Page 132 of The Simurgh

Silas cut the blade through the black shape that bore down on him.

The cave shuddered. The water churned. The goddess screamed her last.

A blast of air threw Pitch back on his heels, and he grabbed at nothingness to try and stay upright, extinguishing his flame while he fought for purchase.

The darkness blew outwards, filling the cave entirely. Submerging them in a blackness Pitch had not known since the abaddon.

He reignited his flame. For one terrible moment it seemed light would never enter the world again. And even when the fire penetrated the shroud of night it did not do so far.

‘Silas, Silas?’ He called into a frightening silence, wading through water frothed by the goddess’s destruction. ‘Where are you?’

The angst, the misery, that had plagued this place was gone. But if Pitch did not hear a reply soon, there’d be his fury to replace it.

A low moan came from the shadows.

‘I’m coming, Silas. I’m right here.’ He still could see no more than a foot in front of him, but he felt led with each push of his body through the water: a gentle pressure at his shoulder, urging him along. If Izanami guided him, it was the least fucking thing she could do.

Pitch nearly collided with the ankou.

Silas was mostly submerged, just the tops of his shoulders and his head visible. The scythe floated beside him, and a derelict raven sat upon his shoulder, its head lowered to match that of the ankou.

But Pitch made no move to strike the bird. He suspected he knew its ilk. A necromancer seeking to atone her sins.

‘Silas?’

Pitch swallowed bile that rose with looking on the ankou’s injuries. He had no idea where or how to touch him, only that he wanted to so badly it made his fingers ache.

‘It’s all right, Pitch. I’ll heal. I promise.’

‘I kept my promise, best you keep yours, Mr Mercer.’

The raven tilted its head, watching him with one milky eye as Pitch tried to walk around Silas slowly enough that the water would not shift against his cuts and gashes.

‘Don’t harm her,’ Silas spoke wetly.

‘I won’t.’

‘It is done.’

‘Gods, I hope so.’

He sank down into the water, and had to bite his tongue so he’d not make a sound at the sight of Silas’s face. One of his eyes was swollen shut, the other bloodshot so badly the white was nearly entirely red. There was a massive cut on his lower lip, flesh peeling back like flower petals. Smaller nicks, varying in depth, were cross-stitched over his face. The entire lobe of his right ear had been gnawed off.

‘Silas…’ Pitch had no idea what to say.Are you all right, was ridiculous.

‘You are not hurt?’

‘No, no I’m fine. My ears ring a little from your goddess but…fucking hell, Silas –’

‘I told you, you’d make me stronger than the gods so long as I knew you safe.’ Silas made an odd sound, laughter perhaps but horrible mangled.

He buckled and Macha’s raven went scattering in a whisper of black. Pitch caught him, despising himself for the pained cries it drew from the ankou.

‘Forgive me.’ Pitch pressed his lips to Silas’s damp hair. The smell was atrocious, the hint of old mud, decay and blood, as though the ankou were one of those rotting things in the grave. Pitch swallowed against the foul thought, staring at the sprawl of dark blood on the water’s surface, illuminated by the subtle glow beneath his own skin. ‘You pushed yourself too hard –’

‘And She is gone.’ Silas hung over Pitch’s arm, the water lapping at his chest. ‘Morrigan has lost her foothold here. And the atrocity of the Sluagh is no more. They are free.’

Pitch did not like the way Silas slurred his words. The way his head still hung low, his hair concealing his face.