The Skybound Sea

THIRTEEN

“I have been looking for you. . for a long time.”

Sheraptus’s eyes burned as he cast his stare upon the scene below. Forgepits burned, alive with the sounds of metal being twisted into blades and breastplates, audible even from his terrace. The sound of creation carried so far.

“You are not pleased to see me again,” he closed his eyes, whispering to his guest behind him. “It is hard to blame you.”

Another scream rose up from below as another slave, one of Those Green Things, was shattered beneath an iron sole. The cargo the slave carried fell to the ground, splashing in the red life that seeped from its many, many cuts.

“But that seems like an eternity ago. Since then I have found. . questions. I don’t like them. A netherling knows. We are born from nothing. We return to nothing. There is only bloodshed and fire in between. There are no questions that do not have this answer.”

The sikkhuns howled with wild laughter as the dead slave was hauled by a female to their pit and tossed in. Their hunger was a thing alive itself, the gnashing of their jaws and the ripping of scaly green meat, the cycle of life to death, death to nourishment, nourishment to life.

“But there has to be more,” he said. “It was simple in the Nether. There was nothing. But here? The slaves barely put up a fight when we came. All this green, all this blue. .”

He swept a hand to the face of the sprawling forest, scarred by an ugly sea of stumps. Its lumber had been hauled to the surf, turned into the long, black ships bobbing in waters stained by soot and blood and scraps of flesh.

“They didn’t even fight for it. Why? Is there simply more of it that they can take later? But if there is more. . who made it?” He clenched his fist, felt the anger burn out his eyes. “Metal does not take shape without fire and flesh. Ships do not construct themselves. This? All of this, someone had to have made it.”

He shut his eyes, felt the fires smolder beneath his lids as he drew in a deep breath and exhaled.

“That’s why I asked them to find you, specifically, out of all of your small, weak race. I wanted to find you. .”

He turned around to finally look at his guest. A pair of beady eyes mounted upon tiny stalks looked back. The crab scuttled across the plate, its chitinous legs rapping upon the metal. It would go one way, find its path terminating in a long fall from the pedestal, move another way, find a similar conclusion, try the other way.

It was almost as if it wasn’t even listening, Sheraptus thought contemptibly.

He swept over to the plate, plucked the crustacean up gently in his hands. It had taken time to understand how to take something so small without crushing it. He had practiced. And upon his palm, the crab scuttled one way, felt the palm’s width end, scuttled the other way.

“And you waste it all,” he whispered. “You and Those Green Things and the pink-skinned overscum. . you have all of this, and you simply move about. You do nothing with it.” He turned his hand over gently, watched the crab flail briefly, then right itself upon the back of his hand. “Why?”

He found his ire at the crab’s silence boiling. Not that he expected it to simply up and start talking, but it could at least do something different. He jabbed it with a finger, pushing it around on his hand.

“Do you simply not know what to do with it all?” he asked. “Does the sheer vastness of it all overwhelm you? Or do you simply choose to do nothing with it?”

It scuttled to escape his prodding finger, flailing as it found itself upon his palm again. And still, he tormented it.

“And why are you even here? What are you supposed to do? If you have no purpose, then how can you-”

He hissed as he felt a sting shoot up through his finger. The tiny pincers released him almost immediately, leaving little more than a bright red slash across the digit and a distant pain that grew to nothing in the blink of an eye.

In the next blink, his fingers had curled around the thing. He spoke a word, felt his eyes burn, felt the crown burn upon his brow. The flame coursed through his palm, licked his fingers. His nostrils quivered with the scent of cooked flesh.

When they uncurled, a tiny black husk smoldered in his palm. He turned his palm over, let it drop to the terrace floor. It shattered, splitting apart into tiny, burning slivers, quickly sputtering out into thin wisps of smoke.

“There,” he said. “There!” He turned to the other end of the terrace, thrust a finger down at the floor. “Did you see that?”

Xhai blinked vacantly. Her brow furrowed as she looked down at what had once been the crab. With a snort, she looked up, shrugged, leaned back upon the terrace’s railing, and crossed a ruined arm over a healthy one.

“So fragile,” Sheraptus whispered, turning his attentions back to the black stain. “Why did they make it so fragile?”

“If it’s weak, it’s weak,” Xhai replied. “Just the same as any other overscum or underscum. Why do they do anything they do?”

