Stenn awoke with a shiver running down his spine. He thrashed about, almost violently so, trying to grab at the feeling as it crawled down his back. He found that his blankets had been tossed about. Through his blurry vision, Stenn caught sight of Marianne’s ghostly form standing nearby.
“Lady Ennet,” Stenn said, trying to quickly rise. His bones cracked and popped in complaint, so he was forced to go a bit slower.
“I must apologize,” she said, eyes locking with Stenn’s.
“You mean for last night?” Stenn asked. Then he trailed off and thought for a moment. “I think it was night, anyway. It’s a bit hard to tell time in here.” The grogginess of sleep hung heavily over him and his vision was still a bit blurred.
“Not for that,” she said. “I do not regret how I acted. I would have done it a thousand more times if I given the chance. Your companion may have had a point somewhere amongst all of her youthful rhetoric, but my rage was my own. I am not ashamed of it.”
Stenn began to stretch, pulling and tugging at all of the muscles that were rebelling against him. “Yes, she certainly has a habit for riding one’s nerves, doesn’t she?” Stenn stood up. He looked over at Anna’s bed.
“I must apologize,” Marianne said again, “that I could not tell you sooner.”
The bed was empty and still in a messy state. The small pair of gauntlets and boots was missing. The least faded of the maps had vanished from the pile. Stenn couldn’t catch his breath.
“Where is she?” he gasped.
“I don’t know,” Marianne said. “But I think both you and I know where she’s going.”
The Wellspring.
Before Stenn’s thoughts could catch up with him, he was running all about the little building. He was already used to the space being cramped, so with Anna gone, the interior felt uncomfortably empty. He strapped his own gauntlets and boots on so quickly and tightly that it was making his limbs go numb. He readjusted the leather and belts with an unsteady hand.
“Calm yourself, Stenn,” Marianne coolly insisted.
“I will be,” Stenn panted. “After I find her.”
“You’re panicking. What do you think you’ll accomplish like that?”
“It’s making me move faster, isn’t it?” Stenn offered. It’s terrible reasoning, I know, he thought. But what else am I supposed to do? Stenn had imagined that one day he would be feeling the same clutching at his chest as part of his journey into fatherhood. He realized that, one day, Eym might get lost in some dark woods or in the streets of some foreign city. And yet, he never really thought he be prepared for the feeling. Looks like I wasn’t wrong. He adjusted his boots and gauntlets one last time and splashed some water on his face. He finally stopped as he stood at the Sanctuary’s exit, his chest still heaving.
“Imagine if you were to find her looking like that.” Her pale form materialized in front of Stenn, her arms crossed and her head down.
“I don’t think I’ll have to worry much after that point.”
Marianne only shook her head slowly. “Maybe being far from the living has given me a strange and distant perspective from what you know, but it is much easier now to see the mistakes made by people every minute of every day. Imagine if Anna saw you how you are now. You would look like a madman. She might even think that you were going to haul her back here in your rage.”
“I gave her my word that I would see this through to the end.”
“Words are often forgotten in the heat of the moment,” Marianne said.
Stenn knew she had the right of it, if only a little bit. He tried to calm himself but didn’t think it was doing much good. “Did you see Anna leave?” Stenn asked.
“I did not. I was… inconsolable for a time after speaking with you two. I had drifted out of the Sanctuary for some time in order to recompose myself.” Stenn took notice of Marianne’s voice for the first time. He was surprised that he somehow hadn’t noticed it before. It sounded… sober. As if somebody had just woken up from a dream to find a cold, grey reality filling their waking world.
“What will you do now?” Stenn rested his hand on the round white stone door. His arm was practically thrumming with anticipation, despite his efforts to keep his energy in check.
“I do not know,” Marianne said. “I do not think there is much more for me here. Perhaps I will drift through the world of the living dead for some time. Perhaps I will simply retire again and think on your belligerent companion’s words.”
Stenn sighed. “Marianne,” he started. His thoughts seem to jam up against themselves. Secretly, Stenn had hoped that this time wouldn’t come. It was hard enough to see Marianne as a member of the lingering dead, but for them to both have the composure and the time to say “goodbye,” was something else completely. Stenn might have laughed if the situation was not so grim- laughed at his own childishness. A single word was defeating him when he had already overcome a zealous young woman and a world hell-bent on killing him. “Come with me,” was all he could say.
“And do what?” she asked, drifting past Stenn. His spine crawled again in that all-too-familiar chilling way. “What place do I have at your side and on your adventures when I could be anywhere else in the world?”
Stenn swallowed. “Because you might have a chance to see him again.” Marianne made a sharp turn, her hair cutting through the air like a sudden breeze through smoke. For a moment, Stenn thought he saw the reflection of Samuel Ennet in her eyes.
“I cannot,” she said. “I should not. Perhaps it is better I do not know his ultimate fate. Maybe eons from now I can pass on to the other world without knowing. And then he may have been waiting there, in the world of the dead, all along. Eternity is a long time; our years apart will be but seconds in the end.” She wasn’t even looking at Stenn now and her voice was becoming softer and quicker. It was like she was trying to explain it to herself, not to Stenn.
“Then we shouldn’t say our farewells right now,” Stenn said, breathing a little more easily. “Just think,” he added, his hand starting to push open the round rock slab of a door, “eons may not be much compared to eternity, but that won’t make all those years pass any quicker.”
Marianne nodded, her arms crossing more closely around her.
Stenn nodded back at her then passed through the door. He broke into a run before the slab shut behind him.
Another non-sun was casting its light. This one was much closer to Stenn than the previous ones and was notably dimmer. Stenn had seen this new hollow on the map; it was longer but shorter than the huge grassy sphere from earlier. However, there were surprising new details that were nearly tearing Stenn’s attention away from his quest.
The fields and grasses had given way to full trees. They stretched to at least twice Stenn’s height, but he could see trees three or four times his height peaking up above the tops of the others. Their trunks looked to be the same boney material that sprouted from Garamoush’s orange bile. Even as Stenn rushed past them, he could see that their gnarled trunks were twisted like woven rope.
The vegetation was evidently growing taller and stronger the closer one got to the Wellspring. At least, Stenn assumed as much the old fables never spoke much about Garamoush’s… vegetation, but it only made sense that the closer one was to the Wellspring, the healthier His inner world became.
Stenn stopped at a crossroads, panting heavily. The only way he could find the forest of strange trees even somewhat navigable was by the narrow paths of hard-packed dirt. The flesh and bone of Garamoush were curiously missing from this hollow. At least, bone in the most literal sense, Stenn thought. The bone trees, their bark, if it could still be called bark, was a strong shade of white and the branches somehow even sported leaves. Stenn had passed through them as he had run. They were deep blood-red and damp like they were always covered in morning dew. The branches that held them, though, despite their strange material, bent and snapped like any others.
“Of course,” Stenn said to himself. He looked both w
ays at the crossroads, scanning the tree branches. Stenn had broken more than a few as he ran, Anna probably wouldn’t have been much more graceful. At least, Stenn was hoping so. It was true that if he proceeded right for the Wellspring, he probably would have run into Anna eventually. But if something happened to her in-between where Stenn was standing and the door to the Wellspring, he would only know once it was too late.
Stenn wiped a bead of sweat out of his eye. He hadn’t been running for too terribly long and as old as he was, he wasn’t so out of shape that he would be panting and sweating like that so easily. This was different; this was the panting and sweating of fear.
Finally, after some searching and probing down both paths, Stenn started to follow a small trail of subtly broken branches and fallen leaves.
Stenn stopped, bending down to catch his breath. He was still wiping away the sweat from his eyes.
“Anna!” He called out.
Nothing came in response.
Stenn called out again. He was, again, met with nothing but silence.
“Excuse me,” a voice came. “Are you lost? Or, somebody you know is lost? Anna, was it?”
