Black Halo

great wooden corpse.

‘I guess,’ Lenk whispered, ‘that’s that.’

Through the groan of wood, the splintering of the ship’s ribs and the roar of great, gushing wounds filling with salt, he could hear a reply.

‘You’re surprised?’

Was the night cold or hot, he wondered? Should he feel as warm as he did at the sound inside his head?

‘I … came for them, didn’t I? I came for her. And she just-’

‘Left you. But it wasn’t just her.’

‘No, they all did, didn’t they?’

‘Distractions.’ The night turned freezing. ‘As we already knew.’

‘I remember … I trusted them, once, didn’t I? Towards the end there, I was enjoying their company. We were going to go back to the mainland together. Things were going to be all right, weren’t they?’

‘Not your fate.’

‘Not our duty.’

‘I suppose not.’

Water was seeping up around him, licking at his boots. The mast behind him started to groan; its foundations shattered, it protested once, then came crashing down to smash into the ship’s cabin. The world was crumbling beneath him and he stood facing the cold darkness below, alone.

‘So what now?’ he asked.

‘We kill.’

‘It ends.’

‘Conflict.’

‘Tell me,’ the voice, fever-hot whispered. ‘How far has killing gotten you?’

‘Do not listen,’ another, bone-cold, protested.

‘All fighting ends eventually.’ Fire-hot. ‘And by the end, what have you got but a heap of corpses? No one left to speak to, to lay your head upon, and it grows so heavy … ’

‘Trickery. Lies.’ Snow-cold. ‘We have survived before. We survive, always.’

‘You’ve been killing for so long, fighting for so long. Even when you had the option to leave, you turned to fighting, and this is where it has brought you: alone, abandoned but for voices in your head. It’s time to listen to reason. It’s time to give up. It’s over.’

An inferno.

‘Ignore. Do not listen. Survive.’

A mild chill.

His hands fell to his side, sword from his hands, clattering to the drowning deck. The air turned to iron in his lungs, forced him to his knees. The water was not as cold as he expected, rising up around him and embracing him, a thousand tiny, lapping little hands, welcoming him into their fold, assuring him that they would never abandon him.

‘Rest now. Your wounds are great. Your head is heavy. You’ve done enough.’

A blanket of shadow, warm and comforting, fell over him, bidding his eyes close, bidding him to ignore the pain in his shoulder. He felt numb of his own volition, burrowing into his own body, leaving the rest of him senseless to a pair of massive hands being laid gently upon his shoulder.

‘You’ve fought so hard and for nothing. Let this be the end.’

He felt the fingers on his face, but could not feel the cold of the palms that pressed against either side of his head. The water was up to his waist now, the shadow engulfing him completely. Soon it would be over. Soon it would end.

And there would be no more pain.

‘NOT OUR TIME.’

Blood cold, brain frozen, muscles spasmed. His sword came to his hand, arm flew from his shoulder, found flesh and bit deeply. The screams were a disharmonic chorus, ringing from within and without a head that boiled and a body that froze.

He leapt to his feet, turned around.

And they were everywhere.

Bone-white hands, grasping railings and hauling up glistening hairless bodies onto the deck. Rivers of flesh pouring out from the companionway, glistening black eyes wide and needle-filled mouths gasping. Boiling out of the ship’s wounds, knotted clots of skin and teeth on salty, dark blood.

And among the frogmen, their masters walked. Three of the Abysmyths dominated the rapidly sinking deck, striding over their charges on skeletal black legs, pulling their emaciated bodies through the splintered wood. And before him, a great ebon tree leaking sap, the demon clutched the wound at its flank that Lenk’s sword had carved. Its vast, empty eyes strove to convey agony, just as its reaching, webbed claw strove to find Lenk’s throat.

‘Mother give me patience for the weak of heart,’ it croaked through a drowning voice. ‘I do what they cannot, through Your will.’

‘SURVIVE.’

Advice or command, it was all that the voice told him, and it was all he needed.

The webbed claw grasped the air where his head had been as he darted low and swung his sword up, driving it into the creature’s spear-thin midsection. It ate a messy feast, ichor dribbling from its metal maw and chewing through ribs as the blade and its wielder ignored the screams of the dying.

And yet, Lenk’s brain was set ablaze with another wailing scream.

‘STOP IT!’

As fervent and fiery as the command was, Lenk fought against it. When the voice’s words were not obeyed, it lashed out, searing his brain and boiling the blood in his temples. He staggered, rather than darted away, from the towering demon as it collapsed to its massive knees and then landed face-first in the water.

A wall of pale white flesh greeted him, broken only by the four wide white eyes that stared at him from above. The frogmen pressed toward him, feral hisses slithering from their gaping, needle-lined mouths, webbed glistening hands outreached. The Abysmyths towering over them picked their way carefully towards him, gurgling in the voices of men long claimed by the sea.

‘Absolution in submission,’ one of them croaked. ‘Atonement in acceptance.’

‘Mercy at the Shepherd’s crook,’ the other one said. ‘You cannot continue like this, lamb, wallowing in despair and in doubt.’

‘Mother bids us,’ the frogmen echoed in twisted, echoing harmony. ‘The Prophet commands us. All for you.’

They reached for him with free hands, clenched bone knives in the other. The Abysmyths’ jaws gaped, webbed claws open as if to invite him to get in. He saw his death reflected in every black, glossy stare and his life vanishing down every gaping gullet.

And, with no other plan, he heard the voice that spoke on freezing tongues.

‘Kill.’

And he obeyed.

He lunged forward, swinging the blade as he did. It gorged itself, cleaving through rubbery white flesh and spilling fluids into the water indiscriminately. Those frogmen that fell he used as stepping stones across the drowning deck, cleaving into more and more still as he made his way towards the railing, ignoring the fever-hot voice screeching at him.

‘PLEASE! THEY HAVE DONE NOTHING! SPARE THEM!’

They knotted at the railing, preventing him from hurling himself over before he could reach it. He didn’t care; there would be more of them under the water, anyway, in their element. His target was closer, taller and decidedly darker.

The Abysmyth reached for him, its four-jointed arm extending to snatch him from the deck in an ooze-