in his estimation. The library stretched three stories tall and half a mile wide, built of pale yellow mortar and brick, the insides lined wall to wall with packed manuscripts and dust-covered piles of books. More than could ever be read in a lifetime.
Enki imagined how long it would take to read every manuscript. He'd have to spend the rest of his life cloistered here, poring over tomes. The thought filled him with a certain fervor, compelling him to step forward and start peeling what scrolls would separate from the shelves.
The outlander was content enough to leave him there and explore. The girl and hound went with him - clearly the safest place for them was still by Ragnvaldr's side. The former rubbed sleep from her eyes, gazing up at the stacked bookshelves in wonder. It would surprise Enki if she could read at all; perhaps he could teach her a glyph or two when they circled back.
Most of the scrolls were nonsense, or too desiccated to read; the scant few intact were dense enough to make up for it. They required deciphering, written in barely parseable glyphs, but Enki was nothing if not venomously stubborn. They spoke of gods - the older, ancient gods of humanity's collective worship and fear, and newer, less familiar ones; some of the documents even seemed penned by the latter. Enki roved over them hungrily.
So it was true, a god could be made. Self-determination at last.
"What does it say?"
The sudden low rumble of the outlander's voice almost — almost — caught Enki off guard. Luckily, after staying unmoving for several hours his body was stiff as a board, so he didn't so much as flinch.
"Ah." He looked down at his unfurled manuscript. "A formula for creating life from blood. The prose is intolerably flowery, but the discoveries are worth studying."
"You seem a well-studied man," Ragnvaldr remarked, which Enki did not preen in response to. "I'm surprised there is more for you to learn."
"There's always more to learn." Enki smoothed his hand over the parchment, feeling the raised curves of ancient ink. "There is knowledge that can only be gleaned in the depths of a dungeon such as this, that which is forbidden. Knowledge shunned in the light of the sun. The weak-willed might turn away, but I do not."
Ragnvaldr hummed, as if he weren't surprised. "What such knowledge would you seek?"
"New magicks. Spells deemed, foolishly, too powerful or blasphemous for common study. To take one's fate into their own hands."
"Really?" Ragnvaldr huffed out a quiet laugh, like the priest had made an unexpected joke. He sounded mirthless, tired. "How would one do so, priest?"
"Do you know of the man who founded this place?" Ragnvaldr shook his head. Enki continued, "His name was Valteil. A priest much like myself. Obsessed with the creation of artificial life; automatons and homunculi the likes of which we've seen throughout this city — though his vanity prevented him from unshackling them from mortality grasp. He, with his companions, descended into the depths of this place to find ascension, and become gods. To an extent, they succeeded."
The outlander's silence was short and filled with uncertainty. "Is that what you seek as well?"
"Ha. I merely seek answers. Resolution." Enki mulled over revealing the next piece of information, but decided if Ragnvaldr had already watched him saw his own arm off and waxed poetic about his dead wife and son, there wasn't much harm in sharing anymore.
"I'd reached the limits of my studies in this life. This feeble mortal body, this pathetic lifespan — there was nothing more to glean, so I decided to move to the next. Alll-merian sycophants... eager to glut upon death, those self-flagellating fools. But on the cross itself, a vision befell me, or was bestowed upon me, showing me a man who might become a god. That man. Le'garde.
"I dove into the depths seeking the truth of the matter — if he truly was the man of prophecy. To know his involvement in fate, if he had any power over it... of course, he did not. He would not be lying dead in a cell otherwise. What powers hath the new gods then, if their chosen is easily led to slaughtered like the lamb?
"So I do not wish to become one of the new gods. I wish to look beyond them. I desire the knowledge that will allow me to gain the most valuable asset of all. I want control. That which is most denied to us by this rotting world and its gods."
Taking a deep breath, Enki let the momentum of the words peter out of him. He hadn't realized how furious he had been getting. But then again, that was how it always had been, from when he was just a whelp like the girl following them around. There had always been a fire roiling beneath his lungs, churning his stomach acid into bile, fueling him with hatred and anger and resentment.
He couldn't recall ever having voiced these thoughts out loud, though. He found it took some of the pressure off his chest. Focusing back on Ragnvaldr for the first time since the beginning of their conversation, he saw a soft, somber frown, a furrow pulling his thick brows together.
"It seems you don't have much that calls you to the surface anymore," Ragnvaldr said after a while, voice carefully neutral.
"You know it well. To descend these depths you need to have nothing, or to have lost everything important enough to keep you tethered. What would I have to return to? There's no point."
