Page 49 of Up from the Earth

I knew that voice, the call of my Queen, and I peered over Cern’s side to see her reaching out from me from a writing hole of blackened arms that clung to her.

Thwump.

Momentum veered us from our course, and it sent Cern flying at a perpendicular angle that ended as we collided with something hard. Suddenly, he was lying on top of me. I put my hands to his side, feeling the growing wet and warm that oozed between my fingers. Shoving did nothing but cause me to scream, the pain in my stomach a searing tear as I tried to push him off.

Only then did I look down.

The hilt of the sword protruded from his chest, and I knew at once that it had gone straight through him…and into me. I couldn’t sense his heartbeat, mine slowing. The world blurred, my fingers growing cold, and my head too heavy to hold up. Everything was quiet, and where once there was tremendous pain, it all just melted away. I could feel…nothing.

Horror appeared above me, a tongue dangling from a skinless mouth. “So much for the reign of the spring queen. When you change, when my pit eats you up and seeps into your bones, you can help me tear the flesh from your beloved Beast King.”

It was all cold and dark, and then it was all simplygone.

Twenty-Two

Cauldrons Are A Place Where What Goes In Does Not Come Out The Same.

Darknesshadbecomeafamiliar bedfellow. I recognized it, understood its purpose in the scheme of the universe. I saw my spouse in it. I saw parts of myself there, and I could accept it as the end. And yet, I remained. There was not a door past the World of Below. It was the ultimate destination of all spirits before and after their existence on the mortal realm. So then, where was I?

There was only black around me, but I had some notion of standing. I was standing, my feet pressed against something solid. There were no shapes to make out, no light, and I could look down and see nothing of my body.

Cern had perished right next to me, and he was not in this place. I was alone. Was this to be my fate? A being that was not quite mortal and not quite divine struck down and left to dwell in the void of all things. I could not have that. I would not survive it, at least not this part of me that lingered.

These ordered thoughts would turn to madness and I would be nothing more than a shade of suffering and pain.

A change. Something to my rightchanged. It wavered in the black like something hidden in the murky waters of a lake. There and gone so quickly, but I felt it. I waited several long moments, eons for all I knew, and it did not repeat.

The madness begins already. I am alone in the dark and going mad.

My essence diminished, retreating somewhere inside itself to become smaller. It appeared that I could close my vision to his realm, like shutting my eyelids if I still had them. There was no breath to sigh out, and it was all I sought to do.

“Are you? Are you indeed?”

I jerked into attention. I had not hallucinated that. There was a voice, the echo of it still dancing around the endless expanse surrounding me.

“H-Hello?” I could speak.

Expecting nothing and everything at once, I hung on edge, waiting for a response. I couldn’t track time or distance here, and the perimeter of darkness felt like a curved bubble stretching out into infinity around me.

Thump.

Was it a feeling? A sound? Perhaps a bit of both, and it pulsed around me. Whatever I was, I couldfeelit squeeze down just enough and then retreat. It had been soft but sure. Had I heard that movement? Was there truly movement at all?

Thump.

“Hello?!”

My voice rang through the abyss, distorting with each replay until it became one I didn’t recognize. Or did I? It was feminine. My Queen? But no, that wasn’t it. Softness, a deep tone accompanied by the bark of dogs. Then an accented tone that carried warmth and growth. It was so similar to another that reverberated around and around and around.

“Hello.”

That one was solid, a woman’s voice. It was so like my own, but…older.

I blinked, something still available to me apparently, and there it was again. That shimmering like light through dark waters. Focusing on it, I rushed forward, propelling myself with the power of pure intent. The hazy array grew closer, and I could pick out more of it—a reflection cast on a black surface.

She was me…but not. Fair hair draped down slim shoulders, a dress of gossamer and endless yard of thin fabric hung from her body, and the swell of her round belly was shielded by her delicate hand.

“Who are you?”

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