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Chapter 1: Prologue A Cry for Help

Chapter 1: Prologue A Cry for Help

The dead earth was already shaking when she opened her eyes.

A deep tremor rolled beneath her, strong enough to send cracks racing through the grey soil. Somewhere in the distance, something enormous groaned beneath the ground. The sound carried for several seconds before fading into an unnatural silence.

The woman lay still, staring at a sky with no sun.

There was light, though she could not tell where it came from. A pale glow covered everything, colourless and cold, leaving the barren landscape trapped somewhere between evening and dawn. Black grass grew between slabs of broken stone. Far away, beyond hills covered in crooked ruins, walls rose high enough to disappear into the haze.

Something shone above them.

It resembled a column of white fire, though it flickered weakly, vanishing for several seconds before struggling back into existence.

She pushed herself upright. Her thoughts moved slowly, each one struggling through a thick fog. She remembered noise. People shouting. A terrible pressure against her chest. Then...

Nothing.

Her clothes were still on her, although the fabric across her stomach was dark and stiff. When she touched it, dried blood flaked beneath her fingers.

A faint scraping noise came from behind her.

She turned.

Something crawled over the crest of the hill.

At first, she mistook it for several people tangled together. Then it rose, and she saw that all those bodies belonged to the same creature.

It had dozens of arms.

They grew from its back, ribs, shoulders and hips, some long enough to drag across the ground while others curled tightly against its chest. Its swollen torso hung above four crooked legs. Where its head should have been, several faces had been pressed together into a trembling mass of eyes and teeth.

One of those faces smiled at her.

The woman climbed to her feet, panic painting her face white as snow. The creature’s arms dug into the earth. Then it surged down the hill.

She ran.

Her legs moved before her mind understood the danger. She stumbled across the broken ground, nearly falling when another aftershock shifted the stones beneath her feet. Behind her came the rapid drumming of hands striking soil.

She glanced over her shoulder and immediately regretted it.

The creature was gaining.

Its many arms worked like the legs of a centipede, pulling its enormous body forward with hideous speed. Several mouths opened across its fused faces, each producing a different voice.

"Fresh."

"Whole."

"Full."

The woman forced herself toward the distant walls. She had no idea where she was, but walls meant people, and people meant safety. The pale column above the city flickered again. It looked impossibly far away.

A hand swept past her shoulder.

She threw herself aside. Fingers closed through empty air and struck the ground hard enough to break stone. She rolled down a slope, tearing open her palms before crashing against the remains of a pillar.

The creature followed without slowing.

She seized a jagged piece of stone and drove it into the first hand that reached her. The shard pierced its palm. Thick black fluid spilled over her fingers.

The creature screamed.

For one hopeful instant, she thought she had hurt it.

Then the hand closed around the stone. Flesh folded over it, swallowing the shard into the palm before the wound sealed. Another arm struck her across the side and hurled her through the black grass.

She landed hard enough to empty her lungs.

More hands descended.

The woman rolled as fingers tore through the earth beside her face. She kicked one arm away, ducked beneath another and forced herself upright. The creature was stronger and faster, but its limbs crowded one another whenever it tried to grab her. She kept close to its side, forcing it to twist its enormous body while she searched desperately for somewhere to escape.

Beyond a cluster of leaning stones, she saw a man.

He stood perhaps a hundred paces away, watching her.

He was tall and broad across the shoulders, dressed in a battered dark coat with its sleeves rolled below his elbows. A coffin had been secured vertically across his back with iron hooks and heavy chains. It was enormous, wider than his body and tall enough to rise above his head. Scratches, dents and dark stains covered the wood.

Relief struck her so violently that she almost laughed.

"Someone!" she shouted.

The stranger’s expression changed.

He looked past her at the creature. Then he looked at her again, and what appeared upon his face was neither concern nor fear.

It was dread.

He turned around and began walking away.

The woman stared at him in disbelief. "Wait!"

He walked faster.

The creature’s arm wrapped around her ankle and tore her from her feet. She hit the ground, clawing at the grass as it dragged her backward. Another hand caught her wrist. A third seized her hair, wrenching her head up toward the cluster of hungry faces.

The stranger stopped.

His shoulders sagged.

He turned slowly and pointed a thick finger at her. "Whatever you do," he shouted, "do not ask me for help."

She could barely hear him over the creature’s shrieking. Its fingers began sinking into her skin, passing through flesh without leaving wounds. Something cold moved through her skull. Images flashed before her eyes: a woman laughing beside an open window, a house with blue curtains, hands placing candles upon a cake.

