The screams of the dead rose from the blackened earth.

  Over the course of his journey, Isaac had heard many cries of pain. Pirates burning alive, bone thralls hissing and melting, a sandwyrm dying from mass impalement. He had become very familiar with the sounds of agony uttered by man and monster alike.

  Nothing could’ve prepared him for the ghostly wails coming from the obelisk. The naked souls, severed from their bodies millennia before, screamed into the stone and rock around them. It sounded like nothing he had ever heard before. It was a massive chorus of pure energy. It was ethereal, it was piercing, it was hallowed and ringing and crawling up his spine, it sounded as if all the natural elements of the world were collectively begging him for death, and it only worsened his rage. He wasn’t sure if they were screaming in pain, or if millennia of imprisonment had driven them mad, but, in the end, it would make no difference. It was all going to burn.

  The screams were desperate. Endless and infinite. He had to make them stop.

  He passed through the stone archway that lead into the top of the obelisk. Zaria and his father followed behind. The former clutched her poleaxe tight, while the other crawled along the walls in a spreading film of bone.

  There was a hollow glass conduit inside the center of the tower, shaped like a cylinder and reaching all the way to the bottom of the structure, like marrow would run down the center of a bone. This was the soul repository, shining a brilliant purple as thousands of beings swirled inside. A vast network of pipes and machinery wrapped around the glass, twisting like blood vessels. There were intake valves, transmission lines, energy threshers, engines that mulched and spun. At points, the glass and pipework had cracked from millennia of disrepair, and wisps of souls reached through the gaps, like prisoners begging through the bars of a dungeon.

  It made Isaac think of when he was a boy. He had been attempting to craft an alchemical elixir in his uncle’s laboratory. Somewhere along the way, the solution had turned acidic, and the steam had eaten through the fume hood above his head. Purple smoke had drifted from the melted steel like the souls were doing now.

  His uncle had found him. The cane had rose. But, after a moment, Berith’s face had softened. There had been laughter. A pat on the back. He had looked at the acrid smoke eating through his lab equipment and told Isaac that he had made the same mistake before. Instead of a beating, there had been slow guidance and patient lessons. In fact, Berith had spent the rest of the day showing him different alchemical mixtures, even to the point of letting him skip his chores, creating wonderous potions that glowed and sparkled with magic. That night, Isaac had sat on the windowsill of his bedroom, dangling his feet along the exterior stone of the tower, and promised himself that he would earn such a day again. He would earn this kindness from his uncle. It was what he wanted more than anything in all the world.

  Now, staring down the length of the obelisk, Isaac listened to the screaming of the souls. He thought that, very soon, he would not sound much different than them.

  Through the pipework and blinding purple light, he caught glimpses of movement. The flowing of robes, shards of ice and fire. An army moved down below. More than once, he thought he glimpsed its leader through the distance and light. A shaved head over fuligin robes, a cloud of bone drifting through the air.

  His fists clenched. The rage boiled inside.

  “Right,” Zaria said, peering down next to him. “This looks proper fucked and all, but we’re storming this cock like a gods-damned castle. Aye, lads?”

  “It’s an obelisk. There are carvings—”

  “Silence, squire. It’s long, hard, between the legs, and exactly where we’re gonna kick your cunt of a relative.” She turned back to them, the soul light illuminating her scars. “I appreciate that you lot have got more magic than I do, but I’ve fought more battles. Mud and guts sorta thing. Anyone got objections to me taking command?”

  Isaac shook his head. Cain pushed out a tentacle of legs and shook it like a tongue.

  “We’re treating this like proper soldiers. Ranks and divisions.” She pointed at Cain, or the thickest part of him. “You’re gonna be light infantry. The engagement force. Keeping his slaves occupied and soaking up fire. That something you can do?”

  Cain twisted his skulls towards Isaac, gasping.

  “Berith’s a necromancer,” Isaac said. “He’s got anti-necrotics, and he can take control of the bones themselves. My father won’t be much help against him.”

  Cain nodded all his faces.

  “Aye,” Zaria said, “not your uncle directly. I’m speaking of his thralls. They only got ice and fire. You’re a spilling pile of corpses—cleave yourself apart, attack from all sides, rush at them like you did in the catacombs. The goal is to skirmish. Keep them off-balance and distracted. Make sure all them magics are pointed away from us. Clear?”

