They enter a wasteland of broken stone.
The forest fades behind them in to a shroud of black ice mist. Steep hills made of shattered shale and loose plates of granite lead to bitter peaks that resemble teeth. The sky is flat and still, and the air is bitterly cold.
He walks with the small army of Grey Clan. The black wind batters them mercilessly. T heir clothing is weighted down with shadows.
The land slopes up. T he climb through the Burned Hills is arduous. H is muscles ache. H e uses whatever cracks and crevices he can find to haul himself up the rock face.
The stones grow tall er. Mov ing through them is like navigating a path of knives. The path is riddled with pits and flaws left by acid shower s.
The land is sharp. Blood sluices down his hand as he crawls through the razor peaks.
The Burned Hills are vast, and they are covered with caustic stains and burns.
The dark mountains fade into the endless dusk. There’ s nothing to the north or south, but to the west, many miles away, stands a mountain.
I know that mountain. I’ve seen it before.
The Black Citadel wait s on that distant peak. It holds the entrance to the Carrion Rift, and the way home.
The trek across the Burned Hills is riddled with hardship.
The mist on the ground conceal s dark crevices, wounds in the stone that lead to underground sea s of void darkness.
Several Grey Clan d ie. They don’t see the cracks until it’s too late, and they scream and fall and are gone before anyone knows what happened.
The sky bleeds liquid. It’s been so long since he’s seen rain he almost forgets what it’s like, but he know s it wasn’ t like this. The substance is b lack and viscous, like tar and honey. It paints them dark, makes their feet stick to the ground. Its touch is ice cold and stings the flesh.
They move on.
Vast worms slither across the landscape. Like the other creatures of the Whisperlands they are more shadow than real, smelted charcoal forms that writhe and twist across the Hills. The worms are halfhumanoid: slimy torsos with gangly arms and sharp talons and rows of razor spines atop massive inchworm bodies.
The travelers try to avoid these horrors, but can’t. More Grey Clan fall in an onslaught of blade s and poison-tipped tails, chewed to bloody bits or thrown against the rocks and reduced to blood stains on the stones.
He kills one of the beasts on his own, and with Kyver’s aid he kills another. Shadow skin reinforced with chitnous bone plate makes the beasts difficult to destroy.
After a time, bone-tired and covered in blue-black blood and worm remains, he and the survivors finally reach the far side of the Burned Hills.
There are only ten of them left now, where before there were over twenty.
The y stand at the edge of a poison glade.
Pools of briny water release bursts of vile yellow slime. Viscous pools churn with slithering grease. S tones shaped like coffins stand on the other side of the pools, near a small forest of dark trees at the base of the mountain.
They carefully navigate through the area. S mall animal-like creatures, purple and black lizards and razorback toads, race away as they approach.
The smooth stones are slabs of frozen crystal fused around humanoid remains. The creatures frozen within have claws and sha rp fangs, and he realizes they’ re vampires, trapped in the dark ice.
They pass through a graveyard of frost- en tombed dead. The sick pools bubble and pop as they walk through the labyrinth of ice sarcophagi.
A storm churns over the mountain. The peak is preposterously tall and looms over their heads. Dull bursts of thunder echo out of the sky. Pale explosions detonate within the cobalt clouds.
They’ v e nearly reached the forest when the stones fall apart.
Icy rock melt s like candles. Thick chunks of frozen crystal fly through the air. The cloying cold turns to a sweltering heat. Massive talons tear through the ice. Dripping anemic bodies pull themselves free. Slathering fangs open wide and issue cold howls.
He draws his blade. There are a dozen vampires, and they descend on the group from all directions. Flesh tears and blood flies. His arms ache as he does battle. Gore covers his face.
They are beset by waves of un dead. K ni f e — like claws pierce reptilian flesh. Hammers smash vampire skulls into pulp. C laws rend open torsos and tear off faces.
Kyver motions. He and Vala run for a narrow corridor lead ing into the mountain, located just past the small forest.
Cross follows. A vampire flies at him with such speed he can’t react before it throws him to the ground. The back of his head strikes rock. Everything bleeds to a blur. He feels the body come down on top of him.
Talons scrape across his knuckles. H e hisses as blood pours onto his face. He pushes back with all of his strength.
