Seeker of Legends (Fate of Legends Book 2), page 33
“When Xerxes began to change,” she replied, “…I was terrified I would lose him completely. I left the caves, risked being caught by Tykus’s soldiers and killed, to find a way to help him. A noble family specializing in knowledge of the Deep had fled the Acropolis during the civil war; I went to get their help.”
Hunter’s guts squirmed.
“You mean Lady Camilla,” he guessed.
“You know her?”
“We’ve met,” he grumbled.
“Her father helped me,” she stated. “Told me that there was a chance I could stop Xerxes from changing…maybe even stop all of my people from changing…if I went to the Kingdom of the Deep.”
“Why go there?”
“The Kingdom of the Deep is the gateway to the Deep itself,” she answered. “Do you know what that is?”
“Isn’t that the place where the rules of the world go haywire?”
“In a way,” she conceded. “The Deep is…” She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “It does different things depending on how far you go. At the outer edges, it locks in the nature of things.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I went to the Deep to stop him from changing,” she explained. “The Lesser Deep had the ability to lock in his nature, so that nothing could change it.”
“Ah,” he replied. He glanced at Xerxes. “I’m guessing it didn’t work.”
“Not in the way I expected,” she agreed. “My plan was to bring back water from a stream at the Lesser Deep, so that he could drink it. As a Legend, I thought I had nothing to fear…that nothing could change me.”
“What happened?” he asked.
She hesitated, then stepped forward, only a couple of feet from him now.
“Vi told me you can absorb memories,” she stated. “Is this true?”
“I can.”
“How well?” she pressed.
“Pretty damn well,” he admitted. “They feel like my own memories,” he added. She nodded.
“Your brother has the same gift,” she revealed. “But much weaker than yours. That’s how he knew that you’d been taken by Vi after she killed one of my Ironclad in the Fringe.”
“The one that attacked me and my friends?”
“The one that tried to rescue you,” she corrected.
“Yeah, well it murdered my friend,” Hunter retorted. “Tore his damn arm off!”
“He didn’t know who you were at first,” she explained.
“Right,” he grumbled.
“The point is,” she continued, “…you can absorb memories. It’ll be easier for me to show you what happened to me if you experience it for yourself.” She gestured at him. “Take off your helmet.”
He did so, and she took another step forward, then leaned down until her forehead touched his.
* * *
The sun hung low over the horizon, its rays casting the scattered clouds overhead in a reddish-purple glow. Stars were already starting to peek through the sun’s dying light, barely visible in the heavens. The air was warm and uncomfortably moist, a slight breeze feeling marvelous against Neesha’s sweat-slicked skin as she hiked up a steep, rocky slope. Twisted trees dotted the landscape, a far cry from the dense forest behind her. A forest she’d been traveling through for days now, ever since passing the Kingdom of the Deep.
She stopped to catch her breath, bushing a few gray curls from her face. She leaned forward, hands on her knees, waiting for her breathing to slow.
Too old for this shit, she grumbled to herself.
She stood up straight, her backpack weighing heavily on her trapezius muscles. She tightened the strap around her waist, shifting the bulk of the weight to her hips. Glancing back the way she’d come, she saw the ground sloping downward to a rocky field extending for a good mile or two, merging with a vast forest beyond. And far, far in the distance, obscured by traces of dense fog, the black spires of the Kingdom of the Deep.
She sighed, facing forward and continuing her trek up the steep incline. Not so steep that she had to use her hands to climb it, but steep enough to make her ass and hammies ache. And her knees. She was in good shape – especially for a woman in her sixties – but not nearly as strong as she’d been before she’d come to this god-forsaken world. Time had not been kind to her…or to her son.
Neesha felt a familiar hopelessness come over her, and shoved it aside. There was no time for it; she’d mourned for Xerxes enough. A good son, with a nasty temper but loyal beyond measure.
And now he was changing. Changing like the rest of them.
