As she takes in her surroundings, Shipwright’s gasp echoes off the slick walls and fades into the darkness. Even the dead at her back fall quiet, subsiding into snapping and growling like cowed dogs.
Shroudweaver glances nervously behind them, but Skinpainter’s attention is focused on the black spike suspended above. The stalactite still not fully sealed after twenty long years, marred by a jagged crack along a third of its length. They half imagine they catch a glimpse of white bone, the gleam of a madly rolling eye.
The three of them take a few nervous steps forwards, cautious as cats, sand crunching softly beneath their boots, as the pale shells of things that have never seen light are slowly ground into dust.
‘All of this down here,’ Shipwright murmurs, her voice hushed with awe. ‘I never knew.’ She shoots a glance at Shroudweaver. ‘You never told me.’
In reply, Shroudweaver raises a cautionary finger to his lips, and points.
There’s something in front of them, a heap of bodies on the shore beneath the spire, softly twitching. Skinpainter’s stomach lurches. They don’t need to wonder what happened to the guards any more.
They start forwards, then slide to a halt as the bodies are pushed aside from within, sloughed off as a larger figure hauls itself atop the pile.
Its ravaged, ripped back is turned to them, but even in the half-light of the lake cave, Skinpainter knows that shape, the broad shoulders, the salted hair. Every tattoo on their shifting muscles was painted by Skinpainter’s own hand. Kinghammer.
Every one of those tattoos now broken and torn, the body beneath heaving in huge, jagged breaths.
Skinpainter curses under their breath and glances over their shoulder at Shroudweaver who shakes his head, tight-lipped. The dead have filled the passageway behind them. A snarling mass of limbs and steel. There’s no way back.
Their mind races. There are other ways out, but all on the other side of the lake, miles distant, which requires passing the pile of corpses and Kinghammer, who remains silent, back turned, bare feet shifting unsteadily on the softly writhing bodies beneath.
Atop the pile, their old friend slowly tilts his head back, until his gaze is fixed on the spire. His hands extend from his sides. The left still clutches the hammer, matted with hair.
‘My lord?’ Skinpainter says.
Kinghammer’s head turns slowly, juddering with the scrape of bone. One eye glints in the half-light, their lower jaw hanging loose on red ropes of tendon.
And from that mangled maw, the Emperor’s voice.
‘No.’
At that, something breaks in Skinpainter’s heart. They shouldfight. They should raise their geometrics in defence, but the horror hits like a wave, blood rushing in their ears like the sea.
They hear Shipwright’s shocked scream, hear their own voice saying. ‘How?’
The Emperor laughs at that. A jagged, choking thing that slides over Kinghammer’s broken teeth.
‘Thanks to his lovely daughter.’ A mangled hand waves at Shroudweaver. ‘Such anambitiousgirl.’
Shroudweaver starts forwards, and Skinpainter puts a hand across his chest. ‘Not yet.’ The barest whisper. ‘Please.’
‘Let him go,’ they say.
The Emperor cocks its head. Kinghammer’s puppeted skull listing as it twirls the hammer nonchalantly in slow, long circles. Bits of meat fly off and spatter the sand.
‘Let himgo? No, Painter. I can’t do that.’ Kinghammer’s shoulders roll as the Emperor’s voice continues. ‘This body is so much better than what you left me with. What youbothleft me with.’
It flicks its eyes up to the spire. ‘You do remember what you did, don’t you, Skin?’ Its voice a guttural hiss. ‘Let your people devour me. Shattered the remains piece by piece. Bound even those.’
Skinpainter breathes deep, tries to fight waves of nausea, cold sweat wreathing their skin.
The Emperor continues. ‘How clever you thought you were! Painting my own people with your foul patterns. Locking me out of their blood, even as your pale friend locked me away from the dead.’
Kinghammer’s head snaps to Shroudweaver, its voice a snarl. ‘Thief.’ The hammer swings in an arc, smashing down into the writhing dead. ‘A slow death for you, dabbler.’
Skinpainter breathes in, lets it slide out slowly. ‘Let him go. I offer you a trade.’
The Emperor’s eyes light. It digs a finger deep in its new mouth, pulls a strip of skin loose.