The outlander was looking away now, somewhere far off. Was there pity Enki sensed in his silence? He bristled in response. "What? Do you find my answers insufficient? I didn't come here for scrutiny."
"No, no," the outlander responded. "It is as good a reason as any." He tilted his head. "I just wonder what it is you would do if you succeeded."
"I don't know," said Enki, surprising himself with the readiness of the reply. "I suppose I would continue the work of those before me. Plunge the depths of this grand library. The limits will be different when I'm a god. There shall be new worlds to explore."
"That said," Ragnvaldr replied, "to whom would you share those worlds with, so many feet underground? I have heard not of the new gods. I do not know, when they did ascend, if they ever breached the surface again, and I cannot help but wonder if that was a waste."
He paused, then shifted back on his feet. "I believe you could be different, though. Through force of will more than anything. You have more one-minded determination than any man I have ever known, outlander or no."
Enki stared up at the library ceiling, tracing the dull gold patterns of whirling brick. How much farther up were the dungeon floors they had descended from? Still farther, bedrock, farther still, the sun?
How long would it take to reach them again? Would he remember what they looked like if he did?
—
The girl sat by herself for a while, watching Moonless run in circles across the field and kick up grass with her massive claws.
Moonless grew bigger and bigger every season. These days, she dwarfed the girl easily; the silvery fur on her crown nearly brushed the branches of overhead trees. Every season she strayed farther from the house as well, wandering for longer in the woods, disappearing into the dark.
She always returned, eventually. But the girl wondered if there would ever be a time when she wouldn't come back. Not that the girl believed she would ever be bested by another creature - there would never be a beast that could match Moonless' size and ferocity - it was simply that she was wild and always had been, probably always would be. Like the migrating birds and salmon swimming upstream, it was hardwired in her to return home, or the closest thing to it.
She wondered if they, in time, would also have to move.
Nightfall cast the yard in deep shadow. Only the wan face of the moon kept the porch in light. The girl gazed out into the dim grove, trying to see shapes within the shapes, ambiguous movement in the black.
A twig snapped in the distance. She peered in the direction of the sound, expecting to see Moonless.
Instead, in the darkness of the grove stood a figure. Humanoid, male. Not the outlander - too lean; the expanse of his bare chest lined with scars. Nor did he resemble the dark priest - wild hair shorn short, a curved blade dangling at his side too heavy for the priest to carry.
The girl was sure she had never seen this man before. Yet something about him seemed familiar, and looking upon him, she felt no fear at all.
The shadow stepped forward to the edge of the grove. He lifted his non-sword hand - a wave of greeting.
The girl waved back, cautiously.
The strange man nodded. There were no eyes she could see in his shadowed face, but she felt he was making eye contact all the same.
She tensed as his hand lowered towards his belt, but what he withdrew made her gasp — a tiny, raggedy doll hewn from fabric, once again, strangely familiar. With a start, she remembered where she had seen it last.
In the catacombs, past immovable bars, it had sat glinting on the floor of a damp, unilluminated prison cell. The door had been locked and they'd never recovered the key for it. The outlander and priest had moved past but she'd lingered for a moment, imagining they could have taken it along. She'd wondered what it would have been like to hold it, to brush her fingers through its straw-hair.
And now the doll was once again before her. She still hesitated to approach. The shadow, seemingly sensing her trepidation, placed the doll at the grove's edge and walked back several paces.
Whistling for Moonless, she cautiously got off the porch. The man stayed in the dark as she and the hound approached, expression remaining unreadable.
As she approached, the girl noticed he wasn't simply standing in shadow, but seemed ensconced by it; the darkness rippled around him like a desert mirage, tearing gently at the edges of his image. He kept such a distance from the boundary of the light that she wondered if he could even move past it. Yet he had, just to bring her the doll.
Approaching the poppet, she had Moonless sniff it first before picking it up, holding a spell in one hand just in case. It was a paperweight in her palm, slightly scratchy and soft to the touch. Just as she'd always imagined. She rubbed it to her cheek. Its black button-eye rolled pleasantly smooth against her skin, its hair tickled her face.
When she looked back up, the man and his strange shadows were gone. The only evidence he had ever been there was the poppet cradled in her hands.
—
As always, it was the depths that damned him. The winding library corridors, the empty hallways, the endless miles of books that made up the walls. Scrolls stacked helter-skelter floor to ceiling, whispering promises of more knowledge, of more understanding, of more, more, more. It drew him into the dark.
He thought he saw a hanging corpse, he thought he saw a man standing at the edge of the dark. It spoke to him — wan, yellowed skin, hollow cheeks, cavernous eye sockets with nothing in them.
