SLATE

That gaunt and lank figure that I dub Shadows moves in a series of precise and complex forms around the stone, twisting spirals, and stuttering thrusts. It is a dance of dark art.

I feel it before I see it.

The life bleeds out of me and color bleeds from the world. It is nothing so crude as the arrow in my gut — it is some other sort of life. It might be the snuffing of joy, the murder of hope, the twisting of the will to live. It is like these things and unlike them; it is less substantial and more real. There is some part of me, invisible, intangible, and unnoticeable until someone tries to bleed it from me. Only then do I realize what it has and I want it back.

It feels wrong, in the same way, everything in this world feels right. A word from the annuals of knowledge given to me for unknown purpose; a word from long ago, that crawls over my skin. I test it on my lips, wrapping them around its syllables. “Evil.”

Green Man has stepped closer. He prods Yven with his long arms, almost playful. He tests her, like a snake handler with a cobra. He numbs her, provokes her, unbalances her, while she continues to nobly staunch the bleeding hole in me.

A push on the shoulder, a tug on her furs, a slow touch running up her arm, a hard slap on her head. Nothing to harm her, or do lasting damage, physically speaking.

I must wait for my chance. Too long and I may not be able to lift the metal in my hand. And somewhere an invisible knife that could kill both in a beat.

I must be losing a lot of blood because there is black smoke in the air like squid ink and the black obelisk is pointed at both ends and floating before Shadows.

The intricate sequence of gestures outlines an orb-like structure of moving parts, it takes physical shape and presence in the air. Bony fingers mirror the motions of gyrating parts. His arms widen to their full and unnatural length to encompass the orb. Symbols flash on its surface.

Green Man places a hand over Yven’s head and slides it over her face. A single massive hand can close over her entire head. He whips is back before she can snap her jaws over him.

The black smoke expands and contracts like a living thing. Each time it expands, it becomes more substantial, coalescing around the stone in its center. Wisps take form and substance until there is some perverse sense to them. It is a fractal of living parts. An eye wrapped in thorns becomes a flower of blooming fingers. A tangle of spiral horns becomes a split tongue, swallowed by a serpent that swallows itself headfirst. And on it goes, changing forms.

Shadows takes a scrap of bloody cloth from within his robes — mine. “Bile and blood.” He casts it into the cauldron.

A tendril of black smoke reaches from the orb-like a vine to the sun. It carves paths in the air, surging forward, pausing, forking like lightning. The sun, I realize, is me.

The forked tugs and winds into one neat cord from sphere to center mass.

Green Man lifts Yven by the head so her legs swing and scrape the ground.

Out of view, blue liquid drips from an orb of its own. Its protective shell has become a colander for straining a brain, drop by drop. A life form that is only brain feels its life dripping away with slow regularity, calculating its loss of functionality with exquisite exactness, measuring its pain exactly.

Green Man rips Yven away by the hood and throws her to the ground. She holds the hood in place with both hands to counter the violence.

He toys with her like she is a kitten. She snaps and claws at him, and the Green Man laughs at the bloody scratches on his arms.

The knotted black cord connects me to the orb and pulses dully. I’m not sure what it takes, but I know I want it back because it is mine.

The Green Man and Shadows exchange words and looks — it is not going according to plan. His eyes flicker from me to the orb and back. His face firms and he redoubles his attention to Yven.

My belly sucks at the rough shaft as I begin the slow, painful climb. Nerve endings snag on course wood; the friction of sucking layers of guts snagging on the length of the shaft makes progress agonizing. A tug of war within me.

Green Man is light and quick despite his bulk, pulling her across the ground by her leg or arm or hair. A stroke then a slap.

Bloody hands paint the stiff bristles of the arrow’s feathers. It feels I am going the wrong way, as though I try to force the arrow back into my belly.

A hard slap is broken on Yven’s arms and rolling body but drives her to the ground again.

I reach the gauntlet behind me closing on the shaft of the arrow. My other hand closes over the front end. The gauntlet provides strength that my weakened body does not possess.

Pausing, I gather resolve, count down.

I rock forward, feeling the shaft splinter in a gauntleted hand. The gauntlet’s grip keeps the shaft from splintering inside me. The grip on either end does the same, keeping the shaft in one piece.

I hit the ground hard — by design, slamming my shoulder on hard stone and back into its socket. The experience of pain is steered by the mind’s limited ability to focus on multiple stimuli. The pain in my shoulder takes the reins of my mind for blessed seconds.

Blood splashes on the red root and I keep nothing back from it — if the parasite can give me any strength, I will take it. Blood pools in the vacuum left by the shaft. That suction was keeping me alive — shoring up the damage, and keeping the blood from flowing out of my body.

But there is something to be said for the warm flow of blood and some blood finds its way back, through the root. Its tendrils stretch into my mind. Inside me, the blood rain births tender red leaves.

The root rewires my brain: pain is pleasure and benevolence. Pain retreats and the world around me comes into sharp focus, including their voices.

“I tell you, something is wrong. It isn’t working.” Says shadows.

