Black Halo

the pool, no time to free Daga-Mer, to complete his mission.

He had a mission, he reminded himself. He had a deal. He would deliver the vial, pour Mother’s Milk into the water and free Daga-Mer. In exchange, he would remember nothing. He would be free of sinful memory, at long last. He would not remember the pain, the tragedies, his name …

He had a name.

He grimaced.

The sound of stone shattering pulled him from his brief reverie. A cry of alarm was bitten back in his throat. He hadn’t been discovered, he recognised. Rather, something had been shattered. The statue of Zamanthras that stood at the head of the pool, he recalled. Zamanthras was uncaring. Zamanthras did not save his family.

He had a family.

‘Hah!’ the female barked. ‘See? Found it! It’s like they say: Smash the biggest thing in the room and you’ll find your answer.’

‘No one says that,’ the male replied.

‘I say it. I’m a Carnassial. So they will say it now. Won’t they?’

The females grunted their agreement, chuckling. There was the sound of stone sifting, rocks sliding.

‘What … this is it? It’s just a heap of bones!’

‘That’s what we came for,’ the male replied. ‘Take it back to the ships. We’re done here.’

‘Done? The sikkhuns are still hungry.’

‘They are always hungry.’

‘The females haven’t killed enough.’

‘They will never kill enough.’

‘There’s still overscum here!’

The male paused.

‘Find the ones with heads bowed, talking to invisible things. Kill them. Don’t waste time on anything else. Ships need rebuilding, and Sheraptus is not pleased because of it.’

‘Right, right,’ the female muttered. The sounds of ironclad feet shuffling rang out, then stopped. ‘Well, well … what’s this thing do?’

‘We don’t have time to-’

‘It’s huge,’ another female interrupted. ‘Look at it! It’s got this big … big …’

‘Spiky thing,’ a third gasped. ‘It’s spiky! But how does it work?’

‘No idea,’ the first female grunted. ‘It can’t be that hard, though.’ There was the sound of shuffling, knuckles rapping wood. ‘There’s some kind of … stick thing. What’s it-?’

A snap. Wood rattled. Air shattered.

The Mouth froze as a purple blur fled past his pillar. He stared as it came to a halt against the stone. The netherling gasped, laying wide eyes upon him. She tried to say something through a mouth quickly filling with blood.

Possibly due to the massive spear jutting through her belly and pinning her to the wall. She squirmed once, spat once, then died upon the wall.

And a grating, wailing roar of joy swept through the temple.

‘Did you see that? Did you see it? It was all-’

‘TWANG! Yeah, and then it was all fwoom and she just went flying!’

‘Look at that! Killed her right there! Look at her just hang there!’

‘Could you make it twang faster? Could it be fwoomier?’

‘Yeah, you could! Just put more spikes on it!’

‘Right! More spikes and you could just kill anything.’

The low, morbid chuckle that swept the temple was the first female, Qaine.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘We’re taking this.’

‘Quite done?’ the male asked. ‘Want to collect the one on the wall?’

The Mouth tensed.

‘Who gets shot with a giant spike and deserves to get pulled down?’ Qaine grunted. ‘That’s not a bad spike, though …’ She hummed as the Mouth gripped his knife tighter. ‘But we can make it spikier.’

‘Shootier,’ another female agreed.

‘Stabbier,’ a third said.

‘Twangier.’

‘Yeah,’ Qaine said. ‘Take it to the ships. Round up the sikkhuns. They’ve eaten enough.’

There was the sound of crates crunching under rolling wheels, grunts of effort as something massive was escorted out of the temple. A solitary breathing told the Mouth that he was not yet alone. He guessed by the lack of snarling accompanying it that the male still remained.

‘You could have stopped this,’ the male whispered.

The Mouth’s eyes widened. He tensed, preparing himself. The knife was tight in his hand, though he wasn’t sure how much difference it would make. The males used magic, he recalled. A flimsy little spike made of bone would be useless against such power.

Throw it, then, he told himself. Distract the male, then escape. There would be time enough to return later, to return to his home, to find what he had left behind, to say good-bye to …

What about the mission? he asked himself. What about the deal?

‘But you didn’t …’

The male hadn’t struck yet. Who would he be talking to, then?

‘Your people paint the stones red with their blood. Your shrines burn. You lay shattered on the floor … and I walk away.’ The Mouth could hear the sneer in the male’s voice. ‘If you were real, you’d do something.’

There was a long silence. The male waited.

And then turned and strode out.

It was some time later before the sound of dying and the war cries of the invaders faded outside. The Mouth waited quietly before he even thought to move.

And by then, he realised he was still not alone.

Soft feet on stone floors. Frantic breathing. Terror in every sound. Not a longface, then. Then there was the sound of slurping, the desperate gulping of water that belonged to the scared, the sick, the dying. He remembered that sound.

And as he turned, he remembered the girl. She stared up from the pool, wide-eyed beneath a mop of wild black hair. Her face was dirtier than before, covered in soot. Her hand was deep in the sacred pool, her cracked lips glistening with holy water.

No, he reminded himself, waters of a prison, that which holds back Daga-Mer. You’re to free him, remember? Remember?

Of course he did. But he also remembered her, her fear, her desperation, her name. He opened his mouth to speak it.

‘I don’t care,’ Kasla said before he could. ‘It’s not holy. If it was, She would have done something.’ The girl pointed to the shattered statue of Zamanthras. ‘And now nearly everyone’s dead! Stabbed, bled out or eaten by those … things. And She did nothing.’

The Mouth followed her finger. Zamanthras’ stone eyes stared at him blankly: no pity, no excuse, no plea for him not to do what he knew he must. He stared down at the vial in his hand.

Thick, viscous ooze swirled within. Mother’s Milk. The last mortal essence of Ulbecetonth, all that was needed to free Daga-Mer from a prison unjust. He looked to the pool, and as if in response, a faint heartbeat arose from some unseen depth within the massive circle of water.

A distant pulse, reminding him with its steady, drumlike beat.

He leaned closer, as if to peer within, to see what it was he was freeing. He saw only his reflection, his weak mortality distorted and dissipated as ripples coursed across the surface. Kasla, the girl, was drinking again, noisily