Page 55 of House of the Beast

Chapter

S tepping through the gate felt like an absolute dearth of all sensation.

I had never experienced anything like it. Even in those dark, quiet rooms where my father had taught me about commune, it had not been like this. I could always feel the warmth from the candles, smell smoke in the air, and hear the quiet noises of living things from outside.

But in that black space, I truly felt nothing. Like the world around me had simply disappeared.

For a moment I stood still, on the brink of blind panic.

It was the squeeze of Aster’s hand around my own that brought me back to myself.

I immediately returned the gesture, holding on to him like a lifeline.

I focused on the erratic rhythm of my heart and remembered where I was.

Everyone else had come through this way, and I would do so as well. I forced my feet forward once more.

A couple more steps and then every sensation slammed back into me at once, leaving me dazed as a drunken sailor after a bar fight.

Sight was what I registered first. The area around Firmament Square was almost fully terraformed, and it remained our most stable outpost to date.

But as I blinked around at the same buildings, on the same streets I had just come from, I could not help but be surprised.

Had I gotten turned around somehow and wandered back out the gate?

But no—a moment more of observation, and I determined that it was not quite the same place.

The lanterns that had been floating through the air were all gone.

So were the crowds of people. The sky above me was a vibrant, fantastical hue of blue-purple I’d never seen before, and littered with what looked like millions of pinpricks of light, not just twinkling but vibrating like living things hungry to jostle loose and soar downward.

Beside me, Aster was quiet and unmoving as he gazed up at them.

The air was still—unnaturally so. No wind, no hint of sea air.

Everything seemed brighter somehow. Sharper.

Even the air had a sharpness to it—like the tang of metal, abrasive but somehow cleansing.

Then I registered the sounds of battle.

Dark smears painted the ground, remnants of the terrors that had waited for the gate to open only to be met with Kugara’s most divine warriors, greedy for ichor to feed their connection to their gods.

I glimpsed the blue cloaks of the Metia Heavensguard whipping around a corner.

Somewhere beyond the nearest line of buildings there were voices shouting, metal ringing, an explosion, and then a deep, eerie wail that resonated through my very skull.

Whatever it came from was too big to be a terror, and something about it felt familiar—as if I had heard it before these last few days. Perhaps I had, as it approached through the sky, singing silently to the people of Sorrowsend. The fallen star was nearby, and someone was already fighting it.

I ripped my hand from Aster’s grasp—he would join me again one way or another—and pelted down the stairs from the gate.

My feet ate up the pavement. I was weak, unfed by the droves of nightmares that had been taken down before I even arrived, but I would never forgive myself if someone else slayed the Wanderer of Still Waters before I could even lay my eyes on it.

Another deep, guttural boom rattled my bones as it crashed over me. It had come from behind the next row of buildings, and was followed by the sky briefly lighting up with silvery starlight. Metia Heavenseers and their magecraft.

Something big was happening, and here I was, missing all of it. Damn, damn, damn.

I tore around a corner, and then nearly tripped over my own feet as I jerked to a sudden halt. The path in front of me, the one leading to all the action, was blocked. Three Dreadguard had situated themselves in the middle of the street, almost like they had been expecting me.

“Lady Alma.” The one in the middle greeted me with a courteous nod of his head.

I did not want to be doing this. I did not have the time to be doing this. But from their dogged expressions, I could figure that they weren’t here just to say hello.

“Shouldn’t you be over there helping my father?

” I said, jerking my chin at the sounds of battle going on behind them.

There was another rumble, and then a chorus of agonized screams. I thought I saw something course through the air—a giant arm, with too many joints, bending in places it shouldn’t.

The star had manifested itself into something resembling a god already and was not pleased to find itself hunted.

“We are,” said the Dreadguard in the middle, somehow unfazed by this. He was tall and broad with a reliable sort of face under his helmet. “Lord Zander has requested that we stay behind and attempt to convince you to join his cause before you run into one another in less auspicious circumstances.”

“And if I say no?”