Focus, she scolded herself.
She couldn’t change what had happened, but she could stop Xerxes from changing any further. He could still speak, thank god…not like most of the others. She’d had to teach them sign language, a skill she’d learned from having a deaf brother.
If she could make it to the Lesser Deep, she could save her son. He was changing more slowly, on account of his powerful will. But if she didn’t get back soon…
Neesha grimaced, moving faster up the rocky slope.
To her relief, the terrain leveled out a bit ahead. Bones littered the ground, some tiny, some quite large. None were recognizable. Trees – or what might have once been trees – grew in dense clusters amid the rocks. They were all wrong…some had trunks covered in scales instead of bark, while others had massive fleshy tumors sprouting from them. One tree – clearly quite dead – had a thick blanket of matted-down feathers all around it. Another had eyeballs winding up its trunk and branches.
She was getting close.
Neesha felt a tickling sensation on her neck and swatted at it. The bugs here were bizarre as well, and one of them had been particularly persistent, annoying her for the last few hours.
Better not be a god-damn spider, she thought darkly. She hated spiders.
The landscape ahead rose in a slight incline, a layer of dense fog hanging low over the ground, the ghostly shadows of deformed trees piercing through it.
She continued onward, the backpack’s straps chafing her shoulders after so many days of traveling. The bulk of its weight was in the flasks of water she’d brought. She’d saved one of them to take water from the Lesser Deep back to Xerxes. According to the researcher she’d spoken with weeks ago, the Lesser Deep – the shallows, as the locals called it – had the ability to stop Xerxes from changing any further. It could never change him back, but it might preserve what humanity her son still possessed. Thank god that his mind was strong; when she’d left him, he’d still been himself. A human mind trapped in the body of a beast. But it was only a matter of time before that too was lost.
Neesha walked through the fog, peering through it, what little of the landscape she could make out dull and gray. After a few minutes, the fog was less dense, allowing her to see a few dozen yards or so. Tall structures rose from the ground ahead and to her left, what appeared to be the ruins of an ancient stone building. A few columns standing some twenty feet high, and a partially preserved archway. Nature had overtaken the ruins, vines winding their way up the columns, and strange clumps of brownish flesh sticking to their bases.
Neesha stared at the ruins, the archaeologist in her tempted to veer off to study them. She resisted the urge, knowing that time was of the essence…and that her rations would only get her so far. Nothing here looked safe enough to forage, after all.
She passed the ruins, studying them as she did so. They could be religious structures, a temple of some kind. The denizens of Kingdom of the Deep worshipped the Deep as much as they feared it. To them, it was the source of life itself, the wellspring from which all creatures – except humans, of course – came. There were tales of people who had gone to the Deep, legends of strange and miraculous things that had befallen these travelers over the last few millennia. Most of course were utter nonsense, or changed beyond recognition by generations of re-tellings. But many tales had at least a kernel of truth to them.
Only the mad dared travel to the Deep, of course. And Legends. For only a Legend could enter the Deep without fear of being transformed by the powerful wills that lived within it.
Neesha continued onward, the ground sloping upward again, this time at a less steep incline. The soles of her boots made a crunch, crunch sound on the rocky debris underfoot, the fog rising to chest-level around her. The terrain leveled off, and she spotted more structures ahead, this time to her right. Huge, curved structures made of white stone, piercing through the low-lying fog. The closest ones were at least fifteen to twenty feet tall, lined up one after the other in a perfect row. The structures became gradually smaller, the last ones appearing to be as tall as Neesha herself.
Strange, she thought.
She kept walking, studying the huge structures as she went. After a few minutes, she passed the row of structures completely, and glanced back at them curiously.
I wonder what…
Then she saw it.
From this angle, it was suddenly all-too-clear what the structures were: bones. Massive vertebrae stacked in a long column, the backbone of a creature of unimaginable proportions. Larger than any dinosaur…larger than any creature could possibly be.
