The Thrasson's body believed. His aching ribs made soft popping sounds, and his breath left him and would not return. Hurting too much to scream, he dropped to his knees and fumbled his dagger from its sheath. He jammed the tip beneath the first buckle and cut the strap. His lungs filled with air, but the crashing anguish in his stomach deepened. Not worrying that the blade might slip and cut him, the Amnesian Hero shoved the knife down the crooked seam and severed the other two straps. The armor fell away, clanging softly into the dirt.
Even before the pain began to recede, the Amnesian Hero was on his feet and reaching for his sword. He would win no combats against the Lady of Pain-or anyone who, like the gods themselves, used magic without casting spells – but Hades had heard his prayer for a glorious death, and the Thrasson would not squander the honor by dying poorly. In fact, he found himself looking forward to the battle; a valiant effort would secure his name – or rather his legend – a place in the songs of bards throughout the multiverse.
It was not to be. His sword had not even cleared its scabbard before a loud clatter erupted from the far side of the wall.
"Zoombee!" The golden thread came arcing into the alley, unspooling as it flew, then the stones in the dabus' wall began to tremble.
The Lady of Pain pivoted her blade-haloed head toward the sound. The Thrasson drew his sword, but resisted the urge to attack. Despite appearances, he was quite certain that his powerful foe had not forgotten about him.
Jayk pulled her torso atop the wall, then froze in shock as she found herself looking down at the Lady of Pain. "By the One Death!"
The Lady raised a hand, as though to help the tiefling over.
Jayk's face went as pale as pearls, then the stones resumed their trembling. She glanced behind her and frowned, then granted and began to flail her legs at something.
"Don't fight me!" The voice was Tessali's. "This is for your own – huh!"
Jayk landed a kick, then hoisted herself entirely onto the wall and, like a rope-dancer, ran along the crest. The long-fingered hand of an elf caught her ankle, and she pitched headlong off the wall, crashing down upon the two dabus guards. The amphora came free of their grasp and thudded to the ground, rolling clear as a tangled heap of tiefling and dabus crashed down behind it.
The Amnesian Hero rushed over to the jar, silently thanking Apollo for not letting it shatter-then he noticed the crack in its neck. A loop of fine golden thread had pushed through the tiny fissure and seemed to be writhing out. The Thrasson kneeled down and clamped his free hand over the crevice. The filament pushed its way between his fingers and continued to work free.
"I fear your gift has been damaged." Still holding his sword, he turned to the Lady of Pain. "Whatever your intentions for me, perhaps you should open it now."
The hem of the Lady's gown billowed outward, as though she were walking forward. She seemed to step downward, then her dress fluttered again, and she vanished from sight.
"Milady?"
Another clatter sounded from the wall, then Tessali's voice called, "I need another net. They're both here!"
The Amnesian Hero turned to see a barmy net spinning through the air toward his head. He reached up and caught several strands in his hand, then, before Tessali could pull the draw cord, yanked his attacker from the wall. The elf had barely hit the ground before the Thrasson's sword was slashing back and forth through the net, cutting it to pieces.
By the time he turned back to the amphora, the golden thread had worked completely free of the crack. It rose into the air and began to circle. Pains Of The Flesh
Against that golden strand, there is no slip.
Still as stone, I stand before the Amnesian Hero, both feet smooth upon the ground. The Thrasson and his ilk call me gone, but not so that flaxen thread. Like a worm to a corpse, it comes to me and scribes its circle.
There is time yet, I think. I steal forward, feet as soft as feathers upon the haze-brown sky. The Thrasson's supplication, those divine lines, cannot stand: he must recant. He must disavow, he must renounce, he must curse my name and sob, wail, and beg for death. He must suffer for what he has done; for the good of the multiverse, he must rue the hour he uttered that beautiful prayer.
I do not reach him.
Once more the filament circles me, and something – I cannot say what – stirs in that void where I once had a heart. It is nothing I have ever felt before: a fluttering, a feeling as gentle and lonely as a mourning dove's lament; it is like a lover's hand: warm, comforting, and somehow familiar, so very inviting and so very dangerous.
Daedalus himself, most cunning of men, spun that golden fiber. It is sturdier than any chain Hephaestus ever forged. To pull against that filament is to make it stronger; to cut it is to braid it double, to untwine it is to spread it in an inescapable mesh. The Thrasson has cast Poseidon's net, if a single strand can a net make, and I dare not give it the touch.
I close my eyes, and when the thread circles the third time, no fiber drags across my skin, no filament tightens around my throat, no string binds my wrists. The Lady has gone from that dim alley.
The Thrasson stands unrepentant, the tiefling unpunished beside him. A key has turned, a lock has clicked; a door hangs unlatched and the treasure sits unguarded. I could go into the mazes after them, but there are dark things in the labyrinth, and corridors innumerable, branching and twisting and feeding into themselves in an irreducible tangle. In those passages all wanderers perish, by bloody claw or upon tottering legs, but always with the certain knowledge that the exit lay just beyond the next corner. Perhaps that is punishment enough.
And, in truth, I dare not allow the Thrasson to open the amphora and cast at me more strands from Poseidon's net. Already, the first has found me again. I feel a growing surge in that void where I once had a heart, a rhythmic roar that builds and fades, then rises again more powerful than before. The smell of brine and the salt sea pervades the air, and a stiff breeze whispers across the water. Hard as I try, I cannot shut off the sounds or ignore the scents; they are inside, like nightmares gushing from that dark well in my chest.
Standing above white-crested waves I see the Lady of Pain, gowned in white cloud and belted in golden light, her lips the same turquoise as the Arborean Sea. A string of pearls, black and lustrous like succubi tears, hangs around her neck. About her head flashes a diadem of blue lightning, while in place of her red-stained blade halo waves a flyaway mane of yellow hair: The strands vanish into the air and have no ends; they are a hundred thousand golden threads that lead to a hundred thousand of the multiverse's infinite planes.
In the air beside her – me? – hangs a ghostly visage made of the wind itself and as huge as the sun: the Elemental Queen of Air. Though her features are as translucent and shifting as a breeze, I see something in the shape of her face, in the angle of her oval eyes, and in the set of her high cheeks: a certain motherly semblance to the Lady of Pain.
On my other side stands a trident-wielding giant, waist-deep in waves, reeking of kelp and salt air, sea-foam for hair, sparkling skin like moonlight on water. Upon his lips, a father's miserly smile. He is stretching an upturned palm toward me and looking out to sea.
This cannot be! If I had parents, I would remember. This memory – this illusion-is some trick of Poseidon's, a ruse to win my trust and nothing more.
A black-sailed dhow approaches, steered by a single black-hooded helmsman. On the deck rest four black coffers, the bride price mighty Poseidon demands for the heart of his golden-haired daughter. The boxes hold agony, anguish, misery, and despair-the four Pains that rule the multiverse – but how I know, I do not know; that is as dark to me as the face beneath the hood.