"There was no point to any of it," it said. "All this work... all this research. The world is doomed, and we are doomed the most."
The apparition fell forward and plummeted, and the darkness swallowed him whole. Enki watched him shrink into a speck, then nothing. The void after his entry looked no different than the void before. He wondered if there was any light in the world strong enough to penetrate it.
The ladders were not suited for climbing. Old, rickety things. Probably one bad movement off from careening into the depths themselves. Enki climbed them down anyway. Each step creaked beneath his feet, threatening to give way; each step he silently dared gravity to pull him to his fate, and it didn't.
It would have been more dangerous had he been traveling with anyone — the girl and the hound were easy enough to give the slip, Ragnvaldr took more convincing, but in the end he knew to leave Enki to his own devices, and Enki besides had held him to his oath of servitude. You'll listen to me from now on, he'd said. Ragnvaldr, a man of honor, acquiesced.
A more foolish man might have seen Ragnvaldr as an asset, dragged him down into the pit. Enki knew better. It was his face, his ragged and scarred and noble face. What good would it have done to bring him here? He still had hope for life outside the dungeons, compassion enough to extend to the liabilities of companions around him.
He believed he could save them. He would try to save Enki, and Enki simply didn't have time for hopeless endeavors.
He continued to climb.
It was pitch dark. Only his meager torch gave light, just enough to illuminate himself and the ground beneath him — though ground was a generous term, under his feet he could sense no foundation. Just scattered, packed bookshelves anchored by their own weight.
This is always what it had been leading up to, the miserable dregs of the pathetic life he'd had to wade through. Down there lay certain death. But in oblivion there lay answers only the descent could provide, and there was no one more receptive than Enki to a life in the dark.
He came to the last platform. There was no more progress forward, no more ladders.
The torch died in his hands.
Enki stood, gazing into the miles of yawning nothing beneath, and asked a question.
From the abyss, a terrible figure rose.
—
Ragnvaldr walked, and walked, without stopping.
It was frigid out; one last snowstorm before the onset of spring; Ragnvaldr took no notice. The wind screamed in his ears. Flecks of frost and icy dew stung in pinpricks against his exposed skin.
The village gate was closed, nearly frozen shut, but Ragnvaldr was able to wrench it apart without much trouble. It ground open with a long, tremulous screech that shook the snow from the nearby bushes, echoing through the surrounding valley.
He trudged through knee-high sleet towards the village leader's hut, passing by arrays of buildings all sealed shut. Some of the windows were lit up, others cold and empty.
His spear, bobbing and brushing through the snow with each step, dripped heavy still with blood.
Ragnvaldr slammed the door open. He took great breaths, each exhale huffing a cloud of vapor before his nose and mouth like a beast.
The sight of the village leader greeted him, as expected — next to her, however, sat two unfamiliar figures. A strange, pale woman with short-cropped brown hair and a stern expression, clad in full plate armor that shone so strongly it was blinding. By her side hung a longsword, gleaming point dug into the floorboards. Next to her sat something even stranger.
It could not be said what was wrong with the man, but there was surely something wrong. Perhaps it was the gauze covering his face — wrapping around and around until the underlying features were soft and formless — save for a single eye staring, unblinking, from an open slit. Opposite the immaculately armored woman beside him, he wore only humble robes which hung off him like spiderwebs. The skin visible between his bandages was wan and lumpen, resembling somewhat melted candle wax, pink stretched leather.
As Ragnvaldr entered, the knight swiveled towards the sound, sitting up straighter if possible. Her eyes were clear and burned with zeal.
"What's this?" she asked. "A visitor at this hour? In this weather? Who are you?"
The other strange visitor said nothing. The single eye between sheaths of gauze swiveled towards him.
Ragnvaldr looked at them, then looked at the village leader, whose face was an unmoving mask of stone.
"What is the meaning of this?" he asked.
The knight cleared her throat, ignoring that neither she nor her strange companion were being addressed.
"My name is D'arce, of the knights of the Midnight Sun. My captain and I have journeyed far from the great kingdom of Rondon to offer your, ah, lovely village a boon of protection. Are you a citizen?" She quirked a brow as she surveyed his ragged furs, his scar-covered arms, his prosthetic leg. "Do you have... questions for us...?"
Ragnvaldr did not respond — staring wordlessly at the village leader, his own face unmoving.
"Ragnvaldr," the village leader said, "this is not for you. Leave. Now."
The bandage-covered stranger was looking at him. That pale eye, unblinking and inscrutable, dimly illuminated by firelight.
Ragnvaldr turned on his heel, opened the door to the howling snow, and stepped out into the storm.