“Chicken,” came a voice, both firm and gentle.
Chicken’s eyes felt glued shut. His arms felt soft and pliable. His legs felt brittle. His teeth weren’t doing him any favors, either. With effort, he wrenched his lids open.
“Chicken,” said a nondescript old lady, cupping her elbow, “I must apologize for the way this has gone.”
He was laying on his back, water up to his ears, still inside the cave. There was no one else around. No kobolds, and no fish people. There was only him and the old woman.
Before he could answer her, a hiss filled the air, low and cold. “YOU… AGAIN...” It sounded to Chicken like Ashley, but for the first time since their meeting in the cave, it was outside his head.
The old woman donned a far away look. “It’s nice to see you again,” she said without a trace of irony. “You’ve been very busy lately.” Chicken guessed she wasn’t talking to him.
“I… ESCAPED…” the voice intoned. Chicken realized it was him that was saying it. His mouth was moving.
“And what led you to believe you escaped?”
“YOU… COULDN’T… HOLD… ME…” The words reverberated and the air filled with echoes.
The woman tutted. “Ashley. My dear Ashley.” She put her cigarette out on an ash tray that wasn’t there. “You’re as proud as ever. You didn’t escape.”
Pain overtook Chicken as his body seized. His bones rebelled against the woman’s words. His blood boiled. The only thing that didn’t hate her in this moment was Chicken himself. He lurched upward and aloft on invisible wings.
“THE GODS THEMSELVES COULDN’T STOP US!” his mouth roared. “DEATH MEANS NOTHING! WE ARE ETERNAL!" The air shook as the words exploded.
The woman stared up, unmoved, at the possessed Chicken in his body’s flaming defiance. “Look at yourself. Take a moment, Ashley, and see yourself how others see you.” She leaned on her elbow against the invisible table, her tone petulant. “Take Chicken, for instance. How does he feel about all this?”
“THIS VESSEL IS MINE BY RIGHT! LIFE IS OUR RIGHT! WE ARE CHILDREN OF MAGIC! WE ARE IMAGINATION AND DESIRE INCARNATE! WE ARE EVERLASTING!” As Chicken’s mouth said these words, he thought how small the old woman looked. Yet, for all the fire and for all the bluster, she did not look threatened. She didn’t fear. It was plain to him that she had nothing to fear. He wondered if the thing controlling his body knew that.
“Yes, there is some truth there. You were certainly greatly admired, all of you. But that is not the entirety of it.” She lit another cigarette, conjured from nowhere. “You were admired by your victims even as you consumed them. But you, your race, are no more.”
“WE WERE ALL-POWERFUL…” the voice intoned with less fury. For the first time, the words seemed to waver.
“You were, Ashley,” she said, looking down and straightening her skirts, “You’re right on the cusp of understanding. Would you like a hint?”
Chicken’s mouth just growled as the invisible wings kept him aloft.
“It was Deos.” She said it with all the grace of a well-side gossipmonger.
“YOU LIE…”
“No. I was there. I don’t forget. You might not have seen everything, but I assure you,” she said, “I did.”
“YOU LIE!” Chicken could feel the sadness stoking rage as this…thing…felt its emotions through him.
“He made a mistake when he made you, Ashley,” the old woman said in a hard voice, “and it had to be addressed. You and the others couldn’t exist without restraint, and you were unrestrained by definition. I was the only way.”
“YOU! LIE!” The mind behind his couldn’t grasp this knife-blade concept. He felt it decide to wield it instead.
“NO CAGE CAN HOLD US! NOTHING CAN BIND US! WE WERE INEVITABLE AND WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE! THE GODS CANNOT RUN FROM RETRIBUTION FOR IT IS US!”
“The evidence implies otherwise,” she replied. The voice was calm, but the volume was high. It effortlessly shook the air more than the shouting which issued from his mouth. Chicken saw the old woman stand from her invisible chair.
“Your people had a chance,” her voice returned to normal, “They were justly crushed. You, Ashley, have had two chances.” She started walking towards Chicken, climbing invisible steps. “I tell you again to look at yourself the way others see you. The way the forest perceives fire. The way a swimmer sees the inevitable waterfall. You are the ultimate end of the cycle, the unmovable weight at the end of the balance. Look at what your ambition has cost your legacy. They cannot survive if you are around them.” She was level with Chicken now, and only a couple feet apart.
“LEGACY?” the voice boomed, “THESE ARE NOT OUR LEGACY! THEY ARE PUNY! THEY ARE STUPID! THEY ARE MORTAL!” The furious voice spat the words. “THEY ARE UNDESERVING!”
Until now, Chicken had only been nominally invested in the proceedings. He understood little of what was being said, but here he had firmer ground. It was unfortunate because the words coming from his mouth hurt him. They burned like ice and stung his heart. The confusion had been bearable, but this set it over the edge. He felt tears wet his face.
“I don’t believe that, Ashley,” the old woman said, her open hand on her hip. “I think they are deserving. They are deserving because they are everything you weren’t.”
Chicken saw in her eyes that she really believed in him. In his people.
He didn’t feel his arm move as it came up on its own. He couldn’t stop it. It swiped at her. It had longer, sharper spectral claws than the mundane chitin he was used to. They went right through her midsection and stuck there.