The voice sounded familiar, but there was something… wrong about it. It sounded almost too familiar, like an overcompensating imitation of something Stenn knew perfectly. Stenn turned to face the voice. The foliage and the shadow it cast were still thick and heavy, but Stenn reasoned that whoever was speaking would stick out like a painting in a prison cell. He scanned the landscape of whites, reds, and blacks, until he realized that he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary at all, or at least anything ordinary in the relative sense.
“Are you… are you unwell?” The voice asked.
That time Stenn was able to follow the sound perfectly. He thought he was looking at another tree trunk. But tree trunks don’t blink and speak with human mouths, not even in Garamoush’s shell. Stenn knew that the idea of seeing a face in a tree’s bark was only supposed to be figurative- a little bit of fantasy. This face, however, obviously was very much real.
Lord Samuel Ennet’s gaunt and pale face stared out at Stenn from a particularly thick snarl of branches and leaves. Stenn couldn’t even see the rest of his body; he was just a floating head amongst a cloud of white branches and red leaves. Stenn didn’t break eye contact, but he gently jabbed one of his gauntlet’s sharp hooks into his side. He hid his wince well, but it wasn’t from the pain. It was from the realization that he wasn’t dreaming.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Stenn said.
“Am I?” Samuel Ennet blinked then looked about, his bright green eyes dancing with life. “No, I don’t think I am. At the very least, I am not now, nor do I have any plans of passing soon.”
“But I- your-“What can I say? Stenn asked himself. Do I just tell him that I talked to the ghost of his dead wife or that the whole world has given him up for dead? Stenn never really prided himself on being a glowing conversationalist, but he still had at least some standards.
“But…?”
Stenn managed to suppress an “uh” and responded, “… You were gone for so long. We all assumed the worst.” At least it wasn’t a total lie, Stenn thought. It wasn’t so much that Ennet was missing for over half a decade, it was that he was missing inside of Garamoush for over half a decade.
“Who are these ‘we’ and where can I give them a stern talking to?” Ennet laughed. It was a laugh so painfully familiar to Stenn that it felt like the face in the trees simply couldn’t have been the real Samuel Ennet. It was some kind of trick of the mind or a clever trap. The airy and jittering breaths and the almost comically upturned mouth, it was all too close to be right. There was just something Stenn couldn’t place that made his spine shiver. And shiver it did, often.
Ennet’s laughter subsided. “But I digress, I’m surprised to see you here too, Stenn. I did mean to write to you, but, ah, the postal service here is somewhat lacking.” The face smiled again. When Stenn last saw Ennet, he wasn’t fully bald or anywhere near as pale. However, he let it slide; it was the least of his questions now. “We shall have to catch up on our adventures after we see to your own predicament. I will offer whatever assistance I can.”
Stenn wanted to slap himself. This bizarre reunion had caused him to neglect the very reason he was there. With his dawdling, Anna’s trail might have gone cold in that time. For all he knew, this face in the trees was only some kind of sick illusion in this new hell that Stenn had fallen into.
Of course that’s what it is, thought Stenn, making his mind up, maybe I’m just projecting my worries. Or maybe he’s just another ghost like Marianne. Not worth thinking about anymore right now.
“I would appreciate that,” Stenn said, as quickly and coldly as possible. “Somebody very… dear to me is lost in here. A young lady. A strong and stubborn young lady.”
“Is this the mysterious Anna you mentioned?”
Stenn nodded.
“Why, it would be an honor to help my dear old friend with his predicament!” Ennet proclaimed, showing the strength of his trained Declarer lungs and voice. “I shall call out to you should I find hide or hair of the young lass. I trust you will do the same for me?”
“Of course,” Stenn said, his patience for this fake Samuel Ennet just about out. Stenn was confident he could still find Anna’s trail if he moved quickly enough. If he started running as soon as the fake Ennet had left him, Stenn would almost certainly reach Anna before the Ennet doppelganger. That was going on the assumption that the face in the trees wasn’t just some fever dream or illusion.
“Very well then. I shall search through these trees and in the eastern part of the shell while you examine the west side.” The face bowed and then shuffled off into the trees. When it moved, though, it sounded… heavy, as if the face was carrying something wet and weighty, like sacks of mud, behind it.
Stenn shook his head and ran what he assumed was westward in this strange world, as quickly as he could. Luckily, Anna’s trail of broken branches and fallen leaves hadn’t been dispersed by the cold wind that quietly swirled about.
Stenn ran as quickly as his legs could carry him. His mind was blissfully quiet during that time, but one question snaked its way into his head. One that was even stronger than the question of the sudden appearance of the Samuel Ennet doppelganger. Why did she leave? Stenn remembered back to their examination of the maps. Was it in my look? Stenn wondered. Did she think I was going to drag her out of here, now that we know a way out?
“Didn’t I say I would be standing with you to the end?” he asked the wind as it rushed past him, as if it was going to carry the question straight to Anna. She told him she was always trying to be stopped by “people like you.” Stenn wondered what that really meant. Doubters? Bullies? Adults?
Stenn didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to stop now to solve the question. I’ll just ask her myself, he decided. He kept following the trail, going faster now.
Stenn leapt over a shallow ravine that had been carved into the ground. Stenn had seen some smaller ravines earlier in the hollow, but now they were becoming more and more common. All of those cuts and shallow ravines in the ground he saw before had been empty, however. They didn’t look like they had ever even held water or anything else that was comparable. The ground always looked like it had been torn away by some sort of force of decay. Now that he had a brief second to think about it, the ravines did not look too much unlike the decay Anna had pointed out that had struck some of the caves and the giant grassy sphere. In fact, they were almost uncomfortably similar.
Worse still, the ravine that Stenn was running towards was full of what looked like the uncomfortably familiar black sludge. But there was nothing for it, Stenn knew. He could almost certainly jump the gap if he ran at full speed…
Then the black sludge started to move.
Stenn barely stopped himself from falling headlong into the black mass. Only the metal spike at the feet of his boots saved him from the
mass that wasn’t just moving. It was rising. It was like an enormous worm was wrenching itself from the ground. The mass continued to pull itself from the ground until it stood over twice Stenn’s height. It was a shadow given form, dark and impossible. A huge bleached and broken ribcage sprouted from its chest and protruding bits of boney spine jutting out of its back like stalagmites. The worm-like figure dripped and oozed sludge and Stenn almost gagged from the smell- an unholy mixture of a funeral pyre and a swamp.
“I haven’t found your companion yet,” said the monstrous worm. It has to a dream… I have to be dead. This… this can’t… The mass turned. “But I shall not give up so easily, Stenn. You may be sure of that.” The pale face at the top of the worm, itself surrounded with a cowl of squelching black flesh, smiled. Its smile, its voice, it was all Samuel Ennet. Even the way the horrific… thing rubbed together in nervousness its two bone scythes, which were undoubtedly its arms, was Lord Ennet through and through.
The sole breath of air that Stenn was able to breath was for Anna’s sake. At least, Stenn thought, his eyes still running in panic all over Ennet’s new body, if he’s here. He’s not with her.
The creature couldn’t have been anything or anybody else but Ennet. The inflexions, speech, and face of his old friend were all there. Somehow, it made more sense in Stenn’s mind that way. Something was telling him that Garamoush wouldn’t tolerate some kind of shape-shifting demon living inside of His own shell, so Stenn was able to put that possibility out of his head. But then, why was He tolerating Ennet?
Maybe He isn’t, Stenn speculated, thinking back to just how much Garamoush was Stirring of late. Perhaps it’s not unlike how a dog rolls to get a flea off of its back.
If Stenn’s mind had been telling him that something was wrong about Ennet from the beginning, which it was, then his body had taken a turn trying to tell him the same thing. His whole body practically convulsed with a shiver every time he looked at Ennet’s towering worm body for more than a few seconds.