Neesha stared at that spinal column, a chill running through her. She found herself touching the hilt of the sword sheathed at her waist, and forced herself to relax. If there were creatures like this one, living ones, then she would have no chance at protecting herself against them.
She peered through the fog around her, wondering what other creatures might live in this ungodly place.
Keep moving.
After a few minutes, Neesha reached the base of a large hill. She started up it, then stopped as her foot sank into the hill itself, her boot plunging into the moss-covered rock with a muffled crunching sound. She withdrew her foot, then stared at the hole it’d made. At the ivory-colored bones laying exposed, piled on top of each other in a dense jumble.
This wasn’t a hill…it was a mass grave.
She hesitated, lifting her gaze to the top of the giant pile of bones. There had to be hundreds of thousands of dead bodies here, if not millions. The question was, what had killed them?
The Deep, she guessed. I must be close.
Or maybe she’d already arrived.
Neesha took a deep, steadying breath, then resumed walking up the hillside, her boots sinking all the way to her ankles with each step. She grimaced, making her way forward carefully, rising above the fog blanketing the base of the hill. Slowly, testing each next step as she went, she finally reached the top, the pile of bones giving way to a narrow, rocky ledge, a thick carpet of moss-like flora growing on it.
She froze.
Ahead of her, the earth gave way to a truly massive pit in the earth, easily several miles in diameter, extending thousands of feet downward. So far downward that the waning sunlight couldn’t reach the bottom.
Neesha stared into that massive abyss, feeling suddenly dizzy.
The ledge ahead of her dropped almost straight down, leading to another broad ledge some twenty feet below. More ledges protruded from the pit walls further down in a terraced fashion, a little like a rice field. These extended downward as far as she could see; some of them contained small pools of water, a few of which glowed a faint blue in the dying light. Others hosted trees and shrubs, or large vines that wound their way up the side of the pit, green tendrils clinging to the rocky walls. Small waterfalls flowed from holes in the side of the pit, cascading down into the pools below. They had to be underground aquifers draining into the pit, Neesha realized.
Now all she had to do was get to the water, fill up a flask, and get out.
She stepped up to the very edge of the pit, studying the terrain. The nearest ledge was twenty feet down…too far a drop for an old woman. If she broke a hip, she was screwed. She glanced to the right, spotting a large green vine – wider than her waist – climbing all the way up the pit wall, then draping over the ledge she was standing on, only a few yards away. A single blue stripe wound around the huge vine, glowing faintly in the darkness.
She followed the vine’s length downward with her eyes, spotting a terraced ledge some sixty feet below. It appeared to come from that ledge, roots embedded into the rock there and dipping into a glowing pool of water no bigger than a modest swimming pool.
If I can climb down that vine, she thought, I can get the water from the pool and go.
Neesha hesitated, scanning the pit for alternative routes. She would only get one chance to get this right after all…and the consequences for failure were far worse than her own death. After everything she’d gone through – after what she’d become – death was hardly something to be feared. At least if she died here, she’d never have to worry about what her body would do to anyone else. Too many had suffered from her horrifying power already.
There were no other routes she could see; the vine it was then.
She walked up to the vine, being careful to keep a few feet away from the edge of the pit. She reached the base of it, ducking below the branches spreading outward from it, then climbing onto it. The vine’s rough bark offered plenty of handholds and footholds, and she lowered herself into the pit carefully. Then she swore under her breath – she was still carrying her backpack. She climbed back up, taking her backpack off and retrieving an empty water flask from it, shoving it in her pants pocket. Then she returned to the vine, climbing downward.
Neesha lowered herself slowly, carefully testing each foothold and handhold, taking her time. She felt something crawling on the back of her neck – another damn bug – and swatted at it.
Better not be a goddamn spider, she thought darkly. Or I swear I’ll jump off this damn vine just to kill it.