The vampire glares down at him. Cross sees himself r eflected back in its glassy eyes.
He kicks and rolls away from the naked brute. It lashes out and rakes him across the back. H e falls screaming. Razors burn across his skin.
Without thinking he rises to his feet, turns and buries his blade in the vampire’s face. Cold blood splashes on his arms. He wrenches Soulrazor/Avenger free from the gnarled bone.
The reptilians are dying all around him. They fight v aliantly. Spears skewer undead and curved sickle blades cut through the dark-haired fiends, but the vampires are too strong, and more of them appear out of other ice tombs, primitive undead interred in frozen prisons to act as sentries for the Shadow Lords.
V ampire s fall beneath wedge blades. Reptilian throats are torn out. Vampires dart in and out like wolves, stab their foes with eight-inch claws, pull away, stab again, a dance of blades and blood.
Something grabs him from behind, and he nearly turns and stabs Vala. She scowls, and pushes him forward. Kyver is a hundred yards away, just inside the dark doorway into the mountain. The corridor i s next to the copse of dark trees, a glade at the edge of an ice-water pool.
It looks familiar.
Heavy leaves fall in his path. He sees women assembled near the tree line.
She’s there. She has to be there.
He goes to find her. His feet splash in ankle-deep freezing waters that hadn’t been there a moment before. Tears of joy run down his face.
No, Vala screams, but he doesn’t listen. He can’t.
He only t akes a few steps when tentacle s wrap around his leg. Their touch is so cold they burn. The water bubbles and pulls back, no longer icy and cold but hot and turgid and filled with blood. Foamy eyes take shape in the murk.
The dark tentacles tighten around his limbs and lift him into the air. A great maw like an open wound rises from the water beneath his feet. It pulls open like a tear. T housands of tiny teeth glisten with poison and filth.
He hacks through the tentacles and falls into the water. He twists and kicks and swallows the sick fluid, emerges and gasps for air. A nother tentacle wrap s around his throat.
Vala charges in and hacks off the leathery appendage with an axe. Kyver grabs Cross’s arm and pulls him free. They struggle out of the water and make their way back to shore. Cross’s body is wracked with hurt.
The rest of the Grey Clan is all dead. The vampires feast on the remains and howl into the sky. Several of the undead turn and look and run after the three survivors as they struggle to escape the tentacle beast, a bulbous sack of meat limbs and drooping mouths. Teeth grind and twist in the gaping holes all over its body.
T he forest is now nothing but dead branches. Whatever Cross thought he’d seen had just been an illusion. The same is true of the mountain: it’ s actually a stout metal citadel made of twisted edges and serrated walls, towers like spikes and portals like wounds. The Citadel is fused to a smelted hill of granite and stained quartz. Jagged crenellations reach towards the sky like hooked claws.
The Black Citadel.
The y run for the doorway in the base of the Citadel. Vampires snarl at their backs. The tentacle beast lashes out, grabs some of the undead and pulls them to the water, but that does n’t deter the relentless mob as they scrape their way through bloody remains and tear across the open ground. L ong tongues drip acid drool and claws scratch against the ground.
Vala shoves him forward through the doorway and time slowed. The dark walls came into focus. The light brightened as they moved away from the shadow grime of the Whisperlands.
Kyver shoved Cross ahead and looked back at the door. The crowd of bestial vampires was less than thirty yards away.
“Go!” Kyver shouted. “This is as far as we can take you!”
“What…?”
“I hope your Eidolos friend told you what to do!” he shouted, and he turned back. Vala slammed the door shut, and t hey barricaded it with a thick wooden beam and propped up iron bars that looked like they’d once been part of a portcullis.
Hazy torchlight suffused the Citadel. B its of sharp metal protruded from every wall, which was dirty and covered with rust and dried blood. Dangling iron braziers swung back and forth on metal chains that ran up to the height of the narrow ceiling. Thin curls of grey smoke filled the hall with the smell of burning coals. The corridor that led from the entrance ran for as far as Cross could see.
The door buckled behind them, and they heard the wild growls of rabid vampires. C laws raked the door from the other side and filled the air with the song of knives.
“Go!” Kyver yelled again. “We’ll hold them for as long as we can…find Azradayne! Stop her from getting the Obelisk!”