“Precisely,” he murmured. “Why? Why were they made? Who made them?”

“No one did. From nothing to nothing.”

“That’s for netherlings, certainly. . or is it?”

Xhai’s face screwed up at the notion. He didn’t bother to note the look of genuine displeasure across her face as he looked at her.

“Who’s to say we weren’t also made?”

“Master. .” she said, taking a step forward.

“But this thing. . it was made fragile. And we. . were made strong.” He tapped his chin. “The Nether made us strong.”

“The Nether is nothing.”

“The Nether is-”

“We are netherlings,” she said, her voice rife with more force than had ever been used with him. “We are not called that because we were made. We are strong because we are netherlings. For no other reason.”

He recoiled, feigned a look as though he had just been struck. Almost instantly, her visage softened. No, he corrected himself, Xhai was incapable of softening. Her face. . twisted, looking as though it were trying dearly to find the muscles to look wounded.

Just as she always did whenever he looked hurt. She was so predictable, especially when it came to him. If he flinched, she was ready to kill. If he sighed, she was ready to kill. If he looked at something, she tended to assume he wanted it killed and thought it might just be easier to let him say otherwise if he wanted it alive.

The more he looked at her, the more genuine his frown became. It was a crab he saw. A crab tall, purple, and muscular, but a crab, nonetheless: without purpose but to move, to pinch when prodded, and just as fragile.

Perhaps, then, netherlings were not made. Perhaps everything came from nothing, scuttled about without purpose until they died. Perhaps this all came about for no reason.

Perhaps. .

But then why were trees here, if not to be made into ships? Why were slaves here, if not to serve? Why was there so much of it? And why was he, and only he, wondering any of this?

“Master,” Xhai whispered, edging closer. “You seem. . well, we are to leave for Jaga soon. You said. Is your time not wasted by thinking on this?”

The invasion. To bring down Ulbecetonth. Enemy of the Gods. And the Gray One That Grins.

“Perhaps,” he whispered. “Purpose is not given. . but discovered.”

“Master?”

He turned to her, smile broad, eyes bright.

“Bring me the human.”

It had not once occurred to her to pray.

Not when she had awakened, bound and bruised upon the deck of the ship, her companions absent and probably dead. Not when she had been marched bodily across the great scene of fire and death that was the island’s shorefront. Even when her captors had intentionally lingered near the great pits from which bestial laughter rose between sounds of bones cracking and meat slurping, not once did she look to the sky.

Not to heaven, anyway. She did look up, once, and found her gaze drawn to the terrace overlooking the blackened, blood-stained beach.

And eyes alight with fire had looked back.

Sheraptus had offered her nothing more than a stare. No jagged-toothed smiles, no wretched leers, nothing to boast about what he had done to her, of what he would do to her.

He stood. He stared. That was all he had to do to make her look at the pit and think whether it might be better to simply hurl herself into the jaws of whatever lurked inside.

But the netherlings had been upon her before she could consider it seriously, wrenching her arms behind her back, hauling her past scenes of corpses and flame and smoke and blood, into somewhere vast and dark.

After all of that, the dead bodies, the suffering so thick in the air it made it hard to breathe, the cackling laughter of those things in the pit, and him, she did not pray. Even as the cell door groaned and slammed shut, no light but what seeped from the cavern mouth so far away, she couldn’t even think to pray.

Not until she had become aware that she was not alone in the cell.

Not until she had met Sheraptus’s other victims.

After that, it was easier.

Blessed Talanas, who gave up His body that mankind might know, the old words came flooding back to her now as she strained to concentrate over the sound of sobbing in the darkness, know this and always that I never ask You for myself, but that I might ease the pain and mend the wounds of body and soul.

“He doesn’t always come,” the girl whispered. “Not always. Sometimes, he comes by and stares through the bars and I can just. . see his eyes in the dark.”

Her name was Nai. Asper had gleaned that much after a few hours in the dark. They had begun in silence, all queries as to their location or what the netherlings had in store for them were met with quiet whimpers and nothing else.

Asper did not press her. She had met victims before, wives beaten by their husbands, children who knew things of suffering that grown men did not, people for whom speech was agony. People who didn’t want to be reminded that they were still people.

She had waited.

And eventually, the girl had spoke.

