The sun was already too low in the sky. Rose felt her stomach in knots. With every push she got closer, but it got darker and darker. Approaching the stone wall was easier than anything on this path had been for days. Maybe weeks. The road was of dwarven make, so it was smooth and solid. It led at a gentle slope up to what amounted to a low stone wall with holes for the view and light on a flat mountain peak. The whole thing was somehow cast in a golden light by the sunset, even though the sun was behind it. It was arching toward them from their angle, with benches fitted between each pillar, each one under a thin window, so that two people could sit with a window view at almost any part of the semi-circle. Rose figured that the window construction must have something to do with the lighting. In the center the road became a ramp leading down through a rectangular hole in the ground to massive double doors made of dark stone.
Emrys was in good spirits, somehow. “The dwarves left you a ramp!”
“Right. Very generous of them.” Rose didn’t share his good mood. Were they too late? She was already struggling with herself not to get too far ahead. He was limping hard to take pressure off the belly wound and sweating like …. well, she did remember the night she met him. He was sweating like an Emrys. At least he didn’t smell like sausages right now.
He looked ahead and limped forward a bit faster. He grimaced and stumbled and finally said, “Go. I will follow as fast as my meager frame can manage. Go save your sister. I have done most of what I can.”
Rose didn’t wait for him to say it twice. She said, “Let’s hope you know what I’m about. See you inside, stinky,” and took off down the ramp with a haste that she could not have managed for her mother. She couldn’t tell if she was terrified or eager. If that bastard laid a single hand on her sister-
Rose didn’t even notice when the ramp gave way to three short stairs that she launched herself from and landed with a crack. The chair kept moving, though. She took a breath and reminded herself to be careful. It wouldn’t be helpful to have to scoot herself into the depths of some horrid catacombs. The place wasn’t hard to navigate, which made sense. Why would the ancient dwarves create a home for their honored dead that was difficult to navigate? It was pretty clear that the place hadn’t been cared for in a while – dead plant matter and baskets of rotten food were in alcoves, for example. She guessed the cultists didn’t care too much about aesthetics, but once upon a time this place had probably been stunning. The whole affair was lots of quartz and granite and what not. Each small alcove had a bench in it large enough for a single occupant. There were carvings on most surfaces larger than a dinner plate. A lot of it didn’t mean anything to her: patterns or lines and sweeping arcs and the like. She saw a lot of those repeat. They must mean something to the dwarves, but not to Rose. But there were occasionally carvings of faces and whole bodies. It wasn’t realistic, like a human carving might be, but it was stylized. Sort of like they were exaggerating certain traits: the nose being pointed like an arrow or the beard being straight in lines.
The place was lit, though, which was nice for her. She knew that dwarves had pretty excellent eyesight. It was sometimes said that they could see in pitch blackness, but she’d never seen proof of that. This seemed to imply otherwise, because there were glowing orbs worked into the walls in various places. As Rose pushed her way through the right hall she saw a greater glow arising from ahead. To the left she finally saw what the alcoves were for. There was a fucking dwarf sitting there. Or maybe a statue of a dwarf? But wearing clothes? She honestly didn’t know what she was looking at. It looked like a statue of an aged dwarf, but it was realistic, unlike the stylized carvings from the walls. And it was also dressed in some sort of ceremonial clothing: white with red design embroidered around the neck and sleeves – colors she could make out through the ages of dust on the thing. It was shockingly intricate even in the dim light. This dwarf was sitting with stone hands on his legs like he was waiting for his grandkids to show up. Only stone. Weird. As she pushed ahead, Rose saw the path branch off into three tunnels: left, right, and center. Left and right were open arches, but the center had two huge stone doors banded with metal that might have otherwise been blocking the way, but they were standing wide open (in fact, the left door was cracked and broken in the center). The brighter light was coming from the center and she saw at least two more weird dwarf statues on the right, so she decided that the center was most likely to lead to where she wanted to go.
And then she was there. Ahead of her was another ramp leading across a great pit, the bottom of which might have once been a mine or a lake, but it was empty now and the lights from the circular structure up ahead cast down upon it. Whatever those lights were once supposed to illuminate, now they illuminated something that Rose almost couldn’t comprehend. It was simply too big. Nothing that size had any business resembling a body, but there it was.
Rose had once heard a story about a god that stalked a valley surrounded by cliffs: it stalked around and couldn’t leave, some huge man-shaped beast made of plants and bone that was too heavy to climb up the sides without them crumbling, so it just walked and stalked back, shaking the earth as it did so until it stopped moving and slept.
She’d tried to imagine the scale of that creature many times as a child. She had clearly failed. She saw the face first, of course. The left half of it … the Sundered Countenance clearly did their best to imitate the ruined mess, but they didn’t manage. Nothing still mortal could manage it, because the left side of the face was not simply raw, it was dead. And it wasn’t bone, though she could see some sheets of bone in there the size of houses, but it was the massive walls of rotten flesh, the frozen rivers of gore channeled into the side of it, the empty eye socket that four grown men could have stood in with room to spare that was the most terrible. The second most terrible, actually.
Because the other side of the face was …. human was not the right way to describe it. The flesh made no sense. It was made of ribbons of some sort of soft material woven in every direction, but the color was not too different from her own. It had all the relevant parts: nose, mouth, but the eye! It was open. A grey eye looking into nothing, like the eye of a sleeping drunk when you peel up the lids. It’s not seeing anything, but it’s there and there’s still something there inside. Beyond. Oh, gods! Literally, in this case, she figured.
