Not without remembering his daughter.
And yet, it was a problem to handle, one whose origins were not even agreed upon. Plague and bad fish were blamed at first, but the disease lingered. More began to speak of poison, delivered from the hands of shicts ever dedicated to ending humanity. Whispers, rumors; both likely wrong, but requiring attention.
One more problem that he would have to face, along with the dead, along with dwindling resources, along with the prisoner Rashodd, along with Daga-Mer, along with the fact that he had once entered this city with the intent of ending it. He would tell them and they would hate him, someday.
Kasla. .
He would never tell her.
She would never hate him.
He cast his gaze skyward. Clouds roiled, darkened. Thunder rumbled, echoed. A lone seagull circled overhead, soundless against the churning skies.
“Rain?” Kasla asked.
“Water,” he replied. One problem alleviated, at least.
Yet the promise of more water did not cause him the relief it should have, not so long as his eyes remained fixed upon the seagull.
“That’s odd,” she said, following his gaze. “It’s flying in such tight circles. I’ve never seen a gull move so. .”
Unnaturally, he thought, dread rising in his craw. Gulls don’t.
His fears mounted with every moment, every silent flutter of feathers, even before he could behold the thing fully. He swallowed hard as it came down, flapping its wings as it plopped upon two yellow feet and ruffled its feathers, turning two vast eyes upon him.
He heard Kasla gasp as she stared into its face. He had no breath left for such a thing.
“What in the name of. .” Words and Gods failed her. “What is it?”
He did not tell her. He had hoped to never tell her.
But the Omen stared back at him.
From feet to neck, it was a squat gull. Past that, it was a nightmare: a withered face, sagging flesh, and hooked nose disguising female features that barely qualified as such. Its teeth, little yellow needles, chattered as it stared at them both with tremendous white orbs, a gaze too vast to be capable of focusing on anything.
It was not the monstrosity’s gaze that caused his blood to freeze, not when it tilted its head back, opened its mouth, and spoke.
“He’s loose,” a man’s voice, barely a notch above a boy’s, and terrified, echoed in its jaws. “Sweet Mother, he’s loose! Get back! Get back in your cell! Someone! ANYONE! HELP!”
“That’s. . that’s Algi’s voice,” Kasla gasped, eyes wide and trembling. “How is. . what’s going-”
“Zamanthras help me, Zamanthras help me,” Algi’s voice echoed through the Omen’s mouth. “Please don’t. . no, you don’t have to do this. Please! Don’t! PLEASE!”
“Hanth. . what. .” Kasla’s voice brimmed with confusion and sorrow as her eyes brimmed with tears.
“In oblivion, salvation,” a dozen voices answered her. “In obedience, salvation. In acceptance, salvation. In defiance. .”
He looked up. Seated across the roof of a building like a choir, a dozen sets of vast eyes stared back, a dozen jaws of yellow needles chattered in unison and, as one dreadful voice, spoke.
“Damnation.”
“What are they, Hanth?” Kasla was crying. “What are they?”
“Hide,” he told her, taking steps backward. “Run. Get everyone as far away from here as you can.”
“There are boats, we could-”
“Stay on dry land! Stay out of the water! Tell them to leave the dead and the sick.”
“What? We can’t just leave them here to-”
No finish to the plea. No beginning to an answer. He was running.
People cast scowls at his back, shouted at him as he rudely shoved through their processions, cursed his blasphemies. That was easy to ignore. Kasla called after him, begged him to come back. That was not.
They could despise him. He would still save them. He would try.
Thunder clashed overhead, an echoing boom that shook his bones. He glanced up. The clouds swirled swiftly as if stirred in a cauldron. At their center, a dark eye of darker calm formed.
Directly over the temple. It followed the heartbeat.
“He wears the storm as a crown.”
He charged through the city streets, toward the warehouse turned into a prison. He would have prayed that its charge was still there. He would have prayed that the Omen was nothing more than a sick joke from a spiteful beast. He would have, if he thought any god still had ears for him.
He rounded a corner and the warehouse loomed before him. Its doors had been shattered. Algi, young and scrawny, stood against the doorframe, his legs dangling beneath him as his own spear pinned him to the wood through his chest. Algi’s eyes, wide and white, were staring at Hanth with the same fear Hanth knew would be reflected a hundred times over if he didn’t act fast.
A thick drop of rain fell upon his brow. It trickled down, sickly and hot, sticky and odorous to dangle in front of his eye. Red.
“The skies bleed for him.”
He was sprinting now, heart pounding in his chest as he made for the temple. The trail was marked, through streets and over sands, by immense footprints painted in blood.
Hanth could barely remember fear, but it was coming back swiftly. Overhead, thunder roared, lightning painted the skies a brilliant white for a moment. And for a moment, in shadows, he saw them, a hundred wings flapping, a hundred gazes turned to the city.
And its people.
He ran faster.
The temple doors were smashed open, the bar that had held them fast lay shattered on the ground. Darkness loomed within, the loneliness that only came from a god neglected. He charged in.
The temple was dark inside, darker than it was the last time he had been here. Dominating the center was the pool twenty men across. The waters were calm, placid, not a ripple to them.
Despite the thunderous heartbeat pulsing from beneath them.
Hanth stared at the water, wincing. The beating heart was almost unbearable here, an agony to listen to as its pulse quickened, blood raced with anticipation. Yet he forced himself to stare at it.
“Their jealous waters hold him prisoner.”
And then, to the tower of tattooed flesh and graying hair that stood at its edge.
“They call you Hanth, now, do they?”
Rashodd’s smile would have been repellent even if not for the hideous scarring of his face. Still, his half-missing nose, the crimson scab where an ear had once been, and his wiry beard certainly didn’t make him any more pleasant to look upon.
“When last I saw you, they called you the Mouth of Ulbecetonth and I called you ally.” He gestured to his face. “And this is what came of that.”
Still, Hanth found it easier to overlook both the Cragsman’s imposing musculature and his disfigurement when he spied the man’s great arm extended over the pool, a hand missing three fingers precariously clutching a dark vial containing darker liquid.
The only remaining mortal memory of the demon queen herself, the only thing capable of penetrating the smothering waters and calling Daga-Mer to a world that had long since forgotten him.
And as Hanth’s ears filled with the thunder of a heart beating, he knew he was not the only one to recognize it.
“I hid that for a reason.”
Hanth’s words and his tentative step forward were both halted by the precarious tremble of Rashodd’s maimed hand.
“I found it,” the Cragsman replied. “For a different one.”
“Why?”
“Can you truly be so dull, sir?” Rashodd asked. “That I am here suggests that I am charged with doing that which you cannot.” His eye twitched, his smile grew hysterical at the edge. “I’ve heard Her voice, Mouth. I’ve heard Her song. And it was beautiful.”