“And sometimes, he doesn’t do anything. He’ll just-” Nai continued, her voice so shaky it frequently shattered to pieces in her mouth. “He just stands there and he’s watching me and he. . then he. . he turns around and he leaves and says nothing. Nothing. Never.”

“Ah,” Asper said.

Weak words, she knew, but she had nothing else to offer. She had no idea what Nai looked like in the darkness. Asper was quietly grateful for that; it meant Nai could not see her shake as the girl continued to describe her imprisonment.

She had been snatched, apparently, from a passing merchant ship. The netherlings had rowed up beside them during a calm, leapt aboard, and did what they do best. They took nothing, the carnage upon the decks seemingly wrought only for the opportunity to spit on the gutted corpses.

Nai hadn’t been sure why she had been spared. Not until they dragged her to the island, past the laughing pits and the Gonwa bleeding out on the sands, not until they threw her in the darkness. And by the time she had run out of prayers, she wished she lay unmoving on the deck with the others.

Asper had listened to her. To all the torments visited upon her, to the chains affixed about her wrists, to the times she had tried to fight him, to the times that had only made his smile broader as he forced her to the floor.

Each word sent her bowels churning, her heart quaking. Each word told her of horrors and tortures at Sheraptus’s hands she had only narrowly escaped. And with each word, Nai’s voice became more distant as Asper fought the urge to shut her ears and break down.

But she withheld her tears. And she did not block out Nai’s voice. And she listened. Not to know what would be visited upon her, not to try to think of a way to avoid him and his leering grin. But for the fact that Nai had nothing else but words, and Nai had to speak.

She listened.

And she prayed.

Humble do I pray and humble do I ask, she thought, mouthing the words in the darkness, I know that I am weak and have nothing to give but give freely as You once did for us.

“Then sometimes he just takes you,” she said, voice wracked with sobs. “In the middle of the night. . or the day. I don’t know. I can’t see the sun anymore. He comes and he just takes you and you fight him and. . and you hit him and you bite him and he just. . he just. .”

But as You give freely, and as You have told us to give freely of our time and our love and our bodies, I beg You give unto me, she prayed, give that I might do the will and restore that which is lost. Please, I beg-

“He laughs. Like it’s the funniest thing in the world. He takes his hands and he forces you down and-”

In the name of-

“He says things. He says words. They don’t make sense. And there’s a light. And you can see his teeth and he’s smiling and his eyes are big and white and he’s just so happy and. . and. .”

Please, Talanas, just. . please give me the strength-

“He makes you scream.”

Just. . please.

That wasn’t how the prayer ended. That wasn’t what she thought she would ask for. She lifted her hand slowly, that Nai might not know she was moving, and wiped the moisture from her eyes.

No tears, she told both Talanas and herself. She needs help. I asked for help. You can’t give me tears. I can’t give her tears.

Words, however weak, would have to be enough.

She opened her mouth to offer them, weak and plentiful, when she was cut off. A long, inhuman wail echoed from somewhere far away, like a long, vocal hand reaching desperately out of the darkness toward daylight.

They came intermittently, sometimes many, sometimes few, sometimes one long, lonely scream from somewhere deeper and darker. Asper had asked. Nai had clasped her hands over her ears, shook her head. Asper didn’t ask again.

Not about whoever those screams belonged to, anyway. She focused on the victims she could speak to.

Asper found her eyes drawn to the other girl in the cell. Or what she suspected was a girl. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell beyond the fact that Nai occasionally referred to the shaggy heap of disheveled hair and torn clothes as “she.”

And “she” hadn’t said a word since Asper had heard the bars slam shut behind her.

“What is her name?” Asper asked.

“I don’t know, I don’t know. She was here when they took me. I asked. I asked her. But she never told me. She just looked at me and told me that I was next and that I had to go when he came and that she couldn’t do it anymore and that she was sorry and that I could never stop screaming if I wanted to live. .”

“She” didn’t move at the mention, nor at the hand that Asper gently laid on her. She didn’t respond to touch, she didn’t resist as Asper rolled her over. She didn’t even blink as Asper stared into a pair of eyes that resembled a broken glass: shattered, glistening, and utterly empty.

“What happened to her?” Asper asked.

Nai’s voice was a soft, dying whisper. “She stopped screaming.”

