Chapter 152: From The Depths
The return march cut deeper than the fight. Teal moved on reflex, not strength. Her feet were slick with blood, skin split and raw, muscles burned past failure hours ago on the climb to the mountain. The night had taken whatever remained. She walked like something already dead, kept upright by habit alone.
At her side stayed her guard. Always there. His tusks barely pushed past his cheeks, blunt and stunted. Short enough to mark him as lesser. That was why he watched her instead of leading hunts. Compared to the king's sweeping ivory, his were nothing.
She glanced at them and let a thin smile slip through the ache.
"Probably why you're such a dick."
He didn't miss it.
"Mouth shut. Save strength."
Someone kinder might have meant concern. He didn't. Still, she obeyed. Talking earned the whip, and pain stacked fast when she was already empty.
The dark line of the horizon pulled her eyes, and doubt crept in with every step. Maybe the vision had been nothing. A trick of exhaustion. Her body shook uncontrollably, nerves misfiring, breath stuttering in her chest. Hallucinations would have made sense in this state.
Why had she seen him? Future Sight never triggered without focus, without cost. It had never come unbidden.
The more she turned it over, the thinner it felt. Less solid. Less real.
A hidden champion. Some mythic figure waiting in the wilds to tear her free.
She almost laughed at herself.
'You're pathetic, Teal. Truly pathetic.'
Hours later, soaked in mud and roots and the sour reek of elf sweat, the column reached their camp. It was no fortress. None of the forces out here bothered with permanence. Trees driven into the ground formed a crude ring. Huts of packed earth and sticks squatted inside, barely holding shape.
"Home sweet home."
The guard stopped next to her, voice rough with contempt.
"Back to hut. Sleep."
A hand shoved between her shoulders, steering her away. Toward her shelter. Not a hut, really. A pen. The elves kept no livestock beyond mounts, and even though they didn't have any, they'd built a stable anyway. Empty stalls. Rotting beams.
At least she was alone in it.
A final shove sent her sprawling. She didn't resist. Her face hit the mud hard, breath knocked loose, grit filling her mouth. The gate slammed behind her, followed by retreating steps and a satisfied grunt. She lay there a moment before dragging herself forward, arms trembling as she crawled toward her bed.
The sack waited where it always did. Threadbare. Crawling with insects. Barely enough cloth to block the wind. She wormed inside and lay still, staring at nothing, forcing her body to obey. After a long moment, she rolled onto her side and pulled her knees tight, curling inward like she could shrink away from the world.
Pain filled everything. She'd heard the stories, the ones about exhaustion so complete it erased sensation, about bodies pushed past suffering into blankness.
They were bullshit.
The pain never dulled.
It followed her into sleep. She passed out fast once she stopped moving, the one mercy she'd been granted. Rest always came easy, but it never stayed gentle.
Dreams took her every time.
Her body jerked and seized, muscles snapping tight without warning. Outside, drunken elves shouted and laughed, voices bleeding through the walls. Inside the sack, the only other sounds were her low whimpers and broken breaths, noises she couldn't stop, noises that came every night whether she wanted them to or not.
A few sagging structures away, three elves drank and argued inside a low hut, their voices rough as they relived the night's hunt. Though one of them barely spoke. His yellow eyes kept cutting toward the window, attention drifting while the others laughed themselves hoarse.
When the boasting ran dry and the pair beside him collapsed into sleep, the quiet one reached into a slick pouch at his hip. He pulled free a thick pink maggot mottled with yellow and green growths, pressed it flat on the table, split it lengthwise with a nail, and snorted the leaking flesh up his nose. His head snapped back. For a heartbeat his eyes burned bright, and he exhaled with a slow, satisfied grin. Cloth strained between his legs as he rose and stepped outside.
Teal was still running.
She always was. Every nightmare drove her the same way, feet pounding, lungs tearing, flight without direction. This time it was a tunnel, stone tight around her, light swallowed whole. She couldn't see, couldn't orient, only feel cold rock scrape her skin as she fled. She knew she had to keep moving. If she ran long enough, she might escape.
Escape the eyes.
