Hubris - 30. A Sea of Red

“If you’re wanting more than that then I’m sure we can work something out,” the barkeeper drawled. He tugged at the front of his breeches.

Crowe slammed the door shut before he could give himself time to react. Fantasies of turning the man to dust flashed through his mind a thousand reels a second. And why not? All he had to do was give into his rage.

There was always one thing that stopped him: the unknown variable. The ripple effect one impulsive decision made in haste could bring. And there was the tray in his hand filled from end to end with platters of food - a feast after what scant meat he’d been able to scavenge on his travels.

He turned.

The tray fell from his shaking hands. His heart shuttered in his chest. His breath caught in his throat.

Barghast’s shadow flooded the room, dimming the candlelight. Every muscle and vein stood out as if trying to break free of his body. His hackles were raised, his claws unfurled. Every inch of him was primed to kill.

“Barghast,” the practitioner managed to utter. He stepped back until his shoulder touched the door. He had his hand on the doorknob, ready to yank it open and slam it shut to buy himself an extra second. Having seen the lycan in battle, he knew a second wouldn’t be enough. “I can understand if you’re upset with me. I didn’t do it to hurt you. I didn’t have the money we needed for the room and I didn’t know what else to do...”

The panic hit him like a punch to the gut. An iron-clad fist closed around his heart. The walls shrank, closing in on him, the room spinning and rolling as if caught in a whirlwind. No, he thought. Not this again. Monad, help me, I don’t want to die like this.

Barghast lunged for him. Before he could yank the door open, the lycan shoved him away from the door. The world tilted sideways before Crowe hit the floor with enough force to knock the air from his lungs.

How am I still alive? The thought no sooner crossed his mind when the screaming started.

It took all his effort to stand; he had to grab hold of the wall for support. He could hear screams and the sound of glass breaking and those animal snarls. His heart ached, knowing he was the cause.

“You hurt the one person who would always support you.” Petras' undead eyes gleamed from the shadows of the bathroom. “The one person who thought you could do no wrong. How does it feel to know you’ve truly lost everything?”

“No.” Crowe shook his head in denial. “This is different. He reacted violently when that man came to the door…” He’s only protecting what he thinks is his. This didn't mean they were in any less danger. The racket going on downstairs - the shouts, the sound of a scream turning into a wet gurgling sound, those thunderous growls - could alert the torchcoats. He had to stop Barghast from killing anyone else.

Can he be stopped? Monad, help me. I have to try.

He slung his necklace around his throat. He staggered out into the hallway, drunk with exhaustion. He’d managed to sleep a few hours before the barkeeper knocked on the door - before this new nightmare began, for wasn't there always a new terror lurking just around the corner, waiting for the moment to strike? - but a few hours wasn't enough. He needed more sleep. He needed more food.

None of that mattered now.

His shoulder slammed into the wall. The floor felt unsteady beneath his feet. It tilted left, then right, then left again like a ship at sea. The candles, held in glass jars mounted to the wall flickered, and then dimmed. Half of them died out as a cold gust of wind went through them. For a moment he stood in darkness.

When they returned to life, he stood not in the second floor hallway of The Staggering Pig, but the kitchen of his old home. The one he’d burned down.

The cellar door was open, rickety wooden steps beckoning him to climb down into the cellar if he so dared. He could see the chips in the wood from all the hours, all the nights he’d spent clawing at the door, begging for Petras to let him out. Now he could hear someone coming up the stairs. He knew the sound of those wheezy breaths; they sounded like nails on a chalkboard. Crowe knew who it was before he heard the voice.

“This is where whores go…down in the cellar, down in the dark where whores belong.”

Petras' animated corpse shambled towards him. The practitioner stumbled back, tripping over his own clumsy feet. He blinked. He was not in the kitchen of his childhood home but back in The Staggering Pig. He found himself not looking into the desiccated face of Petras, but the ravaged face of a revenant. It stalked towards him, a meat cleaver raised high above its head.

He’d been discovered again.

Crowe didn't have it in him to fight. Not this time. He staggered back into the room he’d paid so dearly for. He slammed the door in time to hear the meat cleaver slice into the wood with a heavy thunk. He turned the lock.

He wanted to stop but he knew he couldn't. The revenant would never stop until it had his head to bring back to its masters. He searched around the room, desperate for an avenue to escape. He was alone. This time he didn't have Barghast around to help him. He shoved the thought away before it could cause him further grief.

