The moment Yethyr stepped into the Circle, the blood changed shape, flowing across the stone until it painted a simple drawing of a stairway at his feet. He took another step to find the stairway real. An optical illusion made physical as what should have just been a drawing in blood guided Yethyr further and further into the floor.
When that floor was higher than his head, he looked back. He could see Jaetheiri peering down at him in horrified bafflement.
I was inclined to feel the same.
That horror intensified when the way above snapped shut, plunging us both into darkness.
But Yethyr did not flinch; he was not lost.
He could hear the dead.
Deathsong pounded from every direction, as loud and numerous as the stonesong that once filled Datrea.
It was in the ground where Yethyr stepped; it was in the walls that his gloved fingers braced against.
His knees buckled. It was everywhere, pounding from every direction, eager to drain the very life from his skin. Even I felt it dancing off my steel.
But Yethyr was a conductor of deathsong.
He pounded a rhythm into the wall, unrelenting and so addicting the voices of the dead could not help but join in. I struggled to resist the urge to do the same. It was an insatiable beat, one that demanded compliance. It was suffocating, all consuming.
Liberating.
With every blind step into that discordant soundscape, Yethyr strengthened, instead of drained.
Every note, every musical phrase meant to warp him became warped in his wake, shifting an octave, changing in pitch until it had joined the symphony he composed to puppet his body.
With the choir of Hell empowering him, he did not limp, every step became as light and crisp as the young living man he was supposed to be.
Here, in Hell, he had the strength to wield me on his own.
The horror of that shook me from his will. I desperately stopped following along with his composition. It was difficult. His music was irritatingly catchy, but I would not give him my help freely.
The voices of the dead had no such pride and they cheerfully gave him the strength to stride down the steps. He ceased pounding his rhythm against the walls. The hellish choir kept the beat on its own.
“Brilliant.” Z’krel’s voice made Yethyr jump. It seemed right by his ear in the darkness. “Pure genius.”
From another, it would be a compliment. From the demon that devoured geniuses, it was a threat.
Yethyr’s hand closed around my hilt. “Are you salivating at the sight of me, Z’krel?”
“No. I’d rather—well, there would be no point saying that.”
Yethyr narrowed his eyes. “Saying what?”
“I was going to make an analogy related to agriculture, but you wouldn’t understand. You are Brinn. You know nothing of a slave’s work.”
“Explain it to me anyway.”
“Curiosity?” Suddenly the voice seemed to move as Z’krel was circling him. “Among the Brinn? What a tantalizing fruit ripening on a long diseased tree.”
Yethyr huffed. “I don’t need to be a farmer to understand that analogy.
“Not that analogy, no. Listen carefully my boy: some crops are for eating; some are left in the ground to cultivate for a future yield.” Suddenly the flames of his giant skull ignited, revealing Z’krel inches from Yethyr’s face. “You, young prince, were made to be cultivated.”
Yethyr shuddered and backed away; he removed me from his belt and held me between him and the skull. The bandages he had wrapped me in started to brown and crisp from the sheer heat. “I will never be your demon.”
“No,” Z’krel agreed. “You won’t. You will never earn that good fortune.” He floated backward, giving me respite from his scorching inferno. “But you will find me generous to the unfortunate. I welcome you to my hall, young prince. May my hospitality be to your liking.”
The flames of his eyes extinguished and Z’krel disappeared just as smaller blue lanterns illuminated, revealing that Yethyr had descended to a lavish chamber, decorated in a style not dissimilar to the Palace in Datrea.
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Yethyr returned me to his belt but eyed the lanterns warily. The strange blue fires were nestled in hollowed-out skulls that seemed to shift so that they could watch him as he moved deeper into the room.
Something brushed his leg. He yelped only to see an orange tabby cat staring up at him with intent pale green eyes. It looked suspiciously like the same one that General Tynir had tossed into a Datrean back alley. There was no point in asking how it had followed Yethyr here. It brushed his knee with its head and then scurried on to scratch at a chair leg.
Yethyr breathed out a sigh. He appeared to be in some sort of lounge. His bone boots muddied lush carpets and his glove trailed luxurious divans. Vibrant fruits adorned the tables, along with pitchers of rich sweet-smelling drink. There were many doorways leading to other rooms, and Yethyr immediately concluded they were in some sort of hellish maze.
I agreed although I wasn’t sure how we were supposed to navigate it. I learned to navigate the Maze of Stone from Aztomag, but I doubted this layout followed the same pattern.
The sound of humming interrupted both of our thoughts. Yethyr turned his head. It was coming from one of the dark corridors connected to the lounge. It grew clearer and more familiar.
