Kenzo Shadowblade's Arc

Chapter 22 of 3

Kenzo knew what waited below. The eyeless serpent drank the blessing and grew stronger with every light he raised. To starve it, he had to go down into the dark. But he could not see there, and his blades needed the blessing's water to fight. The one thing that fed his weapons also fed his enemy. He knelt by the crack and felt the cold breath rise from below. Nino came and knelt beside him. The monk pressed a dead-quiet hand against Kenzo's arm and shook his bald head. He pointed at the twin blades resting in the spring, at the faint blue water still clinging to their steel. Then he pointed down into the black. The meaning was plain. Take the water down there, and you feed the thing. "I know," Kenzo said. "But I can't fight blind." Water rose from the pool and took shape. Naznorith formed from it, hooded, robe streaming into the dark. The hidden figure had freed Kenzo's hands before and bound them when they died. Now it lifted one black hand over the twin blades. "Light draws it," Naznorith said. "So carry no light. The water alone will bind your swords. It gives no glow the mouth can drink." Kenzo dipped his dead hands in the pool. The water climbed the steel and set the twin blades shivering with living tension. They gave no light. Just cold pull and thirst. He could feel their weight through the water, not through fingers he no longer owned. "Then how do I find it in the dark?" he asked. A new voice answered from the altar. Father Talious stepped from a door of pale blue fire. The priest had been lost across the sealed portal, trapped in his future world. Now he stood here, jaw set, his robe glowing with holy white light at the chest. "You don't find it with your eyes," Talious said. He knelt and pressed his palm to the stone. "I've seen you fail this a hundred times, Kenzo. Every time you brought a torch. Listen instead. The mouth breathes. Follow the sound." "You crossed back," Kenzo said. "The door was sealed." "Not this one." Talious touched the blue fire behind him. "It closes when I go. I have one crossing. I spend it here." Kenzo gripped nothing and held everything. The twin blades hummed in the water's grip. He lowered himself into the crack. The dark closed over his head. No light. Only the cold, and far below, a wet seam of a mouth opening and closing on the black. He let go of the last handhold and dropped into the deep. Behind him the blue fire winked out as Talious spent his crossing to guard the surface. Below, the breathing grew louder. Kenzo fell toward it, blind, his blades thirsting, ready to starve the thing that ate his temple's soul.