8
A curtain of sparks veiled my sight. A squeal of clashing blades stifled my hearing. For an instant all sense was stolen from me. And though I remained motionless, awaiting the death that Dryya had ordained, it did not come.
The sparks faded. The squeal receded. And I yet lived.
The canyon was still before me, impenetrable beneath its fog-leaf shroud, those bloated creatures floating listlessly over its spires.
It was quiet. Even the pervasive wind had slacked in its moaning. Only a metallic grinding persisted. Directly behind my neck.
"You would dare raise your claws to me?" Dryya asked, half a snarl and half a whisper.
"Please, Fierce Knight," Ogrim cried, "stay your nail! Has the affliction's madness clouded your eyes?"
Feet scraped against stone, weight shifted, and a nail rasped down the length of a claw.
I could not turn, not even the slightest shift of my head. The burden of command held me still, as if I were entombed within a block of stone.
"If madness claims anyone, then it is you. The Lady's decree is to see this thing destroyed, and yet you impede that!"
"But why?" Ogrim gasped. "I beseech an answer! Why must the Little Knight perish?"
"Vessels are not meant to possess minds. It is contrary to their purpose!"
"Is this because of that nymph hopper? Was skewering it so terrible an offense?"
"Amongst the King's constructs, consciousness is a threat, in these Vessels most of all. I will eliminate that threat. Now, lower your claws and stand aside, or you will soon rue your actions!"
Ogrim began to pant. "But Hallownest is a land of enlightenment. A mind is a noble thing—a goodly thing! You would slay the Little Knight for having one of its own?"
"For the last time, yes! Curse the King and his secrets, if you vow to cease this interference, then I will reveal the truth."
The friction of claw and nail heightened. "A cruel offer, you would have me barter the Little Knight's life for a few dread secrets?"
"Fine, then." Dryya said. "Wallow in ignorance if it suits you, so long as you step aside."
There was a cracking, a groan of tormented metal. Ogrim loosed a pained growl. "I will not. I cannot allow such unrighteousness."
"What notion do you have of righteousness!" Dryya bellowed. "You are but an infant!"
"Perhaps!" Ogrim bellowed back. "But I am bound by a duty I cannot forsake!" He heaved, and there was a stumble of steps. "I tell you again that I will not allow this."
There was an icy span of seconds. And the heat of debate drained from Dryya's voice. "Very well. Then ready your claws. You have passed beyond clemency."
"To me, Little Knight," Ogrim whispered. "Remain close. I will shield you."
The impalpable tomb of Dryya's last command crumbled away, and movement was restored to me. Ogrim's order took hold, and I darted to his side.
Gouges and scattered chips of metal-like chitin marred the spot where the two Knights had locked blades. Dryya stood several paces away from it, her weapon held out before her and leveled at me.
Ogrim extended his arm to separate us. The claw upon it had lost its glass-smooth edge and was now covered in nicks and dotted with web-like fractures. It tremored as Ogrim raised his voice. "This battle need not be, Dryya. If it is truly the Lady's will—the King's will—that this Little Knight be—" He swallowed. "done away with, then I will hear it from them! Let us return to The City. All of us."
"I already speak for the Lady. Her verdict would be no different. And that King is as blind now as ever. Delusion would conceal any flaw that He might perceive in His Pure Vessel." She shifted her stance to face Ogrim. "No. I will administer judgment here. To it. And to you."
Ogrim took a breath, but before he could retort Dryya struck.
She moved as if the weight of the world meant nothing. Her slender legs closed the distance in a single bound, and with both claws she lifted her longnail over her head.
But Ogrim reacted, far faster than he was like to do. Before Dryya's blade could bisect him, he crossed his claws to catch it. There was a booming concussion, like the dying toll of a great bell.
Two new fractures sprouted along the blades of Ogrim's claws, and he collapsed to one knee. The rock beneath cracked from the force, and a stalactite from the nearby cave mouth dislodged. Before it even shattered against the ground, Dryya was in motion. She faded back and then forward, feinting strikes at Ogrim's sides, legs, and head.
Ogrim parried at the phantom attacks but did not connect with Dryya's nail. A growl billowed within him, and he lunged to his feet in a sudden shift toward aggression. Like a rising spear, he extended his claws toward Dryya's stomach, but again they found nothing.