Cross nodded, and ran. He wanted to say ‘thank you’, but it seemed ridiculous given the circumstances. They’d used him just as much as he’d used them. They all had something to gain, and plenty to lose.
He just hoped he wouldn’t fail them all.
The door buckled again. The growls grew louder. He glimpsed back, but Kyver and Vala faded into the dark ness behind him as he ran.
He didn’t have much time.
The hall emptied into a sort of amphitheater. Wide and rounded steps led up to a platform covered with large cages and slabs of ice turned grey with age. Multiple halls led away from the chamber.
Each cage held the skeletal remains of a creature, and not all of them were human: he saw Gol and Vuul, Gorgoloth and thin and mouthless Lith.
W hite-grey illumination bled down through dirty skylights in the tall ceiling. Thin sheets of grease ice covered the steps and the upper platform, and old gnarled bones and rocks littered the floor.
Cro ss looked down the hallways and saw nothing but shadows. He heard the growl of monsters in the distance.
The air tasted like smoke. With Soulrazor/Avenger in hand he crossed the chamber. His boots felt like they were ready to come apart. He looked down at himself and saw that his rotting clothing was brown and black with dirt and shadow y filth. He looked like a beggar.
It felt strange not having his spirit with him. In the confusing atmosphere of the Whisperlands it was easy to forget he was so alone because everything there was always in flux, and the unintelligible spectral voice s in the black wind never ceased. Here, the isolation struck him, and he felt naked. He had no ability to scout ahead or determine what lay down the corridors short of investigating them himself. He couldn’t sense if anything approach ed. He was just Cross, barely armed and alone.
Which means I don’t stand a chance.
All he had was the arcane blade, which, though powerful, remained something of a mystery. He was still unsure of its full potential. It could heal him, and it seemed capable of shielding him from harm. It could destroy powerful creatures, and it grant ed him more sword fighting skill than he actually possessed.
Still, it decided when it did all of those things. He had little control over the blade, and little notion of what it wanted. He sensed intelligence in it, a dark and powerful presence, but he couldn’t communicate with the weapon. It frightened him.
Cross stopped to cat ch his breath. His body shook all over. Now that he was back out of the black winds all of his aches and fatigue caught up with him. His muscles were sore and his bones felt bruised.
He remembered his old life, back with the team. He felt like he’d just seem them, like no time ha d passed at all. M aybe he’d just wake up from th at nightmare and be back in the manor, ready to eat eggs made by Ash’s homunculi and try ing not to trip on Grissom’s damn ed giant cat. He’d listen to Ronan and Kane bicker, and he’d watch Maur tinker with explosives at the dining table. A nd he’d see Danica, and maybe, just maybe, he’d tell her how he felt.
But that’s not going to happen on its own. You have to get there first. You have to earn it.
He steeled himself. He’d get nowhere standing around.
Cross made his way across the room. Drifts of dust and floating ice crystals hung in the air.
A sense of dread overtook him, and h e stopped in his tracks. Something else moved in the chamber.
He looked up at the ceiling and saw a massive white spider, easily the size of an automobile. It nest ed on an iron web, and its behemoth stomach stretched like it was ready to burst. Hundreds of milk — pale eggs pulled taut against its cadaverous sack. Diamond black eyes shone dark ly in the grey-white light.
The spider watched him. Cross stared up at it, petrified. Dozens of his reflections looked back at him, one from each of the spider’s many dark eyes, and each image was slightly different from the others. H e was a different man in every one of them.
The spider sat as still as a stone. He knew for a fact he’d seen it before.
It can’t be. It’s just another hallucination.
He ran.
Cross found himself in a maze of halls. There was no sound. He moved through crypts and pas t archways made of antler and bone. Razorblade tapestries and iron mirrors lined the corridors. Some areas were bound in darkness so thick it nearly suffocated him.
Eventually he slowed his pace. His heart raced, and his skin was flushed with cold sweat. G rime covered him, a layer of muck so dense he’d never shake it off. He felt dirt beneath his fingernails and around his eyes.
He looked around.
Dark murals covered the walls of a wide and long chamber, a sort of meeting hall or assembly area. Blood-red carpets lined the floor, but like everything else in the Black Citadel they ’d been eaten by age, and were covered with moth holes and frayed edges. A long table made of silver and stone took up the middle of the chamber, but it, too, had been ruined by the passage of time.
