Chương 25: Chapter 24 – The Toll

Passage clambered up the ladder and onto the balcony as fast as he could. Patrick was faster still. Passage was halfway over the ledge when the balcony shook, the front of the townhouse shuddering as the ground floor doors broke apart with the sound of rotten wood snapping and water splashing. Passage didn't pause, falling against the front door, hastening to reach it almost before his feet were under him. The handle did not turn, the door rattling in its frame, locked.

More shouting from within – a chorus of anger and confusion. Passage stepped back, took a single bracing breath, and kicked. He was a big man, a heavy man, and the door was as rotten as the rest of the house. The wood crunched and the door burst inwards. Inside was chaos. The canal house was deeper than it was wide, a stairway nestled halfway along the right-hand side of the room. A broken oil lamp lay in the centre of the space, flames spreading across the floor where it bled its fuel.

In the dancing light lay the wreckage of a home mauled by Pike's terrible strength. Near the door, a table had been shattered, chairs broken or overturned. Holes were torn through the walls, gaping wounds that ripped straight through to the houses on either side. Bracken was on his knees, trying to clamber back to his feet at the far side of the room while Pike was busy pulling his arm from the wall behind him. Bracken's attention snapped to Passage, wide-eyed and terrified.

He stumbled a step closer, making for the doorway. Pike ripped his arm free in an explosion of splinters and dust, spinning drunkenly about. Blood stained the front of his shirt, a dozen tiny wounds where woodchips had pierced his skin, but his arms were stone, unblemished but for the cracks that ran their lengths. Pike moved drunkenly, his face contorted in a bleary-eyed snarl. He lurched towards Bracken, fingers outstretched to snatch at the back of his shirt. Bracken was quick, but panic made him clumsy.

As Pike's fingers grazed his back, he flinched to the side, trying to change direction. His foot landed on a broken piece of wood and he went down, ankle rolling. Passage never stopped moving. His eyes took in the situation. His mind made sense of it. But his body needed only instinct and an excuse. He was already halfway across the room when Bracken went down. He'd had a plan right up until he saw his best friend in danger.

Somewhere between that instant and the next, he'd dropped the bag and the bell and snatched up a broken table leg. Pike moved more like the head of a flail than a man, gravity and mass dragging him onwards into the next terrible collision. He tried to stop in his tracks and failed, turning towards Bracken and toppling over onto his side, his legs unequal to the task of controlling his momentum. He caught himself on one hand, face turning towards Passage just in time to catch the table leg across his chin.

The wood broke, Pike did not. The fat man grunted, hardly flinching as the table leg caught him full in the face and turned to kindling. Passage was left holding half a length of wood, his own momentum having carried him a few steps past his target. Not good. He reeled about, instinct faltering as his mind caught on the wrongness of it all. Hot-headed and stupid, he only played at being the wise one in the group.

He looked with horror at the bell, their life raft, sitting abandoned on the floor at the far side of the room, and a furious Pike lumbering to his feet halfway between.

"Bracken! The bell!" Passage shouted, trusting his friend to understand. He tossed the broken length of wood at Pike. Again, the man simply ignored it, scowling and drooling and flexing fingers adorned with knuckles of terrible stone. The weapon bounced off Pike's chest and fell to the floor near the fire still slowly spreading. So far, the damp was keeping the fire mostly contained, but the flames kept burning, nonetheless. Bracken hesitated, scowling through his fear like he planned on doing something stupid.

Pike's attention bounced between them, Bracken to his right, Passage before him, the bell abandoned at his back. Passage snatched a plate from the counter beside him, tossing it at Pike, then another and another. He may as well have tried to stone an ox to death with pebbles for all the harm it did, but he didn't need to hurt the man, he just needed him angry, dumb, and distracted. The first two, Pike handled on his own. The plates assured the third. Pike ran straight at Passage.

Passage had half a second to appreciate what a grave mistake he'd just made. Bracken was small, and lithe, and nimble. The room was narrow. Passage was none of those things. He could not hope to dodge half as well as Bracken had, but a hit from Pike would splatter either of them just the same. Eyes wide, fists raised, Passage prepared to die. Patrick had other plans. The Twice-Stained madman burst from the stairwell, exploding into the room amidst a wave of ink-black water.