My change in position is not even worthy of his comment.

I look down. The tether that connects me to this…organism also knits my wound closed. When I try to rip it out, my hand passes through the cord.

Green Man has his hand on Yven’s chest. He cannot just throttle her; his hand is too big. He manages to hold her down and cut off her airway with one hand. “I told you. She is not the nerve — he cares little.”

“He can be made to care — you’re holding back.” Says Shadows.

“She’s all edges.” He slams Yven into the ground in frustration and enough that I feel it in the ground.

“Every other time you find a man with a maiden, there’s a tie. But not always so.” Green Man flips Yven’s back on her back. “I can understand. This one’s spitting feral.” His hand probes her thick furs. “Flat as a board and all edges. Like a sewer cat humped a skeleton. No wonder he doesn’t have a single shit to give.”

“Look at her.” Green Man squeezes her face roughly, “She’s unlovable.” A long scarred tongue snakes from his lips. “But I’ll do my best.”

“Yess.” Shadows sighs as the cord twitches with a surge of energy.

“Arf!” Green barks, sudden and loud. The action so completely breaks the rules of expected behavior as to be dumbfounding. He throws his body into a crouch, performing something like a push-up with one hand on Yven’s chest. “Arf! Arf!“ His eyes are full of cruel amusement; his smile is wide. Bearing his weight on Yven’s chest, he draws a hooked knife from a scabbard at his back.

The sudden shift destroys any appearance that the pair were floundering.

It says they know what they are doing; they have done it before. They are not out of ideas. They have not reached the depths of their creativity. Their control is total. Any appearance to the contrary is an act. They play with us.

Shadows stops suddenly. His empty hood crawls slow degrees.

Green Man draws a single drop of blood with his blade.

The single drop, vivid against the white skin under her eye.

The minute particles Yven’s blood fill the air. How few they must be from to reach my senses. It is a savor measured in parts per million. I don’t smell or taste it, but the root does. It hijacks my brain and screams at me to finish what Green Man started. To seek the vein and let it be free.

Green Man doesn’t feel it — not like I do. But he reads the room.

Yven’s heart flares — I smell that in her blood — her breaths stab upward, causing Green Man’s hand to rise up and down on her chest; she instinctively punches oxygen to her body and brain, preparing herself for what comes next.

“Sweetblood.” Says shadows, like it is her new name. “Her blood speaks.”

I will the cut on Yven’s check to open. It does.

Yven jerks forward, Stabbing her face into the tip of the blade.

My vision magnifies. I see her flesh part and blood flow into the cavity. Rivulets splash over the lip, stop, and spill into the air like it is in zero-Gs.

Her blood is intoxicating. Trace amounts streak through my veins, filling my body with wrap fuel and the desire for more.

The invisible knife appears. It is painted in bright Yven’s red blood and I see a second cord stretching out to Yven as it does to me.

The painted knife sails smoothly to the orb and drips Yven’s red blood into the ball of twisted potentiality. The orb responds, accelerating like a blender. The second cord snakes from the orb, branching in the air until it finds Yven’s core.

“Spirit and soul.” Spider-like hands close in reverence.

Whatever it wants, it now gets. Whatever I lack, she has by the shipload. Her cord pulses fast and strong, filled with whatever vital force it carries. The black orb bulges with the influx of energy, swaying as though it will burst. It drinks in deep gulps.

Tongues of shadow lick from the black orb but the fire steals light instead of giving it. The leaves around us have turned to black ink. The snow is iron filings in an electric field. Bodies are bags of skin and cloth.

I pry a sword from sticky flesh and stagger towards the orb. It is a physical force, something I might call ‘bleakness’. Every inch towards the orb is an inch towards death. A very real death, that might leave you standing afterward.

Shadow takes notice of me now. His form stutters in what I take as irritation.

His hands blur and he pushes. I fly backward towards the tree.

The knife bores into my chest, twisting into the raw flesh of the burns on my chest, forcing me backward.

He is not ready to kill me yet, but he doesn’t want me to interfere either.

Yven twists her head to watch me. Taking no notice of Green Man’s roaming hands. Her cold is stronger still, overflowing with whatever energy they collect.

“We had it wrong” Green Man shouts into the flames. “She is the source. He is the nerve.” Green Man points a finger pointed toward me.

“Perhaps” Something like a smile spreads beneath the veiled face of Shadows. “Or perhaps, they are both nerve and source.”

The black orb has gathered strength and substance. It is a real thing now, not energy. It has an outer membrane covered in bulging veins. The veins form a cocoon — or a womb —pulsing with energy.

Shadows hand closes around the orb, and yet not the orb in front of him — but that which carries a super-intelligent mind, and wolf pup in a leather pouch.

Shadow’s back is towards me. I see the sling fall. I see the edges of spidery fingers closing around the wolf cub. He holds the cub in the air, and the cub twists.

The cub does not whine, it screams. It is the sound you expect to hear from a human child.

“They will both feed the spell. And each other.”

The cord that connects me to the black cocoon begins to throb.