Page 135 of The Death Wish

An angel had hurt him. Manipulated and deceived.

The thoughts flashed and died quickly. Too much so to do anything but cause confusion.

Pitch dragged himself to his feet, feeling the tug of his flesh as his knees came away from the bony reef. He stood in a spreading film of his own blood. The water nearest him now matched the pale red hue of the light.

He searched the landscape. For someone? Perhaps. There was an endless stretch of the water and reef.

He took another step and found it akin to walking through treacle. Treacle laced with pins and razor blades. The skin on the underside of his feet tore open. Another step and the blanket of blood around him darkened.

But he should move on. He should continue to suffer. He must…why the fuck could he not recall what he must do?

‘What am I doing here?’ he asked of the mournful cries that accompanied him.

Their loud and debilitating wails were beneath his skin, behind his eyelids, tying his veins in knots. They soared around him, a flock of ravens setting eyes upon its prey.

Pitch clutched at his head, a dazzling pain behind his eyes. A flashing image of birds aloft: feathers drifting, feathers upon a mask, cloaks of black, horns of onyx. Chocolate eclairs. A man with silver glasses. Hot cups of tea. A cloven foot. A dagger that flashed as it came for him. Pitch cried out and threw himself beyond reach of the attack.

Only to find the unyielding hardness of the reef. Another cut of skin. Another bloodletting. And the near overwhelming desire to give in to a torrent of tears.

Pitch blinked, his eyes stinging. Tears were not familiar to him. This was not right.

Heat filled his belly. Not scalding, but comforting. He drew in a breath and cradled his bleeding, punctured hands against his stomach. He found satin and stays; damp and hard and familiar. Pitch looked down at himself, his fingers tracing a bloody line over the simple corset he wore.

‘Blood Lake,’ he whispered.

Something fluttered beneath his skin, fanning the fire that despondent sorrow sought to destroy.

Destroy.

Destroy the halo. He was here for the halo. The Blight faltered in its song of dread and loss.

‘Where the fuck is it?’ Pitch shouted. ‘Where are you, Samyaza? It is pointless to hide from me.’

Pitch ran. The bones slashing at his feet, his blood leaving a cape of crimson spreading out behind.

He ran. Trying to outpace the gathering storm of the Blight. Trying to bring Vassago to the fore once more.

The toes on his right foot were all but bone, and his lungs were wracked with painful spasms by the time he finally saw a shift in the landscape. A singular rise amongst an endless flatness. All the hue and cry of the lake’s woeful inhabitants suddenly dulled, his blood thundering in his ears. A dizziness coming over him.

The hilt of a sword protruded from a jagged assembly of bones piled high in the shallow waters, as though swept up by an enormous broom, left for a cleanup that never came.

The halo.

Pitch let out a wild laugh and rushed forward, lamentations rising around him, surrounding him. He stepped over the countless dead, the many who had fought and lost and fouled these waters with their regret and sorrow, and whose remains took the flesh from his own bones. They bled him until he was woozy with the pain.

But he was so close.

The simurgh spread itself into his fingertips, into his badly damaged toes, and right down the lengths of his hair. Urging him to lift his feet higher, even as the flesh there dangled and the white of his bones shone through. Misery scratched at his back, and grief tangled itself in his thoughts. His face was streaked with tears that would not stop falling.

But he was so close.

The hilt of the sword was plain, the pommel a bulge of dull iron-grey, the grip black as tar and its leather fraying, the blade blunt where it was not buried in the stone.

The water grew shallower. Barely covering his bleeding feet.

Just another few strides and he’d be there. At the source of so much suffering.

A sob left him. A searing wretchedness that burned his nostrils. And by the gods, it was agony to take every step. He faltered, and the Blight came at him again, with a hammer strike of abject wretchedness. His cries joined the chorus.