Sunless Ezthamic's Arc

Chapter 6 of 8

The empty grave kept carving his name. Ezthamic did not wait for it to finish. He drove Eclipse Fang into the raw timber and split the grave down the middle. The chains snapped. The broken halves fell past the cliff edge into the dark. But the fall opened something below. A seam cracked along the cliff face, and cold air rushed up. A stair of stone and rusted metal led down into a vault that should not exist. He climbed down into it. Broken machines hung from the ceiling on chains. Dead creation chambers lined the walls, each one his own size, each one empty. A man waited among them. Older. Scarred. Same face as Ezthamic, but calm, and his skin carried no golden cracks, no number, no mark of the Engine. He held two aged pages in one hand. "You found the vault," the old man said. "Good. I'm Eight. I tore these from the Ledger myself." He lifted the pages. "So the count would stay wrong." Ezthamic reached for them. Then a sound came from the chambers, a wet tapping of claws. A pale thing stepped into the light. Four legs. A smooth white head and black eyes with no pity in them. "The Eraser," Eight said quietly. "The Engine sends it when one of us learns too much. It won't kill you. It will take you out of this world's memory, like you were never made." The creature lunged. Ezthamic met it with Eclipse Fang. The blade passed through its side and the wound closed like water. He felt his own thoughts thin, his name slipping, the vault going gray at the edges. He stopped swinging. He turned the blade flat and waited, still, until the Eraser leapt again. Then he struck up through its open mouth. The black-gold edge caught something solid inside. The creature froze, cracked, and fell apart into white dust. His name came back to him in a rush. Eight did not move. "You're faster than the others were." He pressed the two pages into Ezthamic's hand, then nodded toward a dead machine on the floor. A small engine core, its casing split, a red heart dark inside. "Touch it. You've earned the truth." Ezthamic laid his palm on the broken core. The dark heart pulsed once. His head filled with faces. His own face, over and over, waking in vats, bleeding gold, screaming, dying. Not eight. Not twenty. More than he could count, line after line into the black. Around him, the vault woke. Lights flickered inside the dormant chambers. One after another they hummed and glowed, hundreds of them, each cradling a sleeping shape with his face. The tapping of new claws started somewhere far off. Ezthamic pulled his hand back, shaking. Eight watched him, calm as ever. "You still think there are only eight of us?"