Things didn’t seem to last there. That was the Whisperland’s curse: nothing went untarnished. Decades passed in that realm while only weeks went by in the solid world, but the darkness of the Whisperlands corroded everything, living and otherwise. It decayed material things, caked the brain, and soiled the soul.
He cautiously moved deeper into the chamber. Blood welled up beneath his feet when he stepped on the thick carpet. He stepped away. Even w ith everything else he’d been through, for some reason he didn’t want that crimson filth on his boots.
H e approached the murals. They all showed a spider — the spider, his spider, an enormous a nd pale monstrosity ready to burst with young. She devoured cities. Mounds of humans fell before the creature's onslaught. In the murals she wa s vast, a legged insectoid moon. Buildings and monuments collapse d beneath her. People, their faces pale with horror, fe ll into dark rips made in the earth by her monstrous razor limbs.
It can’t be, he thought.
He stepped away from the murals and moved on.
He went deeper into the Black Citadel. Nothing challenged him. He had the feeling nothing would.
Cross passed through cold chambers filled with ice wells and shattered bone masks. He saw blood runes on the walls and floor, half-completed sculptures of man-beast symbiotes and gigantic insect skulls.
The inside of the Citadel was vast, much larger than it should have been, but he’d learned long ago not to trust anything he saw in the Whisperlands.
He knew he was near the Carrion Rift, the place where the obelisk had fallen. He could feel it.
Only the living are lost. That was what the Eidolos had told him, the knowledge he’d need once he breached the Citadel and faced its masters. It had told Cross he’d understand what it meant wh en the time was right, and that it c ould mean the difference between failure and success. Only the living are lost.
The air was colder the further he went. He walked through drifts of grave dust, and the stone halls grew darker. T he muted light from the hanging braziers dimmed. B urning fog covered the floor. Cross walked slowly, careful to keep his distance from the bladed walls.
Everything was deathly still. He tightened his grip on his sword as he passed crossroads that led to bone-dry rooms. Everything was cold and dead. He selected a corridor at random, and walked down it.
I can’t have escaped notice, he thought. They know I’m here. They’re toying with me.
He’d made a mistake. He had no idea how to find the entrance to the Carrion Rift, or if he could be sure the Obelisk was truly in the Citadel.
Maybe I should have circumvented the Citadel, and looked for the Rift itself.
Only the living are lost.
Cross pressed on. He passed hanging cages filled with cadavers long sucked dry of their blood and fluids. He tasted arcane fumes in the air; they were intoxicating, and he shook with need. Bodies had been submerged in pools of formaldehyde, and he saw workshop chambers populated by half-constructed automatons. There were rooms filled with sarcophagi and swords.
Cross’s anger mounted the further he went. He was nothing to the masters of this place. Azradayne and the Shadow Lords had no fear of the man who wandered the halls of their lair. He was insignificant, not even worth challenging.
The shadows deepened. After a while he could barely see. He held his blade steady, ready for something to leap out of the darkness at any moment. H e used it to probe the ground and the walls.
We search.
Only the living are lost.
Cross walked on. He was not afraid.
Shapes bled into view. The s ilence melted into the sound of distant fires and the echo of alien birds.
He came to a wooden bridge decorated with bones. The bridge spann ed a deep chasm.
He was no longer in the Citadel. He ’ d found the Carrion Rift.
Cross looked around. T he Black Citadel was behind him, with its bladed halls and piles of bones and its utterly dead smell. He stood on the edge of a plain of smashed black ice and oily stone. Purple mist curled against the ground. The sky was dead black.
The Rift lay before him, a massive rent in the dark earth. Green and black fumes filled the depths of the canyon, roiling poison smoke filled with vague shadows and monstrous calls. The walls were broken and jammed with jutting bones and gaping holes. Mounds of smelted quartz formed a crude ledge near the iron-chained bridge. Massive skulls — likely Doj — decorated the poles support ing the chains. The bridge rocked and creaked in the acid breeze. A path paved with glittering black scales led to the bridge.
Cross slowly stepped forward and looked over the edge.
We search.
The Obelisk of Dreams would be below, in the depths of the canyon, but there was little chance he’d be able to descend and find it, at least not without magic. He doubted his hybrid blade would grant him the ability to fly.