The Fierce Knight seemed almost phantasmal as she dodged out of the range of Ogrim's attack. She flicked her nail with an air of impatience. "This is no sparring match, Ogrim. I am no tutor with one claw behind my back and a shellwood nail in the other. This is a duel. And you—perhaps above all others—know of my history on this subject."
"Oh, yes," Ogrim said with a groan-twisted laugh. "A sprawling legend of unbroken victory."
"Yet that does not deter you," Dryya said, almost sadly.
"Never."
Dryya waded in with a fresh volley of strikes, and this time not one was a feint. They crashed against Ogrim's immobile defense, setting his shell to rattling.
Slashes rained at Ogrim's brow and thrusts probed at his heart, but he did not move, instead catching or parrying each attack with his crossed claws. A semicircle of cuts and furrows formed in the ground at his feet. But as the count of strikes rose into the dozens, Ogrim began to crumple. Faintly at first, but soon to the point that he staggered with every hit, and barely managed to resume his stance before the next fell.
I kept my place at Ogrim's side as he had ordered. The duel raged an arm length away, and every swing of Dryya's nail made my cloak flutter. Periodically, she attacked me, forcing Ogrim to alter his defense. He suffered several glancing blows against his carapace to ensure that I went unharmed.
Though I did not move, I began to burn with the same searing feeling that had come with Dryya's command to hunt. I was under no other directive than to stand, yet the burn persisted, with some task unheard, some duty ungiven.
The strong protect the weak.
My grip tightened upon the nail.
But with one last clang, the assault ended—and the burning with it. Dryya fell back to her previous spot. "Why prolong this farce?" she asked, the slightest labor in her voice. "You crack to pieces. You cannot win."
Ogrim wobbled on his feet. "I fight not that I might triumph before you, but that I might not fail before myself."
"You will die," Dryya observed. "Is there any greater failure?"
Another pained laugh from Ogrim. "We have never shared this many words, you and I. It did not occur to me how… different we could be."
"This grows distasteful. You would do well to lay down and feign death. Perhaps I might overlook you after the Vessel has been disposed of."
"You know that I cannot," Ogrim whispered. "I would sooner slay myself."
Dryya made a petite noise, something like surprise. "The wisdom of my years fails me too often," she said.
"What?"
"Vessel!" Dryya shouted. She did not even look at me, but I felt her hooks coiling. "Destroy yourself!"
The hooks sprang. They wrapped my body and burrowed into my limbs, again making of me a marionette. With a deft twist, the shortnail inverted in my grip, and both my arms lifted the sheening point to my chest. Liquid-shadow beaded as the tip pressed into my body, but I felt no pain, merely a chill as if from a lonely gust. My arms tensed, preparing to drive the blade deeper, to rend whatever vital spark I had and return me to nothing.
"Stop!" Ogrim wheeled to face me. "You must not do such a thing!"
The nail slackened.
"Destroy yourself, Vessel." Dryya repeated. "I command it!"
There was a sick crunch, and a flurry of opaque bubbles gushed from my chest. I collapsed to my knees, but oblivion did not take me. I readied to strike again.
"I said STOP!" Ogrim screamed, this time with such violence that his voice tore. "You are never to slay yourself, Little Knight! Do you understand? NEVER!"
The hooks unwound. My arms fell limp at my sides.
Dryya rose to a booming echo that transcended even Ogrim. "You WILL obey, Vessel! Destroy yourself! Now!"
But I did not. Though I felt the order upon my shell, it held no authority. It was as if some inviolable barrier diverted the frothing river of Dryya's will.
Ogrim knelt beside me and grasped the nail's hilt between his mangled claws. He extracted it from my chest with a tug and tossed it to the ground. The shadow-smeared blade skidded across the stone, catching on a protruding pebble and skipping off the cliff's edge into the canyon below. Ogrim held his arms about me in a defensive circle yet seemed uncertain how to react to the thin flow of darkness that percolated from my chest and wafted through the air.
"Again, it proves its dysfunction," Dryya muttered. "The new order did not erase the last. Somehow, this Vessel retained it…"
Ogrim whipped about, snarling. "Too far, Dryya. Too far! You skirt the precipice of dishonor. Has all sense of chivalry rotted within you?"
