The Nameless Lands

(Contains brief moments of sensitive language and violence. Reader's discretion must advise.)

The Nameless Lands

Robson. W

The pyromancer in red sat on a tall smooth block of moss stone over a valley of white blanket grass and pale dead trees. The flakes that fluttered freely like freezing stars were relentless. It had been going on for five months with so much as a minute of pause. The pyromancer had been killing his time by tossing a ball of small fire around from one gloved hand to another, both concealing black, charred skin and blood dried cuts and lesions from his years of work. His face hid under a chainmail-like patterned helmet that wore over his head under his red wide-brimmed hat, the color of the very fire in his hands. Slivers of his yellow eyes shined from the gaps of his helmet—the crunching of snow and snapping branches caught off his guard. The pyromancer froze, holding the flaming ball in his hand like a rock, ready to throw. 

"Sutha?" The pyromancer called quietly. 

"It's me, don't you fucking roast me alive, Sabiroth," Sutha replied, hectic and sharp. 

"I wasn't going to hurt you, so long as you don't scare me like a child with a stunt like that. Our target could've been standing in that exact spot." Sabiroth berates his partner. His partner, in particular, was the Half-Orc, Sutha Sunasha of the Eastern Steppes. She stood clad in fur and steel that hid her muscular physique. She stood staring down her partner with fiery red eyes with pupils like that of a cat. Her long brown braided hair moved barely in the winter wind. Her small tusks were sharpened to a fine point, and her thick, olive skin carried her sheathed long sword. She snickered at him. 

“That shows you for not paying attention to your surroundings because if that were the target, you’d be a mangled pile of blood and bone just about now.” 

“I’d doubt that.” Sutha could see the smile through Sabiroth’s mask and smiled back.

Sabiroth gathered himself, brushing the snow from his cloak and dissipating the fire in his hands, then hopped from the stone, feet first onto the ground. His boots were swallowed in white powder.

“And besides,” Sutha added, “I caught a glimpse of our target; it’s rolling in the tar banks like a pig. That way.” Sutha pointed her finger towards the tree line. Sabiroth looked up to the branches, naked and gray.

“Do you think the branches will hold us both?” Asked Sabiroth.

“We land in the right spot, and it should. Some are rotted hollow but not all of them,” said Sutha. Her bladed sword is tied back onto her waist. She knelt on one knee and looked at her partner. “Well?” She asked impatiently, thinking Sabiroth was on the same page as her.

“What are y…no, no…thank you. I can just teleport.” Sabiroth looked back at her blankly. He must’ve thought she was out of it today. Him on her back? That’s double the weight. They’ll break the first branch in no time and scare the target shitless back in its cave.

“ What’s the problem?” Sutha said, her head raised. Her face soured as if she had been offended, as if she had been rejected for proposing to him.

“Aren’t you worried I’d create extra weight if we did this? I don't like this plan.” Said Sabiroth.

“Why are you always scared when you touch me? We’ve been together for long enough for you to know that I’ll never break you… even if I want to. And for the record, I’m faster than you and more agile, with or without your powers. And lastly, you’ll scare it back to wastes with all that noise you’ll make when you teleport.” Sabiroth went pink.

“Oh, and you’re as silent as a mouse then?” Sabiroth said irritability.

“Yes.” Snapped Sutha in a hushed tone. Now get on, or we’ll lose it, and so help me if we do, I will strap you on my back, bound and gag, till we make it back to Hanghill. Got it?” Her eyes were redder and more violent than the fireball Sabiroth played within his hands. He didn’t have a second option; doing things she says by will or force is the worst thing Sabiroth has to put up with her. The more time he wasted debating with Sutha, the more time their target would escape. And after a month of tracking it, letting it run isn’t acceptable. It will fight, and it will die fighting. Finally, Sabiroth gave in and climbed on Sutha’s back. “Got it.” He replied. Sutha was right; Sabiroth was never comfortable with physical touch; unless it was the direst of circumstances. Sabiroth swallowed his pride for now and held tightly on Sutha’s neck with his arms. Sutha wasn’t worried he’d risk straining her throat. It had to take a hundred chains for her brain to believe that she was being unintentionally strangled.

“Don’t let go.” Said Sutha.

“Won’t dream of it.” Sutha leaped high to the nearest branch with the spring of her knelt knee, as wide and thick as a grown horse. And before her feet even brushed the branch, she leaped again. This time with her other leg and blitzed to the next. They jumped tree to tree until they could make out the outlines of black tar on the horizon, and the bank’s stench knocked them back. When they arrived in the middle of the banks, the tar was the size of a lake. It drowned every inch of plant life, the trees around barely held on their own. Many were uprooted and sunk halfway, while some were angled as the tar acted as a sort of glue that kept the large trunks from falling. The heavy snow turned into a wet flourish that burned as it touched the black surface. Sutha jumped to one more tree before stopping. 

She let a hand gesture and helped Sabiroth from her back. A terrible scream echoed across the region, clouds of birds fled, and the tar itself shook and rippled. The thing Sabiroth and Sunasha hunted for so long was below them. It was a collection of hands, legs, breasts, tails, wings, and heads of every feasible creature under God’s design. It bore the fruit of a cyclopean maze of plant, animal, insect, and man. How flora held itself from the lake, it protruded from its thorax of patterned cow skin and crying bodies buried and fused. The collection rolled and fluttered as its legs danced and scrambled. This sight made Sabiroth’s color drain from its skin. He was a ghost through his red apparel, a scared, nervous, unflinching ghost. His yellow eyes never looked away from what he saw. Even he tried, even if he so much as succeeded, he still would’ve seen it, looped and cycled forevermore in his brain.

“Stay with me.” said a familiar voice in the back of Sabiroth’s mind. His eye contact broke when a silk, olive green hand popped out of the corner of his eye. The hand snapped its fingers until Sabiroth felt that he finally returned back to the present. He could hear Sutha’s voice more clearly. It was a meager whisper. “Sabiroth, stay with me. Don’t look at its face. Sabiroth?”

“I’m here.” He replied in the same tone as Sutha’s. “I’m sorry, it’s just… I don’t know what came of me.”

“You’re fine, just shut up and listen, I’ll chase it that fallen tree over there. The minute I land, burn its legs off. If that is wood fused into its legs, you will burn its legs down to its roots. Go for its thorax without a second thought, I will rip its jaws open and plunge my sword into its brain. Ok?”

“Ok.” 

“We can’t turn back, Sabiroth. We’re so close. It’s literally right there, for fucks sake. We follow through with our training, our plans. We will walk out alive. We. We’ll drown its body in its own shit and rest. The coins they’ll give us this think about it Sabiroth. I can claim my title and be knighted like they promised me. I can’t believe our time has come, Sabiroth. Ho-Jan Sabiroth, are you ready to fight with me?” Sutha unsheathed her sword swiftly and raised its end to the air. Sabiroth looked at her, finally has looked at her. Her small opal blue eyes glinted with tears as she awaited his answer. He unsheathed his blade and crossed it with hers.

“Till my final breath, Lady Sunasha.”

And with a single leap, they fought the shadow.