  In response, two heaps of bone sloughed from the central mass, twisting into the general shape of beasts. Their barks were hissing and loud.

  “Squire, you’re the heavy artillery. Main attack force. While your father’s drawing their attention, you’ll be picking ‘em off at a distance. Looks tight down there—area of effect will do wonders. Snipe your uncle if you can, but focus on the thralls. If they’re his energy, then they’re his ammunition. Take away his ammo, and he’s got naught to fire with.”

  Isaac nodded. “What’re you going to do?”

  “Me?” She hefted her poleaxe into both hands. “I’m your bloody bodyguard. Anyone tries to come after you directly, I’ll chop them into bits. My job’s to keep you safe and doing your squirely duties. Sound good?”

  He managed to smile. “No other way I’d like it, Z.”

  “Right, then.” She raised her axe overhead. “Let’s conquer this cock!”

  Cain took the lead—the creatures leaped and spilled over the pipework, and his central mass crawled down the curving wall like a raindrop on glass. At the side, there was a spiral staircase winding into the earth, shrouded in the mists of leaking souls. Isaac took the stairs at a marching pace, the feel of Zaria’s heavy footfalls behind giving him strength and courage.

  He patted the dagger in his pocket, the one she had given him. Somehow, he knew he was going to need it.

  Despite the swirling light of the souls, Isaac was able to make out some reliefs carved into the walls. It was difficult to interpret them. Much of the stone had collapsed over the millennia, and what remained had largely faded into craggy brick, but he was still able to catch glimpses of figures and words. It seemed to be the same sort of creation myths he had seen in the necropolis. Underneath the rusted fan of a thresher, he saw a celestial figure descending from the heavens, stripes and stars symbol on their shoulder. Below, a starving crowd waved bones in plea and worship.

  The two of them continued to descend. As they did, the screams grew louder. The souls reacted to their presence. Purple fog seemed to condense in their wake, grasping for them, and the shifting haze had the residual shape of arms and hands, the hints of moans and begs. In the central glass conduit, thick clouds of souls collected around their vertical position, following their downward progress.

  The timber of the screams shifted. Isaac had never heard the language of the necromancers—only seen it written—but he imagined he could hear it now. The words of an ancient people. He could imagine the souls begging to be freed.

  Before long, the sounds of combat began to pierce the screams. Shattering ice, crackling fire. Through the pipework, he glimpsed movement and light, the darting shadows of falling bodies. Entire swarms of bones seemed to flit through the air like dueling clouds of insects.

  Isaac leaned over the edge of the winding staircase, staring down the length of the obelisk. The mnemonics came easily. Second nature. Berith had drilled the motions deep into him. He remembered grass. A cane. Sweat and fire and blood.

  He pointed his finger down towards the fighting, waiting for a thrall to expose themselves through the pipework. Raw sound would turn the Khador students into paste, and the shockwave might shatter—

  “Get down!”

  He felt himself shoved forward. Barely a second later, a blizzard of ice crackled against the wall behind him. After nearly smashing his head on the stone steps, he saw two thralls nestled against the glass conduit, crouching on the edges of the pipework and casting elemental spells. Isaac blasted one with raw sound, and the red mist that resulted was almost brighter than the souls. Bloody shrapnel hit the other thrall, but she did not fall from the pipes. She did not feel pain anymore. She kept casting with shards of bone embedded along her body, pointing a spout of fire in his direction.

  The flames came in a rushing cone. Just as he felt the heat on his face, a leaping mass of bone intercepted the spout. Femurs and ribs stabbed down from above, skewering the thrall like a storm of arrows. Even with an extra skeleton’s worth of bones inside her, she still attempted to cast, but her foot slipped on the pipes, and her body was too weak to keep from tumbling off the edge. She slammed against every nest of metal on the way down.

  Several masses of bones crawled along the wall above them, rushing to join the rest.

  “Thanks, father,” Isaac said.

  One of the slugs grew a porcupine shell of arms, all of them giving a thumbs up as it threw itself off the stairway.

  “Fuck me, then,” Zaria said, helping him stand. “He’s leaving rearguards. Watch for ambushes.”