What, then? What the hell am I supposed to do?
He looked ahead. Dark shapes moved in the distance, silhouettes hidden in walls of grisly steam. They were giants, and they haul ed some large box es or crate s.
Or the obelisk. Shit.
He crouched low and stepped onto the bridge. It rattled and shook, and for a moment he gazed into its impossible depths. Stories told of the Carrion Rift being filled with deep channels of blood water and the half-submerged remains of cities destroyed during The Black. Monstrous aberrations and mutated horrors lurked there, things that had never known sunlight or clean air.
Cross carefully made his way across, holding onto the chain railing for support. The bridge pitched and almost threw him over the edge. F umes filled with acid whispers slithered a round him.
One hand on the chain, h e jogged across as quickly as he could, his eyes on the silhouettes within the smoke on the other side. He knew what was waiting for him.
Once off the bridge he ducked behind a low wall made of smoking dark ice filled with stone sediment. The ground was cold and hard. He waited, and watched.
As he’d feared, the giants beyond the smoke were Sorn: nine-foot tall humanoids with stony grey skin and mismatched steel and leather plate armor, short capped helmets and steaming thaumaturgic equipment, steam-driven hammers and large repeating pistols. Each had a single yellow eye in the middle of a wide forehead cove red with short horns. The four Sorn moved in and out of the smoke. They circled a twenty-foot wide hole in the ground. The hole was uneven and jagged, like something had fallen from the sky and punched through the earth.
The Sorn shifted large c rate s and steel-rimmed boxes filled with i ron t ools, welding torches, chisels and hammers. A nother broken wall of ice granite stood on the other side of the hole, and beyond that the world spilled into open dark plains.
Cross watched the giants erect a trio of iron beams to form a pyramid over the hole. Bolt guns punched thick iron nails through the metal and into the ground. One Sorn wore a face-mask and used a massive acetylene torch to bind the tips of the beams together. Another Sorn gathered lines of cable and a pulley.
They planned to descend.
That must be where the rip is, he thought. The way back to the real world. The place where they ’ll take the O belisk.
Something sounded in the distance behind him. He heard a boom ing sound, like dropping bombs. The dark sky rippled with twisted arcs of chain lightning. He smelled the tang of ozone and rain, a distant and half-remembered memory from his childhood.
Something was happening at the Black Citadel.
They’re looking for me, he realized. How they couldn’t have known he was there already was beyond him. He felt sure the spider had been a guardian pet of the Shadow Lords, a minion or a marauder in their service. And he knew it had s een him. Never mind that. They’re looking for you now. You don’t have a lot of time.
H e continued watch ing the Sorn from his hidden position. H is body was tired and cold, and the hexed fumes that pour ed out of the Rift made the air taste sick.
O ne of the Sorn hauled some sort of generator or engine towards the hole. Thick rubber tubes and hoses pumped translucent fluids into vibrating no zz les. The device sound ed like an airship’s turbines, and soon it filled the air with such noise it was impossible to hear anything else, even the distant echoes as the Black Citadel came to life. The Sorn plugged pneumatic filters into the engine and sprayed pale grey smoke into the hole. Cross guessed they were sen ding purifying fumes to make the air below less poisonous.
It’s now or never.
He raced forward. The grinding engines masked the sound of his movement. He ducked low and kept close to the shattered walls, and he used the columns of fused mountain rock for cover a s he dart ed between the crates. He dug around near the top of a box until he found what he was looking for. Cross stayed low and kept his breaths shallow and even so he wouldn’t be heard.
With the Sorn ’s attention on the hole, Cross stepped up and sliced open the fuel pump on the machine. Foul-smelling liquid ran all over the ground and formed sticky pools.
The Sorn turned soundlessly, and one moved to inspect the damage. Cross slipped back into the shadows and kept his body pressed tight against a twisted wall of glacial rock. He was thank ful the Sorn had poor night vision.
His m ind flashed back to the city of Rhaine. He saw Graves and Cristena and Stone. He’d watched them all die at the hands of the Sorn, and even though the giants responsible had all been killed, a hatred for the predatory race still burned deep in his heart.
He aimed the flare gun between the Sorn’s legs and fired. The engine fuel caught alight. Cross ran. He heard weapons being readied behind him, and he half expected to be shot in the back by massive nail shots or ball rounds.
