Blood of the Mantis

It seemed to him that there was now another with them, there in Nivit’s home. Some shadow-thing hidden from him, but lurking at the edge of his senses.

Use it.

His hands played over the box, gripping it, feeling the endlessly reiterated features. How else would one use a box?

He came to his senses suddenly: becoming aware of himself and what he was about to do. His mind was already issuing the countermand but, before he could recover his self-possession, his traitor hands had acted.

He opened the box.

Darkness came flooding out.

*

The walls were twisting, inwards, downwards, all knotted and thorny, and he was falling, drowning, a world opening about him…

Sef screamed, clutching at her head, but Gaved was bewildered, seeing nothing. Tisamon had leapt to his feet, claw ready on his hand…

The world was made of knotted, diseased trees, thorned, running awry with briars, leprous with fungi, and the space between the trees was darkness and shadows and yet more trees and he waited for the jump, the snap taking him back into Nivit’s dingy little hut, but it did not happen.

Achaeos climbed to his feet, and saw his hands were empty and the box was gone.

No. Iam within it.

The prison of the Darakyon, home of all the horrors that warped place could muster, and he was now inside it.

He turned all about, breath issuing swift and ragged, but he was alone, all alone…

Is this it? Am I here now? For ever?

‘I am Achaeos, Seer of Tharn,’ he declared, choking on his own voice. ‘I demand that you acknowledge me.’

We acknowledge you.

But this was not the great voice of the Darakyon, only the voice of the creature from his dream.

‘Laetrimae!’ He turned.

She was there, a Mantis-kinden maid possessed of their lean, angular beauty, and dressed now in the carapace-steel armour of centuries ago, looking fair and pale and terrible.

What have you done? She approached him, picking her way through tortured ground that writhed and contorted all around them. You have opened the box. No other has ever dared to come here.

‘I am here.’ I cannot admit weakness now, because she is Mantis, and she would kill me. ‘I have followed the commands of the Darakyon. What would you have of me?’

She raised a hand, and he flinched, expecting thorns, but it was live, warm skin held against his cheek, and then she leant down and kissed him, briefly but passionately, on the lips, engaging his white eyes with her own.

You, little neophyte? she mocked. We want nothing of you. You are not the one.

And, despite himself, he let out a cry when the thorns and spines burst bloodily from her skin, ripping her apart, goring her through and through, the arcing, piercing and repiercing briars, and the jagged chitin that ripped through her armour and turned it to rust. And he heard-

‘Achaeos!’

A voice from behind him. A real, live voice. Staggering back from Laetrimae, he turned to see Tynisa struggling towards him, brandishing her rapier in her hand. The sword gleamed with a green-white light, and he saw an answering gleam from deeper within the trees.

‘Oh,’ he said slowly, because he had not appreciated the true scale of the problem.

‘What in the wastes is going on?’ Tynisa demanded. He looked back to Laetrimae, but the Mantis creature had gone, fading into smoke the moment he glanced away from her.

‘I… may have made a mistake,’ he stuttered. She gaped at him and he recalled how she had been brought up by dull Beetle-kinden. She looked as though she was on the very brink of going mad.

‘Achaeos, we were in Nivit’s. We… Where are we now?’

‘Calm. Be calm,’ he told her. Small help, as he sounded less than calm himself. Here now was the other gleaming light, striding out of the broken darkness: Tisamon with his claw blazing, his eyes locked on Achaeos.

‘Magician, what have you done?’ he asked. ‘Where have you brought us?’

‘Can you not tell?’ Achaeos asked of him. ‘You of all people? We are in the heart of the Darakyon, Tisamon. We are inside the Shadow Box.’

Tisamon stopped, and Achaeos saw his throat work silently, his eyes widen. He knows at least enough to be afraid.

‘Sef!’ Achaeos called out. ‘Sef, come to us.’ Who else? Not Gaved, not Thalric, and Nivit’s girl was out somewhere on business. ‘Nivit, are you there?’

‘Help me!’ It was Sef’s voice, shrill with terror. Another Spider brought up by Beetles, Achaeos supposed.

‘Here! Follow my voice! Come here!’ he called out.

‘Achaeos, how long are we going to be here?’ Tynisa demanded of him.

He was glad that Sef appeared just then, stumbling and almost falling, until he caught her and set her on her feet. She promptly dropped to her knees, hugging herself, with eyes closed. He could not blame her.