  They continued down the winding stairs. Isaac prepared hurricanes in the palms of his hands, ready to push off any thrall that waited to attack them on the pipes.

  There were more myths on the walls. Quadruped animals, crowded in the thousands, all shuffling towards a massive ship that was unlike any he had ever seen before. The rest of the carvings had been smashed apart, but it appeared that, when the animals left the ship, they were walking on two legs. Emerging from glass coffins. Surrounded by flies.

  The only thing Isaac could think about was trust. Before his journey, trust had been something that only ever brought him pain. His uncle would beat him bloody. His instructors would look at him with pity and obvious discomfort. Not once in his life had he ever asked for help from anyone without fearing retribution or shame, and, in the end, he had merely stopped asking at all. Before his journey, he had thought he could only find peace within himself.

  Now, he felt confident. He had Zaria at his back, and his father surrounding them at all sides. He trusted them completely. The knowledge was as warm and certain as the desert sun rising over the dunes, and it brought his determination to heights he had never thought possible. He promised himself that every day of his life, from now until death, would be lived in defiance of the fearful instincts that had been beaten into him by his uncle.

  Every breath he took was seared with rage.

  Below, the battle grew closer. Khador students had been placed in straight lines along the winding staircase. Cain’s corpse-hewn monsters rushed at them through the bricks and leaking souls.

  Then, the glowing sigil on one of the thralls began to brighten, and Cain’s beasts were flung off the stairway, pulled by some invisible force. The masses of bone were held in the air above the pipework, crushing and shattering like wheat in a mill. The thrall collapsed, her body so thin and drained of energy that she barely stirred the dust when she fell. She tumbled off the stairway, falling down the length of the obelisk as Cain’s forces were shredded with necromancy.

  Isaac unleashed the hurricanes in his hands. He bounced them off the curving wall, and the line of thralls were flung out into the pipework, raggedly smashing into metal. Even above the screams of the dead, he heard a symphony of breaking bones. The necrotic force holding his father’s thralls in the air started to weaken, and the slack in power was just enough for some of the limbs and skulls to break free, scuttling along the pipes in retreat.

  A pair of glowing eyes met his from below. The distance was great, and they were tinged with parasite magic, but he couldn’t fail to recognize them. They were the same pale blue as his own. He had seen them every day of his life.

  Suddenly, a femur screamed past his face, shattering against the masonry. It had been a deliberate miss. A warning shot.

  Isaac returned the favor. He pointed his finger at an exposed portion of brick and fired raw sound at the masonry. It exploded in a shower of chunks and dust, raining down heavy slabs of stone. For a moment, the glowing eyes disappeared, and the rumble of brick covered the screams.

  But the eyes reappeared again, piercing through the clouds of dust, and a growing whiteness began to appear from below. It was bone. An entire rushing wall of it, swallowing the pipes and glass. It was so thick in the air that it might as well have been a flood coming at them through a tunnel.

  Isaac changed his casts to wind. He smashed holes into the wave of corpses. There was an overwhelming sound of bones clattering against metal, ringing so loudly through the obelisk that it began to eclipse the screams. With a final burst, Isaac widened the wind into an opposing wall, smashing the geyser down until there were only a few limbs and skulls still dancing through the air.

  From below, he heard shouting.

  “I gave you a chance, boy!”

  One of the Khador students stopped his casting. In barely a few seconds, his body shriveled down to rags of skin. As he collapsed, the obelisk itself began to rumble. Another whiteness appeared below. The first flood of bone had come like water filling a glass—this one leaped and festered with alarming speed, like an avalanche spilling through a mountain valley. It must’ve been the collected might of half of Cain’s forces. Isaac received the distinct impression of standing in the middle of an active volcano.

  He would’ve still been staring if Zaria hadn’t grabbed him. She forced him down flat against the stairs. Barely a second later, an overwhelming geyser of bone erupted from below. Hundreds of corpses splintered and ricocheted across the pipework. Even with the stairway shielding him from the worst of the blast, chips and shards still slashed across his skin, no different than the metal shrapnel of a bomb. He covered his organs against the ricochets and braced through it all, as he always did.

  When he looked again, the metal pipework had been punctured more thoroughly than a pin cushion. Purple specters leaked from the energy grid, grasping and screaming. Cain scrambled back up the obelisk wall in legions of body parts.

