Steven Montano: Crown of Ash

He hesitates. He feels fear like a lead weight.

The mages. I can’t remember. There’s something about them that I need to remember…something important.

Without another thought, he follows.

Steven Montano

Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4)

The inside of the tower was cold and dry. Cross knew who he was t he moment he set foot inside, even if he couldn’t remember much of anything else. The soot immediately started to flake off his skin. He felt his senses return, like he’d been stuck in a mental haze. His body shook from the cold, and he was able to move quickly again, unhindered by t he debris of the Whisperlands.

Cross had entered other structures in that strange world before, but this sense of clarity, this cleansing, had never before occurred. He’d never found himself shielded from the roar of the black w ind and the touch of the tainted world.

The inside of the tower looked like an abandoned outpost. Tattered grey flags dangled in air that reeked of age and tasted like soot. The floor was littered with drifts of cold ash and the charred remains of broken furniture.

Aside from the open doorway, which led to air so suffused with darkness it was like black gelatin, the only other way out of the stark room was a ricke ty wooden staircase leading up. He took it.

Each step rattled and creaked beneath his weight. M otes of dust floated down from the ceiling. The only light came from ambient worms clinging to the walls. For all Cross could tell they were long dead, but their bodies still shone with a phosphorescent shine that turned everything a shade of sick green.

He passed alcoves filled with the bones of unknown animals. Small slits in the outer walls grant ed vi ew of the black landscape.

His muscles tensed as he ascended the final few steps.

The upper floor of the tower was a single large room. The ceiling was drastically too high for the circumference of the chamber. The lightning worms were absent there, so only the barest details were visible in the light that spill ed in from the doorway behind him: shattered porcelain dolls, piles of shredded clothing, smoking ice strewn like shattered glass. The room was quiet, and all he heard was the tell-tale call of the stygian wind s.

The children waited for him. A boy and a girl, both dressed in rags. They weren ’ t as large as they’d been outside, where the ir appearance had been almost troglodytic, preposterous skulls on ridiculously small bodies. There in the tower they were much smaller, and while their flesh held an unnatural pallor they at least were the size of normal children, only with slightly enlarged eyes. T hey stood stone- still and stared at Cross as he stepped into the chamber.

They weren’ t alone.

A monstrous presence waited behind them, something t all and massive but entirely encased in pillars of roving darkness. He squinted to try and get a better look at the creature, but whatever it wa s it remained just out of sight.

“Hello,” the boy said. His voice was flat and emotionless. He moved robotically.

“Um…hello,” Cross said quietly. He took another step into the room, but he refused to wade too far in. The light behind him couldn’t penetrate the gloom. He heard something wet in the shadows, something sli thering. It coiled and tensed, and he smelled the musk of organic waste, vaguely sexual but putrid. “What is this place?”

“Shelter from the storm,” the girl said. H er voice was equally dead and distant. Neither of them moved an inch. Cross didn’t think they even breathed.

“Why am I here?” he asked.

“Only you can know that,” the boy said.

“We are not concerned with why you are here,” the girl said.

Cross stepped sideways, careful to walk slow and quiet.

“What are you concerned with?” he asked.

“How to leave,” they both said in tandem, their voices so effortlessly cued to the same frequency it sent shivers up his spine.

“Leave…this tower?”

“The Whisperlands,” they said, and then the boy continued to talk on his own. “I am a prisoner here, just like you. I have been here for a very long time.”

“What are you?” he asked. His fingers slid towards Soulrazor/ Avenger ’s grip. It had been some time since he’d remember the black-and-white sword’s name s. “Why are you talking to me through these…” He looked at the girl. It was difficult to see just how lifeless she was in the dark. “ Through these things… they sure as hell aren’t children. ”

“Your mind could not bear the sight of me,” she said.

“That’s a little judgmental, isn’t it?” he said with a nervous laugh.

I have no magic, he realized. He’ d wandered across the Whisperlands for what felt like decades, but in the mental mire caused by the black windscape the memory of his loss either hadn’t occurred to him, or else it simply hadn’t mattered. The blades might not have any of their arcane properties here, and I don’t have any other weapons. If the s e things want to kill me, I’m done.

“It is not a matter of judgmen t, or inclination,” the boy said.

“It is matter of what you can fathom,” the girl add ed. “And you cannot fathom me.”

“You’d be surprised,” Cross said grimly. “So what do you want from me?”

“You wish to escape,” the boy said. “That is plain.”

“I wish to help you,” the girl add ed. “But I cannot leave this place.”

“Of course,” Cross said with a nod.

“Do not doubt me,” the boy s aid. The voice was less human than before. It scratche d like steel and glass. The child ren ’s eyes we re black. Shadow veins bulged from their faces and ma de their false flesh paler. Their feet lift ed slightly off the ground.

T endrils attach ed them to the darkness at the back of the room. Flesh lines hooked into their backs, greasy appendages dripping slime in the rigid air. He couldn’t tell if the bodies were those of actual children or if they were just extensions, constructs. Flesh puppets.

“How can I not doubt you?” Cross asked quietly. He took a step back towards to the stairs. “You won’t show me what you are.”

There was n o answer. He felt the air breath e and tense.

And then it showed him.

Darkness peeled back. Tendrils of shadow ripped away like frightened snakes. The children’s eyes vanished into puddles of slime, a nd the bodies flattened like empty sacks a nd fell to the floor with sickening slumps.

The creature was made of soiled skin and shadow orifices. Its mountainous husk was the height of the room, a pulsating membrane of fish-like flesh and tinted veins. It had no visible limbs or appendages save the tentacle strands, which melted so seamlessly into its bulk they almost looked like shadows th emselves. The entire body had the semblance of a dark tree trunk, a living pillar of glistening black skin fused to the floor.

Cross’ s head throbbed as he look ed at the creature, not so much from the grotesquerie of its appearance as from the sheer force of its psychic presence.

Eidolos. Cross had heard of the dread race before, but only in rumor. They were one of the few creatures described in the Tome o f Scars he’ d never encountered firsthand. Once-allies (or slaves, or masters, depending on which story one believed) of the subterranean giants called the Cruj, the Eidolos were a bizarre earthen-organic race of rocks that had assumed flesh form and bonded with the arcane energies of the earth. The younger versions took on the form of humanoids, but the older they got, the more they evolved, and the less human they appeared. Possessed of vastly superior and alien intelligence s, the Eidolos were known for their incredible cruelty and dominant psychic powers, which, if the reports were correct, could literally crush a human’s mind if they spent too long in the creature’s proximity. Warlocks and witches were supposedly afforded some measure of resistance due to their arcane spirits. Which means I m ight be screwed.