Two red points tracked her through the dark, patient and close. They whispered promises and lies, urging her to stop, to rest, to give in.
She pushed harder as they drew near. Blind and panicked, she slammed into something solid. Pain burst behind her eyes and she went down hard. She tried to rise. Her body refused. Limbs wouldn't answer. Weight crushed her into the stone.
They were almost on her.
She fought, muscles screaming, breath breaking apart, but nothing moved. Pressure settled between her legs, hot and sudden—
She woke.
An elf with yellow eyes was on top of her, pinning her down. His breath scorched her face. His weapon was already buried inside her.
"NO—!"
A hand clamped over her mouth.
"Zha-ith. Smile."
She felt his body tense, felt him drive deeper, saw the hunger burning in his eyes. Hunger for her. Hunger to hurt. When he drew back a fraction, she knew what was coming. The next thrust would tear the pain wide open.
She went still.
Fighting would only make it worse.
"Kor-lur lun!"
A voice she didn't recognize in the chaos of the moment. Her eyes flew open in time to see two green hands hook around her attacker's tusks.
"Zul-itha!"
The pull came hard and final. Bone tore free with a wet crack, ripping his jaw apart and splitting his face into a raw, hanging ruin. Blood sprayed across her cheeks and mouth, hot and metallic.
His weight collapsed onto her, crushing the air from her lungs. She couldn't scream. Couldn't even draw breath. The corpse was still inside her, a dead pressure that refused to let go, until the one who had intervened hauled the body off and flung it aside.
Her words spilled out of her without order or sense.
"Kal-Ulith? You… why? What did you… I don't—!"
Her body shook hard enough to rattle her teeth, blood still burning between her legs. She clawed backward as she spoke, eyes locked on her guard while she dragged her rags back into place. Her spine struck the stable wall. The impact knocked the breath from her chest and finally cracked something open behind her eyes.
She stared from the ruined body on the ground to the elf standing over it.
The same one who had dragged her by the hair.
The same one who had laughed while carving her back open.
The same one who had stood by every time she broke.
Nothing aligned. Nothing fit. Her mind couldn't make the pieces touch.
She hadn't cried once since her capture. Not through the beatings. Not through the hunger. Not through the games they bled her for. She had swallowed every scream and buried every tear.
Being saved by one of them shattered what was left.
She folded in on herself as it finally came apart.
Teal broke apart. The sobs came loud and raw, tearing out of her without restraint. Tears poured until the world dissolved into blur and smear. She locked her arms around her knees, pressed her face into herself, and let it all spill out without holding anything back.
Time vanished. It stopped being a thing she could measure. At some point, something dropped onto her body. She recoiled with a sharp cry, snapping backward until her skull cracked against the wall.
"Da—!"
She clutched her head, blinking through pain and tears until the shape came into focus. A heavy hide lay across her lap. Thick fur. Clean. Dry. No blood. No rot.
Her breath hitched as she looked up.
The corpse was gone.
Her guard was gone.
She was alone again.
Dizziness rolled through her as fear and confusion tangled together. After a long moment, she reached inward, shaking, and dragged the blessing over herself. Warmth seeped into her skin, slow and steady, something she barely remembered how to accept.
She lay back down. The sobbing had faded, but the tears kept coming. Her body still trembled, not from cold, not anymore. She fought sleep for fear of another attack, and lost. Like falling through snow with no ground beneath her, she drifted until darkness took her again.
The tears never stopped.
Grimm tried to wipe one from her cheek. He slid straight through her skin, his own entrails ghosting through her face. He bared his teeth for a second, annoyed, then settled a length of himself across her shoulder. The hollows of his eyes dimmed as he watched her breathe.
A pulse tugged at him. His skull twisted toward the distance.
He hesitated. Looked back at her one last time. Then he lifted into the air and vanished.
The feeling in him was unfamiliar. Heavy. He had never felt sorrow for another being. Not really. Even his own loneliness had always seemed small. Being unable to play with his friend was nothing compared to what this human carried.
He didn't care for humans. Watching his friend tear them apart had always felt right. Fun. Like breaking toys to see what was inside.