  Somewhere below the metal, bricks, and souls, a voice rose from the depths.

  “You always were disobedient!”

  Another rumbling shook the obelisk. Instead of below, this one came from above. A legion of limbs dug through the mortar inside the walls, breaking the bricks apart. Massive chunks of stone rained from the ceiling, covered in a moss of bone. The pipework was smashed apart. The glass conduit splintered and cracked. The stairs crumbled from the repeated blasts, adding to the masonry still raining down into the depths of the earth.

  By the end, the path in front of them had been destroyed. There was a gap in the winding stairway, almost half a revolution around the width of the obelisk. Far larger than they could leap. No way down.

  “Isaac!”

  His fists clenched around the hurricanes.

  “This was never your mission!”

  He would’ve leaped after his uncle if Zaria hadn’t still been shielding him.

  Even still, reason held him back. The obelisk extended down further than he could see. Stone continued to tumble and drip from the broken stairway—whatever was left of their path only continued on from the other side of the glass conduit. Trying to drop onto the next revolution of the stairs would likely break their legs, and Berith had sundered all the pipework they might’ve clambered on to continue forward.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Not all of it, actually. There was still some. . . .

  For the first time, Isaac noticed the dust in the air. It seemed to glint and swirl, as if attempting to catch his attention. When his focus was found, the dust shot itself down through the air, pointing towards a thick bed of pipework further below. Around him, the leaking souls actually seemed to be spreading along through the dust, mingling and separating, as if they were made of similar substance. Glinting dust amongst a swirl of purple light, begging them in an ancient language.

  What was this dust made of? Had the necromancers bound their souls to solid objects? Had the process of time eroded it down to specks in the air?

  There was a relief on the walls behind him. Something similar to what he had seen in the necropolis. One of the necromancer gods commanding a swarm of flies, ordering them to burrow beneath the skin of a kneeling worshipper.

  Above them, Cain crawled down the walls. His film of corpses was thinner now—he had lost much of his mass during the assault.

  “Shivering tits,” Zaria said. “That’s our stairway gone. Bony fuckin’ whoreson.” She paused. “No offense.”

  Cain nodded one of his skulls.

  The dust was still swirling in the air, pointing like an ocean current. Pointing towards the pipework below. It was not too far of a leap.

  She turned to Cain. “Can you make a bridge of sorts? Something sturdy enough to carry us?”

  Cain extended a head stalk out past the stairway, gazed eyelessly down the length of the obelisk, and shook it hard.

  He felt her twist and turn behind him, searching. “Isaac. Pull your ropes. The wall’s cracked open here. Don’t know how sturdy it’ll be, but I can tie some knots—”

  “I’m going to jump,” Isaac said.

  “Don’t be daft. Ain’t no way you’re surviving that.”

  The dust swirled faster, as if to urge him on. The souls begged and screamed.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, and leaped into the air.

  As a boy, he had often wondered how long the fall would be if he leaped from the top of his tower. There had been many nights where he had sat on the windowsill, dangling his legs over the drop, imagining the sensation. More than once, he had been tempted to leap only so that his training would finally end.

  His answer came fast—not long at all. He slammed into the pipework after barely a second of flight. The ancient metal heaved with the impact, wrenching itself down with a violent lurch. By the end, he was nestled into the apex of an elongated V shape, staring down the length of the obelisk as the metal screamed at his weight. He scrambled over to a thick nest of pipe junctions, feeling like a bug in a spiderweb.

  When he looked back, Zaria and Cain were watching from the stairs. He gave them a thumbs up while gasping for breath.

  After a few seconds, Zaria sheathed her poleaxe and leaped after him.

  Her impact was much more violent. Even the glass conduit seemed to shake. Metal screamed in snapping protest, and the pipes did not stop her fall so much as slow it down. He grabbed her flailing arm as the last of the metal snapped from the frame, leaving her body dangling over naked air.

  She was too heavy. He couldn’t pull her up. Zaria grabbed at his tattered clothes, desperate for a grip, but the pipework was still shuddering, still lurching down with their combined weight. They were going to fall.

