Chapter 56: The Scalpel's Descent

Kizawa's words are a death sentence. "It is time to go."

I am Erima. I am the strategist. My mind is a place of logic, of calculated risks and acceptable losses.

This is not an acceptable loss. This is a guaranteed loss. This is not a plan. It is a suicide note.

"Kizawa, you are a fool," I hiss, my voice a low, shaking vibration. "You cannot stand. Hachiro can barely see. Yogawa is gone. We have no supplies. We have no idea what is down there."

"I know what is down there," he rasps, his back to me. He is strapping his sheathed swords to his waist. His hands are shaking so badly it takes him three tries. "He is down there. And he has her."

That is his entire world. His entire logic. It is a closed, perfect, maddening loop.

Krell, the nine-foot monster of a General, is watching us, his four black eyes narrowed in a look of calculating amusement. He wants to see this. He wants to see if the broken insects will actually try to fly.

"Fine," I snap. My own anger is a welcome, hot spark in the cold despair. "Fine. We go. We die. But we die together."

I storm over to the medical slab where Hachiro is.

He is a wreck. He is curled on his side, his entire body trembling from the agony of the Rekka-moss. His shattered arm is now a puckered, steaming, glowing-green ruin. The moss has burned away the rot, the Miasma, but it has also seared him to the bone.

"Hachiro. Up."

His eyes flicker open. They are unfocused, swimming with pain. "Erima...? It hurts so much..."

"I know," I say, my voice hard. "I have to be hard. Kizawa is moving. We are leaving. Now. Get up."

"Leaving...? We cannot. I cannot move."

"You ARE THE FIST," I snarl, throwing Kizawa's own words back at him. "You are the one who can EAT POISON. Are you going to be beaten by a healing?"

It is a cruel thing to say.

It works.

A spark of his old, stubborn spirit ignites in his eyes. "I am not beaten."

He plants his one good hand on the slab. He shoves himself into a sitting position.

A sound of pure, strangled agony is ripped from his throat. But he is up.

"Good," I say, my voice only shaking a little.

The medic shoves a pouch at me. It is filled with more of the glowing moss. "For the insects," he grunts. "It will keep them alive. Or kill them faster. No difference."

I snatch the pouch.

Next.

Yogawa.

He is a limp, catatonic heap in the corner. His eyes are open, staring at nothing. He is gone.

I crawl over to him. I check his pulse. It is there. A faint, thready rabbit-beat.

"Yogawa. Wake up."

Nothing.

"Yogawa! Kizawa is leaving! We need your spell! The Leap!"

Nothing.

I am a pragmatist. I do not have time for this.

I draw back my hand. And I slap him. Hard.

The sound is a loud, sharp CRACK in the obsidian hall.

Hachiro winces. Kizawa turns his head. Krell watches, his four eyes unblinking.

Yogawa blinks.

A tiny, flickering spark of awareness.

"...wha...?"

"GET UP!" I roar, grabbing the front of his robe. "You are a magician! Act like one! We are LEAVING!"

"Leaving...?" he whispers, his voice a child's voice. "But the monsters... the Assassin... it spoke..."

"YES," I snarl, shaking him. "It spoke. And there are MORE of them. And we are going to go fight their KING. GET. UP."

The terror clarifies his mind. He realizes I am serious.

"No... no... no... I cannot... I will not..."

"You WILL," Kizawa's voice cuts across the room. It is cold and hard as ice. "Or we will leave you. And they will find you. Your choice, Magician."

Yogawa looks at Kizawa's bloody, terrible, standing form. He looks at Krell, a nine-foot monster of cold indifference. He looks at me, his face a mask of rage.

He chooses the monsters he knows.

He scrambles to his feet. He is shaking so hard he can barely stand, but he is standing.

A Grak-ta guard thuds over. He drops my new gear at my feet.

It is a bow. An obsidian bow. It is gorgeous. Black, heavy, and strung with a gut-string as thick as my finger. The draw-weight must be impossible.

The quiver is filled with obsidian-tipped arrows. They are not fletched with feathers. They are fletched with thin, sharp shards of chitin.

A pouch of dried fungus-meat is thrown at me. A canteen of water.

