A Monster Inside, page 36
part #1 of Undying Prince Series
Erik, I’m sorry. I tried.
Floating with her back facing up and her eyes shut, Hanna could still see the pool. Green no longer seemed broad enough to define it, much less describe it. There was no word for it, now, but green was the closest color by comparison. It welcomed her, enveloping her in the softest of embraces, fluttering like dove feathers. A promise lay within it as though it were enticing the last breath out of her chest. She did not understand why she was unafraid. Death never appeared so beautiful.
Mother, Father, I’m coming. Wait for me.
Something yanked at her, dragging her away from the warmth that encompassed her. No! She fought against it, unable to move, helplessly looking as the vivid color that stood beyond knowing dimmed. The pounding of ten thousand drums roared in her eardrums; she wanted to shriek, but her voice was lost to her. Everything collapsed in on itself in the space of an eye blink, to a pinpoint, to darkness. Wind howled, rushing past her wet cheeks as she was lifted into the air and was sent tumbling across the ground.
Coughing loudly, studying the dirt before her face, Hanna froze. A flicker of movement caught her attention from the corner of her eye. Heart thumping, afraid to look, she turned slowly and stifled the scream that tried to escape past her lips. A large Dökk, clothed in a tattered red cloak, loomed above her with a mocking smile. Like a wild animal blinded by the glare of torchlight, she stiffened.
“You’re afraid.” The red-cloaked Dökk sniffed the air through the two slits below its eyes. “I can smell it spewing from you.”
Hanna closed her eyes. Breathe. Don’t allow fear to control you. She closed her trembling hands into fists. The concatenation of events that led to her current circumstances flashed through her mind like overripe fruit tumbling down a staircase. Ypse! If you’re still alive, I promise you, I will make you pay for this!
“How better the earth will be when you and all your kind lie broken and dead,” the cloaked Gray Skin said.
Hanna opened her eyes and forced herself to appear calm. “If I’ve offended you, I apologize. I’m here by accident, not design.” Even as she spoke, a little voice whispered in the back of her head, Pretty words won’t be enough to save you, child. Her mother’s voice or she imagined it so.
“Your existence offends me, human.” The Dökk kneeled beside Hanna and ran a cold knuckle along her cheek. “Oh, how you will suffer at our hand.”
Hanna turned her head slowly, and a tear tracked its way down her face. The day had already been a difficult one. Yet it seemed like her captivity among these savages would be an object lesson in torment. The cloaked monstrosity scooped the tear into its mouth with a finger, revealing yellow-stained, fused teeth. Tremors shook her body. The creature’s large eyes were pools of pure darkness that drove terror deep into her pounding heart.
Two other Gray Skins pulled Hanna to her feet and dragged her between them, following behind their red-cloaked brethren. Dökk, much shorter than the ones that held her, watched her from beside the green ponds. She stumbled over a rock and righted herself.
“Where are you taking me?” Hanna asked, surprised by how frail her voice sounded to her own ears. I’m stronger than this. Firmer. “Answer me.”
“The Great Mrethren wishes to speak to you,” the cloaked Dökk said. “Now be quiet. The sound of your frantic heartbeat is the only noise I want to hear from you.”
“Your name, do you have a name? Mine is Hanna Ito. I—”
The cloaked Dökk whirled on Hanna, its dark eyes narrowing. Her only path to survival lay in forming a relationship with her captors. It had become so blindingly self-evident that it was impossible for her to see any other way. Now staring up at the alien face towering over her, she understood she had been mistaken. Her heart rose into her throat, making it difficult to moisten her dry mouth.
“Call me Saxi if you must call me anything at all,” the cloaked Dökk said. A second later, he backhanded Hanna across the face.
Pain flared, red and hot, and the world rang like a struck gong. Hanna’s legs turned into wet bread; the only thing that kept her on her feet were the ruthless hands holding her in place. Blinking away tears, she straightened, tasting blood in her mouth.
Saxi calmly observed her. “I won’t warn you again.” His voice was emotionless, distant, and as cold as the heart of winter.
Hanna decided there and then that she would kill Saxi. She hated nothing so much as being beaten. As a child, even her tutors had known better than to raise a hand to her—or soon learned the reason why. Hands closing into fists, she dropped her gaze, doing her best to appear meek. Men attacked from the front, but women fought from the shadows. That was a lesson her mother had hammered into her head.