  But the souls reached for him, grasping through the rended metal. They wrapped around his arm, and he felt a sudden surge of strength infuse itself into his muscles. He pulled her up, and she came with a rising swirl of souls. As she cleared the edge, and they collapsed back onto the pipes, the souls were grasping at the opened wounds in the power grid, holding them together with a moaning grip. The metal stopped shaking. It held with great firmness.

  A single cloud of light rose to his face. He saw the vague suggestion of human features, a gash in the fog like a swirling mouth. Underneath the sounds of battle, two words were spoken, and they came from a voice that Isaac imagined was like the noise of the stars, the grand motion of the planets in their orbit.

  He recognized the words. The necromancer language.

  End this.

  He nodded. The soul dissipated, spreading into dust. He felt imbued with a noble purpose.

  Zaria slapped him across the face.

  “You fucking codpiece! You stupid scabber!” Her teeth glinted purple as she snarled. “Are all humans mad for testing death, or is that just your affliction?”

  He gestured at the dust in the air. “They told me to. The necromancers. The souls—”

  “Some fucking dead people beckoned a leap into a chasm, is that it?”

  “It, uh—it just felt right, I guess.”

  She slapped him again.

  Cain rolled a film of bones down the masonry. He paused at their level and shook his skulls incredibly hard.

  “Sorry, father,” Isaac said.

  The field of skulls gave him an eyeless, but very pointed look. Then, they bent themselves downward, gazing along the remaining length of the obelisk.

  “We’re alright,” he said, gesturing over to the spiral staircase across from them. “Keep harassing Berith. We’ll follow.”

  The skulls nodded, and the bones split into crawling formations, descending down the circular walls like drops of oil skimming across water.

  Slowly, the two of them rose to their feet, making sure their stance was steady on the nest of pipes. The souls were still holding the rended metal in place, and they seemed to coil towards the spiral staircase across from them. Guiding them on.

  “You know,” Zaria said, “it’d be real nice if your uncle showed his front ‘stead of his back. Lot of men are dyin’ in his place.”

  “My uncle’s going for the base of the obelisk,” Isaac said, carefully stepping over a jagged valve. “There’s a massive cavern out there. The necromancers would’ve constructed it in such a way that they would have some—I don’t know, some apparatus to feed the soul energy into the skeleton. There’ll be some mechanical device that he can use to attempt the resurrection.”

  “What happens if he does?”

  “It’ll crush us like ants, and he’ll conquer the world.”

  “Lovely,” Zaria said. “And there was me thinking that not all sorcerers were twats.”

  “It works both ways. He can’t bring this colossus to life with his bare hands. If we smash that device, then the Diet has nothing. They wouldn’t have bothered with this whole conspiracy, otherwise. The nine kingdoms will come together to make sure no one can ever try this again.”

  She looked down through the pipes. The obelisk continued deep into the earth. “Gotta get there first.”

  “And we have to kill my uncle, too.”

  She glanced at him.

  “It’s the only way,” Isaac said.

  “Is that your rage speaking for you?”

  He didn’t respond.

  They were almost at the staircase. Zaria looked at the gap they would have to leap, then returned her gaze to him. “If you think slaggin’ him is the best course, then I’m all in. Just don’t want you doin’ it blindly. Get me?”

  “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  “Keep your focus. You’re better than he is, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Isaac,” she said. “You’re better than him, aren’t you?”

  He looked at her, realizing how hard his fists were clenched. “Yes. I am. We’re smashing this tomb to pieces. Whatever the Archons think they can—”

  Something caught his eye. Movement above, where they had been. Something glinted and rushed.

  The only thing that saved his life was the reflexive flinch of his arm. He cocked it to his chest, and two out of the three knives stabbed through his arm instead of his chest. He didn’t even feel them at first—it was only when he looked down at the blades that the pain started, and it was sufficient enough to make him lose his footing on the pipes, falling hard on his back as blood began to pour.

  A figure jumped down onto the pipework. She was small, fuzzy, wrapped in bone armor, covered in dry blood, and already brandishing her cutlass in a screaming charge.

  Zaria barely managed to unsheathe her poleaxe. “How the fuck—”

  Captain Black Eye Soren leaped from the pipes, powerful bunny legs carrying her into a rushing arc through the air. Zaria blocked the plunging sword with the haft of her axe, but the sheer weight of her captain slamming into her was enough to send them both tumbling off the pipework. They crashed into the winding staircase, spilling down the ancient architecture in a ball of grunts, steel and bashing flesh.

