Black Halo

‘This isn’t the time or the place,’ Kataria said, sighing. ‘Figure out your petty little human squabbles on your own time. I want to leave.’

‘Disagreements are a natural part of anyone’s nature.’ Lenk stepped in, eyes narrowed. ‘Not just human. You’d know that if you were two steps above an animal instead of one.’

‘Slurs. Lovely.’ Kataria growled.

‘As though you’ve never slurred humans before? You do it twice before you piss in the morning!’

‘It says something that you’re concerned about what I do when I piss,’ she retorted, ‘but I don’t even want to think about that.’ She turned away from him, running hands down her face. ‘This is why we need to get off this stupid boat.’

They’re close to a fight, Gariath thought from the boat’s gunwale.

The dragonman observed his companions in silence as he had since they had left the island of Ktamgi two days ago. Three days before that, he would have been eager for them to fight, eager to see them spill each other’s blood. It would have been a good excuse to get up and join them, to show them how to fight.

If he was lucky, he might have even accidentally killed one of them.

‘Why? Because we’re arguing?’ Lenk spat back. ‘You could always just fold your damn ears up again if you didn’t want to listen to me.’

Now, he was content to simply sit, holding the boat’s tiny rudder. It was far more pleasant company. The rudder was constant, the rudder was quiet. The rudder was going nowhere.

‘Why couldn’t you just have said you didn’t know how to plot courses?’ Asper roared at Denaos. ‘Why can’t you just be honest for once in your life?’

‘I’ll start when you do,’ Denaos replied.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

The humans had their own problems, he supposed: small, insignificant human problems that teemed in numbers as large as their throbbing, populous race. They would be solved by yelling, like all human problems were. They would yell, forget that problem, remember another one later, then yell more.

The Rhega had one problem.

One problem, he thought, in numbers as small as the one Rhega left.

‘Because we shouldn’t be arguing,’ Kataria retorted. ‘I shouldn’t feel the need to argue with you. I shouldn’t feel the need to talk to you! I should want to keep being silent, but—’

‘But what?’ Lenk snapped back.

‘But I’m standing here yelling at you, aren’t I?’

Things had happened on Ktamgi, he knew. He could smell the changes on them. Fear and suspicion between the tall man and the tall woman. Sweat and tension from the pointy-eared human and Lenk. Desire oozed from the skinny one in such quantities as to threaten to choke him on its stink.

‘It’s supposed to mean exactly what it does mean,’ Denaos spat back. ‘What happened on Ktamgi that’s got you all silent and keeping your pendant hidden?’

‘I’ve got it right here,’ Asper said, holding up the symbol of Talanas’ Phoenix in a manner that was less proof and more an attempt to drive the rogue away like an unclean thing.

‘Today, you do, and you haven’t stopped rubbing it since you woke up.’ Denaos’ brow rose as the colour faded from her face. ‘With,’ he whispered, ‘your left hand.’

‘Shut up, Denaos,’ she hissed.

‘Not just accidentally, either.’

‘Shut up!’

‘But you’re right-handed, which leads me to ask again. What happened in Irontide?’

‘She said,’ came Dreadaeleon’s soft voice accompanied by a flash of crimson in his scowl, ‘to shut up.’

Their problems would come and go. His would not. They would yell. They would fight. When they were tired of that, they would find new humans to yell at.

There were no more Rhega to yell at. There never would be. Grahta had told him as much on Ktamgi.

You can’t come.

Grahta’s voice still rang in his head, haunting him between breaths. The image of him lurked behind his blinking eyes. He did not forget them, he did not want to forget them, but he could only hold them in his mind for so long before they vanished.

As Grahta had vanished into a place where Gariath could not follow.

‘It’s not like this is exactly easy for me, either,’ Lenk snapped back.

‘How? How is this not easy for you? What do you even do?’ Kataria snarled. ‘Sit here and occasionally stare at me? Look at me?’

‘Oh, it’s all well and good for you to—’

‘Let. Me. Finish.’ Her teeth were rattling in her skull now, grinding against each other with such ferocity that they might shatter into powder. ‘If you stare, if you speak to me, you’re still human. You’re still what you are. If I stare at you, if I speak to you, what am I?’