The creature was pulling them out of her.

Her memories.

"Help me!" she screamed.

The stranger closed his eyes.

Black markings erupted beneath the woman’s skin. They coiled around her wrist, forming unfamiliar words before extending into a pale chain of light. The chain crossed the distance between them and buried itself beneath the stranger’s sleeve.

He looked down at it.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

Then his face twisted with such violent fury that even the creature hesitated.

"You miserable, many-armed piece of shit."

He seized one of the chains holding the coffin to his back and tore it free. The wooden box crashed into the ground hard enough to shake the surrounding stones.

The Abomination shrieked and dragged the woman closer.

The man kicked the coffin.

It spun upward.

Its lid burst open.

Weapons filled the sky.

Swords, spears, axes, hooked blades and crescent-headed glaives scattered above them. There were weapons she recognised and others shaped for hands that could not have been human. For one impossible moment, the pale sky disappeared behind iron.

The man caught a falling spear.

He crossed the distance between them before the woman saw him move.

The spearhead entered the Abomination’s elbow. He drove it through three more arms, pinning them together, then twisted the shaft until bones tore through black flesh. The hand holding the woman’s ankle loosened.

He caught her by the back of her clothes and threw her behind him.

She struck the ground, rolled and pushed herself up in time to see him abandon the spear. A heavy curved sword dropped from the sky. He caught it with both hands and sheared through six approaching wrists in a single stroke.

Hands struck the ground around him. He moved between them with brutal precision, never retreating farther than a few steps from the woman. A hooked blade replaced the sword. He buried it in the creature’s ribs and dragged its immense body sideways. Before it could recover, he caught a descending hammer and crushed one of its faces.

Black blood sprayed across his coat.

The creature regenerated almost as quickly as he destroyed it. Severed arms thrashed in the grass before crawling back toward their owner. Split flesh pulled itself together. The face beneath his hammer swelled outward, teeth and eyes rising again from the ruined meat.

The man did not slow.

Every weapon became an extension of his body. He used the length of a spear to keep the creature away, broke its shaft inside its chest and drew a short sword before the pieces hit the ground. When the sword became trapped between its ribs, he released it and caught an axe. He moved with none of the elegance she expected from a swordsman. His fighting was violent, direct and horribly efficient.

He hacked joints apart. Tore limbs from sockets. Kicked crawling hands into the path of falling blades.

The Abomination possessed dozens of arms.

Within moments, it had none.

Its enormous torso collapsed, mouths screaming as new limbs pushed from its wounds. The man grabbed a scythe from the ground and swung it around his body. Its blade passed through the creature’s waist, separating it cleanly into two convulsing halves.

He planted his boot against its upper body and raised the scythe again.

"Stay down," he snarled, "or I’ll find somewhere worse to put this."

The creature did not understand him. Flesh bulged around its ribs as another cluster of arms began growing.

The woman watched in horror. "Why isn’t it dying?"

"Because today has decided it hates me."

One of the severed hands sprang toward her.

The man turned instantly. His scythe flashed, slicing the hand apart before its fingers reached her face. That brief distraction allowed the Abomination’s torso to lunge at him. Its mouths closed around his shoulder and tore away a chunk of flesh.

He responded by driving his fist through one of its eyes.

The creature recoiled. He seized its jaw with both hands and ripped the fused faces apart down the middle.

A bright white shape pulsed inside its opened skull.

The woman saw it. So did he.

He grabbed a broken sword and stabbed directly into the light.

The blade passed through without resistance.

The white shape remained untouched.

A voice called from above them.

"Well, look what you prepared for me."

A second man descended from the leaning ruins, his dark cloak fluttering behind him. He appeared far younger than the man with the coffin, with polished armour, carefully arranged hair and a thin sword held casually in one hand.

Frost covered its blade.

The first man looked up, and murder entered his expression. "Don’t you fucking dare."

The younger one smiled.

He stepped past him and drove the frozen sword into the exposed light.

Ice spread through the Abomination’s body. The creature released one final scream before cracks raced across its flesh. A heartbeat later, it shattered into a cloud of grey ash.

The ash flowed toward the younger man’s forearm.

A dark mark encircled his skin from wrist to elbow. As the remains entered it, the darkness receded slightly, revealing a thin strip of pale flesh.

He inspected the change and grinned.

"Ah, thank you for the freebie, dumbass."

The other man punched him.

His fist struck the younger Reaper across the mouth and sent him crashing through a broken pillar. Stone collapsed around him.