"Chivalry," she said, as if tasting it. "You will find that word grows fatuous with time's passage. But no. Not quite. If that were so, then you would have died the moment that you turned your back."
It took a great effort for Ogrim to rise. He propped himself to his feet with the tips of his claws. Like Geo from a torn pouch, chitin tumbled from his blades. "Shall we continue?"
"Enough of this." Dryya snapped. "Yield, this contest is done. You have not the right nor the power to continue."
"I am not defeated," Ogrim slurred.
Dryya shook her head and raised her nail. "Do you intend to make of me a butcher?"
"No, Fierce Knight. The opposite. I will save you from that end."
"Fool."
In three stomping steps, Dryya was upon Ogrim once again. She planted her feet and swung her nail in an arc at his torso. The attack was far slower than any she had yet loosed, but it seemed infused with every scrap of her strength.
Ogrim attempted to dodge, but the movement was little more than a lurch. At the last instant, he raised his claws to shield himself, but they did nothing. The nail's impact pitched him to the ground, with such force that his shell cracked.
"Stay down," Dryya said. She spun about and raised her nail to me, preparing to bury it to the hilt into my mask. She snatched a breath, and the blade descended.
But up shot Ogrim, beyond pain, beyond fatigue. He wrapped Dryya from behind with his broken claws, catching her bent arms and pressing them tight to her chest. The nail jolted from Dryya's grip and dinned against a rock. Ogrim arched his back, lifting Dryya's tall form and stealing her purchase of the ground. "You will not!" he cried, with words wet and tortured. "So long as I live, you will not slay this one!"
Dryya struggled and twisted, but Ogrim's claws were locked like a pair of manacles.
"Vessel!" Dryya shrieked. "Hurl yourself into the canyon! Seek out the greatest beast within so that it might devour you!"
The command flooded over me, circumventing whatever barrier might have been. I faltered up from my knees and took a half-step about, in the direction of the cliff.
"No!" Ogrim yelled, "Stop! You must—"
But Dryya flung her head back to slam Ogrim full in the face. She wrenched her body to the side and lashed out with an elbow at Ogrim's temple.
The grapple broke, and Dryya stumbled free of Ogrim's arms. "Do as I commanded!" Dryya said, before turning around and clenching her claw into a bludgeon.
Ogrim was already drawing a breath to interdict, but it was lost as Dryya punched him in the eye. He bellowed in pain and reeled back.
"Go!" Dryya thundered.
The word slammed against me like the butt of a lance. My feet lost the ground, and I found myself hurtling into the canyon.
Ogrim screamed something after me, but the growing distance obliterated his meaning.
As I plummeted, black bubbles streamed from my chest like the trail of a shooting star. Though pulsing shadow obscured my vision, I saw a spire rushing up to intercept me. Before I collided and dashed to pieces, the material of my cloak transformed, becoming membranous and sheathed in light. I flapped with all my strength, sweeping my transient wings to one side and altering my trajectory. Wind roared as I grazed the spire's edge, and pain sheared across my shoulder. With a kick and another flap, I amended my course.
My wings soon shriveled, and my glide returned to a fall. I pierced the canopy, and branch after branch buffeted me. Their sharp edges scratched my mask and tattered my re-forming cloak. I landed without elegance, tumbling into a cluster of ferns and coming to a stop.
But no sooner had I stilled than I rose to my feet. The brand of Dryya's dictum was seared into my shell, and I could not resist it.
I set off in search of a creature to devour me.
In contrast to the cliffs above, the canyon floor was glutted with life, both plant and fungal. Thick shrubbery and nests of vines occupied the spaces where light could be found, while carpets of mushrooms took up the darker stretches. Overhead, sprouting from the craggy slopes of the spires, were the tall-stalked plants that made up the canopy. Between them flitted winged bugs in many shapes and sizes. Some paused to regard me, venom dripping from their bright-orange abdomens.
Spores rose like fog banks as I trudged over fungi, and stray leaves clung to my cloak as I pushed through bushes. I passed even more bugs as I went, but they were far too small to consume me.
The insubstantial leash tugging at my neck eventually brought me to a clearing occupied by Maskflies. They flinched at my appearance and took flight in a spiraling arrangement before vanishing into a hole in the canopy.