No one in heaven or earth could blame her for wanting to break down, Asper knew. No one would blame her for weeping, for shrieking, for pleading. But as she stared at “her,” this woman who drew breath and nothing more, she could do nothing but ask.

What is he?

She wasn’t sure whom she asked, who would answer her. She wasn’t sure why she only thought to ask now. But she had to know. She wondered who could do this. Not in the moral sense, but the physical. Who could so easily take a human being in his hands like a cup, turn her over and pour out everything inside her, then let her fall and shatter upon the floor?

What kind of creature had that power?

A god, she thought. They treat him like a god. The netherlings tremble before him. Nai speaks of him in whispers. And she. . Asper looked down at the girl, who stared up at Asper, through Asper. He took her. Everything about her.

But there were no gods.

No one had answered her prayers.

She was still here, in the darkness, with an empty, shattered glass and a girl who had nothing but words. No one was coming. Not from heaven. Not from earth. There was no answer to her prayers.

There was only her.

There are no gods, she told herself. And if there are no gods, there is no one who can do this. Not to me. Not to anyone again. Gods can’t die.

She looked down at her left hand, tightened it into a fist. Beneath her sleeve, beneath her skin, she could feel it. She wore the agony like a glove, the pain welling up inside her a familiar one, a welcome one. One she hoped to share quite soon.

He can.

There was movement beneath her as “she” drew in a sharp breath.

It was something so small it would go unnoticed in anyone else. In a woman that hadn’t made a movement more energetic than a blink, it was enough to seize Asper’s attention.

And in the span it took her to notice the sound of heavy iron boots on stone floor, the door was already flying open. She could not see the tall, muscular women as they swept into her cell. But she could feel their hands, the cold iron of their gauntlets as they jerked her to her feet, wrenched her hands behind her back and hauled her from the cell.

She might have cried out. She might have even been tempted to concentrate on the agony in her arm and summon it against them. She didn’t know. It was hard to hear, harder to think with Nai’s screaming.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” the girl shrieked. Asper heard her scrambling away from them, twisting out of their grasp, raking her fingertips upon the floor as they hauled her out by her ankles. “No, please, not again, not again, not again, I’ve been good, I don’t deserve this, please, please, please, please-”

Pleas, tears, screams. A singular, desperate sound that echoed through the cavern. It was joined by the screams from deeper inside, an endless, unrelenting cacophony marching alongside Asper as she was bodily dragged toward a distant halo of light at the end of the twisted corridor.

Within the ring of light, she saw it. A shadow standing tall, hands folded neatly behind its back.

And within the shadow, she saw them. A pair of lights, blood red and fire hot. Stars in hell.

The fear that had been bearing down upon her since she stared praying grew at the sight of him. It settled upon her shoulders. It pressed upon her neck. It ate the anger from her body, it drank the breath from her lungs.

But even beneath its weight, even through the half-formed prayers in her head and the pounding in her heart, she could still hear her curse herself.

Not now, you idiot, she snarled inwardly. Not in front of Nai. She gritted her teeth, felt her neck strain against the weight as she tried to raise it. He’s not a god. There are no gods. Not on earth. Look at him.

It hurt to move her head, hurt to even think about it. But she forced herself to do both.

Look.

She did.

He did not.

Sheraptus stood, head bowed beneath the black iron crown upon his brow, staring intently into his palm. With one long finger, he gently pushed about tiny black fragments in his hand, attempting to piece together a charred puzzle.

It wasn’t relief she felt to be denied his gaze as she was shoved past him. Her fear settled firmly upon her back and she felt extraordinarily heavy at that point. A sudden anger rose inside her, leaving no room for breath. That he could do what he did to her, to Nai, to the other girl, and not even look when his victims were paraded before him was. . was. .

She had no words for it. Only desires. Only a yearning to scream, a yearning to break free from her captor’s iron grip and lunge at him with an arm that throbbed with a pain she wanted nothing more than to share.

Those desires left her, though, along with the air in her lungs, as the netherling twisted her about, placed a palm upon her belly and slammed her gainst the wall of the round, cavernous chamber. Sense left with the wind and she scarcely even noticed her arms being raised so high above her head as to pull her to the tips of her toes. It returned, however, with the eager snapping of metal as manacles were fastened about her wrists and she was left to hang against the wall like a macabre piece of art.