And I told this man about Anna… Stenn thought. He shuddered to imagine what would happen if he didn’t find her first. So, he chose not to. He wouldn’t let Ennet find Anna first. At least until Stenn found a solution to the whole unnerving situation.
“Do you know where your companion of yours was bound to? If it was even anywhere in particular.”
Stenn bit his lip. It would set his mind at ease for a short while if he sent Ennet off on some wild goose chase to the far end of Garamoush’s shell. But, if on the off chance he did find Anna first, Stenn would probably never even know it.
No, Stenn thought, it’s better I keep an eye on him for now. I’ll figure out how to explain it all to Anna later.
“The Wellspring,” Stenn said.
“The Wellspring?”
Stenn turned. He had never heard Ennet sound so… offended. And yet, when Stenn was brave enough to look at his face, the old lord was smiling. At least, his mouth was. His eyes remained sharp and accusing, his small pupils focused like a wolf on a wounded fawn. “What bombast,” he clamored, “what youthful vigor. We must applaud her and give her due and proper credit.”
“Yes,” Stenn said, distracted but already moving. “That.” He was making good progress in believing the lie that he had started feeding himself. This worm… thing may be Ennet. It may not be. But what really matters is that it’s not going to be a threat…
…For now. Stenn’s metal-clad fingers clenched into a fist. He never thought he would have so few objections to remembering his days as a Knight, but he started running over several different, nearly-forgotten techniques from back in the day. Just in case it came to blows. This Ennet thing knew where Anna was now. I will not hesitate, if it comes to that.
Ennet was close behind Stenn, uncomfortably so. His hideous body looked like it was soaked in steaming tar the way it squelched and left trails of black sludge behind it.
The trail was becoming easier to follow now, perhaps because Stenn was intent on finding Anna above everything else in the world, perhaps because he simply wanted to look at anything else but Ennet. Still, he edged to ask, “Are all of those trails of…” Stenn paused, thinking that calling it “sludge” or “disgusting horse shit” might be considered insulting. He chose just to ignore the choice altogether. “Well, are they from you?”
“Yes,” Ennet sighed, “An unintentional consequence of my new body. I admit, it pains me to see the beauty of His shell defiled so.”
Stenn recalled how the sludge not only made the beautiful hideous, but it absolutely destroyed anything it touched. Even the ravines throughout the forest must have been carved by Ennet’s residue. “I suppose you were also responsible for breaking the barricade outside of the Sanctuary?”
“The Ruins, you mean?”
Only Samuel Ennet could argue semantics when he has the body of an enormous black worm. “Yes,” Stenn said. “The Ruins.”
“You may place the blame on my companions for that,” Ennet said, his bitterness clear to hear. “Their paranoid minds told them that His shell was a dangerous place.” Ennet laughed. Stenn cringed. “So they felled the trees in the Ruins and the timber we had carried with us and sought to keep ‘something terrible’ out. Even my own lady wife was too worried to think clearly.”
Stenn felt another cold shiver run across his spine. But this time it was uncalled for. There was simply a sudden need to shudder running up his body like his spine was coated with ice. It felt… familiar? This was not the first time it had happened either. When Stenn had first seen Ennet, there was a shivering that had gripped him that felt different than one of fear and revulsion. It just wasn’t until now that he had realized it.
Stenn was about to respond, but Ennet continued, his tone becoming darker. “They doubted me. They doubted our cause. We were lucky; we only had a short distance to go to reach the Ruins. We passed right through this forest, in fact. I told them all that we had come for research, for knowledge, but they were always afraid. The more confident I became… the more afraid they became. It was as if they feared the progress I was making. I was turning the legends into reality. I read of the Banshees, studied the Worm, shouted to Garamoush while He spoke… and they doubted me.”
Most probably wouldn’t have picked up on the subtle changes in a man’s voice when he sounds sleepy and unassuming by default, but Stenn had known Ennet for decades, so it wasn’t hard to know that the old man was being serious. And serious he was, his tone flying about the various ranges of “subtle” from subtle vulnerability to subtle insanity.
“And what do you do now?” Stenn hadn’t even begun to realize that he was walking again. The branching paths of the earlier forest had been combed away to host only a single, wide path. If Anna had come that way, there was no possibility Stenn could lose her trail. However, it was strange that the trees seemed to be losing the very thing that made them trees. As Stenn progressed, their bark became glass and their leaves were crystalline and almost blade-like. He took special care to duck under and around them.
“I wait,” Ennet said, sullenly. “I came here with the express and sole purpose of studying humanity’s great guardian god. But, try as I might, I was denied entrance to the Wellspring. Whether by words or by weapons the door would not open to me… You know the door of which I speak, yes?”
“The mountain in the Mountain?” Stenn said, recalling part of the old story.
Great Mountain of knowledge
Great god of the sleeping
Opens His door
To the truth that we seek
Parting mountains
Inside of His Mountain
Past there lays the Wellspring
From which His divine tongue
Finds its words…
Stenn always found it a bit unfitting to call Garamoush’s shell the “Mountain,” no matter how clear of a comparison it might be. Mountains usually stayed in one place. “Yes, I do. It’s… a fickle door.”
“To say the l
east,” Ennet snarled. “Perhaps it was because my, indeed all of our, presences here are… frowned upon. Perhaps Garamoush knows us only as sinners and not as scholars. So, to answer your question, I wait. I wait for something to happen. Since this new body came to me, I have shed the obsession and greed I felt before. They have been… internalized.” Stenn caught his and Ennet’s reflection as he passed a crystalline tree. Ennet’s new body seemed almost like solid darkness, utterly devouring the man Stenn once knew. “They have become a part of me.”
Stenn couldn’t help remembering some of the lines of one of the more famous poems from the long-dead poet Klaus Semleson. He was a noted pessimist and one of the Ministry’s first to write about the nature of Garamoush. The Worm of Man, it was called, and Stenn felt as if he was living part of the poem.
…Beware the man with only greed
He who plants the seed
And tills for still greater
Misdeeds
A man becomes a worm
A worm becomes the Worm
Obsession darkens
Soon madness harkens
Beware you tempered men
When to lust, virtue falls…
Stenn stopped, but Ennet continued on as another rumbling ran about the hall. Stenn braced himself against the oncoming Stirring, but it didn’t come. He sighed and caught up with Ennet, who didn’t even stop for a moment.
“This isn’t right,” Stenn said- more to himself than to anybody else.
Ennet apparently decided to enter into Stenn’s one-sided conversation anyway, however. “There are many things you could be saying that about, Stenn.”
You say that as if it was some big secret. “Garamoush’s Stirring, I mean. I admit, I’ve lost track of time since I came into His shell, but it couldn’t have been a full day yet. He’s Stirred five times today alone. Five. For a creature that sleeps for decades, that much movement is like if we all started doing summersaults in our sleep.” Though, I use the word ‘we’ loosely in this company, Stenn thought, the image of Ennet’s grotesque body slowly burning into his skull. “It’s not right.”
“Hmm,” Ennet said. “I confess that I have come to ignore His mighty movements beneath my feet. Even when I still had feet, I paid them little mind. However, it is strange that you bring that up,” Ennet started to move again, Stenn quickly pulled ahead of him. “You see, some of my companions said the very same thing. Garamoush was to Stir maybe thrice every few months, but the longer we stayed, the more he Stirred. Most curious indeed.”
For a moment, Stenn thought he had caught another glimpse of Ennet being uncomfortably close to him yet again. Instead, the blackness that rested right above his shoulder stayed. It festered, even in its reflection.
An entire length of the crystalline forest had been carved away, as if acid had eaten through everything it was able to touch. Only the black sludge that was cementing itself unwelcomely into Stenn’s head remained. He could smell it from where he stood. It smelt like Ennet, like death, but stronger and omnipotent in its reach. Stenn could feel his eyes starting to water.
“What is that?” Stenn asked.