That is it.

Krell is a monster. But he is a monster of his word.

"You have your tools," Krell growls. He points to a dark, low-arched tunnel at the far end of the Nexus. "That is the way. The 'Undercroft'. A waste tunnel. It leads to the edge of the city-stone. From there... you fall."

He is taking us to a sewer. A drainage pipe.

"The rest is on you, insects."

Kizawa is already walking. He limps, each step a fresh agony, toward the tunnel. He does not look back.

"Hachiro," I say, my voice quiet. "Help me with Yogawa."

Hachiro nods, his face a grim mask. With his one good arm, he grabs Yogawa's robe. I grab the other side.

We are a procession of the damned.

Kizawa, the dying Blade, leading the way.

Me, the unarmed Arrow, now armed with a bow I cannot possibly draw.

Hachiro, the broken Fist, his arm a ruin, his chi gone.

And Yogawa, the shattered Scholar, his mind a wreck, stumbling between us.

We follow Kizawa into the black tunnel.

Krell watches us go.

He does not wish us luck. He does not offer a blessing.

He just watches his expendable scalpel go to work.

The tunnel is a descent. It is a sewer. The walls are slick with a cold, foul-smelling slime. The floor is uneven, and a trickle of filthy water runs down its center.

We walk for an eternity. Ten minutes. An hour.

There is no light. Only the sound of our stumbling feet, Kizawa's low, pained breathing, and Yogawa's quiet, terrified sobs.

Then, light.

Not light. A lessening of the dark.

A vast, open nothingness.

We have reached the end of the tunnel. We are standing on a small, wet ledge of obsidian... on the outside of the city-stone.

The Abyss.

It is not red-lit here. The city is above us.

This is the true dark. An infinite, cold, empty blackness that stretches down forever.

The Spinner King's parlor.

It is so vast, so empty, that my mind cannot comprehend it. My stomach lurches. I am going to be sick.

"Yogawa."

Kizawa's voice is a dead thing in the infinite quiet.

"The spell."

Yogawa looks at the drop. He sees the endless void.

He screams. A thin, high-pitched shriek of pure, final terror.

"I CANNOT!" he sobs, collapsing to his knees on the ledge. "IT IS NOTHING! IT IS FOREVER! WE WILL DIE!"

"We will die here," I say, my voice a cold shard of ice. "The Assassins will find this tunnel. They will come for us."

"I DO NOT CARE! I WILL NOT JUMP!"

Kizawa is done.

He limps over to Yogawa.

He grabs the magician by the front of his robe.

He drags the screaming, sobbing man to the very edge of the abyss.

"You will cast the spell," Kizawa hisses, his face inches from Yogawa's, his blue eyes burning with a cold fire. "Or I will throw you down. And then... I will jump after you."

He means it.

Yogawa sees it.

He sees the madness in Kizawa's eyes. The absolute certainty of a man with nothing left to lose.

The fear of Kizawa finally becomes greater than the fear of the drop.

"I... I... cannot..." Yogawa sobs.

"Chant. Now."

Yogawa squeezes his eyes shut. His voice is a broken, terrified, weeping wail.

"By the weight of regret... by the price of the fall... I bind the void..."

His hands are glowing. A faint, sickly purple light.

"Hachiro," I say.

Hachiro nods. He steps up. He places his one good hand on Yogawa's shoulder.

He has no chi left to give.

"I am empty, Erima," he whispers.

"He does not know that," I whisper back. "Just push."

Hachiro understands. He grunts, pretending to push energy into the spell.

The purple light around Yogawa's hands flares brighter.

It is not Hachiro's chi.

It is Yogawa's own terror. His own desperation. It is fueling the spell.

The bubble of unstable magic forms.

"It is ready," Yogawa sobs. "It will not hold. It is not strong enough."

"It will be," Kizawa says.

He grabs the rope from our first fall, which I had salvaged. He ties it around his waist. He loops it around me. Around Hachiro. Around Yogawa.

We are a chain of fools again.

Kizawa stands at the edge.

He looks down into the infinite blackness.

He does not hesitate.

"Mizuki," he whispers.

And he jumps.

He drags us all with him.

We are falling.

Again.