A sudden breeze whipped around her, and she stopped, gripping the vine tightly, waiting for it to pass. Then she continued downward, eventually reaching the bottom. She let go of the vine, surveying her surroundings. She was standing on a small, moss-covered ledge twenty feet above a glowing blue pool. The narrow ledge sloped downward to her left, leading to a carpet of moss-covered rock at the edges of the pool. The moss closest to the pool glowed blue, just like the water and the glowing stripe on the vine.
It was a straight drop to the pool ahead; too steep to climb down. It was hard to guess how deep the pool was…but might not be safe enough to just jump into. Besides, she needed to have a way back up to the ledge she was standing on after she got a sample of that water.
That meant the only way down was to follow the narrow ledge sloping down to the left. But it looked awfully slippery.
“I am too damn old for this shit,” she grumbled.
She sighed, steadying herself with one hand on the pit wall, then stepping down the steep slope. Her foot didn’t slip…so far, so good. She took another step down, then another. Then her foot slipped; she cursed, catching herself before she fell.
Gonna be real fun getting back up.
Neesha steadied herself, then took another step…and her foot slipped again, sliding to the right. She lurched to the left, slamming her temple on the rock wall, then falling onto her left hip.
A loud snap echoed through the pit.
She screamed, feeling herself sliding off the narrow ledge, agony shooting through her shattered hip. Her legs dangled off the edge, hanging over the pond some fifteen feet below…and threatening to pull her over the edge. Neesha dug her fingers into the slick rock, trying to stop herself from sliding off, but it was too slippery.
She felt herself slide off, felt herself falling. There was a bright blue light, and then warm water engulfed her.
Neesha’s breath locked in her throat as she plunged deeper into the water. She reached her arms up, raking downward with her hands, trying to claw her way up through the water. But without her legs – and with her clothes weighing her down – she continued to sink. She felt her right foot hit something hard, and realized she’d hit the bottom of the pool. She pushed off it, using the momentum to swim up toward the surface, ignoring the pain in her left hip as she did so.
Neesha’s head burst through the surface of the pool, and she gasped for air, swimming toward the nearest edge of the pool. Her left leg dangled uselessly beneath her, every stroke bringing a new wave of pain. She was only a few feet away now, but her clothes weighed heavily on her, her boots threatening to pull her under.
Come on…
She lunged at the shore, reaching out with one hand and grabbing the mossy stone ledge. Her fingers slipped off the slick glowing moss, and she gasped, her head plunging beneath the water. She gathered herself again, lunging outward, and this time she managed to grip the ledge, pulling herself to it and resting her arms atop it.
Neesha stayed there, floating in the water, her breath coming in short gasps, her hip on fire.
Okay.
She closed her eyes, forcing herself to slow her breathing.
Focus.
And then her arms began to burn.
Her eyes snapped open, and she jerked her arms from the ledge, sinking immediately into the water. She reached out, clutching the ledge with both hands, feeling burning in her forearms…and her fingertips. She pulled her head out of the water, staring at her arms.
The skin on the front of her forearms was rising up, as if new veins were growing there, engorged with blood.
The pain intensified, and she cried out, clinging to the ledge even as her hands felt as if they were on fire. It took every bit of willpower for her to hold on; she saw the vein-like bulges extend down her arms, all the way to her hands. They looked blue in the light from the glowing pool.
No, they were glowing blue.
She stared at her arms incredulously, feeling the burning intensify. It crawled up her shoulders to the sides of her neck, then to her scalp.
Oh god oh god…
She gasped, gritting her teeth against the pain. It shot down her spine then, spreading to her legs, then her feet. Pain far worse than her shattered hip. Pain beyond anything she had ever suffered.
Neesha felt her grip on the ledge slipping, and lunged forward, resting her arms on the rocky ledge, holding on for dear life. She watched as the vein-like structures on her hands and arms glowed brighter blue, as bright now as the water itself, and the moss on the ledge.
