The Ballad Continues…
CHAPTER 12
“What is happening to me?” Cage whispered.
Smoke paused on the sandy island. It was a drop in the ocean, an abandoned beach in the forgotten abyss. Around them, blue. Only blue. A stretch of cobalt, like paint spilled from a thousand cans.
“What’s meant to happen,” Smoke finally said. Then she resumed pacing, around and around, driving furrows into the beach like rings around a tree trunk.
Cage shook his head. Whatever this was, it wasn’t meant to be. After the swamp, he had felt numb, unfocused, confused. But now, in the fifth arena, clarity punctured him, a fleet of salt-edged razors. It cut him deep—the reckoning, the understanding, stinging with the ocean’s burning breath.
He was killing creatures, monsters, things, and it bothered him less with every life theft. This acceptance of death, of murder’s necessity, bewildered him.
And enraged him.
For it was Fei who had set him upon this path, and the gods beyond the stars who had forged him for this purpose.
He had never chosen to soak his hands in blood, no matter how broken.
No matter how desperate.
No matter how doomed.
Cage clung to his saber, fingers twitching, and poked the sand. There was air all around, yet no air in his lungs. Panic squeezed his chest, stomped on his bones, forced him to cave beneath the universe’s fists, punching him down, down, down.
He fell. Collapsed. His knees hit sand. Waves drenched his robes, the indigo of the forgotten void. He coughed, choked, faint from trying so hard to get nowhere. His mouth dried, his tongue paper. Air dribbled in, a leaky straw, his lips chapped with peeling skin. He tipped forward and caught himself on his palms. Shaking, sweating, he flinched at his weakness, a weakness he couldn’t afford.
Smoke sank beside him. She would always fall with him. That terrified him. He wouldn’t drag her down with him, but he couldn’t help himself now. Her hand rested on his shoulders, gently pressing him into the sand, grounding him, anchoring him to this strange new world.
“Two breaths in, one breath out,” his sister murmured. She was his fortress, armor, and shield. “Long, short, long.”
Cage listened to her. He always had, always would. One deep breath till his lungs bulged with air, then a gulp to balloon his chest. Next, an exhale long as the wind. He forced air through pursed lips till his lungs emptied and his chest sagged.
“Again,” Smoke said, no judgment, no shame.
Again, Cage listened. In, in, out. In, in, out. His chest loosened. His lungs relaxed. He could breathe without hacking up all his hard-won regret. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“Nothing to thank,” Smoke grunted. She held nothing over him, not even her pain.
And she should have held her pain over him. She should have held everything over him. He was tissue while she was steel. Life tore him apart like butter, but even death could not crack her.
“Whatever you’re thinking is wrong,” Smoke said. She resumed pacing again, spiraling around the tiny island, a snail trapped inside a shell.
“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” Cage said. He pushed to his feet and followed her circles. Sand dusted their boots like snow, fine and glittering.
Smoke snorted. She kicked a stone into the fathomless ocean. “You were moping. Sulking. Ripping yourself open. Blaming yourself for the universe.” She faced him, her eyes like black holes, magnetic, inescapable. “But the universe is not your fault.”
Cage swallowed. Her intensity was an open flame. And he believed her. Always. But he didn’t want to. He wanted to wallow in self-pity till the stars fell down. Yet that would waste her time, and he had wasted enough.
“Okay,” he whispered, soft enough that it folded under the waves, beneath the azure sky, a bright cornflower blue.
That’s when he noticed.
There were no plants.
No animals.
It was quiet here, besides the susurrus of water on sand. That quiet unnerved him. No other arena had been as calm, as silent. There was a violence in silence Cage didn’t trust.
Smoke tensed beside him, her circle broken.
From the ocean, a gurgle.
Bubbles.
Ripples.
“Smoke—”
The sea erupted.
Tentacles rose from the navy depths. Slimy, bumpy, glowing with lime dots. Fire and smoke coiled around its mountainous mass. Electricity puffed from the ocean’s tumultuous waves, crackling over the writhing beast.
It was the Ozena. A headless octopus. Its tentacles emitted acid. The Fallen monster squirmed from water onto shore, sizzling where it joined land. One touch, and they would die. Cage knew it in his gut. And if a touch didn’t kill him, the stench alone would. It was rancid. Putrid. As if milk were left to sour and curdle, then poured over week-old roadkill.
Smoke didn’t wait this time. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t think. Her dagger flashed in the noonday sun, a brilliant bronze. She carved an octagon into the sand, decorated with symbols and icons and sayings in dead languages. It was artwork, a masterpiece, yet this art was only meant to kill.
Cage didn’t wait, either, and followed her lead. A towering tentacle smashed into the sand by his feet, and he ran to Smoke’s octagon, scurrying along the beach. In, in, out. In, in, out. His breathing was cyclic, rhythmic, a metronome, a pendulum. His pulse was steady, stable, as if dread never was, never had been, and never would be. He was unused to this calm, the serenity of midnight in the harsh light of day, and stumbled mere footsteps from Smoke.
But he rose again.
And barreled on.
The Ozena slapped the ground beside him. Five tentacles fell in a storm of acid rain. Cage covered his face and stabbed, blind. Blue swelled from the octagon, a tide of La Chrome. It devoured the octopus and left crumbs in its wake.
Then it was done.
Fast, simple.
But nothing was ever fast or simple in all the worlds.
Nothing except death.
Brilliant!! All hail the headless tentacle acid beast!!! Also sussurus?! Your prose is too good. A billion acidic tentacles upon you!! Tentacularly spectacular!
Omg 😲 the sea erupted.....I could see it, feel it....brilliant.