Whatever was humming was humming Yethyr’s melody.
A body shambled out from the darkness. Just from the lumbering gait, I could tell it was puppeted by deathsong, not through Yethyr’s power, but its lips were definitely humming Yethyr’s song. As it grew nearer, it only got louder and more eerie.
It shuffled into the light of the skull lanterns so that I could see that it was a young clean-shaven man dressed in gold embroidered livery. He had dark lifeless eyes and there was no wonder why. The crown of his head had been sliced clean off, making plain that the brain was very much missing.
Consumed by the lord of this place.
Yethyr swallowed nervously.
Once he was before Yethyr, the brainless man jerkily took up a bowl, held it out, and stopped humming.
“Would you like some grapes, my lord?” he said tonelessly, in understandable, if strangely accented Brinn, like the language was unnatural on his tongue.
Yethyr gently pushed the bowl away and asked in Datrean.“Are you of Datrea?”
The corpse made no response; there was no evidence that he had ever heard. He set aside the bowl and took up a goblet.
“Perhaps some wine to quench your thirst?”
This time, he offered it in monotone, but easy Datrean, which Yethyr seemed to think as a sign of progress. He reached for the corpse and unleashed a new composition upon him.
“Look at me when you address me.”
Its dead eyes snapped up to meet Yethyr’s, but there was no flicker of comprehension.
“Tell me your name,” Yethyr demanded.
The corpse stared at him blankly. Yethyr had dominated the body, but he could hardly make the mouth say anything it used to know without the brain.
Yethyr released his hold on the corpse and brushed it aside.
He stalked down halls and checked room after room to find them filled with brainless shambling figures sweeping floors and dusting skull light fixtures. With the tops of their heads gone and the brains missing, they looked much like the wine goblets they occasionally offered, drunk dry, and empty of whatever brilliance used to fill them.
They were all cheerfully humming Yethyr’s own song. As the Prince approached them, his music would dominate them and they would physically answer his every whim, but there was hardly any point to it.
Yethyr had complete power and it was completely useless.
I found the irony delicious, but regardless of my amusement, it was clear why Z’krel had been so confident no spirit here would answer Yethyr’s call. They could hardly answer when they could not think.
The Prince was not deterred. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Z’krel?” He raised his voice to address the ever-watching walls. “Do you gorge fast?”
“On the feast you have provided?” The voice seemed to come from all the skull lanterns and all the dead brainless lips, and also none of them. Z’krel’s chuckle came from everywhere and nowhere. “I could do nothing, but savor it.”
“So the ones in your halls worth talking to are the newly dead then.”
“And those who are worthy to become demons.”
Yethyr scoffed. He crouched down and momentarily reveled in the lack of pain as he did so.
He listened to mindless deathsong that drenched the halls, ignoring the endless voices that had vapidly succumbed to his composition. He was looking for pain, I realized. He was looking for the anguished cry of someone suffering in Hell.
“Scream openly,” Yethyr commanded the dead. “I shall hear you and offer salvation.”
Suddenly, a wail pierced the air, a song of grief that made the stone halls rumble.
Yethyr sprang to his feet and dashed down the hallway where the sound emanated from. I felt his flicker of delight at how smoothly he could run.
But he had to focus. The wail softened to sobs and he had to carefully pinpoint the sound. He scrambled down corridor after corridor, and eventually, he grew near enough to hear the words attached to the sobs.
“Curse it all. Why? Why? Such shortsightedness. Such pettiness. Damn him. Damn them all. Was it all for nothing?”
The words devolved into a new bout of sobs as Yethyr found the right doorway. Within was a lavish circular chamber, filled to the brim with all the delights of food and drink and refined furniture. Brainless servants milled about, humming Yethyr’s song, all but the gray-robbed figure sobbing into the divan at the center of the room.
“Centuries of effort. All ash.” The voice was muffled by a pillow, but it sounded male and Datrean.
A brainless maid wordlessly offered him a handkerchief.
“Thank you, dear.” The man took it gratefully and blew his nose. With him sitting up, it was clear to see that although the top of his head was blissfully intact, the face itself was scorched beyond recognition.
A different servant offered him a goblet which he eagerly drank from. He held it out to be refilled when he caught sight of Yethyr in the doorway.
Unlike the empty stares of the shambling brainless things surrounding him, the dark eyes set in his disfigured face were sharp and cunning.
And dangerous.
Yethyr sighed in relief.
Finally, there was someone who could give him answers.
Thank you so much for reading! I really appreciate all the support I have gotten during the transition to move this story to Royal Road. Do tell me what you think! I love comments and often respond to them
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Z'krel's hospitality is...