"You thieving little grave-rat!" the larger man roared.

The younger Reaper emerged from the rubble laughing, blood running from his lip. "And then you poked it with a piece of scrap metal. Very frightening. Truly. I thought it might die from embarrassment." He then spat to the side, "You can’t kill it anyway."

The larger man snatched a spear from the ground.

The younger Reaper’s smile vanished. He turned and fled over the ruins just as the spear left the other man’s hand. It passed close enough to cut through his cloak before vanishing into the haze.

"You missed!" the fleeing Reaper shouted.

"I know where you live!"

The answer came faintly from the distance. "So does everyone!"

The man stood there breathing heavily, staring after him as though seriously considering pursuit. The pale chain attached to his arm tightened and pulled his attention back toward the woman.

His expression became unpleasant again.

"What?" he demanded.

She stared at him. Up close, he looked even more disreputable. His coat was covered in old repairs, his hair had been roughly cut with what might have been one of his own knives, and blood ran freely from the wound in his shoulder. Nothing about him resembled the shining rescuer she might have imagined while being dragged toward the creature’s mouths.

Then she noticed his arms.

Darkness covered both forearms from his wrists to his elbows. There were no lines or symbols she could distinguish. His skin was simply black, as if his arms had been thrust into fire and burned all the way through.

The pale chain connecting them seemed pitifully small against it.

"What happened to your arms?" she asked.

His eyes narrowed. "You happened to my arms."

"That was already there."

"And now there’s more."

She looked down at her own wrist. The same strange words remained beneath her skin, connected to the chain of light. "What is this?"

"A contract."

"I didn’t agree to a contract."

"You screamed for help."

"I was being eaten."

"I noticed."

"You told me not to ask!"

"And you should have listened."

Anger cut through the remains of her fear. She climbed to her feet, ignoring the weakness in her legs. "You walked away from me."

"Yes."

"You saw that creature chasing me and walked away."

"I was having an excellent day until the ground split open and dropped you into it. Also what the fuck are you doing here? Outside the city?"

"Where am I?"

He turned away without answering and began recovering his weapons. Many had buried themselves in the soil. He pulled them free one after another, examined their edges and threw them into the open coffin.

The woman followed him. "What was that creature?"

He collected a curved sword.

"Why couldn’t you kill it?"

The sword struck the bottom of the coffin.

"Who was that other man?"

An axe followed it.

"What does the contract do?"

He stopped.

Slowly, he looked over his shoulder. "Do you ever stop talking?"

"Not when someone refuses to answer me."

Something shifted in his expression. She could not tell whether he was surprised or merely becoming angrier.

The ground trembled again.

This time, the pale column above the distant city disappeared completely.

The man stared toward it. His irritation gave way to something more serious.

"The Beacon," he muttered.

"What beacon?"

He swore beneath his breath and began loading the weapons faster. "The quake knocked it out. That’s how you ended up here."

"Ended up where?"

He slammed the coffin shut. After fastening the chains, he lifted the entire thing onto his back as though it weighed nothing.

She stepped into his path before he could leave. Her legs were still trembling, but she refused to move aside. "You’re going to explain what is happening."

"No."

"You said you have to protect me."

"I do."

"Then you’re taking me somewhere safe."

His jaw tightened.

"And while we walk," she continued, "you’re going to answer my questions."

The man stared down at her. The many-armed creature had failed to frighten him. The younger Reaper’s mockery had enraged him, but it had not left him speechless.

Somehow, her refusal to step aside accomplished both.

Finally, he leaned closer.

"You’re dead," he said. "That thing was trying to eat what remains of you. You asked a Condemned Reaper for protection, which means I am now chained to you until you reincarnate."

She looked toward the place where the creature had vanished. Only severed pieces and black stains remained.

Then she looked at the enormous coffin on his back and remembered how he had carved the monster apart without managing to kill it.

"Dead?"

"Very."

"Dead..." She shook her head. "I’m not..."

Something tore through the fog inside her mind.

Her hand snapped to her chest. She remembered the pain. The helpless struggle for air. The final few seconds in which she had understood exactly what was happening and could do nothing to stop it.

Her legs gave way.

She struck the ground on both knees, clutching her chest as she gasped for air she no longer needed.

The Reaper watched her without moving. Whatever impatience had been on his face disappeared, replaced by the tired recognition of someone who had witnessed this too many times.

"Guess you finally remembered," he said.

She remained hunched over, trembling.

"Unpleasant, isn’t it?" He glanced toward the lifeless horizon. "Dying, that is."