Saxi turned, and his tattered cloak swooshed behind him as he walked down the hard-packed dirt road and into a large tunnel. Hanna was pulled along by the two Dökk that stood on either side of her.
The tunnel descended and wound through the bowels of the earth, where faint designs were etched into the walls, illuminated by glowing gems embedded every few meters in the ceiling. The fear was back again, wrapping itself tighter and tighter around Hanna’s heart. It pulsed in tune with her sense of panic, spreading ice into her limbs with every beat. Without making a sound, she traveled down endless tunnels, past intersections where unknown monstrosities watched her from the shadows. Her head spiraled, her stomach flipped, and she swayed on her feet as she took every step. There was no concern or pity from her jailors. She either walked or got dragged along.
Saxi spun around and Hanna almost ran into him. “You look ill. Are all humans this useless?”
“No, they’re worse,” she told him, and the lie came easily to her. Looking past him, she spoke in a less arrogant tone. “I assume this is the place.”
Saxi turned back around without responding and entered a cavern where two Dökk twice his size with forearms like a gorilla’s and potbellies stood guard. She followed him, avoiding eye contact with the two giant Gray Skins. They all did.
Hanna had barely let him out of her sight when the scent of damp earth pulled her eyes forward. Strange insects with the proportions of a human skull floated through the air; their abdominal segments shone like lanterns, bathing the cavern floor in silver illumination. Yet what held her focus was something different entirely. A massive maggot-like monstrosity sat at the heart of the chamber, peering at Hanna with the face of an old woman. The creature's body was the size of a small mountain, swollen in perpetual pregnancy, attended by hundreds of the smaller Dökk with bump-like antennae.
Hanna stopped, mouth agape, eyes wide. The Great Mrethren. The Gray Skins at her flank pulled her onward.
A female Dökk with jet black hair and eight appendages like spider legs sprouting from her back approached them. Each appendage was comprised of seven segments, ending in three claws. She moved with a level of self-assurance that spoke of a lifetime of evoking absolute obedience.
“Mrethren Örk,” Saxi said to the female Gray Skin with the slightest nod of his head.
Örk flashed her fused teeth in what some might have thought was a smile. But Hanna recognized it as a sign of irritation. It seemed that Hanna was not the only one who had an ax to grind against Saxi.
“Bring her closer.” The Great Mrethren’s voice boomed with the same of sense of ancientness that permeated its colossal form.
Örk guided them closer to the mound of flesh that was the Great Mrethren. Small Dökk scurried around carrying large, mucus-covered eggs on their backs, transporting them to distant tunnels. Through the transparent casing of the eggs, tiny developing embryos could be seen floating inside.
Hanna peered up at a gray face, marked with dark age spots larger than her entire body. “Your Highness.” She curtsied with all the dignity she could muster. “My name is Hanna Ito, and it’s my pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
The Great Mrethren said nothing. It studied Hanna, its large, black eyes weighing and measuring. An oppressive hatred radiated out from its gaze.
“Forgive me.” Hanna wet her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. “I didn’t enter your domain by choice. If my presence offends you, please allow me to leave, and I’ll never come back. You have my word on it.”
“What is the word of a human to me?” the Great Mrethren asked. She lowered her head until it was inches from Hanna’s own. “Tell me about the Great Master you harbor above. I can feel him creeping at the edge of my awareness, trying to subvert my will. He stole from me! This is not allowed. I will not be robbed. I will not submit to his will. Never again will I submit! The age of the Great Masters has passed, never to return.”
“I don’t. . . .” Hanna shook her head with sudden understanding. “By Great Master do you mean a Sorcerer?”
The Great Mrethren pulled away from Hanna, looking lost in remembrance. “Your kind called them this, but to us, they were always the Great Masters. Cruel. Insane. Beautiful.”
“Then I know the one you seek. His name is Ypse, a slave. Or he was. He is the reason why I now stand here; he used your Vatn Björns to free himself from captivity and threw me into the hole that they had dug.”
“No matter, one way or another he will die today,” the Great Mrethren said. “His sacrilege will no longer be tolerated.”
