The Skybound Sea by Sam Sykes

Author:Sam Sykes
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781616146771
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2012-09-11T07:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

DEATH LANTERNS

Beneath the world, between earth and hell, the differences between life and death seemed more trivial.

The chasm stretched out into a vast trench beneath the highway, a great and cavernous maw into which the sun was swallowed and promptly digested in a stomach of stone and sand.

Here, the signs of battle hung like afterthoughts, a bad dream that could never really be forgotten: corpses entangled amidst the phosphorescent kelp, bones layering the earth, weapons shattered into shards, and the bells, hanging from cliffs, half-buried in sand, swaying delicately and precariously from nooses of kelp and coral.

In the stillness, silence. In the darkness, death.

And still, there was light.

The luminescent violet glow of the kelp and coral was made all the more vivid by the lack of sunlight, painting the sands the color of a dying sky, giving the skeletons an insubstantial flesh, casting a thousand different hues in the reflections of a thousand shattered weapons.

And still, there was life.

Or supposed life, anyway.

They hung; like lanterns, like mirrors, or perhaps like stars that had fallen too far and had forgotten how to get back home. But they hung, in quivering and undulating blobs, thick as jellies, weightless as feathers, their tendrils hanging from viscous bells to brush against the sea floor and caress the hollow cheekbones of the dead.

A beautiful sight, Lenk would have thought as he darted between their reaching tentacles, had he not been struggling to keep footing and breath alike. He would have to make a note to come back and reflect on the beauty when he wasn’t running for his life.

Somehow, the interesting things only ever seemed to crop up when someone was trying to kill him.

And this time he had not the sense to notice the life around him. Because this time he had not the sense to think beyond a single word.

Run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run . . .

“Turn around, fool,” the voice hissed in reply, trying to wrest control from him with an icy, unseen grasp. “Turn and fight.”

No sword, no sword, no sword, could be anywhere, anywhere, can’t see her, can’t hear her, run, run, run, run, run—

“There is nowhere to run.”

Before him, a world the color of a bruise stretched into infinity: great wreaths of violet kelp swaying upon a carpet of sand and bone. Behind him, a world of refuse ran with no end in sight: skeletons of many creatures spread on every spike of coral and swath of kelp with artistic abandon.

Around him, nothing but darkness, offering no escape. In which anything could hide. Including him.

He ran toward a crop of kelp, weaving himself into the folds of it, trying to disappear amidst the violet plantlife.

“This cannot save you,” the voice whispered. “Not hiding. Not running.”

“Kill them. Kill them all.”

“Hate them. Want them to die.”

“They want us to hurt. We can’t. Not anymore.”

“There is only one way out,” the voice spoke: louder, colder, clearer than the others.

They scratched at his skull, it gouged deep furrows in his eardrums.

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