The Light of All That Falls, page 20
The heavy stone made a grinding sound that echoed painfully through the empty structures around him. Davian winced at the noise, pausing and lifting his head, scanning the wide pathway for any sign that he had been heard. There was nothing.
He moved to begin pulling again, and then froze.
A sound—definitely not from him. A wet, regular crunching.
Nearby, too.
Davian straightened, turning to face in the direction of the noise. Leaving his arms strengthened, he crept forward farther into the shadows of the hollowed-out building, sidling up to a window that looked down into the adjoining alleyway.
The dar’gaithin was easily visible in the red moonlight. It was bent double over something, its back to Davian and body blocking his view, grotesquely muscled arms tearing at whatever was on the ground.
Then it abruptly paused, its serpentine head flicking up and swiveling to stare around, revealing what it had been hunched over.
Davian bit back a gasp.
The mangled remains of what was clearly another dar’gaithin lay in a raw pile in the middle of the street, scales torn off and flesh shredded. Black blood surrounded it in a pool, as well as dripped from the hands and face of the dar’gaithin that was now moving, as if somehow sensing Davian’s horror.
The dar’gaithin slithered off to the side, out of Davian’s sight. Its motions were erratic, though. As if it was only sporadically remembering how to move.
Davian held his breath until he could no longer hear the sound of the dar’gaithin’s scales against the stone of the street, shuddering to himself as he peered again at the mangled corpse. They ate one another? That felt wrong, even for Banes. But there was no denying what he’d just seen.
He made his way back over to the piece of rubble he’d been moving, hesitant to make more noise but painfully aware of his need for a weapon now. The stone rasped over the ground as he dragged it, but thankfully it was in place quickly. He tore a small bit of cloth from his shirt and then leaped atop his makeshift step, balancing precariously and reaching up to wipe the black blood from the revealed shaft. Once that was done, he strengthened himself with Essence. Braced to pull.
There was a dark blur from the corner of his eye, and then he was being smashed to the ground by a heavy, black, thrashing force, his ribs snapping with an audible crack.
He croaked a cry as the new dar’gaithin’s bloodied maw opened and snapped at him several times in quick succession, only his Essence-enhanced arms saving him from having his face torn off by jagged teeth. He summoned more energy and desperately pushed, upward and away; the snakelike Bane flailed as it flew through the air, crashing hard into the wall opposite and then to the floor in a cloud of dust.
Davian gasped as he flooded Essence to his caved-in chest, the bones rapidly joining, his collapsed lungs expanding and filling with air once again. From the corner of his eye he could see by its rapidly growing shadow that the dar’gaithin had barely been dazed. He rolled and scrambled to his feet.
“Just wait,” he said to the creature, holding out his hands to show that he had no weapon. “I know you can talk. We can—”
The slavering dar’gaithin leaped at him, jaws snapping together with maniacal fury as it tried to bite him yet again.
Davian dove to the side, eyes wide, panting as he tried to recover. There was something terribly wrong with this creature; even the way it looked at him was different from that of the other dar’gaithin Davian had come across. Less intelligent and more… crazed. It was hard to tell in the dim red light, but Davian thought that its eyes were bloodshot, too.
The creature came again; Davian moved more smoothly this time, allowing it to narrowly miss him and instead smash itself into the wall with a thundering crash of broken stone. He quickly maneuvered himself out toward the open path, wishing desperately that he were able to step outside of time.
Even so, when the dar’gaithin attacked for a third time, Davian was ready.
He dashed to the side, bracing himself atop the stone he had placed earlier and leaping, his Essence-enhanced reflexes and strength allowing him to tear the stone spear free from the skewered dar’gaithin on the wall. He kept his momentum and spun in midair, hanging.
He hurled the spear as hard as he could.
He missed.