The door fell to the floor with a crash. The practitioner felt the vibration beneath his feet. The revenant’s mangled feet made not a sound as it crossed the room towards him. Crowe grabbed the nearest thing within reach - a vase - and chucked it at the window.

The vase burst through the window in a shower of glass. Crowe ducked out of the way just in time to avoid the meat cleaver. He lashed out with a kick that sent the revenant staggering back. Before the undead creature could regain its balance, he crawled through the window, slicing his hand open on jagged pieces of glass. Rain pelted him heavily from above. Thunder roared overhead, lighting the eternal night sky. The gutter was just in reach. He had no choice but to hope the pipe could bear his weight long enough for him to climb down.

What about Barghast? the frightened child part of his mind inquired.

Barghast is on his own for now. So am I. The thought made Crowe want to scream - the thought of leaving the only person he could trust behind, the thought that he’d made a mistake the lycan couldn’t forgive him for and now he probably wanted to kill him - but he swallowed it. Right now death was directly above his head. The revenant pitchex itself over the sill like a tumbling brick. It plummeted through the air, then hit the soggy ground with a wet crunching sound. Crowe knew he had mere seconds before it got back up.

The practitioner let go of the pipe, dropping the remaining five feet through the air. Before he could brace himself for the impact, a sharp pain exploded in his ankle. He stumbled, almost losing his balance. He threw his arm out, bouncing on his other foot. The sound of steel scraping against cobblestone sent a jolt racing up his spine. He turned his head. His eyes bulged out of his head. He let out a sob of terror.

The revenant had clambered to its feet while its twin was coming around the corner of the building, baring a spiked club. Crowe staggered in the opposite direction. Each step sent screams of pain up his leg, but he pressed on while the servants of Hamon pursued him relentlessly.

A strong gust of wind knocked a bin full of trash in his path. Before he could stop, he tripped over it, slamming into the ground. This time he really did scream. He couldn’t hold it back. Vision blurry with tears and from the blood falling in his eyes from the sky, he kicked at the bin, clawing at the wall for support until he could stand.

The sound of voices made him laugh with relief. He could see several figures marching drunkenly through the rain, carrying bottles of rum, impervious to the apocalypse.

“Help me!” Crowe gasped. “Please…help,,,”

He collapsed at someone’s feet, exhausted, unable to breathe, and in pain.

“What do we have here?” laughed a deep voice. “Looks like we’ve found ourselves a practitioner…”

“More like he ran headfirst right into you,” chortled another.

Meaty fingers wrapped around Crowe’s necklace. “That’s mine,” he managed to say through gritted teeth. He looked up and saw the torch symbol of the Theocracy on the back of a torch-coat’s armor when a fist crashed into his face, eclipsing all else.

Barghast surfaced, emerging from the waters of a murky red ocean. The time spent under the surface was as black as the Void, a space from which no memory could be retrieved. It frightened him. For anything could have happened…he could have done anything, he could have hurt his…

Twin o’rre!

His vision went from a grainy screen of dancing spots to a field of blooming red. All thoughts of Crowe momentarily halted when he saw what he’d done while on the hunt. The man’s face…the other who had marked what was his…was a ruin, the face and nose bowed in from where he’d crushed them with his fist, grounding them to mush. His clothes and flesh had been ripped, the bleached curve of his ribs excavated and exposed. His belly was full from all that he’d eaten. Swollen. He’d eaten two men today. He’d eaten more since coming to this strange settlement than he had in his entire life.

What else had he done during the black period? He remembered waking up next to his twin o’rre. Nothing had felt better than to curl up on the bed with his beloved wraith’s bare little rump pressed right up against him, their bodies fitting perfectly together…I’ll rip out the throat of anyone who disagrees, he’d thought before slipping into sleep.

“What did you do, you insolent pup?” the seer snarled at his back. She wasn't visible, but he could feel her presence searing a hole in his back. “If you hurt him…”

“It will be the end of me,” Barghast rumbled to himself. “Crowe!” He tore up the steps. Instead of taking the time to climb through three floors, he leapt through the ceiling, shrugging aside plaster until he reached the room where the sorcerer had given him a bath. He emerged from a cloud of smoke, sniffing the air. His senses told him much had happened in the room since the last time he’d occupied it.

He whined, unable to look away from the chaos. The shattered vase, the unfinished staff lying abandoned on the floor, the shattered window with jagged pieces of glass sticking out around the sill like razor sharp teeth. The stench of rot made his hackles rise. It could only mean the presence of one thing: the Okanavi didn't have a name for such things.

To give a name to something was to give it power.