We all knew I wasn’t really waiting for an answer. The Dreadguard who had been restlessly examining the street grunted in annoyance as he strode over, drawing his sword.

“Captain,” he said irritably. “We came here to help Lord Zander. To bring glory to Avera. Not to babysit his daughter. She doesn’t want to cooperate; I say we knock her out and drag her unconscious back to the others. They need us.”

“Tomin,” the captain reprimanded. “Watch your words. She is still of the blood.”

At this point, I was just waiting for them to make a move so I could be done with this confrontation and move on.

I wrapped my hand loosely around the hilt of my own sword, waiting for the last guy to join them in their little show of intimidation—only he didn’t.

He had hunched over slightly, letting the wall support his weight, and his face was hidden by the brim of his helmet.

“My,” said Aster, suddenly beside me again. “Looks like he’s not adjusting too well to these new surroundings.”

I looked at him sharply, and then back at the hunched-over Dreadguard, now tense for an entirely different reason.

The other two also seemed to sense something was off.

The good captain was too well-trained to turn his back on me, but extended a tentative inquiry to his subordinate, nonetheless. “Neele?”

Neele lifted his face, looking terribly lost. “There’s... in my...” he managed, and then his right eye gave a violent twitch, and jerked out of focus.

“I’d take a step back if I were you,” Aster commented mildly.

I backed up just as the Dreadguard’s eye jerked again and then popped out of its socket to hang boldly down his cheek.

Something slithered out in its place—the dark, fat, shining body of a nightmare made manifest. It writhed out of the poor man’s face and dropped to the floor, wormlike, writhing, and covered in a film of goo.

I was barely able to react before a second creature pried itself loose, and then suddenly there were more, a swarm of them pouring from the bloody socket.

“Shit!” The Dreadguard with the nasty attitude stumbled backward, a tinge of panic in his voice. “Captain, we have to go back!”

I bit down my own exclamation of disgust. We hadn’t been able to see the umbral mind worms during the demonstration at the banquet—but here in their home, they were very real indeed.

This was the sort of thing my father’s blessing was supposed to prevent.

Swearing an oath to an elder god under a vessel’s name should have helped shield their minds against such horrors.

Of course, there was no way to guarantee the strength of one’s psyche, especially when one was newly exposed to a world not built for mortal comprehension.

Some people just didn’t hold up very well, and being so far away from my father, the point of his faith, had doomed this man’s brain to becoming a ripe spawning ground for tiny eldritch horrors to feast upon.

To his credit, the good captain hesitated only a second before he dashed forward, sword ready.

Neele was still holding a hand up to his face, upon which one of those horrible worms was wriggling, and was staring at it confused.

He had time to glance up at his approaching superior and mutter a small “Oh” before his head was lopped off.

The captain flicked the blood off his sword and stepped quickly away before one of those worms could crawl onto him.

His remaining companion sagged in relief.

Neele’s feet staggered, seemingly about to topple over, and then righted themselves.

An even larger worm, this time with a gaping mouth filled with teeth, exploded out of the open cavity of his neck.

At this point, I had drawn my own sword and was rushing forward to cleave the worm in half, but it stretched out with lightning speed and attached that awful mouth to the captain’s face.

A swift sweep of my blade severed the worm’s neck, but I knew it was already too late.

The captain was screaming, his voice muffled through the mouth still latched onto his face, and the end of the worm’s neck was wriggling around without its body, no doubt feeding off the sheer terror coming out of its victim.

“Stop moving,” I barked at the captain, trying desperately to get an angle at which I could pry the worm off. “I can’t—”

“You can’t save him,” Aster said sharply behind me. “Kill him before it gets worse.”

He was right. The captain might have survived having a terror attached to his face if he hadn’t panicked. But he had, and had given the worm a nice, helpful boost of power to sink its teeth in deep, and his mind would soon be eaten away.

Killing him would be a mercy.

The worm writhed and shifted, shaped itself into something new. Teeth grew out of the part that I had severed—another mouth. I had hesitated too long. The guard lunged toward me.

I stepped away in time—and the captain’s infected body lurched right past me toward his remaining companion.