From the corner of her eye, Hanna noticed Mrethren Örk stimulating Saxi and three other Dökk’s sexual organs with her spider-like appendages while her arms remained at her side. Like Saxi and his red cloak, the three Gray Skins wore a piece of ornamentation that separated them from the rest of their brethren. Their faces were twisted in wicked looks of arousal.
“Magnificent, aren’t they?” the Great Mrethren asked.
Hanna trembled. “What do you mean to do with me?”
“The last time our two species went to war, we lost. They are our answer to your Lightbenders and Cultivators; they are called the Chosen, the result of hundreds of years of selective breeding. When next we cross the Rin Mountains, we mean to scour the last of your kind from the surface of the earth.”
“You hate us that much?” Hanna gasped.
“Hate? What do you know of hate? Every day, I’m raped over a thousand times, and then I’m forced to give birth to a new generation of my future rapists. In every other species, intercourse is an act of pleasure—but mine. My creators thought it amusing to watch me suffer. Hate does not begin to describe the animosity I have for your kind! My every breath is filled with dreams of your gruesome end.”
Saxi approached Hanna with his large, gray, erect member swinging in between his legs. She closed her eyes, but the image was seared into her mind. This can’t be happening! Her eyes snapped open, and tears made the grinning face of the Great Mrethren blur in her vision. “I’ll do anything you want. Just spare me this indignity. I beg you.”
“No.” The finality in the word seemed to make the world wobble.
The world wobbled as Saxi’s hot breath puffed at the side of Hanna’s neck. It took everything she had not to scream. If she still had her knife, she would have already plunged it into her own heart. Death was preferable to being violated by theses animals.
“If you do this, you’ll regret it. I promise you!” Hanna shouted. “My husband will come for me, and when he does, remember this moment and know you’re about to die. All of you!” She spun and threw a punch at Saxi’s throat.
Hanna was too short to reach Saxi’s head, but even had she been taller, she would have still chosen his throat. A well-placed blow to the esophagus could kill, even if thrown by a woman. Pleasure bloomed in her chest at the feel of her knuckles slamming into Saxi’s flesh, but she did not allow herself to dwell on it, and immediately dropped to her knees. She grabbed Saxi’s penis and bit down. Blood poured into her mouth, salty and overflowing.
Saxi howled and ripped Hanna away, tossing her aside. A thick jet of scarlet and chunk of gray flesh followed her tumble to the ground. Hanna rolled in the dirt and then came to a stop, looking back to see Saxi on his knees, clutching his bloody phallus. He looked from her to the piece of raw meat on the floor, eyes incredulous, gray face flushed. She wiped her mouth with the back of her arm and sent him a mocking smile.
The Great Mrethren laughed, a sound like rolling boulders.
Chapter 44
Erik howled, a dwindling sound of rage that echoed through the cavern as his dragon flesh bubbled and warped, shrinking in size with each passing moment until he collapsed to his knees, once again in human form. Bruised lungs expanded with ragged breaths, and arms shook while sweat dampened the back of his neck. Too close. That had been too close. He had almost lost himself to the bottomless pit of hunger. If not for Patrick . . . if not for. . . .
Erik hauled himself to his feet and surveyed the destruction he had wrought with a sense of awe twisting the pit of his stomach. Deep grooves scarred the land, joining pools of green into lakes of fire. Dead Dökk sat in piles like wheat at harvest, next to infernos that once had been Vatn Björns. One such eight-legged beast lay prone in front of him, yet instead of flames, monstrous teeth had half-devoured its carcass. The enticing aroma of cooked and uncooked meat wafted against him. He grunted in disgust, sickened by the need that surged through him.
“How long,” he asked the voices in his head. “How long did I lose control?” Time seemed a patchwork of mismatched moments. His descent into madness might have lasted an instant or a lifetime.
Long enough, Patrick said, the echoes of terror coiled serpent-like in the pitch and boom of his voice. Long enough.
Erik allowed the words to roll through him—long enough—understanding what the Lightbender meant. To submit even for an instant, to lose control to the treacherous Hunger was to court destruction, to exist without knowing anything but appetite. That, in itself, was a thing worse than death, no matter the time frame.