Then he saw the blood on the window. If not for the stench of Inferno, it would have been the first thing he noticed. A flower of dread bloomed open in his belly. He whined as he crossed the room, tucking his tail between his legs. He already knew who the blood belonged to, but could not yet admit to himself.

Not until he was sure.

Bending down on one knee, he lowered himself to the wall. He sniffed.

He shot to his feet as another whiplash of thunder crashed across the sky and howled. He didn't care who heard it, be it the necromancers or the torchcoats. My twin o’rre is in danger!

Panicked thoughts raced through his mind as he launched through the window, dropping through the air, the cobblestones below racing up to meet him. How long had he left his twin o’rre alone to fend for himself, alone against the undead, while he’d gorged himself on the man in the tavern?

His feet hit the ground, splashing blood in every direction. He stopped long enough to sniff the air. Crowe's scent trail was still there, but faint, overpowered by the stench of his pursuers. Under any other circumstances, Barghast would have not been as worried…his wraith had proven many times he was more than capable of taking care of himself in adverse situations. But he's injured. He hasn't slept or eaten. He’ll be weak.

Horrid images of finding his twin o’rre slaughtered flashed through his mind. Barghast swallowed back the panic that threatened to explode out of him. It won't help me. I must find him.

He found the undead creatures first on the road that led out of the settlement. Their foul aroma led him straight to them: they smelled like a battlefield the day after a long battle; the smells rotting bodies make after they have been left out in the sun.

A mile outside of town, surrounded by pine trees and darkness, the Okanavian didn't have to worry about being quiet. “You chase after what is mine!” he snarled in the language of the desert.

They turned briefly at the sound of his voice. Under different circumstances he might have

pitied them…what little life they had was not their own. He unfurled his claws, tensing for a strike.

“Be quick about it and do not underestimate them,” the seer advised at his back. “They are far quicker than they appear.”

Barghast decided to test this theory. He ducked in quickly, lashing out with his claws. As he lashed out, the undead creature with the large square blade dove in at his back. Barghast ducked out of the way, reaching for his rifle. The weapon bucked in his paws when he pulled the trigger, the flash blinding in absolute darkness. It felt good to fight again after so many days spent couped up or running…

He yelped when he felt a blade bite into the back of his shoulder. The second undead creature had taken advantage of his distraction, clobbering him with its spiked club. A backwards sweep of his arm sent the thing flying back; it crashed into a tree with a force that would have turned the bones of any man to dust.

“It doesn't matter what you do,” the seer hissed. “It doesn't matter if you bite them, scratch them, hit them with all the strength you have at your disposal, they will not stay down. You must dismember them completely and bury them…”

Embedded in his flesh, the club stuck out from the Okanavian's shoulder. He wrenched it away. Already the other undead creatures lurched towards him while its companion rose to its feet. I will make this quick, he thought.

His claws made short work of their limbs. They were quick, but he was quicker, dodging their attacks while he sliced at them with their claws. First he severed their arms and their legs until they were little more than torsos resting on the ground. He circled them once. They tracked his movement, empty sockets silent but watchful. Their silence made him uneasy in a way he could not say.

The dirt came up easily enough in his claws. He didn't need to dig deep far into the earth before he could drop their remains in the grave. The monstrous things made not a sound when he refilled the grave with dirt. He stopped when he saw something glimmer on the ground. He stooped to pick it up.

Twin o’rre!

He held the trinket up to his nose, sniffing it. The charm smelled so strongly of his beloved it made him dizzy. He studied the charm - a serpent with the head of a lion, both creatures that existed in the desert. He’d seen snakes and wildcats much like lions here in the mountains.

I’m coming, Crowe! Fear not, wherever you are, I’m coming…

“Look up to the sky,” the seer whined at his side. “Crowe’s Monad guides even you.”

Barghast looked up. His breath caught in his throat. He’d seen the city in the clouds twice before: once after Crowe and he had ingested the sap from a tree and again while in the settlement with the black-eyed bear. Now here it was again, resting on the skyline, every bit as beautiful as the first two times he’d seen it.

“How is it I can see it?” Barghast asked the seer without looking away from the city's glowing white spires.

“Monad's ember burns within us all…including the Okanavi,” the seer said in a way that made it clear it was the only answer she would give for now. “Follow the light of the Eternal City. It will lead you to Crowe.”

Barghast nodded with a growl of determination. “I shall.” He tucked his twin o’rre’s necklace into his tunic, with the vow that he would return the charm to its owner when they reunited.