Her captor stepped back, met her scowl with cold eyes and tense muscles, as if challenging Asper to give her a reason to use those gauntleted fists folded over her chest. The priestess offered nothing more than a glare. The netherling, denied, snorted and left.

Nai had more to give.

“Please no, please stop, please no, please stop,” she chanted the words, as though they would gain power the more she spoke them. “Please, please, please, please. .”

The netherling holding her took no notice of her pleas as she forced the girl into a similar set of manacles on the opposite side of the chamber’s door. Nai seemed to forget Asper was there entirely, shaking her head to add gesture to desperate incantation.

And no one seemed to notice the murals upon the walls.

They were almost illegible, smeared by soot from torches haphazardly jammed into the wall, scratched by scenes of struggle or boredom-induced violence. But Asper could make out a few images: men marching to war against towering black shapes, green, reptilian things marching beside them. Amidst them all strode great stone colossi, dressed in robes, hands outstretched.

She had seen these before, she realized: the great stone monoliths upon Teji, as imposing in paint as they were in person.

They marched into oblivion, crushing black shapes beneath their treads, sending white shapes fleeing before their authoritative palms. She followed them as they marched across the walls, displaying banners of many gods, holding weapons high. They descended toward the back of the chamber, the mural lost in the darkness that was held at bay by the torches, save for but a few strands of crimson paint that stretched out of the gloom.

She squinted to see them, to make them out.

Are those. . tentacles?

The scream that burst out of the darkness shook her back to her senses. An inhuman shrieked boiled out of the back of the cavern, echoed through her skull as it did through the chamber. She turned away, shut her eyes, instinctively tried to clasp her hands over her ears even as the chains held her tight, chiding her with a rattle of links.

They faded, eventually. She opened her eyes. The breath immediately left her once more as she stared into a pair of eyes alight with crimson fire not a foot away from her.

“How did this happen?” Sheraptus asked.

He thrust the blackened pieces upon his palm at her. It had once been a living thing, she deduced by noting the charred remains of a jointed leg, even if everything else was soot and charcoal.

She looked from the remains to him. She should have cursed at him, she knew. Spat in his face, maybe. All she could form, as his mouth twisted into an expectant frown, was a single word.

“Huh?”

“Why does this thing exist?” His voice was eerily ponderous, as though he were talking to the blackened husk and not her. “It was so small that I barely had to move my fingers, barely had to think and. .”

He turned his hand over, let the fragments fall to ashes.

“It simply turned to nothing,” he whispered. “Why?”

The fire burning in his eyes could not burn nearly hot enough to obscure the glimmer in his stare, the sort of excited flashing of a boy with a new toy right before he accidentally breaks it. It unnerved her to see it, even without the malicious red glow that strained to obscure it. But she forced herself to look. She forced herself to speak.

“Because you killed it.”

He frowned, the glimmer waning, as though he had hoped that wasn’t the case.

“Why?” he asked.

For lack of anything else, she simply stared.

Is this it? she asked herself. Is this the man that thinks he’s a god? He doesn’t even know why he kills. He’s not a god. He has. .

“Nothing.”

“What?”

She wasn’t even aware that the word had slipped out until he frowned at her. After she was, though, the rest came easily.

“You killed it because you have nothing else. You killed it because that’s what you do. You destroy. You hurt people.” She drew in a staggering breath, but the words came flooding out, impossible to stop. “Because whatever made you, they made you with nothing else but that purpose. You don’t know why, you don’t know how. You know nothing but pain, and without pain, you are nothing.”

It didn’t feel good to say it. It felt necessary, as necessary as the deep breath that came after she said it. It came into her lungs clean, despite the soot, the heat, and the suffering surrounding her. That felt good.

It would have felt better if Sheraptus hadn’t smiled broadly and spoke.

“Exactly.”

She recoiled, the very words striking her just when she thought he couldn’t say anything more depraved. He didn’t notice her reaction, he didn’t notice she was there as he turned around and made a grand, sweeping gesture.

“Created to destroy, created to kill, that makes sense,” he said to the cavern as he paced about its circular length. “Weapons need to be forged. Nethra has to be channeled. But this?” He looked down at the black, sooty smear on the floor. “What purpose is there in something so weak?”