The blast shook the air. Heat washed against him. Cross leapt over a low wall and threw himself back against the stone to use it as cover while he brought his arms up to shield his neck and head. His eyes stung from explosive fumes. His skin felt like it was melting, and when he breathed in it was like swallowing jet fuel.
He waited. After a few moments the series of explo sions stopped. He heard flames and smelled toxins and burning skin.
He carefully stood up and checked himself. He hacked up bloody phlegm, took a deep breath. He was okay.
The dig site was in ruins. The engine was split open and spewed ghastly spirit unguent that looked like slime milk. Thick bursts of oil bubbled and sank into the ground. A handful of the rock walls had shattered and fallen to pieces in the blast. Drifts of yellow smoke from the plains billowed across his path as he quietly walked back towards the hole with his blade in hand.
Two of the Sorn were dead. T heir grey flesh had been blown open by the blast, and their innards were exposed to the salty air. Their central eyes were still.
A third giant still lived, and it struggled a nd dragged itself across the ground. Its back and head were covered with burn marks, and the skin had torn away from its abdomen, where meat gristle and dark blood spilled out.
It looked at Cross as he stepped up and sliced open its throat. It died silently.
Cross scanned the perimeter. There was no sign of the fourth Sorn, and that worried him. Strange alarms blared in the distance, booming drum pattern beats mixed with arcane klaxons.
Maybe the spider he’d seen hadn’ t been associated with the Shadow Lords after all. Maybe it truly was his spider, there to ensure him he was on the right path.
He tried not to think about the murals…about the images of the spider as it destroyed cities.
Dark cries sounded through the sky. There was nothing beyond the mists and smoke around him except for pitch black plains. He felt like he stood in the middle of nowhere.
We search.
Only the living are lost.
Cross checked the iron beams. As he’d expected, most of the device had been damaged in the blast, and two of the beams had fallen down into the hole. The third, however, was still bolted into the ground, and it hung over the opening at a forty-five degree angle. The pulley mechanism was gone, but there was still plenty of cable, and he thought that if he secured a line tight enough he could lower himself down.
The fourth Sorn was down in the hole, where it clu n g desperately to the wall. The rock in the shaft was blasted obsidian that shone like dark stars. The one-eyed giant’s face and body were riddled with cuts, and it looked to have lost some of its fingers. It blinked up at Cross and grimaced.
He found a crate filled with machinery and slowly pushed it into the hole. He heard the Sorn fall as the box of equipment tumbled and struck the creature, and they both crashed down the sides of the shaft.
Cross couldn’t get the image of friends long dead out of his mind. He was shaking, and had to take a moment to right himself. He saw them, remembered them, and vowed to waste no more time.
It took him a handful of minutes to locate enough cable. He tore cloth from the Sorn’s clothing and wrapped it around his hands so he wouldn’t slice himself apart with the frayed metal line on the way down. He wound one end of the cable around a low column of quartz, then looped the other end twice around the beam and dropped the rest into the darkness of the shaft. He searched the Sorn’s bodies and used the smallest carabineer — like clamps he could find to secure himself to the line. He lowered himself into the hole with a handful of flares in his pockets.
The air was bitterly cold. It was like sinking into a pool of ice. Subterranean wind kicked up from below and sent shivers up his spine. His lungs itched from rock dust. Shards of crystal protruded from the walls. He lit a flare as he descended, but it would be tricky to hold it and repel at the same time, so he dropped it down the length of the shaft. To his great relief he saw it hit the bottom, which was several hundred feet below.
He repelled slowly, and his arms soon ached from the effort. He carefully kicked off from t he walls. The grey blood stains left on the jagged stone indicated how sharp it was.
Another blast of ice wind came up at him. Dread whispers filled the air, lost voices that hissed at him to leave. The black quartz was threaded with gold and radiated a primeval chill.
He thought about the spider as he made his descent.
Something wasn’t right. Something had happened when he’d looked into its many eyes, something he’d been unable to piece together. In the past, a white spider had always appeared when he was on the right path, when he was moving to where he was supposed to be. It had helped him prevent the Obelisk of Dreams from being destroyed, and it had helped him stop the Sleeper. It had been strangely absent from his life ever since the team had been formed, just a memory. He’d taken that to mean he hadn’t needed it — that he’d been making the correct choices, and that the path he’d walked had been the right one.