“Ah, it is merely one of my favourite haunts. I concede, my renovations were a bit overdone, but such is the price for an ambitious and hungry mind. One cannot stop at ‘good enough.’”
Stenn wished Ennet had, however.
The forest had given way to what would be aptly described as a festering swamp. Its thick and tar-like waters popped and oozed like pus from a wound. Even the remarkable trees- the trees whose bark was practically stone that was as strong as granite- looked blackened and sickness-ridden. The whole forest seemed to be carved into a cave in its own right. The ceiling was made higher, the floor made lower. It was like an enormous, craterous wound.
The revelation that came to Stenn was so quick and so obvious that he hated how dim he had been to have not seen it before.
But just to make sure…
“One of your favourite haunts?” Stenn asked, not taking his eyes off of the black, diseased abyss. “There are more?”
“Quite a few, in fact,” Ennet said with sickening indifference. “I merely enjoy this one due to its proximity to the Wellspring. There are other, roomier ones, but a man must have priorities.”
Stenn cringed, thankful that his expression was concealed. The fact that Ennet still considered himself a man when he looked, smelled, and moved like he did sickened him.
“And they were all made by you?”
“All made by me.” There was almost a hint of sadness to the pride that filled his voice.
Stenn nodded. It was undeniable now. He couldn’t begin to imagine how the Ministry was reacting to seeing Garamoush toss and turn like he was possessed with nightmares. No doubt they would be pouring over old legends, tales, and past Declarations in search of an answer they would never find. Instead, the answer would be obvious if they had taken their heads out of their own asses an hour or two.
“If you stabbed a man who was awake,” Stenn imagined telling the worried and sleepless Declarers, coming unto them as a deliverer in ill-fitting clothes and possessing a very sour mood, “he would lash out. If you stabbed a man who was asleep, he would also lash out. Garamoush is neither on the verge of speaking nor Waking. He is dying. He is dying and He cannot reach the infected wound nor can He show it to us. You idiots.” Stenn added the last bit for his own enjoyment, but he couldn’t deny how hard it would be to refrain from saying that if he was given the chance. Even if given the word by Garamoush himself, Stenn doubted that the Ministry would go into His shell to remedy the problem. In a terminal case of irony, the Ministry would be so afraid of violating something sacred that they would let that sacred thing wither away and die.
Stenn shuddered and closed his eyes as he turned away from Garamoush’s grotesque wound, a small pain in his head growing steadily larger. Eventually, Stenn found he was able to breathe again. Partially due to the swamp being moved far behind him, partially because the crystal trees had finally given way to open space for the first time in what felt like hours.
“The Wellspring,” Ennet breathed.
Stenn didn’t even feel surprise when he saw the Wellspring’s hall. The feeling of knotting in his gut was closer to disgust. Garamoush’s strength must have been strongest there, ridges of bone stood out in stark defiance of the steaming black sludge that Ennet was no doubt responsible for. As the old story said, the door indeed had more in common with the side of a mountain than any kind of actual door. It was a single slab of shined dark bone that set itself apart from the white bone that surrounded it.
“One almost wouldn’t recognize it,” Ennet continued, his voice full of wonder, “if it wasn’t for the way it speaks to you.” Stenn raised his eyebrow at Ennet and he took the point rather quickly. “Listen. Listen hard.” Stenn found it a bit hard to focus on anything but the monster hovering over his shoulder, but he let his eyes close and his ears open.
The subtle sounds of a language Stenn couldn’t understand crawled into his mind. It felt like the sound had moved past his ears and was burying itself into his subconscious. It made Stenn almost thrum with the deep, incomprehensible words. Maybe it was just a learned reaction at that point, but Stenn felt like he should be shivering, retching, or running for his life. Instead, for the first time since he had last seen Anna, Stenn felt at warm inside, even at ease.
“Be careful.” Stenn was snapped back into reality as he shivered again. It wasn’t the voices coming from the door, but instead it was the voice of a worried woman.
Stenn opened his eyes and threw his vision around the massive, cavernous room. The voice that spoke to him didn’t seem to speak to Ennet. Stenn caught sight of Ennet’s eyes a few times; they were just as full of confusion as Stenn’s were.
“It’s nothing,” Stenn said. He quickly concocted a lie. “I just thought I heard His voice… it said something to me…” Stenn turned his back to Ennet, to hide the sweat gathering on his
forehead and the biting of his lip. “Something in the human tongue.” There had never been a recorded case where Garamoush spoke in the human tongue, elsewise the Declarers would probably be out of a job, and Ennet would certainly know it was a lie… Or at least he would if he hadn’t shut himself away from the world for over half a decade.
“What?” Ennet said. The amount of venom in just Ennet’s single word made Stenn’s whole body brace itself, as if preparing for a blow. “What did He say?”
When Stenn turned to face Ennet, the pale old man was smiling. It wasn’t even the kind of murderous smile with death on its teeth. It was a smile of genuine curiosity, something almost childlike. Stenn didn’t want to apply any sort of expectations to a man-creature-thing like Ennet, but the way his mood changed like the weather wasn’t something Stenn would have anticipated.
“That I was in good company,” Stenn said, lying through his teeth.
Ennet kept sliming. “You see? He truly does know all, doesn’t He? I don’t suppose He mentioned anything about your missing companion, did He?”
“No, He did not.”
In the silence, Stenn knew that sooner than he had hoped, this unholy worm creature by Stenn’s side would be his enemy. Stenn knew far better than Ennet that Anna’s unique brand of youthful stubbornness would never yield. She was not going to stop just because a worm monster stood in her way. She would, by some scheme from her dogged brain, try to find a way into the Wellspring. Stenn braved a look up at Ennet. His face, lost in thought, did not betray the deeper insanity that Stenn knew was waiting just below the surface. Ennet would never let Anna in to the Wellspring alive.
Ennet sighed. Stenn couldn’t tell if it was in frustration or relief. Either way, he began to curl his inhuman body into what Stenn wagered was a comfortable position.
“Then we must wait, as before. If your companion is still coming, she will be here soon enough, I am sure.”
Provided you haven’t scared her away first, Stenn thought as he looked out at the twisting trail of black muck Ennet left behind him. But Anna had braved a cave whose very walls were cut away by the black sludge before and never batted an eye. No, Stenn knew that she wouldn’t stop even if there were a whole horde of Ennets between her and the Wellspring. Not while she was so close.
So, Stenn sat. He dug the tips of his boots into the last bit of flesh and earth before the bridges of bone over the black mire began. He tried his damnedest to keep one eye on Ennet and one eye out to the crystalline trees, watching for his enemy and his friend, respectively.
He thought back to Marianne. Would she approve of Stenn trying to turn his Knightly skills against a Declarer? Would she approve of her old friend fighting against her beloved husband, even though the latter was hardly even recognizable now? Stenn could at least be at ease in knowing that she might never have to seriously consider those questions or even know that they were being considered in the first place. Marianne was likely far away from Stenn and Ennet. She might still be back in the Sanctuary, or she might have left Garamoush or even the mortal plane altogether. Either way, she wouldn’t have to see what became of her husband.
Stenn knew there could have been another novel’s worth of old stories and legends passing through his head at that moment. But for once, there was nothing. He watched the light shimmer and shift along the crystals as if it was immune to the anxiety of the living. His mind became sharp as the crystal edges that turned the light into blades. He pushed the questions that were inherent to the mind and to the mind in danger to distant corners. There was only the present and the mission it gave him.
No justifying, no Cross-Eyed William. No rationalizing, no Banshees. No understanding, no Worm of Man. Time was probably passing by Stenn, but he paid it no attention.
“He’s looking at you.”