The rest of its body was bunched up behind it. It was equally massive. Despite the huge size of this cavern, this god wouldn’t have been able to stretch out in it, let alone stand. If this thing woke up, they were all dead. Not just Rose and anyone inside, but anyone within a mile. Its steps would shatter the land. Its gaze would surely cause death or madness, but if it really decided to kill someone …. How could anyone stand against that? Whole cities would fall.
That’s probably exactly what the Sundered Countenance wanted.
It was so much to take in that she didn’t even see them at first. But then her eyes drifted up to the stone bridge that crossed the cavern. The bridge itself was probably as long as a corn field. But at the far end of it she saw the man. She had come all this way and she didn’t even know his fucking name. He no longer wore the half mask. Now it was hanging off of his left shoulder just like orange-face-mask had said. His clothing was dark – he hadn’t changed. He was standing over a stone table. Maybe a bier or an altar. She recognized the form on it even at this distance. She’d have recognized that shape with her eyes closed. When her gaze settled on her sister, she cried out. She hadn’t meant to, but it came out of her all the same. “No!”
He looked. She could tell he looked. “Let her go!” Rose cried. Her voice felt raw in this place. “You can have me!” It was always what she was going to say. She was terribly afraid that she might have even said it if her mother were the one on the table.
Rose wasn’t sure he could hear what she was saying at this distance. He plunged the knife into her sister’s chest without another moment passing.
The whole world stopped. No magic, this time, just her sister. Dying. Rose thought, ‘No’ and then she thought, ‘Again.’
She pushed herself forward along the bridge as fast as she could toward the man who was now, once again, holding the knife up in the air. Her sister cried out. “Rose?!” Hester’s voice was weary, as if she were exhausted. It struck her like a thick branch. But this time she was closer. If she could hear Hester, then the man with the knife could hear her. “Stop! Just let her go! You can have me!” Rose meant it. She’s give herself over to this madman for her sister.
The man gave her a quizzical look with the side of his face that could give looks. “Why would I want that?” The knife plunged down into Hester. ‘Again.’
She shoved herself forward along the stone bridge, already aware that this power was new and difficult and that it was taking so much out of her, but she didn’t care because her sister was there. Her sister who called out to her “Rose” and her sister who died as the knife came down. ‘Again.’
Rose was shaking now at the halfway point of the bridge. Had she gone back as far as last time? Her vision was getting blurry. Hester’s voice. “Rose!” Face of the man. She could see him clearly now. So … normal. The right side. Bland, with stubble where the hair and beard might be. No time to shave on the road. Brown hair, maybe? A lean face. Muscular build, but not impressively so. The left was, of course, a mess with seeping wounds like scabs over jerked beef. He looked surprised briefly at Rose’s position. The knife came down. She was not close enough to see the light leave her sister’s eyes. Small miracles. ‘Again.’
Rose’s vision was mostly blood now and her ears were ringing a bit. She pushed forward. She didn’t even stop to listen to her …. sister? Mother? Sister. She didn’t stop to listen to her sister calling her name. She didn’t bother looking at whoever this asshole was. She just had to stop him. An arm came down and there was the sound of meat being cut. ‘Again.’
Rose tumbled from the chair. She heard a cry. Some word. It took her a moment to realize that it was her name. Who was calling for her? Oh. That’s right. Sister. Her dead sister was dying and she was calling for roses. She pulled herself forward as someone – her mother, maybe? – plunged something into her sister. Hester. She pushed hard. ‘Again.’
Nothing happened.
No, that will not do.
She reached into herself and twisted. ‘Again.’ ‘Again.’ ‘Again.’
The man looked down at her. She was laying on the ground. She couldn’t move, not the least little bit. She wasn’t going to survive this one. The strain. The Talent had finally killed her, just like her teacher always warned her it could.
It was okay.
She heard a buzzing voice through the ringing in her ears, as if it was far away. “That was a neat trick. I’m afraid it doesn’t seem to have worked as you wanted, though.” He giggled to himself. To her? “I admire the suffering, but I have other things to do here first.”
He raised the knife to finish the sacrifice.
Rose mumbled the thing that she’d been keeping on the edge of her tongue since she got here. The word that he’d taught her after the storm. Who? Stinky sounded right. Did she know a Stinky? Once thing was certain in the next moment. A Stinky knew her.
“alan”
Lightning shot from her dying body into the carved stone walls of the catacomb beyond, going right through the priest without the least bit of resistance: the storm unleashed. The boom cost her the last of her hearing, of course, but that was a small thing now. She’d been aware enough to close her eyes, so that when she opened them, when the blood was blinked away, she saw his body, all red and puffy and split open, the good eye burned out. It crumpled to the ground, but didn’t fall all the way.
It didn’t fall all the way because the storm light had locked the dead priest’s hand onto the dagger, and the dagger was buried in the hilt in her sister. Hester wasn’t all the way dead yet, but this time Rose wasn’t so lucky as to miss the light leaving her eyes.
She tried to gather her thoughts to try to go back again, but she no longer had the word. She no longer remembered the trick of it. She also no longer remembered the trick of breathing. She’d known how just a moment ago, but it was gone now. Her vision also went. She laid on the cool stone, feeling the ground begin to rumble.
Amid the tumult of the sacrifice designed to wake the Sundered Countenance’s dread god, Rose bled the last of her strength. She grew quite still. And then she died.
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