His gaze drifted to Nai, hanging helplessly in her chains. Asper felt her bowels turn to water as though he had looked at her instead. Her feet scrabbled against the floor, the chains pulling her back, forcing her to watch helplessly as he reached out, a pair of long, probing fingers gently brushing against Nai’s cheek.

“What use is there for such a thing. .” he whispered.

The fire in his eyes smoldered, painting Nai’s face crimson. She let out a soft whimper, daring not to speak, daring not to move as his fingers drifted lower, across her throat, toward her chest.

“I DON’T KNOW!”

It wasn’t a lie. She didn’t know the answer. She didn’t know why she screamed so suddenly. And she didn’t care. Sheraptus turned away from Nai, his gaze dimming to a faint glow. Asper watched long enough to see the girl go slack in her bonds again before turning to lock her gaze upon his and his upon hers.

“No one knows,” she continued. “The Gods don’t tell us when we’re born.”

“Then why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do anything you do?” he asked. “Why call out to gods if you can’t see them, if you can’t hear them and they don’t talk to you?”

“They do. We have scriptures, prayers, hymnals, ritual. They tell us how to live, what to do,” she paused to put emphasis on her next words, “why we shouldn’t kill and-”

“Those are not gods. They do not create, they were created.”

“By the Gods.”

“How?”

“They told us-”

“Then why do they not tell you now? What do these rituals and things do but ask more questions? Where do you get answers?”

“They. . they. .” The words came slowly, like a knife being drawn out of her flesh. “They might not give us answers. The Gods might not even talk to us.” She said it aloud for the first time. “They might not even exist.”

It hurt more than she thought.

“They do.”

Hurt turned to confusion the moment he spoke.

“Where else could all this have come from?” he asked, shaking his head. “We have no trees in the Nether, no sand, no oceans.” He sighed. “No gods. But here? You have everything. And for what? What does it do for you? What is its purpose?”

“Not everything has to have a purpose,” she said. “Some things are there not to kill or be killed, but simply to be. . right? They are there to be protected, cherished.” Her gaze drifted to Nai. “The Gods can’t possibly watch over everything.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Sheraptus snapped. “If trees are not created to be made into boats, then why are they here? What is metal if not to be made into swords? If something is meant to be, why is it so fragile?” He resumed his pacing, rubbing his crown. “All things must be created for a reason. Everything must have a purpose. What is theirs?”

He whirled about. The fires in his eyes were stoked with desperation, leaping with such intensity that they seemed to engulf his face, leaving nothing but jagged teeth twisted in a grimace. He thrust a finger at her.

“What is yours?”

She wanted to look away, away from those eyes that had stared at her, away from those teeth that had grinned at her, away from that finger that had-

Look at him, the thought leapt to her mind unbidden. It resounded with conviction from a place she did not know. Look at him and know that he’s not what they think he is. It held her head high, even as it wanted to bow. Look at him and know that he’s not what he thinks he is. It made her draw in a long, clean breath. Look at him. And he won’t look at her.

“Perhaps,” she whispered, “it’s to tell you all this.”

The fires in his eyes waned. Between shudders of crimson, flashes of white broke through. And in them, she could see something that had been stained by flame for a long, long time.

Desperation.

Fear.

A hope that somehow, some way, everything that he was thinking was utterly and terribly wrong.

“How do you know?” he asked.

She shook her head, her chains rattling softly. “It’s never clear. Not without suffering.”

“Suffering?”

“Only with suffering comes understanding.” She closed her eyes, letting the truth of that settle upon her, atop the fear and the anger. “Great suffering.”

He nodded solemnly. That which she felt within her she saw within him as his eyes smoldered, sputtered into empty whites.

“They come to you with suffering,” he said, “when they are needed. That is why you called to them,” he hesitated before continuing, “that night.”

To stare into the white eyes of this man, as she had stared into the red eyes of the man who had violated her, should have been enough to destroy her. She should have collapsed, slumped in her chains, lost all will to raise her head again. But there was something in these eyes, something bright and vivid, that burned even more brightly than fire.

This man was no god. This man could be made to see what he had done.

She looked past him. Nai hung limply in her manacles, drawing in sharp, short breaths.

For her sake, Asper had to believe that.

“How much?” It was the edge in his voice that seized her attention, the glimmer in his eye that held it. “How much suffering before they appear?”