  Isaac was still lying on the power grid, staring in shock at the three knives inside him. One had skewered through his forearm, the second had seemingly chipped off part of his elbow, and the third was jutting out from a spot just beneath his clavicle. He tried to bend the arm, and the searing pain forced him to stop.

  His casting ability had just been ruined.

  At the stairs, Zaria was pacing backwards, holding out the length of her poleaxe. Soren followed her down without leaving a single gap, twirling her cutlass beneath a snarl of burnt flesh.

  “Your magic fucktoy can’t help you now, traitor.”

  Zaria thrusted her spear, but Soren sidestepped it easily, slashing down at the haft. If the hyena hadn’t jerked back, the blow would’ve taken several fingers.

  “That’s fine,” Zaria said. “I’ll follow your lead, capt.”

  Another slash. Steel met steel in a bone ringing clang. They kissed and parted and kissed again.

  Soren barked out a laugh. “Sandy graves for all?”

  Upswing. Backslash. Parry, thrust, snarl.

  “Fuckin’ right.”

  Zaria slashed with the axe, but the blade only smashed through masonry. Soren drew another throwing knife. She threw the blade with a vicious grace. Zaria’s head jerked back. As she clutched her face, Soren jumped over the polearm, bounding a bare foot off the wall, and plunged her sword down. A cloud of souls prevented Isaac from seeing anything but a scream of pain. Then, he saw the two of them tumble off the staircase again, hitting so many pipes on the way down that they were bouncing more than falling.

  He stumbled to his feet. He leaped off the pipes, falling face first into the stairs. He crawled and tumbled after the sounds of battle as his shirt soaked with blood.

  Further below, there was a raging storm of ice and fire. Cain was unleashing the full brunt of his masses, and, from the sight of elemental spells twisting and dying, he was doing considerable damage. But it was a suicide charge, at best. From the look of things, Berith wasn’t even using his necromancy. He was letting his thralls works autonomously. By now, he must’ve been close to the bottom of the obelisk.

  He was supposed to be aiding his father. Cain would perish without him. Now, his legs were growing weak, and his lungs had to breathe against the knife in his chest.

  But he pictured Berith’s face again, eyes alight with parasite magic, and his wounds were dulled with rage.

  Through the haze of souls, he saw the two pirates. They had fallen onto a gnarled tangle of pipes, something that now looked like a forest of jagged metal hanging over a lethal drop. Soren clutched her shoulder, squeezing her body out of the rent-open hole of a cooling fan, and Zaria was dangling by a tenuous grip on a pipe. It was bending like a broken limb, and every desperate grab she made only stained the metal a bright scarlet. The hilt of her captain’s knife jutted from her left eye.

  Isaac raced down the stairs, willing his arm to bend. When it didn’t, he drew the dagger.

  While Zaria tried to pull herself up, Soren sauntered forward. She kicked the hyena’s poleaxe off the pipework, sending the weapon clattering away. Zaria slipped back down the pipe, dangling on bloody fingers. Soren turned her dislocated shoulder towards a hard junction of valves, bashed it against the metal, and snarled as the bone returned to its socket. Finally, she pointed her cutlass down at Zaria’s struggling face, the tip of the sword almost reaching the knife sticking from her eye.

  “Take it with honor,” Soren said.

  “Fuck that,” Zaria replied, grasping the bunny’s leg. “You’re coming with me.”

  Zaria pulled her towards the edge. Soren raised her cutlass, preparing to strike.

  “Hey!”

  The two pirates stopped as Isaac leaped onto the pipework. He had to lean against a blast gate for support, smearing it with blood, but he managed to rise. He pointed his dagger right at Soren.

  “I’m still her champion,” he said.

  Soren’s laugh cut through the screaming souls. She kicked Zaria’s hand off her leg, stepping over the pipes to escape her reach. Her whiskers bent and twitched as she twirled her sword. “You ever held one of those before?”

  Isaac panted around the knife in his chest. The one in his hand remained steady. Below, the battle of elements and bone had silenced. He did not need to look to know his father had lost.