But this one was different.
The little ghost didn't know why. The thought was too large, too tangled for him to grasp. He only knew one thing with certainty.
The toothy humans had to die.
----
Day heat dragged Teal awake. The kind of heat that should have broken her if she'd still had anything left to break.
The air pressed in thick and sour. Piss. Sweat. Smoke. Then she caught her own smell.
Her body jerked away on instinct, and pain answered everywhere at once. She bit it back, shaking, and worked the hide off herself with slow hands. She set it atop her sack with care she didn't feel, fingers stiff, movements empty.
Looking down at her legs, the bruises, the splits in skin, the dried paths and pooled stains of blood blurred together...and the numbness finally arrived.
It hit all at once. Not the absence of pain, but the absence of anything behind it. The ache still lived in her flesh, but inside there was nothing left to react. She understood it then. You didn't go numb by hardening. You went numb by being emptied.
So when shouting tore through the camp and alarms crashed into motion, she didn't startle. She only weakly lifted her head as her guard burst into view.
"Kal-Ulith? What's happening?"
The sound of her own voice felt wrong. Flat. Like it belonged to someone else.
He skidded to a halt at the sound of it, stared at her for a beat, then spat a curse and snapped the words out.
"Follow! Enemy!"
"Enemy?"
She stayed seated, face slack, turning the word over like it might mean something again.
Something in her must have shown. Kal-Ulith swore again, seized her arm, and dragged her free of the stall. When her legs folded uselessly beneath her, he didn't slow. He hauled her up, slung her over his shoulder, and broke into a run toward the king's hut as the camp erupted around them.
It took only a handful of strides for the threat she couldn't picture to make itself known. The sight sparked something cold in her chest, a reflex that solidified and guttered out just as fast, but it existed. They were imps...but wrong. Larger. A dozen of them swarmed an elf, snapping jaws and overly long claws working in a blur, the screaming body reduced to stripped bone before the sound could finish leaving his throat.
Another pack followed, these ones bulkier still, bodies wreathed in flame as they crashed into a knot normal imps. The smaller fiendlings burst apart under the charge, flesh collapsing into cinder and slurry in seconds.
She hit the ground hard as lightning ripped past her in a white-blue line, the air cracking loud enough to rattle her teeth. Kal-Ulith barely cleared it, throwing himself aside as the bolt struck an elf behind them, electricity branching outward and tearing through anything close enough.
From the corner of her view, a young man, human, vaulted onto the roof of a hut, a repeater crossbow locked to his forearm, bolts snapping out in rapid succession as he shouted over the chaos.
"Hex! Right here!"
Something answered him instantly. It hauled itself up beside him, a shape she'd never seen before.
An imp, but again, not. Man-tall, thick through the torso, its outline bleeding upward in a rising haze of red light. In its grip was something her mind refused at first, even now. An axe, only it wasn't just an axe. The body of it was a guitar with its bottom bladed, strings stretched tight along the haft, humming with violence as he gripped it.
Hovering just off his back drifted a flat, pitch-black rig crowded with dials and toggles, and flanking it were two familiar shapes suspended in the air. Speakers.
"For the Broodfather!"
The demon raised his arm, bloodlight surging outward as his presence spiked, then he drove it down—
The sound tore loose like a wound in the air. A single chord slammed through the camp and poisoned everything it touched. Teal clamped her hands over her ears on instinct. It didn't matter. The vibration cut through bone and thought alike, dragging strength out of her body as if it were being siphoned directly.
The voice that followed hit harder than the sound. That dead spark inside her flared back to life.
"A human?! What the fuck are you doing here?!"
The biggest woman she had ever seen atood over her, muscle packed tight over every inch of her frame, one hand buried in an elf's throat as he kicked and clawed uselessly.
"Seo-jin! Check this out!"
Her thoughts scattered with the noise and violence, and she didn't decide to move so much as get pulled along by it, her gaze following where the woman looked.
There. The red eyes.
And the man they belonged to was already walking toward her, bloodlight lifting off his shoulders. Blood dripping from his cleavers.