At the center of the clearing was a cavity of stone, within which rested a crystal-pure pool of water. I skirted its edge, but a metallic flash caught my attention. I stopped, held fast by something. Beneath the perfect stillness of the water rested an object, unnatural in such a setting. It was a nail, the very nail that Ogrim had flung off the cliff minutes before. I quivered in place, strung between Dryya's imperative and another long forgotten.
Take the nail, little one.
Though the leash of Dryya's will strained against me, I shuffled down the slope of the cavity and splashed into the chilling pool. It was not deep, and the nail's hilt came easily to my grip. I kept it close to my side as I left the clearing. My wet steps smacked across the stone.
I was directed ever downward and toward the heart of the canyon. Light became less and less frequent, forcing plant life to give way to fungus and rot. Pale, root-like things began to appear in the soil. They sported bulbs at their tips which cast a ghostly glow upon the unnatural night. Creatures skittered and hissed beyond the reach of those bulbs, but their noises were meager and furtive. They were unfit to fulfill my task.
I continued onward, heedless of the long gulfs of darkness through which I walked.
But weakness crept upon me, like frost over the petals of a flower. Strands of ebony smoke wept from the wound in my chest. My legs shuddered with every step, and spinous vines rendered the path treacherous. As a matter of inevitability, I faltered and fell at a dip in the canyon floor. This dip extended into a slope, and the slope into a fissure.
I crashed through putrid underbrush and slime-coated mushrooms. The walls of the fissure protruded like broken teeth, and I ricocheted all the way down. With a crunch of chitin, I came to a stop.
For a time, I could not rise. The world seemed to quake beneath me, and animation would not return to my limbs.
From the scope of my vision, it appeared that I rested in a cavity of soil and loose rock. The wan caress of those glowing bulbs illuminated my surroundings. Beneath me and within the walls, tiny, spike-covered bugs squirmed over one another with a pointless urgency.
Slowly, feeling crawled its way back into my body, and I pushed up to arms' length. A scrap of moon-white shell fell from the cheek of my mask. Yet that scrap did not belong to me. Though I was wounded, my mask was still unbroken.
I stood, and more scraps thumped upon the soil, falling from my chest and cloak. Something had broken my fall, and in the process broken itself. I looked down.
The tangled strips of a steel-gray cloak.
The shattered remnants of two curved horns.
The stump of a nail, devoured by rust.
And the umbral stain of what had once been a body, so much like mine.
Out of these remains stared one unblinking eye socket, the only distinguishable remnant of a mask. The spike-covered bugs writhed and threshed through the pearly shell fragments, taking them up in their mandibles and grinding them to powder with sedulous attention.
A voice, unbidden, rose from the incomprehensible tendrils of the past.
That thing is… No consequence to you. It is mere refuse…
And again, my purpose ensorcelled me. I strode over the corpse and did not look back.
The fissure was deep, far deeper than my enervated body could surmount. Not even a sliver of natural light reached down from above. Yet ahead, a passage peeked out of the cavity wall. It was little more than a crack lined with fungus, but it foretokened progress. With difficulty, I squeezed through and into the crushing embrace of the earth.
Every step forward was a labor. The scrape and toil of my movements rebounded back at me, for the walls were barely wider than my shell. Stagnation hung heavy, as if the ash coating the land above had seeped down and become the very air about me. My cloak caught on jagged corners. My horns bashed against low-hanging stalactites. At times it felt as if my body would rip in two as I forced through jaw-like openings in the rock. Yet I did not—could not—stop.
Though half-blind and panting, I spied something in the distance. Beyond a bend in the earthen labyrinth stood a beacon, a gap in the wall through which spilled sickly light. I hastened forward, abraded my shell upon talons of stone, and finally tore free of the tunnel's clutches.
I emerged into a crater with steep, towering walls. It resembled the upturned mouth of some enormous parasite: perfectly circular, and with triangular shelves of stone jutting along its edge like teeth. Farther above, the green of the canopy shrouded the gray sky.
On the far side of the crater was a cave entrance. Littered about it were the hulks of dead creatures. Their shells bore puncture wounds, and what remained of the flesh upon their bodies was desiccated and shrunken. Within the cave, a foul wind blew, expanding and receding in a slow cadence.
The leash of my command grew taut. I had found the object of my journey. The heat rose in me, and I approached the cave, every step faster than the last.