  “All yours, love,” Soren said. “Let’s dance.”

  But the screaming of the souls erupted around them. Thick plumes of energy rose from the broken pipes. Soren stepped back, avoiding the grasping fog, but Isaac let them wrap around his form, and he felt his pain fade away as the purple light suffused through his skin. He felt new energy surge inside him. He felt his arms regain their strength. He almost felt as if there weren’t several knives jutting from his flesh.

  The souls whispered again. End this.

  He put the dagger back in its sheath and adopted the first position for a fireball.

  The souls reflected off Soren’s black eye. Her fingers raced across the sheaths of throwing knives, but they found them all empty.

  Isaac forced his arms to the second position.

  Soren dashed forward, bare feet pounding across pipes and fittings.

  Isaac reached the third position. Blood gushed down his arm.

  Soren stumbled and slowed, the souls pushing her back. She dodged around, weaving and sprinting, her sword glinting bright.

  Isaac achieved the fourth and final position just as she closed the distance.

  The flames that came from his hand were no more than a weak sputter. His casting had been slow and choppy. But it was still enough for the unburnt half of Soren’s face to catch alight, and his flames surged through her fur like it was perfect kindling. She reeled back, losing her footing on the pipes, almost decapitating him with a wild swing of her cutlass. The Black Eye flailed along the broken tangle of metal, screaming louder than the souls.

  And the souls themselves descended upon her, and when they touched the flames eating through her skin and fur, they turned Isaac’s weak spell into great spouts of fire, their essences fueling the conflagration until the pirate captain’s body was completely subsumed in the blaze. The formless mass of flame tried to stand, howling in agony. Beneath it, the souls ripped the pipes away with dozens of spectral limbs.

  Soren screamed the entire way down the obelisk. When the screaming stopped, Isaac could still see a small speck of orange through the surrounding purple light, shining like a star in the sky. It did not move.

  The souls receded from his skin. As they left, the pain returned, and Isaac gasped with its arrival, barely managing to keep his own stance on the pipes.

  “Isaac.”

  Zaria was dragging herself up the edge of the pipework. Only one hand could firmly grasp—for the first time, he saw that the other had nearly been cleaved apart, and the flesh seemed to flex in different directions like a rip in a flag. He stumbled her way as she managed to fling herself back to safety. When they met, she pushed him down to a sitting position.

  “Hold still.”

  “Z, are you—”

  “Shut up. Hold still.” She looked over his injuries. She still had a knife sticking from her left eye, leaking a thick jelly down her cheek. Vitreous fluid, Isaac remembered. “You coughing blood?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Isaac! Are you coughing blood?”

  “No!” He coughed, just to make sure. “No, I’m not.”

  “Good. Didn’t hit your lungs, then.” She dug through her pack, ripping apart a white shawl with her teeth. “Gotta put a tourniquet on. My hand’s fucked, so you need to hold some parts for me. You’ll need a sling, as well, so you don’t open it any wider.”

  “I need to cast—”

  “You’re bleedin’ half to death, you stupid cunt!”

  His shirt was heavy with blood. It flowed in thick streams down his hand. As the rush of combat faded further, the pain rose to new heights, smothering all his thoughts.

  Zaria retrieved a torch and smashed it down to splinters on her knee. She stuck the largest piece between her teeth, beginning to wrap the cloth around his upper arm. “Help me tie the knot.”

  He did his best to aid her in applying the tourniquet. She slipped the splinter of torch into the cloth, tied the improvised windlass down, and twisted the wood in circles. He yelled louder than the souls. When the tourniquet was viciously tight around his arm, she fashioned a sling from another ripped section of fabric, cradling his arm close to his chest.

  “Don’t move it,” she said, “and don’t take the blades out, neither. You’ll be dead in minutes if you do.”

  “Are you okay?” Isaac asked.

  She raised her hand. He could see the tendons, and had to stop himself from naming them. “Better than most who’ve crossed the Black Eye. You got more of that magic poultice, by any chance?”

  “I used most of my reagents the last time I healed you. I can’t make anymore.”

  She let out a sharp breath. “Should’ve said so. Would’ve told you to save it for real trouble.”

  “I just . . . wanted to help.”