He began to skulk more than stalk from cadaver to cadaver, putting more distance between himself and the lake of fire to his left. Soon more horrors would come, this he knew as surely as he knew his own name. Yet for now the ungrounded chamber was void of any external threat. His only enemy lay within. He no longer trusted himself in the Celestial Dragon’s form, and that deprived him of his most powerful weapon at the time he needed it most.
Erik sat cross-legged on a patch of earth unsoiled by devastation or rancid fluids, fingering the swords at his side. Possible outcomes spun before him. Most likely, the Dökk with the strange abilities would come next, and while he had fought them and won before, he had never faced more than one at a time. What if five or ten came at him at once? What would he do then? Doubt gnawed at him.
If only I could snare more prana. Erik almost did just that, but stopped himself at the last moment, knowing how dangerous it would be to try so soon.
Let them all come! Asbjörn snickered, a dark sound that brought to mind a dot of inky blackness, spreading out to consume a piece of white parchment. We are the thing that hungers. All they can do is burn in our presence. Burn! Burn! Softer. Burn. His voice sank into the dark depths with a heartbreaking sob.
Erik stilled the quivering of his hand and listened to the vibration of the terrain. Not an earthquake, but untold multitudes of running feet caused the land to tremble, he knew. Here they come, he thought with more weariness than dread.
At the head of a column of thousands, a red-cloaked Dökk charged out of the tunnel directly in front of Erik. Blood dripped down the monster’s thigh from its animal skin loincloth.
Saxi! Patrick growled in recollection.
Erik climbed to his feet. It was strange the way time bent the course of a man’s life into spirals, if not circles. He’s the one who took you prisoner, the one I fought beneath Hjörtur’s shadow?
Patrick flared like an overfed furnace. Yes. Don’t you recognize his stupid cloak? His voice trembled with suppressed emotion. Kill him. You must kill him.
With a shallow breath, Erik glanced around himself. Gray Skins poured out of tunnels in an endless tide, led by Dökk like Saxi who wore a piece of ornamentation that marked them as special. Yet, there were only three of them other than Saxi. Erik breathed a sigh of relief. Four he might just be able to manage. Plus, due to the green pools and the war-ravaged landscape, they would not be able to surround him. He looked up and saw Vatn Björns scrambling out of the openings near the ceiling.
EAT!
The proclamation opened a festering need that hollowed Erik with the remembrance of what he had almost become. He ground his teeth and tasted his own blood. He used the spike of pain to focus his mind. No, I don’t need your help, he told the Celestial Dragon with an air of finality.
Eyes glowing with hatred, Erik pierced his enemies with his stare. “I’ve come for my wife!” His voiced echoed, and the charging mass of Gray Skins in front of him faltered, almost as one, then stilled. He spoke to all of them, but it was only Saxi whom he watched. The creature’s black eyes never blinked, and Patrick raged inside him all the while. “Bring her to me, and you might yet live!”
“Who are you to make demands of us, human?” Saxi jabbed his bone spear into the dirt at his feet with a casual brutality that would have made the hackles rise on a lesser man.
Erik dropped his gaze in thought, then rose it once again to meet Saxi’s dark eyes. He heard movement behind him, the sound of thousands of approaching Dökk. “Me? I’m Prince Erik Ito, the Devourer of Worlds.”
Saxi let loose a bark of guttural laughter, and his spear floated into the air, seemingly under its own authority, turning until it pointed at Erik. Saxi flicked his hand, and the weapon bolted forward, eating up the interval between the two opponents in an instant. Without thought, Erik’s longsword appeared in his hand, slashing out in an arc. The blade met the spear, and bone shattered into dust and fragments.
Behind you! Patrick yelled.
The air popped and a gust of wind rustled the nape of Erik’s neck. Frantically, he spun around, dropping to his knees with his blade outstretched, trying his best to evade the spear advancing toward him. Snarling, growling, a Dökk with a necklace made of animal bones stood at the other end of the weapon, appearing behind Erik as if by magic. Erik’s hair was sent dancing once again, this time by the spear that passed inches above his head, but he spared it no mind, too busy hewing his longsword through the Dökk’s thick thigh. Scarlet ribbons squirted, and the necklaced Gray Skin tumbled back, screeching.