‘Same as you always were.’

‘No, I’m not. If I feel the need to stare at you, Lenk, if I want to talk to you, I’m not a shict anymore. And the more I want to talk to you, the more I want to feel like a shict again. The more I want to feel like myself.’

‘And you can only do that by ignoring me?’

‘No.’ Her voice was a thunderous roar now, cutting across the sea. ‘I can only do that by killing you.’

The wind changed. Gariath could smell the humans change with it. He heard them fall silent at the pointy-eared one’s voice, of course, saw their eyes turn to her, wide with horror. Noise and sight were simply two more ways for humans to deceive themselves, though. Scent could never be disguised.

An acrid stench of shock. Sour, befouled fear. And then, a brisk, crisp odour of hatred. From both of them. And then, bursting from all the humans like pus from a boil, that most common scent of confusion.

His interest lasted only as long as it took for him to remember that humans had a way of simplifying such complex emotional perfumes to one monosyllabic grunt of stupidity.

‘What?’ Lenk asked.

Whatever happened next was beyond Gariath’s interest. He quietly turned his attentions to the sea. The scent of salt was a reprieve from the ugly stenches surrounding the humans, but not what he desired to smell again. He closed his eyes, let his nostrils flare, drinking in the air, trying to find the scent that filled his nostrils when he held two wailing pups in his arms, when he had mated for the first time, when he had begged Grahta not to go, begged to follow the pup.

He sought the scent of memory.

And smelled nothing but salt.

He had tried, for days now he had tried. Days had gone by, days would go by forever.

And the Rhega’s problem would not change.

You cannot go, he told himself, and the thought crossed his mind more than once. He could not go, could not follow his people, the pups, into the afterlife. But he could not stay here. He could not remain in a world where there was nothing but the stink of …

His nostrils flickered. Eyes widened slightly. He turned his gaze out to the sea and saw the dredgespider herd scatter suddenly, skimming across the water into deeper, more concealing shadows.

That, he thought, is not the smell of fear.

He rose up, his long red tail twitching on the deck, his bat-like wings folding behind his back. On heavy feet, he walked across the deck, through the awkward, hateful silence and stench surrounding the humans, his eyes intent on the side of the tiny vessel. The tall, ugly one in black, made no movement to step aside.

‘What’s the matter with you, reptile?’ he asked with a sneer.

Gariath’s answer was the back of his clawed hand against the rogue’s jaw and a casual step over his collapsed form. Ignoring the scowl shot at his back, Gariath leaned down over the side of the boat, nostrils twitching, black eyes searching the water.

‘What … is it?’ Lenk asked, leaning down beside the dragonman.

Lenk was less stupid than the others by only a fraction, Gariath tolerated the silver-haired human with a healthy disrespect that he carried for all humans, nothing personal. The dragonman glowered over the water. Lenk stepped beside him and followed his gaze.

‘It’s coming,’ he grunted.

‘What is?’ Kataria asked, ears twitching.

Not an inch of skin was left without gooseflesh when Gariath looked up and smiled, without showing teeth.

‘Fate,’ he answered.

Before anyone could even think how to interpret his statement, much less respond to it, the boat shuddered. Lenk hurled himself to the other railing, eyes wide and hand shaking.

‘Sword,’ he said. ‘Sword! Sword! Where’s my sword?’ His hand apparently caught up with his mind as he reached up and tore the blade from the sheath on his back. ‘Grab your weapons! Hurry! Hurry!’

‘What is it?’ Kataria asked, her hands already rifling through the bundle that held her bow.

‘I … was looking into the water.’ Lenk turned to her. ‘And … it looked back.’

It took only a few moments for the bundle to lie open and empty as hands snatched up weapons. Lenk’s sword was flashing in his hand, Kataria’s arrow drawn back, Denaos’ knives in his hand and Dreadaeleon standing over Asper, his eyes pouring the crimson magic that flowed through him.

Only Gariath stood unconcerned, his smile still soft and gentle across his face.