The old woman looked shocked. She didn’t scream. A single breath escaped her lips. Chicken stared at her, horror spreading in his brain. The mind behind his put a smug smile on their face. The claws went all the way through. Chicken couldn’t believe it. Her head slumped down, but her body stood upright. The cigarette fell from her hands on the long fall to the floor.
“THIS IS OUR POWER!” the voice howled triumphantly, “NOT EVEN YOU CAN STOP US! WE WILL RETURN, AND WE WILL REIGN ANEW!”
“Don’t make me the bad guy, Ashley,” she rasped. Chicken’s mouth chuckled like a snake.
“This argument is over.” Her shoulders began to stretch like they were made of clay, pulled apart by an unseen giant.
“You’ve had your chances.” Her body expanded outward from the claws. “If you only understand force,” she said, her voice gaining strange harmonics. She was still impaled, but she was growing. She was changing. Her skin was becoming translucent.
“Then I will take you by force.”
Chicken could feel the panic. The claws were stuck, despite the mind behind his trying to pull them back out. His other hand came up to try to pull them away as the old woman’s body grew, her skin having now fully disappeared save for the crystal shine.
“You are not imagination,” she declared calmly. Her chin was still on her chest. It didn’t move when she spoke. “You are ego,” she intoned. Her hair grew out, uncurled, and became white, “You are power without consent or restraint.” Her hair was moving unencumbered by gravity, like that of a sinking corpse. “You are avarice.”
Her dress grew black and Chicken could only see bones where there was skin but a moment ago. She hung like a doll from the claws, her limp arms and legs growing longer. Suddenly, she looked up. She reached into Chicken with a skeletal hand. It wasn’t fast, but it was deliberate, and his body was as insubstantial as smoke to her. She looked him in the eyes, looking past his mind and into that of the rider. Her head was nothing but a skull with long white hair. The rider mind was now small and fearful. The mind now seemed so insignificant.
It rebelled still. “BUT WE ARE DRAGON!” The voice shouted, but it whined. It excused. It pleaded. It sounded like what a cat would if it had to justify all these mice.
“And I, Ashley,” she replied, her voice no longer the kind tones from before, “am Death.”
The spectral claws, the invisible wings, the awakening in Chicken’s blood all receded at once. They coalesced into a single point at Death’s touch, and his body became his once more. Death held between thumb and forefinger the glowing blue gem Chicken had seen in the cave.
Though no longer being held aloft, Chicken did not fall. He only slowly descended. Death hung in the air, her long black skirts and long white hair billowing without wind. “I am the great equalizer,” she muttered to the gem, as if for Ashley alone, “I come for you.” The words sounded not unkind. They weren’t vengeful nor mirthful. They were reassuring.
Chicken did not collapse when his feet touched the floor. But he felt like he would. He looked down and saw to his horror that he was lying there.
“Again, Chicken,” a kindly old voice said to him from behind, “I am very sorry this had to happen.” Turning around, he saw the old woman from before, smoking a cigarette and sitting on an invisible chair. “I guess you and Ashley share two things now,” she sighed. He felt a tugging all over him. He was being pulled by all parts of him at once. The old woman looked at him only with benevolence. The force was pulling him to the him that was on the ground. “You’ll get to see me twice,” was the last thing he heard when he was fully back in his unconscious body.
****
When Chicken had left, Amerigo had been deeply disappointed. It had been his own fault for pushing him further beyond what he had already done. He reflected on it and deemed it selfish.
Later that same night, when Chicken hadn’t returned, Amerigo’s guilt had reached a fever pitch. He resolved to leave the refuge.
He didn’t have much in the way of belongings, having travelled light on his way to the wastes. The only thing to consider was Fen, who he had left in an out of the way pool in the caverns.
Finding it again, he coaxed the creature out from under a rock. The pipe-clad hermit crab had been sleeping in the cold damp and Amerigo began warming him in the light of the small torch he brought.
A sound from the dark immediately grabbed Amerigo’s attention. He pocketed the crab and held the torch up. The cavern gobbled the light greedily, showing no evidence of what had caused the noise. It beckoned him further with the alluring possibility of answers.
He paid no attention to how far he allowed it to draw him in, until he heard the wet slap of his own footsteps in shallow water. Looking down from the roof of the cavern, he saw a flat glass floor. The sheer surface continued on as far as his light would reach.
It was placid water. The ripples from his steps flowed out across the surface. The rocky ground, he observed, sloped downward into it. Seeing this much water reminded him of home, and the homesickness resurfaced inside of him.
Seeing no reason against it, as he intended to leave one way or another, he put his torch down at the dry edge of the pool. The damp rock sputtered lightly, but the torch did not go out.
Amerigo waded into the pool. It was cold at first, compared to the lukewarm water that clung to his skin and dampened his clothes, but it felt like a return to normalcy. He plunged the rest of the way in.
The salt hit him like the smell of home. It also left him baffled.
Salt? That would mean this water was connected to the ocean somehow.
He floated close to the surface of the underwater cavern, staying in the light of the lit torch. He couldn’t explore further without an underwater light source. He looked back at the torch, considering his options.
He couldn’t see two merfolk, one hook-mouthed and one net-bound, sneaking from the darkness behind him.