Stenn’s spine immediately started shivering. He kept himself from looking around. Denial had only gotten him so far, so he pulled it off like soaked clothing. He knew she wouldn’t reveal herself now, with her husband-turned-monster so close. Marianne, Stenn thought, trying to hide his deepening frown, do you wish you stayed now? Is this living Samuel worse than a dead one? Only more silence and cold gave answers to his unspoken questions. She came for closure, no doubt, but Stenn wondered if she had thought it would have come in the shape of a sludge-coated worm sporting the pale face of a man who was all but dead to the world.
“Stenn,” Ennet said, breaking the silence, but not Stenn’s concentration. “If I may ask, what… what did it feel like to have Him speak to you so?”
Stenn didn’t look up at Ennet as he spoke. “I’m sure you know. I’ve been talked at by Garamoush for years but you’re actually able to understand him.” Stenn didn’t like having to keep up his lie. Not as a matter of principle, but if he made even one fault in logic, the whole castle of smoke would fly away with the wind. And the wind was still strong where Stenn sat and Ennet loomed.
“In that regard, I am no different than you, Stenn,” Ennet said. “It is true that I can understand Garamoush in a language that most cannot, but we Declarers are not conversational partners, we are… eavesdroppers. We catch words that would be said regardless of whether or not we were there. What you experienced was different… nigh-impossible, even.”
Stenn did not waver on the outside. At least, he didn’t feel himself twitching or frowning. He couldn’t be entirely sure if Ennet was catching on to his lie, so he acted quickly. “What does it matter? Garamoush’s very existence was probably thought to be impossible before He first wandered ashore.” He asked, hoping it would divert Ennet’s fanatical obsession.
“It matters,” Ennet started, taking the bait and getting lost in his own introspection, “because I have been studying in His shell for five years. I have poured over every tome and book that has been written about Garamoush. I have heard His words from within His own shell. They shook me to my very soul and for years I would fall to my knees and cry, cry with joy, cry with frustration, cry that I was so blessed to even have the chance to be so near Him. Yet He never spoke to me. He never knew I had only come to bless the world with more of His knowledge…” Ennet trailed off.
Stenn’s heart and body jumped when Ennet’s bony scythes stabbed into the ground. Stenn instinctually rolled out of the way, crouching low to the ground, expecting some kind of attack. Ennet, however, only stared off into the distance, his pale face turning a bright shade of red. The lord’s eyes seemed even greener in that light. They shone brightly as they devoured all they saw.
“I knew I was lucky to be where I was. My companions were of the same mindset, I do not deny. But what is luck compared to control? Luck is something fate gives you on temperamental whims. Control is something a man can take with his own mind and hands. Where was the drive for grappling with fate amongst my so-called allies?” He turned to Stenn, his long black body squishing and releasing a new assault of the stench of decay. “Where did it go? Why they did they stop trying to learn His secrets? There was still so much more to learn from Him for the good of all humanity. If only we could be as Him, radiant with knowledge, we humans would not even be at the mercy of his whims. The whims of temperamental fate.”
“Because they were comfortable,” Stenn said. For once, he was confident in his answer. “Because they knew that they would be gambling if they took a step outside of their Sanctuary. They were afraid it would all turn into-“
“-Ruins.”
“Exactly.” Stenn sighed, his mind wandering back several years without his bidding. “When I was thinking of leaving the Ministry, I was just as afraid. From a lord’s servant to a respected Knight, it was a good life all things considered. But I knew it wasn’t right for me to stay. I was a Knight and that’s all I was. I don’t know if I hated what you call ‘luck,’ but I knew that I needed something more to my life. A little bit of, well, control.”
“And here you are, in the shell of a god,” Ennet said. He chuckled and, for the first time, Stenn did not feel
revolted by it. It sounded almost exactly like the old lord he had respected so much. “How strange the journey of life is. It’s only afterwards you get to see just what kind of ruins you’ve made out of your sanctuary. Or vice versa. And it’s up to you to root out the ghosts that live in it. The work never ends, does it Stenn?”
Stenn’s finger’s clenched, his weathered muscles tightening around his old bones. His knuckles ached even thinking again of the Knight he was, of the ghosts he had been rooting out for years. But still they stayed. “It never does,” Stenn agreed. Stenn wondered if Ennet could have known that his own ghost was hovering somewhere near he and Stenn. He wondered what he would say if the pale white shape of Marianne appeared right before him like an oncoming nightmare. Would you hate fate for taking her from you or would you think she was just another soul without the drive to gain control?
Still, Stenn had to smile, if only for a fleeting moment. Again, Anna was above them all. Stenn felt his ghosts running through his bones. Ennet was making ghosts of good people. But Anna, young and wild Anna, she had chased out the ghosts of her parents years ago. She was chasing something new. A child had moved past what old men still could not.
Stenn watched the crystalline trees with renewed intensity.
There was a shaking beneath Stenn’s feet. But it felt different than a Stirring. It felt like the rumbling he had felt in the deep of the forest. Ennet, of course with his enormous body, felt it too. But, while Stenn was looking about the ground and bracing his body in case the worst should happen, he caught sight of where Ennet was looking. And he caught sight of how Ennet looked. Stenn had seen more life in the face of a corpse than Ennet’s as he stared at the Wellspring door.
The door was opening, like the side of a mountain being split in two.
“Why… why her?” Ennet practically sounded on the verge of tears. “Why a child like her?”
In the flood of pale blue light that obscured everything within the great chamber, a silhouette strode out. Her long hair flowed freely and a familiar pair of maps was slung over her shoulder. Anna stood straight and strong as a pillar, looking every bit as mighty as the door she stood in front of.
Stenn bit his lip as he smiled, but the urge deep in his chest to shout out was almost unbearably strong. Damn her, Stenn thought, damn that rash, impatient… fantastic young woman. Stenn wondered if Anna’s parents would be proud of her to see her now. Of course they would. I am.
Anna started to jump and fling her free arm into the air and point in Stenn’s direction, her features still obscured by the light behind her. Stenn raised his hand in response, smiling more freely now.
“Anna-” he started. He ended with a cry.
Stenn knew there was strength in Ennet’s bone “arms,” but he never once imagined how quickly it could bring him low if it came to blows. He didn’t have to imagine any longer. He held his gut and gasped for air.
And Ennet’s voice, if it could even be called one, was unlike anything that Stenn had never heard and he suspected that nothing in the world could replicate just how it sounded. He could not even find words for it. It was the purest fusion of pain and rage. It rent the air, it drained color from skin, and it did not faze Anna at all.
Ennet reared into the air, but Stenn was back on his feet before he could make begin charging at Anna. The old lord barely grunted as Stenn drove his sharpened metal fingers into his flesh. Stenn’s fingers sank deep into the spongy material like it was been sucked into mud. Stenn drove the metal tips of his feet into the ground and wrenched his arm backwards. The steel claws caught globs of black flesh and ripped it clear of Ennet’s body. Ennet groaned but didn’t look back at Stenn. His bone arms were still clawing forward as he tried to pull himself from Stenn’s grasp.
Ennet began to growl and squirm, like a dog trying to shake off a flea as Stenn drove his claws into him again. This time, though, Stenn’s grip was fleeting from the beginning- Ennet was starting to wrench free of his opponent’s grasp and the monster was too restless for Stenn to get a second strong grasp. With a flick of the end of Ennet’s body, Stenn was thrown away and sent rolling.
Stenn was up again just before Ennet could get out of his reach. This time he was standing, this time he was ready. He leapt onto the back of Ennet’s worm-like form and delivered a punch to Ennet’s exposed spine that would have been bone-shattering back in Stenn’s youth.
Whether by the steel of the gauntlets or by sheer desperation, it could still shatter bone.
Ennet howled in fury. He spun and twisted in a way Stenn had not thought possible and he moved quickly to stay atop his enemy. He quickly and silently thanked the thick steel of the boots keeping Ennet’s corrosive body away from Stenn’s skin. Soon he was looking Ennet straight in the face. His jaw was clenched so tight his jawbones jutted like spears from the pale skin that was turning crimson in anger.
