Page 72 of Anathema
And I still had the guards to contend with.
It was then it struck me. I hadn’t heard the guards make a sound.
The prisoner’s lips curved to a whimper as he raised his hands up in surrender. I slowly trailed my gaze to the stony wall at his back, where the flickering torches from the hallway showed my silhouette slowly getting swallowed by a monstrous shadow that blocked out the light.
A flash of black streaked over top of me on a quiet whoosh, and I watched in horror as an enormous silver object stabbed through the man’s chest.
The prisoner’s legs trembled, mouth fully agape, his arms outstretched, as if stunned by the strike. When the steel object recoiled, spilling blood and bits of organs onto the floor, I opened my mouth to scream, but could summon nothing more than fast, shaky breaths that sent puffs of cold air from my mouth.
Muscles board-stiff, I willed myself to look behind me, dizzy from panting. When I turned around, an impossibly giant scorpion stood in the doorway, its stinger stuck upright, hovering over top of me, pincers at the ready, big enough to lop off my head in one snap.
My body fell into hysterics, and I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Could only stare at the creature in mute horror.
Droplets fell onto my face, and choking for a breath of air, I lowered my gaze to blood spilling onto my open palms.
“Oh, god,” I whispered. “Oh, miserable, wretched god, make it quick and painless.”
The tick of insectile claws against the ground snapped my attention back to the terrifying creature stepping over the two guards lying disemboweled at either side of it.
A blackness settled over me.
And all went blissfully silent.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
MAEVYTH
An earthy-root and leather scent invaded my nose, tugging me out of a black void. Something moved between my thighs in a steady cadence. Wet. Like something splashing water. S-clop, s-clop, s-clop.
A thick fog clung to my brain, and I could neither make sense of the sound, nor the sensation. I opened my eyes to … hair. Black hair. Draped across a wide, muscled black neck.
My mind puzzled the view and the sound. A horse.
A horse?
I lifted my head and double-blinked, the fog thinning as I took in the sight of jet-black ears, a flash of metal, and a set of reins.
What is this?
Images snapped through my mind in frustrating piecemeal.
Woods. A cell. An emblem. Bugs.
Scorpion.
Gasping, I jerked back into a hard surface, and something banded around my stomach. I kicked my legs, clawing at the limb restraining me. The scorpion?
No, that didn’t make sense.
“Let me go! Let me go!”
“Still yourself, unless you’d like to be thrown into the black bog.” The voice, deep and threatening, sent a shiver down the back of my neck.
I scanned over the surrounding shadowy landscape. Even in darkness, I could make out spikes of rotted trees sticking up from the mist-covered ground ahead, and walls of rock on either side that, when I tipped my head back, disappeared into the night sky overhead. Two moons shined against a star-speckled sky, offering an illuminated path through what appeared to be a wide gorge.
A void separated me from the last thing I remembered. What had happened between the scorpion attack and now?
“Who are you?” I asked. “What is this place?”