“I don’t-” She paused, reconsidered. “Much,” she replied softly. “There is much suffering, much regret, much penance.”

“And one cannot begin. . without the other.”

In the instant he turned away from her, she saw it. In the corner of his eye, as though it had been hiding from her the whole time, there was a little too much of something. Perhaps it was too much of an eager glimmer in his eye, too easy a smile that came with too much knowing.

She saw it.

And in that instant, she knew that whatever had left him, it wasn’t cruelty.

“No,” she whispered.

Whether she had heard Asper or the sound of Sheraptus approaching, Nai looked up. What it took Asper until now to see, she found in an instant. Her face twisted up into a grimace, her hands clenched, she bit her lower lip so hard that blood gushed readily.

“No. No.” Nai shook her head, fervor increasing with each word. “No, no, no, no, no.” She was all but flailing as he approached her, her chains rattling wildly, her heels scraping furiously against the floor as she tried to back away. “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!”

“Wait! WAIT!” Asper called after him. “This isn’t what I meant! This isn’t what you-”

“It is,” Sheraptus said softly. “It makes perfect sense. Why would gods come unless called? Unless the need was great?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Nai wailed. The cloth of her slippers wore through in a moment and soon, she was painting the floor with her blood as her feet desperately scrabbled. “I didn’t. I DIDN’T! I’ve been good! I. . I screamed! Please, no. Please, please, please, please-”

“Stop!” Asper cried out, hurling herself at him. The chains caught her, chuckled in the rattle of links as they pulled her back to the wall. “This isn’t what I meant! Stop! Stop!”

The metal of her manacles groaned, growing weary of her futile attempts. They tugged her back to the wall, pleading in creaking metal to spare herself the torment. She spoke louder to be heard over him, screaming wildly at him with all manner of pleas, all manner of curses.

Between the chains and herself, she couldn’t hear the sound of metal sizzling, of stone cracking.

Nai’s wailing ceased as he came upon her, looking her over with wide, glimmering eyes. She fell still in her chains, as though if she held just still enough, stayed just silent enough, he might move on. Even then, though, she drew in wheezing breaths, sniffling tears through her nostrils with each gasp.

Sheraptus stood there, hands folded behind his back, calmly studying her. Asper held her breath, watching, waiting, praying.

Humble do I pray and humble do I ask-

Slowly, he unfolded his hands, raised them up to frame Nai’s face delicately as she winced.

You who gave up Your body so that we might know-

His fingers splayed out slowly, each joint creaking as they did, like the long legs of great purple spiders, the tips gently settling upon her temples and cheeks.

I know I don’t deserve it, I know I doubted You but-

“Please,” Nai whispered.

Please-

Sheraptus smiled gently.

Please-

The glimmer in his eyes became a spark.

PLEASE.

And he spoke a word.

Nai’s scream was lost in the violent, laughing crackle of electricity. Asper watched, eyes wide, yearning to be blinded by the flashes of electricity that leapt from his fingertips in laughing lashes, sharing some sick joke with Nai’s flesh that only it found funny.

“STOP!” Nai screamed, struggling to hold onto language. “STOP! PLEASE!”

“Don’t beg me,” Sheraptus said gently. “Them. You have to ask them to come.”

Smoke came in gray plumes, mercilessly refusing to hide the grimace of her face painted by flashes of blue, the shedding of her cloth as electric spears rent her garments. Asper could look away, to pray, to do anything.

And without thought, without prayer, without blinking, she began to walk forward.

“HELP! PLEASE!” Nai wailed. “TALANAS! DAEON! GALATAUR!”

“There we are,” Sheraptus cooed encouragingly. “Just a little more now.”

The flashes grew stronger, their laughter louder, their macabre jokes increasingly hilarious as they plucked at her skin. Hair smoked, stood on end. Her lips curled back to expose gums. A nipple blackened amidst a mass of twitching flesh.

The chains caught Asper, tried to pull her back. She continued to walk forward, unthinking, unfeeling. The searing of her wrist, she did not notice. The shattering of stone behind her, she did not hear.

“Louder, now, louder,” Sheraptus coaxed. “It can’t be too much longer now.”

What tore out of Nai’s mouth was without words, without emotion. It was the kind of raw, vocal bile offered up when there was nothing left within her. From deep in the darkness beyond the chamber, more voices lent theirs to hers, more screaming joining with hers.