“Did you not expect your victim to fight back this time?” Stenn asked, falling into the stance of a Knight. It only took a confrontation by a demon bent on deicide to make it so, but Stenn finally felt right calling what he was about to do “Knightly.”
Ennet probably tried to speak, but his rage wouldn’t let him. Only spittle flew out where words should have been. His boney scythes soon followed. Stenn had braced for them, but the unnatural terrain betrayed him. The gauntlets absorbed most of the blow, but Stenn’s feet slipped on the slime covering Ennet’s body and he again was thrown clear.
Stenn skid to a halt and readied himself for the next attack when it came. And come it did.
The pair of scythes was whistling death as they flew past Stenn’s head. Ennet’s livid fury was fueling him beyond what Stenn had expected the old lord to be capable of. Clumsy though they were, the boney weapons rent the air and split the ground with each swing.
There were no opportunities to strike, no weaknesses or openings to take advantage of. There wasn’t much strategy that Stenn could see in Ennet’s attacks, but rage was pushing the old deranged lord onward and his assault was just enough to check Stenn’s calm and measured style.
Time melted away in the battle as Stenn wove to avoid the madman’s strikes. Bone scythes and steel armour occasionally met, but their interactions were fleeting, like a pair of spurned lovers.
Of all the things Stenn’s mind could have been doing at that moment in time, wandering should have been the last thing. But, his eye still caught a spark of movement and he turned to see it. Anna was jumping up and down, apparently to get Stenn’s attention. Once she had it, she pointed down at the ground, started to crouch and-
Then Stenn nearly howled in pain. Ennet’s latest clumsy strike had impacted Stenn’s gauntlet and the metal caved in, digging into his arm.
Stenn rolled to avoid the next swing but in that time took Anna’s point. He dug his metal claws and boot spikes into the ground. And just in time- the ground began to lurch in that familiar, sickening way.
Braced for the all-too-well-known sensation of spinning, Stenn had to quickly, and with some scrambling, adjust for a Stirring unlike one he had ever experienced. The world did not roll right or left, it started to stand. Garamoush was starting to stand.
From where Stenn clung to the floor as it rapidly became the wall, he could see Ennet’s bone arms flailing about in rage as his body started to bend backwards. The unnatural tar that oozed from his body seemed to be helping him cling to the bone bridge separating him and Anna, but he was quickly losing his grip.
Stenn cringed as he heard Ennet start up another round of screeching. This time, words started to find their way, sounding almost accidental, into his incoherent ramblings.
“You cannot taunt me like this, wise one!” He screamed, his weapon-like arms failing to gain a grip even as they clawed at the air and bone. “You can’t kill me so easily, you liar!” Ennet’s voice, tone, even his whole personality, seemed to change in the flux of his desperation. “Please forgive me, I only wish to learn from you!” Garamoush continued to ris
e and offered Ennet no such forgiveness. “If you will not be my god, then you will be a corpse!”
Stenn had heard the sound, the great concussive sound so many times it felt like a breath of normality amidst the hell that was His shell. Garamoush’s voice was like a chorus of thunder, each new blast rippling across the tense air. Ennet stopped his pursuit, craning his neck to listen.
If there’s any time to strike, Stenn affirmed, it would be now. He started throwing every last ounce of his strength into his climb.
“Listen, children,” Ennet said, “and do not mistake my words.” It was a common practice for a Declarer to orate to a scribe as He spoke. Ennet must never have been able to shake the old habit. “There is a sickness inside of me. It is a sickness that threatens to pull me away from you, my children. Two of your kin, by fate, fell into my shell and do battle with the sickness now as champions of righteousness.”
With such clarity and precision to His words, Stenn had to wonder if Garamoush was even still asleep. Perhaps Garamoush’s unconscious mind was merely acting on its own and telling the world what it had been keeping to itself for so long. He may be able to see the future, Stenn thought, but it doesn’t take a god to know that His death would be the apocalypse in all but name.
Ennet started to shake as he orated. Stenn slowly grew closer. He was always keeping an eye at the bridge to see if Anna was cresting over the next boney ridge.
“The sickness within me is sin. The heroes that fight it carry no darkness in them. Do not mistake my words. Should I live until tomorrow, the efforts of the heroes were successful. By righteousness and strength, they have saved my life. Should I live until tomorrow, keep them well and remember their deeds.”
Stenn knew how the last part went. Declarers always ended their Declarations in the same way.
So say I, in truth.
“So say I, in truth,” Ennet echoed.
In the breath of silence that followed, Stenn looked skyward. He was expecting Anna to come catapulting into the fray soon- as she always did.
“A sickness? A sin?” The trembling in Ennet’s voice was practically strong enough to rival Garamoush’s. “Has He not known how I long for Him? For His voice and His knowledge?” Ennet’s pathetic whimpering gave way to his other, wrathful side, “He may be a god, but I am still the Worm! I am a sickness made by His own doing. I am the sin inherent in his life! I am the Worm! In corpses I crawl!”
He knows his literature, Stenn soberly thought.
…Beware you tempered men
When to lust, virtue falls
For he is the Worm
In corpses he crawls.
Ennet turned quickly, quickly enough to make Stenn’s body go rigid. The vicious, green eyes of the old lord bore into Stenn. “And I may make a corpse of you yet, Garamoush, but not yet. Not quite yet.”
Ennet curled around like thick black smoke and shot towards Stenn, his scythes swinging and stabbing with every haggard breath he took.
Stenn’s mind raced. His thoughts collided with each other. His head pounded. His palms were sweating. The knowledge of how to breathe escaped him.
Ennet’s blade stopped. It stopped close enough for Stenn to smell the raw scent of Garamoush’s flesh that lay caked on its wickedly sharp tip. The old, mad lord cackled and sputtered.
“Are you watching, Garamoush? Can you see your heroes? Can you see how heroically they cower?!” Ennet waited, craning his inhuman body and neck to listen. “What? No response? No proclamation?” The tip of the scythe hovered closer to Stenn’s face. Ennet wasn’t even paying attention to Stenn; he looked far more interested in yelling at a creature who was far above responding to his childish tantrums. “Well, if you care for these heroes as much as you seem to care about me, then they will not be missed!”
In one mighty and defiant shout, Ennet raised his scythe again at Stenn. Stenn knew that the angle was perfect. There was no way Ennet could miss plunging the scythe straight through his back. But he braced for the blow all the same. Even if it would only give him a few more moments to think of Tania, Eym, and Anna, he needed the peace of mind all the same.
“Look out, old man!” Anna shouted.
She was clinging to the floor-turned-wall by her gauntlets and boots like a spider. She pulled one arm free and drew her knife and its grey metal turned glorious silver in the light. Stenn wondered if there was anything as glorious, magical even as Anna- of her yelling, clinging, jumping.
Anna sped downward with a hoarse, high-pitched battle cry. She landed square on Ennet’s shoulders and started stabbing near her feet. The great monster howled and screamed and his thrashing head just avoided getting skewered by Anna’s vengeful knife. Although she missed Ennet’s head, Anna’s blade started making impact with the dark flesh around where Ennet’s neck should have been.
Stenn sucked his breath in between his teeth. It was hard to see from his angle, but there must have been more of Ennet deep underneath all of that sludge, as the black slime was starting to mix with the red blood of a human. Ennet only swung about more violently, his scythe arms burying themselves into the wall at random, coming so close as to shear some of the hair off of Stenn’s head.
Anna stabbed twice, maybe three more times down at Ennet, her strikes getting less accurate each time. With another wrathful cry, Ennet’s thrashing flung Anna off of him. Stenn’s body shook with fear and frustration as he saw Anna start to fall and he was stuck clinging to the wall, unable to move quickly enough to try to catch her.
