Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (18 page)

The constant blood sun dips lower
,
obscured by phantom clouds. 

He
’
s never
walked near these woods
before
.  Somehow, in spite of years
spent
exploring
the
Whisperlands
,
he
’
s never witnessed this forest
, not
until the Eidolos directed him to
it
. 

T
he dread wind carries leaves that crackle like bones.  Every step
he takes kicks
up ecologies of shadow insects
.  Pitiless moans ooze from the dark.

Vaguely humanoid c
reatures
twist and slither like half-melted serpents
at the edge of his vision. 
L
oose stone
s
and twigs roll down the hill as he
ascends
.

Distant storm clouds boil and churn with electric light.  Thunder echoes through the tin sky. 

His body groans with tension.  He feels eyes on in him in the dark,
the gaze of
cold
and hungry
shadows. 

N
atives stand at the edge of the forest
.  They
look out over the path
that leads
to the heart of the grim
woods
. 

He can’t
make
the
figures
out
clearly.  They aren’t
the
same
arcane wanderers he
’s
spied
before,
those
people made black
b
y the necrotic essence of the calcified plains.  These
new
creat
ures are different.  They aren’
t human
, but c
onglomerations of dissident life forces
.  O
ne moment
the
y
resemble hawks, and
in
the next
they
are simian.  They are leopards
and
then
wolves
,
humanoid
and
then
serpent
.

Whatever they are, t
he creatures keep their distance. 
He wonders if
maybe
they
’
re
the
basta
rd
offspring
of fused worlds, random
ly
jettisoned
souls
that have melted together into unstable forms
.  They are h
ybridized survivors without any true identity,
creatures so
drenched in darkness
they don’t
even realize
what abominations they’
ve become.  They mewl and growl at
his passing, but they
keep their distance
.

The world is vast behind him.  He looks back over his shoulder and sees endless plains like dry ocean
s
.  The wastelands are
broken
and withered.  Fissures in the ground leak vapors that congeal
into
mist-
sludge.  The horizon is preposterously far away, a tiny cut at the
edge
of
a
blank nowhere.  There are mountains and hills and the ruins of cities in the distance. 
Black lightning scars the sky. 

He can see further than before.  The shadows seem less thick. 

Things are more real here
, he realizes. 
I’m close
r
to the border. 
Closer
to the edge of the Whisperlands.

He follows the Eidolos’ directions, empathic knowledge not so much known as
felt
. 
H
is instincts guide him, even though he knows they
are not
his
instincts
,
for
the knowledge has been instilled
in his mind
.

The voices in the wind grow louder
. 
They
remind
him
of his spirit, and
he is
fil
led
with sadness
.  He suddenly feels very small, and
very
alone.

H
e
comes to
the edge of
the forest
. 
Hard
wind rattles the skeletal branches
.
D
ead
leaves
fall
like
shards of
glass.  Black-grey mist obscur
es
any
detail of what lie
s
deeper in the trees
.

His fingers tense near the hilt
of his blade.  He knows he isn’
t prepared for this, even with the
information the Eidolos
has
implanted
in
his subconscious mind.
 

The mist envelops him
in
frozen arms.  His boots sink into dust and silt.  He presses through the mire,
and enters
the
trees
.

W
eb-patterns of shadow
mark the path
.  Brackish fluid drips
down
and collects in
rancid
pools.  The air is
cold
and
raw
.  He smells organic waste and
feels
the tang of
smelted
iron
on his tongue
.

There are no paths, no means to
find his way
aside from following his
false
instincts.
  Soulrazor/Avenger cuts a swat
h through the
corpse-dry
trees.  The ghost wind drowns out the sound
as he
crash
es
through
the
underbrush. 

He
senses
a presence
nearby
, a
malign entity
as much a stranger to th
e
dread wilderness as he is
.  W
hatever it is
, it
keeps its distance. 

He carries on. 
He
ponders
the
dire
reality of his situation
.

W
ithout his spirit, even Soulrazor/Avenger
isn’t
likely to do him much good against a cadre of mages.

This is suicide.  But I have to try.

He walks.  There seems to be no end to the forest.
 

Eventually
he escapes the mist, and
the
trees
thin.  He
moves
through
clearings
filled with
black earth and dead leaves.  Piles of dark branches
stand
ne
xt to
long-abandoned campfires.  He smells charcoal and mold
.  T
he whispers of the dead are stronger
there
.

He
looks closer.  What he’d thought were branches are
actually
bones, burned
to
black and stacked in
heaps
.

Some of the trees are made o
f bone,
as well.  Their blanched hue has been discolored by
a
fire that
seems to have
ripped through th
at
part of the forest
some time ago
.  He runs
his
finger against
a
tree and
wipes away
a film of burned grime.  The bone underneath is yellowed and cracked.

Skin flags dangle from the bone trees.  They hang
placid
, as there is no wind
that
deep in the forest.  The flayed flesh is coal black,
the skin of
some shadow-infused beast.  The hide banners stretch like standards
and
mark
an
uneven path through the
haunted woods
. 

He smells meat in the air
, and
he
grimaces
at the taste of salt and acetone.

The
ground ha
s
been
disturbed
by the passage of
other
creatures
.  C
rude blades
made of
fused
carbon
lie
scattered
on the ground.  He hears a faint groan in the distance. 

Mountains loom ahead,
still many miles away, barely
visible through the
dead branches
. 

Bla
de in hand, he follows the new path
.

Tendrils of web
stretch between
the
trees
. 
Dark silk play
s
against his skin like
smooth
fingers.  He feels dust
on his skin
and burned wood on his tongue.

Bodies dangle
from
the trees, suspended
by
necrotic threads.  They appear frozen in mid-fall
and
hang at violent angles.  Most of the
ir
flesh and clothing has corrod
ed
off
the bones.  They bob
like grisly marionettes.

He
pushes
through the perpetual gloom. 
His
joined arcane
blade lights
his
way with a subtle
shine like blue moonlight
.

The forest grows darker.  He smells dead fish and glacial
moisture
,
a raw
ice-water
breeze
that clings to the trees like saliva. 

He sees m
ore signs of passage
,
bla
des and bedrolls and cold camps
that have
long-since
been
looted for anything of value. 

Th
e
presence
he
sensed
earlier
return
s
.  It shifts
in
the dark. 
Being
close
to it
makes him f
eel
like
he stands
at
the edge of an abyss. 

The air is grey
. 
His feet swim in a
cold wash of shadow
that
obscures
the
forest
floor
.  The air is so cold he feels crystals in his beard, and every breath freezes in his throat and lungs.

H
e realizes he hasn
’
t passed through any of the black webbing for
quite some
time
.  He’
s
moved past
its outer perimeter,
past the
warnings, and straight into
the
home
of whatever made them
.

A
bone-white and bladed
arm
as long as a lance
launches
at him from
out of the darkness
.  He uses
Soulrazor/Avenger
to
knock
it aside, then
hacks through
the
carapace and severs the
knife-
limb.  T
ender layer
s
of pulsing red meat
lie be
neath
the cracked bone shell
.  White puss oozes from the
maimed appendage
.