Passage dived aside, throwing himself over the kitchen counter to take cover, for what little protection a wooden benchtop might be worth. Water splashed around the bend, black as pitch and thicker than blood, it clung to Passage's skin. He slapped at it, scrambling away while beyond the counter Patrick screamed his hatred. His voice was the garbled scream of the unquiet dead, lungs full of water, spite, and regret.

The fire flickered, orange light dancing across the ceiling, but the shadows deepened, coalescing into liquid and running down the walls like ink. Passage's skin burned with cold where the watery darkness clung to him and it ran in dreadful rivulets towards his face, sluicing across his arms and chest towards his mouth. He scratched and slapped and writhed but the water ran over his fingers unabated.

He stumbled up against the wall, clamping his mouth shut and swallowing his scream to keep the drowning waters from his lungs, but the frigid black filled his nose and bled through the cracks at the corners of his mouth, his teeth aching with the cold. He pinched his nose shut too late. It tasted like fear and defeat as it coated the back of his throat and froze him from the inside out. Passage convulsed, his body at once weighty and weightless, limbs leaden and heart athunder.

His vision blurred and dimmed, frigid black water pouring into his eyes. He tried to think but his mind was numb. Tried to rage, but his fury had guttered. The waters of the drowned lapped at his body and mired his soul, whispering a message of peace. There was no fighting this. No surviving it. The waters were not cruel, but nor were they kind. There was no bargain or escape, only acceptance. The pain and the fear would stop, just as soon as he gave up.

Passage dropped his hands to his sides, feeling as if he floated there in the ruin of the kitchen, though the water was but a thin film wrapped around his body. The dim part of his mind that still thought in words doubted that Patrick even meant him harm. This was not malice, nor anger, not even murder, really. Just nature taking its course. Water did not hate; it merely flowed. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Pike was on his knees, hands clasped over his mouth, fighting against the tide. Futile and doomed. Patrick stood over him, still weeping tears of night, hair floating about his crown, the halo of the drowned. Beyond them, Bracken had reached the canvas bag and ripped it open. The waters had not reached him, though surely, they would soon. That was sad, Passage thought, but it was a quiet, distant thing. Neither tragedy nor terror, just a dull pang of regret.

Bracken was screaming something, eyes gleaming in the firelight, but Passage could not hear him. Water had filled his ears, and all the world was silent. Patrick bent down, his face close to Pike's and spoke in the dead man's ear. The halfwit was still struggling, his heart still beating, but he had breathed his last. All of them had. Whatever Patrick said, he seemed to find peace in the saying. His lips stopped moving and he smiled. Which is when Pike put a fist through his stomach. The water stopped running.

It trembled, that terrible pressure abating, the cold retreating. Patrick shook, bent halfway over. Pike's fist had punched straight through his belly, buried up to the wrist. Blood splashed down, mingling with the water and spreading through the cracks in Pike's stony arms. Bracken finally wrenched the bell from the canvas bag, looked up, and froze at the sight before him. Pike rose to his feet, forcing Patrick to stand straight like a macabre hand puppet.

The mad Stained's magic lost its shape, the darkness retreating from the water to pool at Patrick's feet, his shadow unaffected by the dancing light. Passage coughed, vomiting water from his lungs, ice and bile burning in his nose and throat. Tears streamed down his face, fear slamming into him like a hammer blow to his chest as the alien numbness abandoned his mind and soul.

"And they say I'm stupid," Pike drawled, drunk and giggly. The fire had spread, tongues of flame licking the wall at Patrick's back. A killer and a corpse, a picture of violence framed in hellish light. Pike placed his other hand around Patrick's throat and began to squeeze. Patrick flailed, clawed at Pike's hand, his pale face fast turning a shade of purple. Pike's fingers dug deep into the sides of Patrick's throat, the skin sinking, threatening to rupture. Bracken rang the bell.

The sound rang out, deep and sonorous and slow. Time slowed, every aspect of the moment taking on a greater weight, a heavier consequence. Gravity pressed down upon them. A small eternity stretched between each passing second. Passage's heart steadied in the space between moments, a war drum beating in his breast. Pike paused his strangling, stopping on the precipice of murder, and looked to where Bracken held the bell aloft.