The boat rocked slightly, bobbing with the confusion of their own hasty movements. The sea muttered its displeasure at their sudden franticness, hissing angrily as the waves settled. The boat bobbed for an anxiety-filled eternity, ears twitching, steel flashing, eyes darting.

Several moments passed. An errant bubble found its way to the surface and sizzled. Denaos stared at it, blinked.

‘What?’ he asked. ‘That’s it?’

And then the sea exploded.

The water split apart with a bestial howl, its frothy life erupting in a great white gout as something tremendous rose to scrape at the night sky. Its wake tossed the boat back, knocking the companions beneath a sea of froth. Only Gariath remained standing, still smiling, closing his eyes as the water washed over him.

Dripping and half-blind with froth, Lenk pulled his wet hair like curtains from his eyes. His vision was blurred, and through the salty haze he swore he could make out something immense and black with glowing yellow eyes.

The Deepshriek, he thought in a panic, it’s come back. Of course it’s come back.

‘No,’ the voice made itself known inside his head. ‘It fears us. This … is …’

‘Something worse,’ he finished as he looked up … and up and up.

The great serpent rose over the boat, a column of sinew and sea. Its body, blue and deep, rippled with such vigour as to suggest the sea itself had come alive. Its swaying, trembling pillar came to a crown at a menacing, serpentine head, a long crested fin running from its skull to its back and frill-like whiskers swaying from its jowls.

The sound it emitted could not be described as a growl, but more like a purr that echoed off of nothing and caused the waters to quake. Its yellow eyes, bright and sinister as they might have appeared, did not look particularly malicious. As it loosed another throat-born, reverberating noise, Lenk was half-tempted to regard it as something like a very large kitten.

Right. A kitten, he told himself, a large kitten … with a head the size of the boat. Oh, Gods, we’re all going to die.

‘What is it?’ Asper asked, her whisper barely heard above its song-like noise.

‘Captain Argaol told us about it before, didn’t he?’ Denaos muttered, sinking low. ‘He gave it a name … told us something else about it. Damn, what did he say? What did he call it?’

‘An Akaneed,’ Dreadaeleon replied. ‘He called it an Akaneed …’

‘In mating season,’ Kataria finished, eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t make any sudden moves. Don’t make any loud noises.’ She turned her emerald scowl upward. ‘Gariath, get down or it’ll kill us all!’

‘What makes you so sure it won’t kill us now?’ Lenk asked.

‘Learn something about beasts, you nit,’ she hissed. ‘The little ones always want flesh. There’s not enough flesh around for this thing to get that big.’ She dared a bit of movement, pointing at its head. ‘Look. Do you see a mouth? It might not even have teeth.’

Apparently, Lenk thought, the Akaneed did have a sense of irony. For as it opened its rather prominent mouth to expose a rather sharp pair of needlelike teeth, the sound it emitted was nothing at all like any kitten should ever make.

‘Learn something about beasts,’ he muttered, ‘indeed. Or were you hoping it had teeth so it would kill me and save you the difficulty?’

Her hand flashed out and he cringed, his hand tightening on his sword in expectation of a blow. It was with nearly as much alarm, however, that he looked down to see her gloved hand clenching his own, wrapping her fingers about it. His confusion only deepened as he looked up and saw her staring at him, intently, emerald eyes glistening.

‘Not now,’ she whispered, ‘please not now.’

Baffled to the point of barely noticing the colossal shadow looming over him, Lenk’s attention was nevertheless drawn to the yellow eyes that regarded him curiously. It seemed, at that moment, that the creature’s stare was reserved specifically for him, its echoing keen directing incomprehensible queries to him alone.

Even as a distant rumble of thunder lit the skies with the echoes of lightning and split the sky open for a light rain to begin falling over the sea, the Akaneed remained unhurried. It continued to sway; its body rippled with the droplets that struck it, and its eyes glowed with increasing intensity through the haze of the shower.

‘It’s hesitating,’ Lenk whispered, unsure what to make of the creature’s swaying attentions.

‘It’ll stay that way,’ Kataria replied. ‘It’s curious, not hungry. If it wanted to kill us, it would have attacked already. Now all we need to do is wait and—’