The unbalanced stone sheared off the scales of the dar’gaithin’s cheek with a shower of sparks; the creature flinched away, shocked, as the weapon crashed to the ground behind it. Davian cursed but managed to land smoothly, crouching and sliding backward through the rubble as he came to a halt.
He tapped his Reserve again as the dar’gaithin slithered forward, lightning fast, recovered from Davian’s failed attack. He fumbled with the unrefined power of Essence as the creature closed on him, then desperately snaked out a tendril. Wrapped it around the cleaned part of the spear and pulled.
The rough weapon spun wildly toward him, red in the moonlight where flecks of black blood didn’t spray from it. Davian snatched it from the air, ignoring the burning in his hands as he touched the dark substance on it, putting all his weight behind it and thrusting hard just as the oncoming creature reached him.
The unwieldy weapon frustrated him again as it smashed slightly upward of where he was aiming, scraping across the dar’gaithin’s eye and into its forehead, jagged stone tearing into his hands at the shivering impact. The dar’gaithin floundered back, stunned by the blow, its left eye a mess of black blood. It steadied, and for a heartbeat Davian thought it was simply going to rush at him again, injured or not.
Then, with another feral hiss, it slithered off into the surrounding ruins.
Davian just stood there panting, every nerve taut as he watched for the creature’s return, hands shaking. He finally registered the pain in them; he held one up, stomach churning to see rotting flesh and suppurating ulcers forming where the globules of black blood had smeared across his skin. He gritted his teeth, reluctantly setting his spear within easy reach and then swiftly cleaning his hands with a torn strip of his shirt, relieved to see the unpleasant-looking damage rapidly fading as he forced more Essence to the injury. Within a minute, both hands were healed.
Once the process was complete, he checked his Reserve. Still fairly close to full—but noticeably emptier than it had been a half hour earlier.
As if to underscore his concern, there was a clattering from farther down the walkway.
Davian drew back into the shadows and then glanced around, spotting nearby stairs leading upward, still in good condition. If he wanted to get a good look at whatever else might have been drawn by the disturbance, he would be better served moving to higher ground.
He used another strip of cloth to collect and then clean the rest of his makeshift spear as he hurried quietly upward, traversing three winding flights before emerging onto an open, flat roof. He eyed the stone beneath his feet—it seemed solid enough, despite the missing wall below—and then lay on his stomach, worming forward until he was at the edge overlooking the elevated pathway.
All was still. No people, no dar’gaithin.
Davian frowned, staying motionless, scanning the area below but not spotting anything of note. And yet, he had heard a sound.
He let his vision drift; this was one of the taller buildings in the area, giving him his first good view of the city. As he’d suspected, it was enormous: the close-set buildings stretched away well into the distance, though even from here he could see that damage was prevalent everywhere. Half of the buildings were jagged outlines, their facades crumbled away; in other places he could see piles of rubble where entire structures had collapsed.
His brow furrowed as he focused on a point in the distance, perhaps a mile away. A sharp yellow light shone upward in a long line, splitting the entire city in half, reflecting off the tops of the buildings and tinting the slightly dusty air more strongly than the red moon. Davian peered along the line curiously, but there were too many things in the way. He couldn’t see the source of the illumination.
Then he spotted the figure.
He squinted. It was sitting on a rooftop near the strange golden light, silhouetted against it. He wouldn’t have seen it, or perhaps would have mistaken it for a statue, had he not caught it shifting positions. It was staring down into the light, Davian thought, though he was far enough away that it was hard to tell.
It was human, though. The more he watched, the more confident of that Davian became.
He fixed the direction in his mind and then scrambled back from the edge of the roof.
There was still no sign of danger when he reached the walkway again, thankfully; whatever he had heard before must have passed by. He didn’t waste time, moving through tunnels, up and down stairs, and along paths and rooftops as quickly as caution would allow. He had no idea whether the person he’d seen would be friendly, but this place was too strange, too unsettling for him to keep enduring it without at least trying to make contact with someone.