  Zaria took a deep breath, growled around the pain, and looked down through the pipes. A small fire was still burning at the bottom of the obelisk. “Saving my life was rather nice, I suppose.”

  “I can’t cast like this,” Isaac said. “You’ll need to lead the way. I think your poleaxe fell to the bottom. If you can—”

  “You think I can swing a polearm with my hand looking like a butcher’s shop?”

  He could almost see the bones of her palm through the jagged valley of flesh. He lightly swung his arm, testing the motion, and received a sharp stab of pain in response. “What can we do, then?”

  She didn’t answer. The knife in her eye glinted with soul light and vitreous fluid.

  Behind them, in the glass conduit, the souls began to quiver. Their screaming rose in pitch, as if gaining desperation. The ancient pipes bent and flexed. All at once, the souls were sucked downwards through the hollow glass, rushing by in streams of light and spectral limbs. Their screams changed pitch with the violent motion, getting louder as they came and fading as they went. The entire power grid shook on its frames as it was brought back to life, struggling against its age and disrepair to perform the function for which it was built.

  Berith had reached the bottom of the tomb. He was resurrecting the skeleton.

  The purple soul light had been the only source of illumination. Now, above their heads, a wall of darkness rushed downwards as the clouds of souls were sucked through stone and machinery. In an instant, blackness washed over them. A few purple wisps remained above their heads, like stars in a night sky. Otherwise, the glass conduit had emptied.

  The screaming had finally stopped.

  “Father!” Isaac shouted. “Father!”

  Only his voice returned. The one sign of movement below them was the faint spot of fire where Soren had fallen. It wasn’t very far away. Everything else was lost in darkness.

  Cain might’ve still been pursuing Berith, out into the cavern beyond. There might still be a fight. All the same, there was no sign of it now. The weight of the earth laid down a heavy silence.

  Sparks came out of the darkness next to him. They caught the torch, and Zaria raised the flame above her head. The light was pitifully small.

  “Isaac,” she said. “We’re fucked now, aren’t we?”

  A rumble began to be felt through the stone and metal. It came from beneath their feet and far above their heads. It was much stronger from above.

  “We got no chance of winning, do we?”

  Outside, through the cracks in the obelisk, the darkness seemed to churn. There was an unimaginably large cavern out there, the one he had glimpsed from the start of the pelvis. Out there, through miles of blackened air, colossal legs might be twitching. Getting ready to stand. If they did, they would be large enough to pierce the clouds.

  “I’ll bandage your hand,” he said, and dug some vials from his pack. He didn’t have many left—just chamomile and boiled elderberry. They would not do much. Even still, he poured them into his palm, ready to apply.

  “Hey,” she said.

  He looked at her.

  She pointed at the powdered plants. “Is that your way of giving me flowers?”

  After a long moment, he made a sound that might’ve been a laugh.

  “There’s a smile,” Zaria said. “I’ll take it.”

  “Be honest,” Isaac said, pulling her hand towards him. “Has someone trained you to be this irritating?”

  “Sheer natural talent, I suppose.”

  He packed the herbs, made a splint, and bound the cloth. She hissed and grunted through it all. She packed the rest of the herbs around his knives, wrapping the splints down tight. He nearly bit his tongue in half.

  They made their way over to the edge of the pipes. The winding staircase just barely caught the edge of the torchlight.

  “Can you make the jump?” she asked.

  “Probably not.”

  The rumbling intensified. Loose masonry broke from the walls. Metal groaned and ripped.

  She bent down, lifted him over her shoulder, and leaped into the darkness. They crashed into the stairs. She gave a sharp cry when her head hit the wall, and a fresh stream of blood leaked down her face.

  Slowly, he was let back down to his feet. She handed him the torch. He was forced to take it in his off-hand—if he held it in his slinged arm, the flames licked at his face. Her arm wrapped around him, keeping him from stumbling over the edge of the stairs, and she pressed her uninjured hand to his chest, fingers wrapping around the knife below his clavicle.

  “Pressure,” she said.

  He nodded. She applied it. It hurt enough to make him gasp. He could not tell if the bleeding had slowed. His shirt was wet and warm. He hoped it would be enough.

  Carefully, never letting go of each other, they descended down the stairs of the obelisk, heading into the darkness below.

  Around them, the earth began to roar.