Though the only sound I made was the hiss of my cloak, the wind within the cave stilled. A sequence of tremors disturbed the earth, and a presence revealed itself. Two eyes—lividly orange—emerged from the dark, and with them came the plated form of a gargantuan bug.
Six legs, vestigial wings, and a nail-sharp proboscis greeted me. I beheld a Hopper, many dozen times larger than the one Dryya had slain. It fixed the molten liquid of its gaze on me and approached. The ground beneath it buckled and cracked like the surface of a frozen lake.
As the Hopper drew close, the finer details of its body became clear. Old cuts, bite marks, and abrasions tarnished its armor. The wings upon its back were nothing but shredded flaps, and a hairline fracture ascended its proboscis, reaching all the way to the eye socket. The Hopper's front-right leg had been severed at an upper joint, causing it to list with every hop. Yet, it still maneuvered around the heaps of its victims with a semblance of finesse. The bulk of its body cast a shadow that stretched ravenously toward me.
But fear was no birthright of mine, and I careened into a sprint, erasing the distance between us. Such was the demand placed upon me.
The Hopper did not bellow or screech. Aside from the crunch of stone, its only noise was strenuous breathing. As I entered its range, the Hopper slid to a halt and gathered its legs beneath it. With a snapping noise that resembled splintering shellwood, the Hopper leapt into the air. It angled its pointed limbs at me and dropped like a boulder.
I did not brandish my nail. I did not tense and prepare to dodge. I did not draw from the well of Soul within me. I merely waited.
In anticipation of my task's end.
But as the terrible weight descended, a smear of color swept down from the crater's edge. I was struck, not by the piercing proboscis of the Hopper, but by something soft and warm. Fuzzy limbs wrapped me, and I was spirited into the sky. There was a deafening crash beneath me as the Hopper landed and imprinted a second, smaller crater into the first.
As I soared on delicate wings not my own, the leash of purpose pulled at me. Of all the creatures in the canyon, that Hopper alone could fulfill my goal, yet I was traveling away from it.
Fatigue rendered me sluggish and impotent, but I pushed against the thing keeping me aloft. I needed, above all else, to return to the crater so that I might be devoured.
"Settle down, valiant larva," whispered the soft, winged thing about me. "Be still. Should you fuss then I might drop you, and we cannot have that."
The leash snapped. As a dozen commands before it, Dryya's edict was lost to me with but the passage of a few antithetical words. I stilled, letting the pain and weariness loose from the cage in which I had bound it.
The winged thing chuckled. "There we are. Much better. You might care to rest, we are nearly free of the Matron's den."
A few flaps and an easy glide brought us above the crater's rim. All around stretched the private ecosystem of the canyon, dispersed with similar craters like marks upon a damaged shell.
The winged thing gripped me tightly and returned to the earth in a helical motion. We alighted on one of the huge, stone wedges that encircled the Hopper's crater. The winged thing flapped one last time to stabilize itself, and fine, ruby-hued powder parted from its wings to sparkle away on the breeze.
I was released from the cushioned embrace with a gentle nudge. But the new mandate of stillness that had been placed upon me paralyzed my limbs, and I collapsed into a heap.
The winged thing made an alarmed noise. "Oh dear, are you alright? Has exhaustion overtaken you? At the least, sit up if you can, I must ensure that you aren't hurt."
I lifted my body from the cold rock and crossed my legs. Despite everything, the nail was still with me. I rested it on my lap and looked up.
The winged thing was a moth, with multi-faceted, obsidian eyes and pronounced antennae shaped like the fronds of a fern. Something like fur draped its entire body, in alternating hues of pinks and whites that clashed with the drabness of our surroundings.
The moth reached up to tug at the tips of its wings and pulled them inwardly in an overlapping pattern. In a few seconds, the wings came to resemble a stiff sort of cloak, and the moth sat down beside me. Stripes of fuchsia and cream mingled in a manner that could be called… beautiful.
"You recover quickly," the moth said. "That is a good sign." It looked me up and down, from the scrapes on my horns, to the nail in my lap, to the dirt caking my feet. At the sight of my chest, the moth cringed. "That is a ghastly wound you bear. Is the pain dire?"
But I did not reply.
"Perhaps I am being impertinent," the moth said. "I will begin with introductions." It lowered its head in a grave gesture. "I am called Seer, of the moth tribe. What is your name?"