He made good time, even if for the entire journey it felt as though there were hundreds of eyes peering at him from every red-tinged shadow. He moved at a slow, crouching run where he could, carefully skirting or climbing the sharpest rises when rubble meant that there was no other way forward. Once one of the darkest shadows underfoot proved to be a deep hole into which he very nearly stumbled, losing his spear to its depths during his desperate attempt to recover his balance. After that, he used a sliver of Essence wherever the red light from above was blocked.
The light he had spotted splitting the city seemed to grow in intensity as he drew near, coloring the air a sharp gold above the buildings up ahead. He glanced at it occasionally, bemused by what it could possibly be.
He rounded another corner; only a single line of structures separated him from where the light was originating now, intense illumination filtering through jagged holes in the nearby buildings. Davian hadn’t spotted the figure again since setting out, but he was confident that he had managed to keep a relatively straight line toward where it had been.
He picked his way around the side of a building, then slowed to a shocked halt as he finally took in the source of the light.
Perhaps twenty feet away from where he stood, the ground ahead just… vanished.
Bright-yellow light poured upward from a massive rupture, a gaping wound in the stone that ran from left to right for as far as he could see. Davian couldn’t begin to guess how deep it might go but it was certainly wide, encompassing where at least two rows of buildings would have been—fifty feet, perhaps more. Hundreds of structures on the other side had been sheared completely in half, and Davian could only assume that this side would look much the same. As he crept closer, a barely audible hum tugged at his ears, seemingly emanating from the depths.
He swallowed. There was no way of crossing the gap, as far as he could tell. Where the earth had been rent the stone itself was glowing, as if it had somehow been infused with pure energy.
Davian still didn’t think it was the light of Essence, though. This was somehow dirtier than the illumination that would have provided: the yellow was hazy, smudged, as if saturated with greasy smoke.
He rubbed absently at his ears as he finally tore his gaze away from the sight, scanning the rooftops for any sign of the figure he’d seen perching there earlier.
There was nobody up above, but it didn’t take long to spot whom he was looking for.
The man—it was a man, Davian could see now—had moved; he was seated at the very edge of this side of the chasm, the zigzagging lip angling him toward Davian. His legs cast strange shadows in the air as they dangled, the yellow light highlighting his narrow features. For a moment he looked almost familiar.
Davian frowned, studying the streaks glistening on the man’s unshaven cheeks. Bloodshot eyes gazed blankly down into the light, though the glare must have been painful. Strands of black, unkempt curly hair hung limply around the stranger’s face, which bore a vicious bruise just beneath the left eye.
Most likely a prisoner, then. Certainly not someone who looked as if he would pose a threat.
He hesitated, then stepped out of the shadows and politely cleared his throat.
The man gazing down into the light started violently, twisting without taking into account where he was and then scrabbling backward desperately as the motion almost sent him sliding over the edge. He ended with an ungainly half roll, half crawl away from the chasm, finishing a few feet away from Davian, who suddenly felt tempted to pretend he hadn’t been watching.
“Sorry,” he said, sheepish as he walked over and leaned down, extending his hand.
The man glared up at him. He was older than Davian—perhaps in his early thirties—and now that he was no longer staring into the golden light, his sharp ice-blue eyes were filled with a mixture of embarrassment and anger. He didn’t take the proffered help.
“El take it,” he muttered, shifting slightly back from Davian again before getting gingerly to his feet on his own. “There’s not supposed to be anyone…” He trailed off, peering at Davian. “Why are you out here?” He spoke oddly—the language was Andarran, but the accent was hard to place, enunciated more carefully and precisely than Davian was accustomed to hearing.
Before Davian could answer, the man let out a groan and crumpled to his knees, face twisting. Davian took a couple of uncertain steps forward.
“What’s wrong? Are you…”
He trailed off.
There was something on the man’s arms. The sleeves of his tattered shirt were rolled up, and each arm looked as though it were encased in shadow—except that this shadow was glistening, liquid as it writhed from wrist to shoulder.
