James Maxey - Greatshadow

Suddenly, there was a loud canine yelp; I turned and found that Infidel and Menagerie had pressed ahead toward the fight up-trail. Now, a gutted wolf was hurtling through the air straight toward me. It tumbled in mid-flight, trailing loops of blue-gray intestine. The wolf crashed into a tree with a sickening wet-meat slap. Menagerie shifted back to human form as he slid to the ground, still gutted. His eyes were glassy as he stared at the gore in his lap. I noticed two bloody prints on his shoulders, about the size of a woman’s hands. Infidel?

I flew to her side, tugged by the knife. She stood on a vine-draped stone platform, all that remained of some lost temple. She was surrounded by dead forest-pygmies, but, this time, she wasn’t the person who had killed them.

Instead, that was the work of the Whisper. My ghost skin crawled as I saw her. She was no longer an empty hole in space, as she had been when I’d seen her earlier. She was now a creature of flesh, though it wasn’t human flesh. Her skin looked as if it had been carved from onyx; her eyes and lips and nails were gems of dazzling ruby. In her left hand was the hilt of a sword, the blade nothing more than a jagged stump. Despite her mineral skin, she moved fluidly as she lunged toward Infidel.

I noticed that fragments of a broken sword lay at Infidel’s feet. She was looking down, confused by where the metal had come from. She didn’t seem to see the stone demon about to strike her.

The Whisper caught Infidel beneath the chin with a two-handed uppercut that lifted her from her feet and made her lose her grip on her long sword. Infidel fell on her butt as her sword spun in the air. The Whisper caught the sword with a fluid back-swipe, lifted it over her head, then chopped down with a vicious grunt, attempting to cleave Infidel in half. The sword snapped as it crashed into Infidel’s skull.

“Ow!” Infidel said, raising her hands to her scalp. She drew her fingers away. No blood.

The Whisper leaned back, howling, shaking her clenched fists at the sky in frustration.

“Leave her alone!” I shouted.

The stone woman spun around, her eyes narrowed into slits as she glared at me.

“She’s done nothing to you!” I shouted. “It’s the Truthspeaker who you should be pissed off at.”

The Whisper growled and leapt toward me. I felt no fear, certain her hands would pass through my ghostly form. Instead, I sucked in air as her ice-cold fingers grabbed me by the throat and jerked me from my feet.

She licked my cheek with a tongue rough as sandstone. She whispered in my ear, “A spirit untainted by matter! What a delightful treat! We dream-dwellers feast upon souls, which are too often made foul by the filth of the bodies they cling to. Once I’ve choked down the Truthspeaker and the others, I’ll come back for you as dessert.”

She tossed me aside like I weighed no more than a kitten; I suppose, in hindsight, that I don’t even weigh that. Then, she bounded from the platform, darting back down the trail. I was very happy at that instant not to be Father Ver. My cheek burned where she’d licked it. It wasn’t all that good to be me, either. What had I done to deserve this?

My eyes were caught by movement. Menagerie raised a trembling hand to his neck and touched the jellyfish outlined there. He collapsed into a puddle of quivering, glassy snot. I don’t know what he’d thought he’d been reaching for, but I doubted this was it. Then, a heartbeat later, he was once more back in his human form. His guts were back inside his body. There was no sign he’d ever been injured other than the dazed look on his features.

Meanwhile, Infidel was back on her feet, the bone-handled knife in her hand, spinning around, thrusting the blade toward any stray sound. As much as I wanted to stay with her, I did some cold calculations and realized that if I didn’t want to become nightmare chow, I needed to get back to Relic and warn him of what was coming down the mountain. He’d been aware of the Whisper earlier; apparently he could see dream-women as easily as ghosts.

I leaned in Relic’s direction, picturing him in my mind. Go! I thought, and I went. I shot back down the mountain, flashing through trees and blood-tangle vine, moving in a straight line unencumbered by the tortuous terrain of the volcanic slope.

I whipped to a stop inches from Relic’s burlap-covered face.

“Relic!” I shouted.

He winced. So. The disobedient dead man returns.

“The Whisper! Nightmare! Kill us all! Dessert!”

Relic sighed. Calm yourself, Blood-Ghost. You need not try to form sentences. If you will still the turmoil of your thoughts, I will pluck what you wish to tell me from your mind.

I surrendered all attempts at speaking a coherent warning and allowed the memories of the past five minutes to wash through my mind.

“A nightmare loose in the material realm,” said Relic. “This is bad. This is very bad.”

Relic looked around. Everyone able-bodied was off in the jungle collecting the scattered gear. Father Ver and Zetetic were left sitting in the center of an enormous footprint.

Relic hobbled toward Father Ver. “Sir, if I may interrupt, you are in great and imminent danger.”

Father Ver looked up. He had finished stitching together the Deceiver’s torn lips. Despite his hatred for the man, I couldn’t help but notice he’d done a clean and competent job. The priest asked, “What are you babbling about?”

“Ivory Blade is dead,” said Relic. “The dream-lover he crafted is on her way to take revenge against you. I suggest you call Lord Tower back from his work.”

Father Ver stood and looked toward the sky. The knight was nowhere to be seen. He looked at Relic skeptically. He was used to only being told the truth, but I could see he didn’t trust Relic. He said, “If there is a danger-”

He never finished his sentence. There was a sudden crash from a nearby bush. A spray of leaves flew out as the Whisper leapt. She cast no shadow; no doubt I was the only person who could see her as she flew with hands outstretched toward the Truthspeaker’s neck. Her mouth opened wide, revealing diamond teeth, then wider still, far beyond a human jaw-span, as she prepared to bite out the Truthspeaker’s throat.

Relic moved with a speed that proved he wasn’t as crippled as he pretended, striking out with his staff, catching the Truthspeaker at the back of the knees. Father Ver was knocked from his feet as the Whisper flew through the space where his throat had just been. She thrust her leg down, catching the priest dead in the center of his face with her stony knee. He gave a sharp cry of pain as he went down hard, blood streaming from his nose.

The Whisper tumbled like an acrobat as she hit the ground, rolling to her feet, spinning around, prepared to leap again at her fallen opponent. Before she left the ground, a small brown bat flitted over the treetops, diving right for her face. She swung her hand to knock it away, but the bat changed in mid-slap into a water buffalo. The beast dug his horn into her jaw as he slammed into her. They both bounced and rolled into the brush beyond the edge of the clearing.

Clever, thought Relic. As a bat, he could see her.

Suddenly, the water buffalo went flying up through the canopy. The Whisper was apparently at least as strong as Infidel, and just as tough if she’d survived a blow like that. Seconds later, she staggered out of the brush, trailing vines. There was enough greenery enveloping her that you could make out her form. She paused a second to tear away the vegetation. She turned back toward Father Ver, only to find that Reeker had run out of the forest to stand between her and the priest.

He sucked in a lungful of air as she dropped the last of the vines. She stepped toward him, a sneer on her ruby lips. Reeker exhaled, a billowy greenish fog that rolled through the air before him, spreading quickly to cover the space where she stood. She was faintly visible as the miasma clung to her. A tendril of the cloud reached me and I quickly retreated. It stank like awful, eye-watering, fetid cheese, after it had been eaten, half-digested, and vomited back up.