The Heirs of Death

38. 2 Lullaby of Death

LULLABY OF DEATH

I'd never seen so many dead bodies in one place-never seen this amount before, for the matter.

We'd gone through what were around six hundred rooms for hours now. And Liam was right, there was no guessing at what horrors were hidden here. So much blood, so many dead, so many cries.

The first two hundreds were reserved to newborns. We watched-as we remained hidden between the folds of the world-as the babes were pulled out of their mothers, as they were chained down to tables and infused with magic. We watched as some bled to their death, or crumbled beneath the weight darting in their blood. We watched as some survived, adopting the darkness, letting it taint them. Own them. We weren't able to do a thing to save them. Or to spare the mothers slaughtered straight right after.

We only walked deeper, pushing away the small, broken cries. Trying not to stare too long, not to see the newborns shrieking against the cold table, their eyes rolling back, their hands grasping for nothing. And then, silence. I never imagined that silence could sound this loud.

I didn't deign ask how Yesar was faring. A mighty, general's son, a warrior himself that would never disclose how he felt, who would never let it show. But he was a newly-made father. And I knew that he imagined the son he had not met yet on those tables, that he saw Taliana in those cells, trying to reach for her child.

It didn't get easier the deeper we went.

Another two hundred rooms, and I knew then why the children at Green Leaf's village were abducted. Why guards took the girls barely past their first bleed from their homes. I wished I didn't. Wished I hadn't seen them bloodied and chained, left for breeding. Forced to carry demons in their wombs, to lose a piece of themselves with each breath as the monsters within them ate them from the inside. They had been little more than decaying bodies, standing on nothing but a string between life and death.

Dying slowly, rotting in dungeons and experiment rooms where the world would not see them. Where no one would know of them, would save them.

Perhaps ending them as we passed by would have been their salvation. Perhaps I should have done that, should have put them out of their misery. But it was such a risk to take, such a clear sign that someone was here.

And so we went deeper, descending levels after levels until there had been no more specialists working, hunched over their tables. Until magic swayed all around, doing all the work that couldn't be trusted to any living being.

We found the Drakals, then. And I realized that the river of souls I'd seen in my vision at Leaf's village wasn't truly real. The thick smoke, the finger-like shapes that came out, those we found. But they poured out of a cauldron carved into the walls. Out of a gate.

Blake's magic was creating monsters never seen before, assembling them piece by piece, building their bodies from shreds of organs. And the souls they poured into them were real, pulled straight out of the realm of the dead. And for Blake to be able to do so, to open such gates...it wasn't normal magic. It wasn't even Dearcious's. It was a fleck of what Apocalys had, of what he left dispersed for his servant to collect.