Twenty-Two
“Get to the edge of the circle,” Raithe ordered, backing swiftly away from the center of the chamber. “Hurry, we can’t be caught in the open. Go, Sparrow!”
I obeyed, sprinting with him toward the edge of the sands and one of the sheer vertical walls that surrounded us. Meeka sprang ahead of us, his long leaps carrying him swiftly over the sand. Fearfully, I stole a glance back and saw the abomination half fall, half slither through the opening and land with a resoundingboomin the center of the chamber.
“Spaaaaaaaarrow.”
The wailing roar lanced through my head, bringing tears to my eyes. The sands trembled violently, shaking and tumbling over each other as the abomination surged toward us.
I hit the vertical wall and leaped up, grasping at the shiny black surface, trying to find whatever handholds I could. But there was nothing to be found in the slick walls, and the obsidian sliced my fingers open as I scrabbled at the surface, ultimately falling back to the sand.
“Raithe!” I spun, facing the massive undead creature plowing through the sand toward us. “What do we do? It’s too steep to climb!”
Raithe drew his sword and stepped in front of me, facingdown the abomination. “Move when I move,” he said as the rotting creature loomed closer. “Meeka,” he went on without taking his eyes from the abomination, “get out of here. Find a place to hide.”
“Meeka not afraid! Meeka not abandon Fateless!”
The drone of beetle wings buzzed in my ears as the insects swarmed us, landing in my hair and clothes. I flinched, slapping one off my arm, feeling several more land on me. Meeka let out a surprisingly fierce snarl and pounced on a beetle that landed close to him, driving his sharp incisors through its carapace and biting it in half.
He blinked, pricking his ears and staring down at the insect he’d just killed. For a moment, he looked surprised, but then he whirled and pinned another insect to the sand, biting through it as he had before.
“Spaaaaaaaaaaaaarrow.”
The ground trembled, and my attention was drawn to the massive abomination who was almost upon us.
“I hear you now,” the monster that was Vahn moaned. It slouched through the sand, dragging itself forward. The cloud of droning beetles around him, crawling over and through his flesh, made his image slightly blurry.“I hear your heartbeat. I smell your fear. Yours and... the other.”
His muzzle curled back from his teeth, those flat white eyes suddenly fixed on Raithe. Worms and grubs dripped from his gums and fell, wriggling, to the sand.“The one who took you from me. Who was always in the way. Now he will die. I will take great pleasure in feeling his body shatter in my jaws.”
Raithe stepped forward, staring the monster down with narrowed eyes. “Come and get me, then.”
With a howl, the abomination lunged, huge jaws gaping as it bore down on us. Raithe, Meeka, and I dove aside, and I heard theboomas the monster slammed into the unyielding obsidian wall. Flesh contorted, bones snapped, and the abomination screamed, making my blood curdle. We backed toward the center of the chamber, and the creature slid down the cliff wall. Its neck was bent at an odd angle, but as we watched, horrified, the body shifted and sloughed off the wall, bones grinding as it shook its head.
A raspy huffing sound filled my ears. A chilling moment later, I realized that it was laughter. Mad, panting laughter.
“You cannot kill what is already dead.”The abomination turned, sand and insects falling around it, to stare at us.“This body is a cage. I cannot die, but I feel every living thing that consumes it. The jaws and the legs and the bodies that burrow. They are in my flesh, in my skull and veins and mind—I can feel them crawling through my senses.”He shook his head again, spraying beetles and worms everywhere.“There is only one release from this torment.”
The terrible skull turned and found me with those eerie white eyes. For just a moment, the madness in them lifted, and it was only Vahn staring out at me.“I’m sorry, Sparrow. I wish it didn’t have to end this way. Why couldn’t you have just come home?”
My throat closed, and the abomination dove into the sand, vanishing beneath the dunes. I watched in horror as the sand swelled, then came right at me.
Fear flooded my veins, and I ran, heading for the cliff wall once again. I didn’t know where Raithe was, or Meeka. I could hear the rumble of the approaching abomination and didn’t dare look back, knowing I would see a massive swell of sand about to consume me.
Once more, I hit the wall, scraping my hands on the sharp black surface as I crashed into it. Heart pounding, I spun just as a massive maw rose out of the sand, a black hole lined with teeth filling my vision.
In that heartbeat between life and death, the world flickered. I saw the gaping mouth of the abomination coming at me through a maze of threads, passing through them like they weren’t there. For just a moment, I saw a shimmering strand wrapped around the abomination, knotted through the creature’s flesh and tangled in its bones. The rest of the monster glowed a sickly green, threads of putrid magic woven throughout its body, stitching it together. But the shining strand at the center... that was Vahn. His fate. His soul. Tied to a body that wasn’t his.
Involuntarily, my hand rose, reaching out even as the abomination came forward to destroy me.
“Fateless!”
Meeka suddenly appeared on my shoulder. He didn’t leap up, he didn’t land on me; he was simply there. I jumped as his tail wrapped around my neck, his beady eyes locked on the gaping jaws a second away from crushing us.
“Mee—”
And I was somewhere else.
“—ka.”