Anna had avoided being thrown like a rag doll when Ennet shook her off. She was quick to put that bit of luck to use, raking one of her gauntlets across the floor-turned-wall until she slowed enough to hook her other gauntlet and then her boots into the wall. Despite her strength, Stenn could see she was exhausted, or at the very least shaken. Her arms and legs shook as she hung to the wall.
Ennet, meanwhile, had evidently decided to ignore his two opponents now that they were some distance away and in hardly any position, physically or otherwise, to launch another attack on him. He slinked up the wall, thick blood and black pus streaming out of his wounds as he went. He wound about like a man drunk, his pathetic whimpering and feeble shouting still managing to overcome the rumbling of Garamoush.
“Bloody hell,” Anna shouted, maneuvering clumsily but quickly along the floor-turned-wall until she was near where Stenn was clinging, “why won’t he die? What is he anyway?”
“Have you ever heard of the poem, The Worm of Man?”
“Not that again,” Anna growled. Despite her shaking limbs, she started up after Ennet. “Shorthand it.”
“Ambition does ugly things to a person,” Stenn said, struggling to move his bigger, heavy limbs quick enough to keep up with Anna. “Ugly enough things to keep them alive when by all rights, they should be dead.”
“That’s Samuel Ennet?”
“What’s left of him.”
Anna looked down at Stenn for just a moment. Stenn could see the concern in her face, but her eyes were the same as they always were- sharp and wolf-like. They were the eyes of the young woman who had tried to slice Stenn’s throat earlier- eyes with no mercy. “Well, I know he’s your friend and all but I still wish he’d just curl up and die already.”
Stenn had at last started to keep pace with Anna, but he knew that Ennet was quicker. “Friend?” Maybe it was the father coming out in Stenn, but he could not stop his mind replaying Anna’s brave heroics over and over in his head. Except, they always ended with Ennet victorious and Anna dead. The rage only boiled up further in Stenn when he thought of his wife and daughter, alone on that plateau near the Granite Citadel. They would be left alone to sit up on it with no husband and no father to tell them about all of the beautiful stars. That’s assuming that the world is even still anything like it is now if Ennet was able to kill Garamoush… Stenn swallowed hard. “They’re going to have to make a new level of hell to send him to.”
“I thought you said he helped
you in the past. Helped you a lot.”
“Bugger the past. We’re dealing with him as he is now.” Stenn could feel the clenching of his fists like he hadn’t before. They were not cracking and popping with bad memories. They were not sore with regret. They were strong and so was he. He didn’t need to be a Knight to protect what was important to him.
Stenn climbed quicker. Anna matched his pace perfectly. Ennet’s wound was making him wheeze and flounder about like a drunken man. They were all nearing the bone bridge that ran straight to the Wellspring door. Stenn wasn’t sure they could follow Ennet over the bridge as easily- his and Anna’s gauntlets couldn’t grip the smooth bone very well, so climbing up it after Ennet would be almost impossible… worse yet, despite Ennet’s wound, he still moved quickly and he was nearing the Wellspring’s door quicker than Stenn would have liked…
But Stenn had Anna at his side. Failure was nothing but a pessimistic fantasy now.
“If you’re still here, Marianne…” Stenn started. A familiar, now almost comforting, chill ran up his spine. “Say your goodbyes now because we’re not letting him get away.
The chill hit Stenn stronger now and then it passed. The chill didn’t go far, though- it stopped in front of Ennet, forming into a pale woman with the saddest expression Stenn had ever seen. He had seen a lot of sad faces in his line of work. And yet, she stood with confidence. Immune to the petty laws of reality, Marianne stood on the wall with her feet firmly planted. Her straight back and strong shoulders made her seem every bit as tall as Ennet.
“You let yourself get fat,” Marianne said.
“F-fat?” Ennet sputtered. He laughed. He laughed the laugh that had a bit of the real, human Ennet still in it somewhere. But, Ennet knew, Anna knew, Marianne knew, and soon the whole world would know that there wasn’t enough of Samuel Ennet left in there to try to save. “I have… uh, transformed. This is the price, no, the gift of knowledge, my dear.”
Marianne was unmoved.
“I never even got to see what you looked like,” she said. “I only felt you as you broke into your new home and slaughtered all of your friends, all of your friends and your own wife. You felt like death.”
Ennet’s boney arms stabbed randomly about, like the limbs of a lost and frustrated dog. He was not moving on. He was not ignoring her. It was like he knew that this new challenger could not be struck down and absolutely could not be reasoned with.
“You say you’re the Worm,” Marianne said, reaching out to Ennet, slowly approaching him. “It’s your own corpse you’re crawling around in.”
Ennet slunk away from his wife with a speed that made Stenn flinch. But Marianne continued. She sunk her hand into Ennet’s dark and horrible body. The whole mass shook and quivered from spine to tail.
“That’s what it was like,” Marianne said. “That’s what it was like to feel your transformation.” Ennet almost doubled over. Stenn and Anna were both close to him now. There was fire in Anna’s eyes. They would get it right this time. The chase would finally end. “Was it worth it?” Marianne asked.
Ennet rammed his boney arms into Garamoush’s flesh. He bent down and howled, flailing about as if he was trying to reach the cold within his chest and his wound at his neck. “It was right…” he muttered. “It was what I deserved!” he shouted. Clawed gauntlets raised, Stenn and Anna were poised to strike. “This is what I deserved all along!”
The old lord managed another, “This… this… this…”
And then he fell.
He peeled away from Garamoush’s body, his shuttering stopping with black and red blood still streaming out from his wound. It had coated Ennet enough to turn the whole front of his body the sick color of a man skinned. He fell long and he fell fast. His impossible shape broke itself on the wall of bone below. It landed with the sound of any human’s body- a wet, snapping, terminal sound.
Stenn sighed, his exhausted arms no longer wanting to support his heavy body. He dug his gauntlets and boots deeper into Garamoush’s flesh and simply hung there, his weary mind barely awake and alert. As he started to drift from consciousness, he could feel Garamoush start to lie back down onto His stomach. The world’s righting itself, Stenn thought. And in more ways than one.
Stenn knew dozens of prayers by heart, but his clouded mind couldn’t find the words for them. So, he made up his own new ones. He prayed for those that died in the Sanctuary, Marianne included, for Anna’s parents and for her brother, for the wife and daughter that Stenn’s heart ached for, and for the old lord who had once been his friend. He offered no prayers for the creature his friend had become. After that, Stenn felt the world stop moving altogether and he let himself relax until he collapsed into sleep.
Out of all things, it was Anna’s light footsteps that roused Stenn from his sleep. Consciousness came back to him slowly and a pounding headache slowed his thoughts. Exhausted though he was, Stenn was happy that he hadn’t bashed his head like the first time he fell unconscious inside of Garamoush. It’s a nice change of pace, Stenn noted. From where he lay, Stenn could see that he hadn’t moved since the fighting ended. The soft blue glow of the Wellspring’s door still emanated from the far side of the room and the forest of crystal trees was visible in the distance. Anna bounced on her heels, stretched out her legs, and, once her patience had evidently run out, began to prod Stenn with the heel of her boots.
“Up and at ‘em, Stenn. You’re not dead, are you?” Stenn knew Anna was asking it in jest, but there was real concern in her voice. With that, Stenn decided it would be a good time to rise.
Stenn cracked and popped his back as he stood and even managed a tired smile. “Dead?” Stenn said, “I survived you didn’t it? And what’s a demon compared to that?” Stenn put his hand on Anna’s slim shoulder. “Good job, by the way.”
Anna smiled and nodded. “You were decent as well, old man.”
It feels good to have stable ground underneath me again, Stenn thought. “Is He still asleep?” Stenn asked.
Anna shrugged. “No idea. I figure that when He does finally Wake, the first thing He’ll want to do is take a walk to stretch His legs. It’s what I would do.”
“Maybe He’s waiting for us to leave first,” Stenn suggested.
