SONG of EMBER

52

INTO THE MIST

PART II

🙜

Two eyes—or something akin to eyes—blinked to life within the sleepy mass of shadows, and Ky could not help but stare wildly back at them. A nebulous body took shape in the looming darkness, yet the eyes themselves appeared to float at will through the mist, tethered to nothing at all.

“Graahhmmm… that… isssss mine…”

Words.

Shockingly high and hollow like branches creaking in a windstorm.

They had no apparent source, but came from everywhere at once.

Ky clenched the jar fiercely.

“It is mine now,” she hissed in the siren tongue.

“Grah!” The fiery eyes burned brighter and the misty swirl slowed. “Aahhhh… I know your kind. You are not a man.”

Ky recoiled, unsettled by its knowledgeable stare.

For a moment the two of them appraised one another, silent in the dark. She crouched lightly on the tips of her toes, poised to dart away, yet still caught between the beautiful echoes and the freedom beyond the door.

“I will be taking this away,” she crooned very softly, “for I am meant to be having of it, and you will be glad of this. You are offering it to me freely, as a gift—”

“Clever tongue,” gasped the entity. “Rivensoulssss… ever did have clever tongues.”

The mist whirled toward her in an eddying wave. Ky squeaked, stepping back and tightening her grasp, but her fingers closed around empty air. Blackness writhed across the floor, darkening its winding path, and when it lifted the jar had reappeared exactly where she first found it. A fresh streak of sticky darkness sullied the glass.

“Hrrmm… that is mine… and you are not welcome, rivensoul.”

A chill skittered across Ky’s neck.

Rivensoul.

Rumors and allusions pricked at her memory, though nothing fully manifested.

At last she managed faintly, “Oh, being of such terrible beauty and darkness—by what name are men calling you?”

If this apparition continued to trade words with her, she could linger a while longer in the presence of those echoing essences. Somehow, some way, she would convince it to part with one of them. She would, because she must.

“Grrmh,” it rumbled, and the eyes shifted slightly, as if their focus had returned to her. “There are none who remain to call upon me… and none who would dare if they did. I am older than the seas, and older than the skies… and wiser by far than your riven kind. Begone.”

The burning eyes faded as a sulferous sigh gusted past, ruffling the hem of her dress. All lights dimmed beneath its longsuffering breath, but the echoes still cried out to her, confused and despairing and sublime. Through the delirium, Ky reasoned that even an eldritch entity was no different to most corporeal creatures in being susceptible to flattery.

She swallowed, vaguely aware that she had begun to salivate.

“You must be skilled in your weavings, older-than-the-seas and older-than-the-skies,” Ky lulled, clasping her hands and swaying in place, “for the elders of my clan are strong, and yet even in their strength and splendor, they cannot sing the life from mortal veins.”

The apparition chortled.

“Gruhm, grah! Your methods… crrrrrude. Your kindred… weak. You sup the mortal blood in vain… never tasting the… ahhhh… fullness of humanity. Riven shall never know the pleasures I have known… for I share not my ssssssustenance with inferior beings.”

Ky would have taken sharp offense had she not been otherwise occupied by her observation of the captive souls. The more intently she hearkened to their disconsolate whimpering, the more confident she became that to claim one would be a sort of kindness in itself. One or more of them must be in want of a body after so many years in isolation.

Was it not possible they had tempted her here, desirous of what she could offer? Surely they wished to be free once more, as surely as she wished to be fulfilled, and would such an agreement not be a sort of freedom for them both?

She risked a step closer.

"How are you keeping a soul to these vessels?”

"Clever riven has shaped magic before, yes? Such intricate beings require something to bind with, else they should have fled my ssssweet affections long ago… grrrrrrrmmm."

Ky shivered with a primal dread, dredged up by the otherness, the nearness of this thing.

But she, too, was clever.

Sil had always been the better at coaxing others into submission, but Ky had succeeded, once—though she rued it to this day. There must be a way to bespell her foe, though it was doubtless ill advised to attempt such a beguilement when it was not mortal, and had no mind to bend. Perhaps Ember's fanciful goblin tales were not so fanciful after all. She could not even begin to guess at what else it could be.

If Ember were here, he would—

Ember must not come here, she reminded herself, wiping a bit of frothing drool from her chin. Ember must not find this place, for he should wish to free them. And we have not claimed what is ours, yet…

Once the soul was in her possession, she would hunger no more, the fortunate mortal she chose would be restored to a body—in most respects a comely one, certainly more alluring than whatever mortal figure it had fled so long ago—and Ember need be none the wiser.

Ky was already wondering what sort of mutually satisfactory arrangement might be made betwixt two incorporeal beings sharing the same corporeal form when the misty figure spoke again.

“Ahhh, glorious day… day of death… much grief, much tasty fear! My bonds are loosed—grahah—much torn flesh, innumerable souls dripping from their mortal cages… and we gathered them all… to hoard them, caressssss them… to feast on their—”

“I already am knowing this story,” Ky cried, digging her fists into the knot of hunger. It was difficult to remain upright, for she now felt far emptier than ever before. “Speak no more to me of feasting!”

The lights all shrank, their voices hushing.

"Gruhhhmm.” The eyes floated closer. “They fear you…"

Ky curled her fingers beneath her sternum, stifling the ache.

"These mortals were freed from their cages by the riven… ‘tis the riven I have to thank for my feast; I merely claimed what they could not. Even now, they are muttering to me. They call you many names. Poison-tongue… devil-fish… deep-dweller… sssssnail-skin."

There was no magic in the words, and yet they struck Ky a grievous blow beneath the breast, piercing her heart as surely as the tooth of a spear.

“What means you by this?” she whined, stricken.

She knew of this, in part.

It should not strike her thusly.

“Strange… that your kind have already forrrrrgotten… what fell-force succored them, when this mountain crumbled into ash.”

To reply in any manner was to betray her ignorance. Her beloved elder had never once woven words of a pact with demon-folk. It stood to reason that this soul-snatcher must be speaking falsely—or perhaps her clan knew less of the ancients than they fancied. The thought was discomforting.

"I slumbered, bound in the darkness… for an aaaaage beneath the ocean," sighed the snatch, and a stray tendril unfurled to fondle one of its shivering souls. "The cursssssed kings of the olden days… ahhhh, they banished us… their magic was bright, too bright for our eyes—grah, the pain! we hungered in vain… and then… the riven came…”

A huffing, gusting sigh wafted through the room, and with it the stench of sulfur and soot.

“They came with promises, and they came with…"

Ky squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her palms over the whole of her face, certain that somehow this nameless horror could see beyond her fingers, beyond her lashes, and into her riven soul.

“...demaaaaands.”