Ezthamic's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

Ezthamic crouched at the edge of the open ground. The cathedral of ribs waited across it, red sky bleeding behind the curved bone. But the flat earth between him and its doors crawled with the eyeless hunters. They loped on all fours, snapping at every twitch of movement. He had watched them for an hour. They did not see. They felt. One step wrong and they would swarm him. A voice came from behind. "Stand still long enough and you'll live. Move, and you'll feed them." A woman dropped from a cracked rib overhead. She wore black armor studded with white bone, and a cracked mask hid half her face. Her one visible eye fixed on the bone mark in his hand. She went rigid. "You carry a Keeper's mark. Where did you find that?" "In the ground," Ezthamic said. "I need to cross. Help me." She studied him a long moment. "They hunt heartbeats through the soil, same as the crawlers inside. You can't outrun them." She drew a curved blade and cut her own palm. Blood dripped onto the dirt. "But they'll chase the loudest heart." She flung the blood in a wide arc across the ground. The hunters spun toward the splatter and charged it. "Move now. Walk soft. Don't run." Ezthamic went. He rolled each step from heel to toe, slow, while the woman drew the swarm away behind him. His own pulse hammered in his ears. Twice a hunter lifted its head and turned his way. Twice it hesitated, as if it almost knew him, then lunged back toward the louder blood. He reached the great doors and slipped inside. The cathedral breathed around him. Crimson vines coated the walls, heavy with heart-shaped bulbs that pulsed with glowing fluid. Four-legged things with vertical jaws crawled from gaps in the bone, sniffing the floor for his step. He froze between them. Near the far wall, a shard of black glass jutted from the stone. He looked into it. His own reflection stared back. Then the reflection moved on its own, tilting its head, watching him. He stumbled back. The floor split. Black roots tore upward. A giant rose from the center, thirty feet of crimson flesh and ivory armor, hundreds of roots binding it to the ground. Red eyes burned under a cracked bone helmet. It lifted a blade carved from a rib and swung. Ezthamic dove. His arm hardened and split into bone. But the giant stopped mid-strike. Its many eyes narrowed on his face. "Why have you returned wearing that face?" it said. Ezthamic's blood went cold. "I don't know that face. Tell me who I am." The giant only raised its blade again. "You should not remember it either." The walls began to pulse. Blood ran through carved channels in the floor. Somewhere beneath the cathedral, a slow heartbeat started to beat. Ezthamic had crossed the ground. Now the thing at its heart meant to bury him with its answer.