They clashed like cathedral bells at first, each one striving to be heard over the other, before finding an agonized harmony, blending into a single perfect scream.

Asper didn’t even hear the chains break, nor did she hear the sizzle of burning metal as the manacle fell from her left wrist, scorched and blackened. She noticed her palm glowing with hellish red light, the bones black and visible beneath a transparent sheath of skin, only when she raised it up, extended it authoritatively, marched toward the black figure.

And wrapped it about Sheraptus’s skinny neck.

Instantly, the laughter stopped, the screaming stopped, the speaking stopped. The lightning leapt back into Sheraptus’s hands, which calmly lowered themselves to his sides, as though he had simply lost interest.

The only sign that anything was wrong was the sickening crack resounding in the silence as his shoulder popped out of place.

“What. . what is. .” he gasped for a moment before there was a faint sucking sound, his windpipe collapsing.

“I don’t know,” Asper said, tightening her grip. “But it was sent here for you.”

Something broke beneath him, a shinbone snapping, realigning awkwardly, and snapping again until his right leg possessed six different joints. He collapsed to his knees, body trembling as though it were about to come undone.

“You. .” he rasped in great, inward breaths, “you. . pure. . destruction.”

Asper said nothing. The hellish red light of the arm intensified, grew fat off the suffering. Sheraptus held up an arm, watched it twist and diminish, as though something sucked the sinew right out of it until there was nothing left but brittle, marrowless bones.

“Only. . gods. . Aeon in. . a human,” he rasped. “Gods. . help. .”

Snap. His knee erupted.

“Help. .”

Snap. His arm folded in on itself.

“Gods. .”

Creak. His neck began to-

“MASTER!”

She heard the cry, heard the iron boots crashing on the stone floor. She had been discovered, she knew, even without looking to see the netherling charging up the corridor, sword at the ready. Not yet, she knew; they might kill her, but not before she could kill him.

As the netherling approached, she flew her right hand out errantly, intended to catch a blow meant for her neck, to swat impotently at the netherling, anything to buy just a few more moments to finish what she had started. She expected nothing.

She certainly didn’t expect her fist to find the female’s ribcage.

And she didn’t expect to feel it explode beneath her hand.

The netherling fell backward, wailing and clutching her side. Asper felt her own grip on Sheraptus loosen as her wide-eyed attentions turned toward her right hand. Her wonderfully normal, uselessly normal right hand.

Upon whose palm a faint, white dot of light began to glow, like a great eye opening for the first time.

It stared at her and she stared at it, unblinking. Within it, she could feel her blood flow swiftly, perfectly, in perfect harmony with the beating of her heart. And even as it slowed, she felt the throbbing pain of her left hand diminish, its hellish red glow dim, only for the white pinprick of light to grow wider, the eye broader.

She blinked. It stuttered.

And then winked out completely.

She continued to stare at her palm, once again perfectly normal. She stared right up until she heard the sound of metal boots two steps behind her.

Xhai had come without warcry or concern, letting her fist speak for her. And Asper was sent reeling, succumbing to its argument as she flew across the cavern, struck the wall, slid to the floor.

Xhai was upon her instantly, boot pressed to her throat, digging its sharp heel into the tender flesh of her neck. She gurgled, pounding at her foot with wonderful, useless, normal hands once more. Xhai narrowed her eyes, pressed a little harder.

“STOP!”

Sheraptus’s voice was barely a voice at all. More a suppurating gasp. His hand swept with no authority, but merely flailed.

“Not kill. . her,” he rasped. “Take away. . sent for me. .”

Xhai frowned, looking from him to her.

“NOW!”

He didn’t specify, Xhai didn’t ask. She reached down, seized Asper by her hair, and began to drag her away. The priestess didn’t care, her eyes fell to the girl hanging from the wall, whose blackened flesh still smoked, whose body still twitched.

Who still drew breath and whispered.

And through the pain and the confusion, Asper smiled as she was hauled into the darkness.

She was far away when Sheraptus made another noise, far too far to hear him chuckle to himself. Far too far to see him stare up, past the cavern roof, past the sky above, into heaven.

“Great suffering. . still alive. .” A contented smile came over his face. “You do listen.”