Passage's smallest and bravest friend held the Implement above his head and looked on the half-Forged in defiance. The bell tolled again and Passage's lungs stopped burning. His legs stopped shaking. His mind stopped doubting. Pike was calm in his cruelty. He did not drop Patrick right away. The baker's son was still prying at the hand on his throat, the steadying presence of Durnheim helping him reclaim his centre.

The shadow at his feet began to bleed once more into the water, tendrils reaching out for Pike, intent on pulling the thug into oblivion at his side. Pike grabbed Patrick by the arm, pulled his fist from Patrick's gut, placed his red right hand on Patrick's shoulder, and tore the limb from Patrick's body like a child ripping the leg from an insect. Patrick screamed, no amount of supernatural calm was capable of shielding him against the terror or the pain of mutilation.

Bracken rang the bell again, the sound deeper still. It echoed on, resonating and harmonising with the first two notes still hanging impossibly in the air. Pike tossed Patrick, both parts of him, down the stairs to splash into the black, the pieces of a broken toy. He turned to Bracken, not even sparing Passage a glance. He drove the blood stained knuckles into his palm, dipped his chin, and charged straight at Bracken. Durnheim's blessings were many, but speed was not among them.

Passage, thrumming with the power of the bell, was slow to react. As was Bracken. His small friend, as mad as he was loyal, locked eyes with Passage across the room. A tiny smile, played at the corners of his mouth. Maybe he was proud that there, facing down the end, he was unafraid. Bracken had a million choices and none. He could have run. Could have ducked, dived, dodged, or found a way to fight back. But Durnheim had him in its grip even tighter than it held Passage.

The pair of them were in motion, two faults in the same great stone rolling downhill, unstoppable and indivertible. Bracken tossed the bell. It sailed overhead, almost grazing the ceiling as it crested over Pike. The bastard did not stop. He ran straight at Bracken, leading with his fist, and punched him in the chest. Bracken shot backwards, a pale cannon ball launched through the open doorway and out into the night, skipping across the canal waters and vanishing from sight.

Passage caught the bell, a fourth toll ringing out, so deep that his ears could scarcely hear it. But his entire skeleton rumbled with its weight. All his life, Passage had associated Durnheim with calm. With peace. With stability. As Pike turned to face him, sunken eyes glaring, lip curling, fists rising, Passage discovered a new facet to the stone Plane's power. Conviction. Pike charged. So did Passage. They roared at one another, voices deep, shouting in the language of earthquakes and broken stone.

Pike brought his blood-smeared knuckles high and Passage led with the bell, carrying it before him like a shield. He did not run towards his foe so much as fall, each step propelling him onwards, downwards, gravity pressing at his back until they clashed and time stood still. The flames froze. The light stood still. Sound simply ceased. Eternity was the purview of stone, and in their death, Durnheim's Implements claimed their due.

The force of the collision rippled through Passage, his every bone aching, threatening to fracture and split. Gravity crushed him from every angle even as power threatened to explode him from within. He beheld Pike's snarl, frozen in the moment, and in his soul, Passage smiled. Cracks spread throughout Pike's petrified arms, canyons parting in his flesh. The bell tolled its last, the sound rumbling through the building, an echo passing where time could not.

The cracks in Pike's arms deepened, spreading to his shoulders. But he was not the only one to break. First one, then two, then a hundred tiny cracks appeared across the bell. There came the sound of rock breaking, and time once more resumed. The bell exploded. So did Pike's arms. Chunks of stone sailed through the air, obsidian black and bloodlessly pale. The two of them were launched apart, carried on a shockwave that burst around them, blowing holes in the walls, the ceiling, and the floor.

Passage crashed through the far wall, ripping through rotten wood like paper and splashing into the canal. He landed in a shallow stretch, a sunken path not far beneath the surface. Durnheim's lingering note inured him against the pain, and he stumbled to his feet, standing in chest-high water. Dust and splinters rained down around him, a storm of shrapnel slowly falling as the three canal houses wobbled, leaning drunkenly against one another.

"No," Passage gasped, grief waiting on the other side of calm. He pushed the feeling away, not ready to mourn until he knew for certain where his tears were owed. The bell's final note faded and took the magic with it. Pain fast approached, Passage's every bone aching, his skin an endless bruise. It was not enough to keep him still. He had to find his friend.

"Bracken!" he wheezed and dived into the black.