CHAPTER SIX
In a land of wave and sand something is cutting it’s way to control beneath a Sacred bone mask.
Islands.
Salt. The sting of wind and the uncertain feet on shifting sands bleached white as bone.
Volcanoes.
Dormant, mostly. Proud and bitter and communing with the sky through twisted plumes of smoke as if mourning absent clouds.
Even as it rises, the smoke misses the fire.
It could have been a place of fierce beauty… but the birds were not the only thing that wailed.
“We will always come through the Web close to the Sacred item.”
And how does one get to navigate the Web so well? Thought Thera “But I do not know who has taken it. Or… precisely what it would do, in this world.”
The hillock was littered with black stone that the heart of the earth had rid itself of, like a punch-drunk pugilist spitting free blood from a cut lip.
The sea wind was harsh and Finlior’s face was white against the stone as she pulled herself under cover and Thera could hear the low sounds of pain from on the beach below.
“She’s corrupted the mask.” Said Finlior.
Well that answers that question, thought Thera.
“Corrupted?” “It ah. It should be a conduit to unite spirit. To help one voice speak for all. Now...” She swallowed her words, trailing off as she turned look once again below.
The sparse soil began to itch at Thera’s skin. The noise of the waves and the waves of pained noise coupled in some bestial marriage of nature and unnatural pain and Thera had a sudden understanding that her own world might not have a monopoly on atrocity.
Finlior seemed to collect herself.
“Now. The mask – the victims. She’s…she’s breaking them. Breaking their souls on rocks of pain. Stopping them from dying but tying their life, their pain, to…to her rule.”
Thera felt the sallow images rise in her mind. Torture. She had assumed as much. She had hoped otherwise.
She made of her heart a black stone.
“Men and women suffer. It is the way of things.”
Finlior flinched.
“Not like this, they don’t. This…this is not natural. I think that is as long as they suffer…as long as they are being broken in Her name…it is likely that their death will stand in for hers.” “What?”“She has broken the mask. Inverted the Sacred. As long as she is willing to make things of humans and make them believe they are nothing but things…they will stand before her and the final veil as tokens to be collected before her own soul is reaped.” “What? She is immortal?”
Hope dimmed low.
No!She had been here before.
The disease was the cure.
Tyranny was its own weakness. As long as you had the looking glass of hope to see anew the pieces.
“No.” She said in the voice like the soft sea which, with implacable will, wears down the proudest stone.
They spoke.
If these poor souls were the scapegoats who stood in substitute for the dark ruler’s true death…then they must hate her.
It was decided.
Finlior stayed behind holding open the thin thread of the Web so they could slip past when the moment had born fruit…
…or fallen rotten to the floor.
Thera moved towards the grisly work.
It took time for Thera to work the shadows and the pattern of the guards and birth the opportunity of death. Then the sharp end of her impromptu stiletto found the eye of the first sentry.
After that, she had a sword.
She set with a will to the wet work.
Minutes slipped by slowly, like the sea wiping away a child’s patterns, and Thera wiped the sentry’s silhouettes from the skyline. They had dead eyes, all of them. Even before her blade went to work.
They were well armed though. She collected anything with an edge.
She made a red hole in their line to where the prisoners bobbed on the water.
The prisoners had terrible slack faces, like a devils sick of sin. Tied to barrels that rotated on great skewers in the tide so that half of their time they were submerged and sleep and peace and breath and dignity had gone for them the way of joy.
Lost.
She cut them free in time to the waves. Placed the hilt of sharp metal in the hands of those who looked fit to grasp it, as they floated on the tide.
Whispered “Now. For hope and vengeance.” In their ears and trusted her anger to cross the language barrier.
And when she had worked her way past the first third and some countless number of shapes had passed the pain of having blood come back to withered hands, the first wretch she had cut lose stood in the water.
Thera’s hope rose with him.
Let tyrants stand on the throat of the down trodden. See how precarious that position, in the moment of revolt.
A scream of rage from the sea soaked figure.
A sword raised, trembling in anger.
“Yes.” Whispered Thera.She stood and raised her sword in response.
They began to stumble towards her.
Swaying, the beach alive with the glint of flame on armour as the guards rallied, the first of the wretches reached her.
He fell on her and she caught him.
“You’re free. I can’t promise you anything but the chance to-“
A sudden pain in her shoulder and she cried, pushing him backwards.
His teeth had not fully pierced her tunic.
She saw, then, in moonlight and firelight the bestial, inhuman fury on the faces of the free.
They moved towards her.
Not to rally.
No… not to rally.
But to wreak havoc.
On her.
A dark, guttural tune was beaten out of them by salt-soaked tongues and as the second figure arrived to her with his sword in his hand, a sword she had placed there, all fragments of hope she had left fell with his down stroke – aimed at her skull.
She parried and struck back by instinct.
Thera looked up the beach to where Finlior held open the portal, but could see nothing but the black rock.
Things blurred then.
A fight. Bloody and desperate and horribly one-sided.
A deception. Cold and desperate and horribly indignant.
A swim. Numbing and desperate with horribly burning lungs.
Adjectives flowed through her mind to describe the hellscape she was suffering before they, too, fled.
Leaving her wordless.
The hours of her exertion passed her but she…
…she too, passed them by.
On the beach behind her, the pain-broken figures hoisted high a woman in a black dress, a woman faceless behind a glittering gold bone mask.
Thera found again her hillock where the bitter curd of the earth’s hot, corrupted lungs had spat forth the rock to cool like a corpse.
She found, again, Finlior.
The broken body of a guard lay nearby and Finlior’s left arm and left cheek were heavy and cold and white and so white in the moonlight.
“Truth.” Spluttered Finlior, through her half-marble mouth, her eyes rolling, as she worked open the thread of the Web.
“Not all the others know. I have failed. Failed. The sisters. I have failed. You must tell them. Must. To work the Web, hold. Hold to the truth. The deepest truth. The deepest truth. I know.”
They passed through the Web. A moment of motion, infinite and instant, and the ash was in the air once more.
“The deepest truth I know. I know. With every breath, hope lives.” Before woman stilled to marble once more beneath the sun’s first gaze and a skull fell to the cobbled streets to beat death’s rolling tattoo on the floor.
And Finlior breathed no more.
Pick a sacred number…
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Head to the discord to vote before Midnight EST 5th August.
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