19 [Lost Memories]

I came out of my delirium to the white figure packing the wounds with blue ferns. Three arms worked with precision as it rested on its thin maggot-like body. Their fourth limb was a clubbed stump, flesh curled into a fat, tough scar.

Cliff looked like he was asleep. He'd stopped doing anything but breathing, slow and steady rasps. It would be easier to tell if he had eyelids. The big beast had a similar wound, already healing and forcing out the makeshift gauze.

The white figure noticed I was awake.

"Fruit makes you remember." She said. "Ferns make you forget."

The skin of her sealed jaw moved with her voice. The three pointed maw in her collarbone pulled air in, teeth grinding against each other. She was right. Already the memories I had been chasing had pulled away, like a fog closing back around a marked stone. Unable to read the text.

The sword.

It lay against the tunnel wall, tip still red with my blood. It was long, made of bone. As long as... I looked at the rough end of the severed limb. Two daggers, with the curve and shape of flattened boar tusk. Pig gut sliced into thin cords to make a makeshift sash to free the hands.

"Dag... ger?"

She looked at me, then followed my gaze to the sword.

"We are even." She said. She pointed one of her arms at Cliff. "They and I are not."

[Status restored: Normal]

She nodded at her handiwork. She must have received a similar message. She returned her bone tools and herbs to a pig hide sack. She's made far better use of her kills than I had. Her hands had become even more dexterous, grasping and manipulating with ease.

"Now drink." She said, "so we may speak."

She held up a small, wet bag. Did I even remember how to drink? It had been a lifetime.

The liquid was thick and oily, permeated by the heavy taste of soured pig gut. Disgusting. But it helped. For the first time air moved through my throat instead of scraping across it.

"Why are you here?" I asked, surprised at my own voice. It wouldn't pass for a human, but syllables flowed together like words again.

Her eyes narrowed, a scowl. "The Jabali, the fat boars, have sent a message. They are hunting us. You two," pointing at Cliff, still in his blissful slumber, "have made it personal. All the children of Mariel are in danger."

She opened the flap of her largest bag. A cliff hugger body lay inside, gored.

"I came to pay my debt. Their bad blood is on my hands too." She raised her stump. "And I wish they bore more."

I told her about our message, the sky burial. We took the other body to the entrance. The first was already gone, only the ichor where it had rested against the stone remained. Hell, it seems, wastes nothing.

"There are few of our generation left," She said. "Fewer still have adapted such as we." She gestured to her deformed body. Her movements disgusted me. When she needed too, she raised her entire body above the ground, walking only on her hands. Her heavy legless worm ends hanging like bait.

"If you have a plan," she continued, "I would join you."

It was so good to hear words, conversation, again. I didn't trust my voice at lengthy passages, but Dagger seemed to have no such troubles. How did her mouth work, I wondered, sealed under the paled marble of her flesh. It seemed in many ways like my eyes. The suggestion of presence.

"No plan." I said, "Allies." We'd made it back to Cliff, who hadn't stirred.

I explained the totem at length. The vision of what was out there looking for us, the Demon and its Dragon. How much stronger we would need to be. We sat in silence after that, staring at the black of the locked domain.

[You are able to expand your Demonic Coven. Would you like to merge Domains with Amaya, Lesser Cunning Scribe Cliff Hugger]

Amaya was a beautiful name, but I felt the deep twinge of broken expectation. There was someone else. I tried to remember. Another soul I was looking for in the dark. Someone I thought of when the lights went out and all I could hear were waves from the beach and open stars. The fog closed closer around my memories.

Amaya didn't accept immediately as Cliff had. She reacted to the message, but we didn't break the silence. Parts of us, I suppose by our very nature, strove to be alone.

"I have a request," she said, as she confirmed. She took the white sword of her arm and held it. "Your curse. I would have you pass it to my weapons once again. The old bone was too weak, but these are better. Stronger. I would have them deliver death to the Jabali."

My curse? The venom. I suppose that's what it was, what we were. Demons, and their curses. Being able to speak again, being able to listen. The more small, normal things dripped into this life the more inhuman our forms became to me.

[You have envenomed Purified Bone Sword created by Amaya, Lesser Cunning Scribe Cliff Hugger]

[You have envenomed Sharpened Tusk Dagger created by Amaya, Lesser Cunning Scribe Cliff Hugger]

[You have envenomed Sharpened Tusk Dagger created by Amaya, Lesser Cunning Scribe Cliff Hugger]

I don't know how Amaya had preserved the human will to create, even from our earliest moments. I was so driven to survive, to grow. It could have been a lack of choice. Cliff had been born massive, crushing our siblings in raw power. I had been the firstborn, stealing my advantages from the weak. Amaya had nothing. Luck, surviving the first few moments. The will to live changes us all in times of need.

Amaya smashed against the wall.

The screams shook the very walls of the tunnel. Cliff woke up angry. He'd pinned her to the wall with enough force to open lashes on her back, wet oozing down the walls of the cavern. How was he so fast when he was so large?

The massive boulders of his hand crushed forward onto her chest. He was going to kill her.

I pierced my stinger deep into the shoulder of his flesh. If Cliff survived this he would be immune to my venom for sure. The Flesh boiled around it, venom pumping hot and deep. Already his healing factor was forcing the stinger and venom out around the wound.

He turned on me, Amaya falling to the ground. His eyes possessed the look of madness. The color of pooled blood. His bellow of rage knocked me away, his maws mashing against each other drawing blood. He acted like he didn't recognize me at all. As he closed the distance it was all I could do to shout over his rage.

"Cliff. Stop!"

He pulled up short, eye to eye with me. I stared back at my featureless face, black except for the white line of razor teeth. The smell of rot and brimstone rolled over me like a foul wind with each breath. What had come over him? He picked my smaller body like a rag doll.

The red dripped from his eyes. Consciousness. Then awareness. Then shame.

He let go.

Amaya was trying to get up, and couldn't. He'd done real damage to her. One shoulder hung loose in a pain I knew very well. The gashes along her back were wide. Heavy vertical lacerations that opened with each breath.

Cliff would have to wait.

I rushed over, and Amaya backed away until she hit the wall.

"Over. Confused." I said. "Need to set the shoulder."

She looked at Cliff, who had crouched into as small a ball as you could form out of a mountain, turned away from us. She nodded.

I took the loose joint, lining it up with the hollow socket and pressed. Amaya screamed out, but the ball wouldn't catch. I couldn't get enough leverage. I was going to try again when Cliff reached around me with delicate hands. He used one to hold her against the wall. The other cradled the loose forearm.

One more scream and it was over. The joint set.

I turned as Cliff backed away into the tunnel shadows. What had happened? It was unfair to ask knowing he couldn't respond. Amaya stared in silence, catching her breath through the pain. She needed to rest, and soon.

Cliff turned away from our gazes. I watched him lumber into the deeper section of the tunnel, out of sight. The sound of rock crushed against itself echoed as he hit another section of the narrows. I didn't know if he would return.

Amaya was able to pull herself over to her bags, drawing out a silk gauze. I had never seen anything in hell like it. Her long reach and many arms made quick work of the wrap, a tight brace to hold the skin together while it healed. Her sharp look said we would have much to talk about when she recovered.

The black wall of the domain reopened.