The man followed Davian’s gaze, his anger dissipating into resignation.
“So. Now you know why I am out here,” he said weakly, apparently assuming that Davian would recognize whatever was afflicting him. “But that does not explain your presence.” He squinted. “I don’t recognize you. Are you even from Isstharis’s section? Who are you?”
Davian shook his head dazedly. “I’m Davian. I only just arrived.”
The stranger stared in disbelief and then issued a short, bitter laugh.
“I know the name. You’re the one they were looking for. You’re supposed to be…” He trailed off, looking even more perplexed. “What do you mean, ‘only just arrived’?”
Davian was saved from answering by the man’s sudden, staggering weave to the side, followed quickly by his eyes rolling back into his head. The wiry man collapsed to the hard stone ground before Davian could jump forward to catch him.
Davian hurried closer to the stranger, concerned but fairly certain that he shouldn’t risk touching the dark, shiny mass covering his arms. It wasn’t the same as the dar’gaithin blood from earlier—in fact, in a lot of ways it looked worse. It seemed to… crawl along the skin as if alive, rippling, caressing it in a most unsettling manner.
He screwed up his face. Whatever it was, it was clearly hurting the man. Killing him, probably, judging by his waxy skin and labored breathing.
He knelt down and stretched out to touch the stranger’s forehead, then snatched his hand away as the substance reacted to Davian’s presence, pulling upward like inverted drops of tar toward him. It didn’t surrender its grip on its current victim’s flesh, though; after letting his thumping heart ease, Davian cautiously reached out again, keeping a wary eye on the unsettling, waving tendrils grasping in his direction.
He swallowed, then tapped his Reserve and began funneling Essence into the man.
At first nothing happened, the glistening mass somehow resisting the flow, forcing Davian’s healing energy away from where it was attacking. Davian almost flinched back as he felt the depth of the injury to the man’s flesh, tiny threads of darkness burrowing down into muscle and bone, sucking out life and leaving rot and decay in its place. It wasn’t just on the stranger’s arms, but beneath his shirt, too—across his chest, almost down to his stomach.
Davian gritted his teeth and pushed more Essence into the man’s body, flooding it with energy. Like a dam bursting, the black substance suddenly seemed to break, seeping away from the surface, its deep hooks dissolving as the damaged areas finally began to restore themselves. Color returned to the man’s cheeks, and his breathing immediately eased to a more regular, relaxed rhythm.
Davian exhaled and sat back, relieved his efforts had made a difference but more than a little concerned about how much of his own Essence he had just expended. His Reserve was noticeably lower once again, and he had been here less than a single night.
He looked around, then picked up the still-unconscious man and half carried, half dragged him away from the chasm’s edge, propping him up against a nearby wall. The stranger continued to breathe steadily, not stirring. It might be some time before he woke.
Davian did his best to ensure the man was comfortably situated, then ventured again over to where the yellow light was spilling upward. It wasn’t as blinding as it had first appeared, and to his surprise he was able to see a fair distance into the depths without difficulty.
He stared downward for some time, studying the abyss.
The split in the earth ran as deep as he could see. Some of the light was emanating from the sides of the chasm; the broken stone surfaces were coated in golden luminescence, though that light was broken by dark holes—tunnels, judging from their regular size and shape, that had been sliced in two by whatever cataclysm had happened here.
Davian tested the anchoring of a nearby piece of stone and then used it to lean slightly, peering over the edge. The abyss stretched downward, ultimately disappearing into a haze of burning yellow. The constant, low, vibrating hum seemed to be coming from the depths, noticeably louder when his head was poked out over the edge.
He shivered, pulling back, rubbing spots from his eyes. What was this place?
The clattering of loose stone against stone caught his ear; he spun, peering in the direction from which it had come. Down the line of the chasm, somewhere behind a huge chunk of broken wall, the sound came again.