He felt cold inside. His breaths crystallized. The pull of gravity seemed to intensify the deeper he went down the shaft, an inescapable draw that led to the fused core of the mountain. He smelled iron and sulfur as he dropped closer to hell.
He remembered looking up at the spider in that cold chamber. He’d seen his own reflection s in its many eyes, and those reflections had a ll been different.
Different angles? Or something else?
The walls seemed to move as he made the descent. Everything rolled around him like he was stuck on a ship in a violent sea.
The light of the flare below him went out, leavi ng him in darkness. He stopped and dropped a second. The new light flickered as it fell, turned at odd angles. It seemed to phase in and out of existence, and when it landed he swore it was somehow different than when it had left his hand.
A different flare. A different possibility.
Reflections. Many eyes.
He realized the truth.
It wasn’t just different angles of myself I saw in the spider’s eyes. I was seeing different versions of myself. It was me, moving along different courses of action. Possible selves.
Cross ’s mind had always been overly analytical. He had a naturally photographic memory, a keen sense of calculation and data analysis. He could read a text once and commit it to memory, compare it to a similar text and see the differences and similarities line-by-line. He had a natural knack for solving arcane algorithms and hex theories, for unlocking codified texts and discordant formulae. He could see patterns and variations where many others couldn’t.
He analyzed the events of his own life, from the first moment he’d seen that white spider with Snow in the cemetery outside of Thornn up to where he was now, lowering himself down a frozen shaft, trying once again to save human magic from annihilation. He broke down every choice, every crossroads he’d ever stood at. He tried to determine what might have happened differently, how events might have changed if he’d made different choices.
The spider saw them all. She (he wasn’t sure, still, why he thought it was female, but he did) had known all along, had guided him.
Guided…or manipulated?
He stopped.
I’d always assumed she was some sort of…guide. Fate, maybe, showing me where to go, what to do.
But to what ends?
He saw the Sorn’s mangled corpse below his feet, so he kicked off and twisted himself around to avoid landing on the body. H e touched down on the rock at the nadir of the massive shaft. The black stone cracked under his feet: it was brittle as ice. A single wide corridor led off from the shaft towards a distant chamber filled with golden light.
His vision shifted, halted, and started again. The air felt uncertain, out of synch. It was like when he’d been dipped in the black fluid in the Bonespire and had stepped outside the normal flow of time. This entire place was disconnected, and it shifted away from the possible realms.
Cross paused, gripped by a cloying chill inside and out.
He knew in his gut that the spider in the Citadel was Azradayne.
Something not of our world, or any world we know, was what Vala had said about her. The Grey Clan hadn’t said what she was.
The more he thought about it, the more sense it made.
She’s moved me where she wants me to be. If she can see different possibilities, different versions of what would happen, then she could have seen how my being in certain places could alter the course of history.
It didn’t mean that he was all important. Chaos theory, the notion of a hurricane caused by butterfly wings, held to the principal that minor events led to greater events, distant chain reactions, small occurrences potentially initiating world-changing sequences. It could have been anyone. All that mattered was seeing the pattern, knowing what threads led to what.
Maybe s he wanted the Obelisk here, so she moved me, made it so my actions would cause it to happen when I destroyed that train.
He drew his blade. The cold caused the hilt to cleave to his skin.
But then why would she send me after it again? And why now?
His mind raced as he stepped down the corridor. The air warmed, but it also grew less stable. His shadow folded and doubled, fell away and danced along the wall like he was more than one self, a group of possibilities. His vision blurred, cleared, blurred again. The sound of his footsteps echoed down the uncertain hall.
Why send me here? he wondered again. Or does it even matter? Now that my part has been played, is she even concerned with me at all?
Was she ever?
He felt he should have resisted somehow, should have made some different choice, tried to act in an unpredictable manner. He also knew it was too late. If he was right, if Azradayne was indeed the spider and she’d manipulated him for the sake of altering the pattern of fates, if she’d spun her webs out as far out as he suspected, then she’d have planned for every contingency. He was nothing more than a fly now, caught in her strands.
Cross continued down the tunnel. Whatever she’d determined his fate to be, he’d meet it head on.