Out of the corner of his eye, Stenn caught sight of what looked like a shifting white cloud and he felt a familiar shiver run through his body at the same time.
“Speaking of leaving…” Anna said.
Marianne’s pale form swirled and shifted in front of them both. She extended her hand and he and Anna tried to take it. Marianne smiled her sad smile, content in just imagining what a friendly touch would feel like.
“I would like to thank you,” she said. “But that would not be nearly enough. But… I am glad. I am glad for the first time in all the many years I have been lost. So… there are no other words for it, I’m afraid. Thank you.” Her form started to shift and change again, like dust being blown away by the wind.
“I have only one request of you both, however. If I may be so selfish as to make it.”
Stenn and Anna both nodded.
“Do not let the world forget. Do not let it forget what kind of a Worm a man can become. There only needs to be one sad story such as this.”
There were no words between them, but Stenn knew he and Anna agreed.
“Should I finally say ‘goodbye’ now?” Stenn asked.
“So long as you keep the memory of what I said alive,” Marianne said, “I’ll never truly leave.” Marianne smiled again. “What a time to rediscover my fondness for theatrics. Of course you may say ‘goodbye,’ Stenn.”
Stenn smiled back and shook his head. “I’ll just say ‘hello,’ then. I’ll say ‘hello’ every time I remember you and what you’ve said.”
“That will do, Stenn,” Marianne said, her sad smile having a bit of warmth in it for once. She turned to Anna. The two women seemed to lock eyes for a moment. Then they both nodded at each other as they smiled.
&n
bsp; Marianne gave Stenn one more look, and then vanished. The coldness of her presence left the room and the sound of a sigh rang in Stenn’s ears. Stenn extended that improvised prayer again to Marianne and made a vow in his mind. A vow to never let her words scatter into the wind.
For a moment, they were both silent, then Stenn looked at Anna and said, “Feels weird seeing the world at an even keel again.” He cracked his back and smiled wearily.
Anna returned the smile, combing some of the hair out of her eyes. Hers looked half-dead from exhaustion. But still, she was carrying one. “I like it,” she said. “I’m kind of growing fond of this feeling of weird.”
“The world out there’s going to be some kind of boring then, I’m afraid,” Stenn said with a chuckle. Stenn looked at the Wellspring door. There were no voices coming from it and there was no blue light from within. Ennet’s sludge had all but drained away as Garamoush was standing and Stenn could almost see parts of His flesh and bone beginning to poke defiantly out of the remnants of the gunk. Stenn started to remove his gauntlets and boots.
“I don’t think He’ll be Stirring again while we’re still here,” Stenn said.
“Ennet said we’re His heroes, after all,” Anna said with another smile. She removed her own armor. “I think He’s taking a fancy to us.”
“He certainly has to you,” Stenn said.
“You mean the Wellspring?” Anna said. She hesitated. “I don’t know if He’ll like this, but… do you want to know what He said?”
“You mean He actually spoke to you?” Stenn asked. “As in, with words? How did you understand him?”
Anna’s eyes started to drift, as if her gaze was following something beautiful. “No, there were no words. Just… thoughts. And images, I suppose. If you could even call them that. It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever felt. It just… was.” Anna looked back at Stenn, her earlier question still written on her face.
Stenn shook his head. “It’s not for me to know. Besides, it’s a bit early to be jeopardizing the new good relations you have with a god, don’t you think?” Stenn put his hand on Anna’s shoulder. He wasn’t entirely sure why he did it, it just felt like the right thing to do. She didn’t try to move away, nor did she glow with pride. If anything, she stood taller, as if meeting an equal. “And what does it matter if you got what you came here for? He did tell you what you needed, didn’t He?”
Anna nodded, but Stenn saw it in her eyes before then. There was nothing like that life and that energy deep within her that he had even seen before. Anna pointed to her head, “All in here. He made sure I could never forget it.”
“And why would you want to?” Stenn asked. “You’re going to send me a letter sometime, right? I’ll be damned if I fought through hell and never meet the man that brought you down here in the first place.”
“We’ll see,” Anna said with a cheeky smile, “your personality is a little… what’s the word?”
Stenn smirked. “Abrasive.”
“I was going to say something like noble, but if that’s not your cup of tea…”
The two of them laughed.
“Why did you leave?” Stenn asked as delicately as he could. “Why didn’t you wait for me? I told you we were in this whole mess together.”
“I know you did,” Anna said. She was chewing on in the inside of her lip, but her eyes didn’t break contact with Stenn’s. “When I had left the Ruins… or, Sanctuary, whatever you want to call it, it was already too late to turn back. I knew you wanted to help, but I couldn’t help think that you never wanted to be here. I thought you had somewhere else you would rather be.”
“Is this because of the map?”
“The map?” Anna raised her eyebrow. “Maybe that’s part of it.” She looked down at her feet. “I know you’ve got a family, a wife and daughter. What I am compared to them? I didn’t think you’d be able to stay if your freedom was so close.”
Stenn only shook his head and smiled. “Did you get hit on the head during all the excitement? You’re the single most important thing to me in this whole damn shell. Garamoush Himself hardly compares.”
Anna smiled too, picking her head back up.
“Besides,” Stenn said. “It all worked out for the best, didn’t it? I mean, you got to speak to a god. Personally.”
“It was… pretty fantastic,” Anna said.
“That’s it? Just ‘pretty fantastic?’ People have written entire ballads about what they think the experience is like. Two words hardly do it justice.”
“Well, you know by now that I’m not one for all those fables and legends,” Anna said. “But that’s really all it was. It was… indescribable. I heard His voice at the door and He let me in. Just like that. I asked Him my question. He responded. It was… simple.”
“He let you in. He chose you,” Stenn said, chuckling, “Maybe it wasn’t just a theory after all. Maybe He just knew that about us already. If anybody knew what had been happening the whole time we’ve been in here, it’s Him. He wanted this to happen.”
“No,” Anna said, straightening her back. She looked taller now somehow. Stronger, too.
“We made this happen ourselves. Garamoush just knows a really good way to say ‘thank you.’”
Despite it all, Stenn still found his eye drifting to the festering black pits of decay that Ennet had created. “Did He say if He’ll recover from all this?”
Anna smiled and crouched down to the ground. She put her hand out onto the earth and flesh beneath her. “He didn’t say anything about that, but He’s a god, right? Isn’t that what you’ve been telling me all this time? I think He’s got the strength to pull through.”
Stenn nodded. “If we had the strength to pull through, He does too.”
“Exactly,” Anna said, looking up at Stenn. In all his old, confusing years, Stenn had never seen the picture of relief painted so clearly on a person’s face. Anna’s eyes shined and even her face, still spattered with bits of blood and flesh, was as glowed with an inner fire that would cow an ox. Stenn only hoped that he could look just as fulfilled, because he was certainly feeling that way.
“I notice you’re missing the maps,” Stenn pointed out.
As if noticing for the first time, Anna looked about but just shrugged half-heartedly. “It’s no problem for you,” she said. “I know you practically memorized them both when we were working on them. Honestly Stenn, I can’t be expected to do everything.”
Stenn shook his head and smiled. “No, of course not, how silly of me.” Stenn’s dry throat hurt when he chuckled but he hardly paid it any mind. “But imagine the load of horseshit we’d be in if you were wrong. What if I just happened to forget everything on those maps?”
“Well, you didn’t,” Anna said. “Now draw that damn map already. I’ve got a brother to find.”
Stenn smiled and squatted down, his bones silent and smooth for once and quickly traced out the map of Garamoush’s shell into the dirt. It ran smoothly out from his memory into reality. He indicated the closest path out. It seemed almost dream-like to not just be looking at the path to return to normality, but to be talking it out and standing up, seeing just how small it looked when one stood up straight and confident. It was stranger still to be walking down the paths with a companion whose importance could overshadow any legend or story ever written.
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