Chapter 2:
The Cursed Sword
Anki lay bound on a narrow cot, wrists tied in roughspun rope.
His shirt was stiff with dried blood.
His father’s.
He stared at the hut wall and waited to learn what would be done with him.
Torchlight flickered beneath the door.
The latch lifted.
Proctor Thadaleis stood framed in the doorway — bald, severe, robed in gray worn thin with years of service. Inked spirals crawled across his scalp and down his arms, sacred markings of the Six Commandments.
“Anki,” the old man said gently. “We are ready for you.”
The boy nodded once.
Thadaleis stepped inside and cut the ropes with hands that trembled despite his efforts.
“Would you like a clean shirt?” he asked. “Some water?”
Anki shook his head.
The Proctor closed his eyes briefly and rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“I am sorry,” he said quietly. “That our laws should be tested so. And upon one so young.”
His voice faltered. He coughed to hide it.
“It’s alright, sir,” Anki replied.
It was the first time he had spoken since stumbling back into Blessed End days earlier — knife in hand, clothes soaked red.
“I did not speak to demons,” he had repeated then. “I did not break the First Commandment.”
Over and over.
The villagers had followed the trail of blood back into the mountains.
They found Randu.
They found the circle.
Questions were asked.
Anki answered in nods and pauses.
He felt nothing.
Not grief.
Not guilt.
Not fear.
He allowed himself to be led from place to place, obedient and hollow.
It was easier to be empty than to be Anki.
Thadaleis searched his face now as if trying to see what remained.
“You held fast to the First Commandment,” the Proctor said. “Blessed End will remember that.”
He seemed to be reassuring himself.
…
The thunder changed.
Anki felt it first in his teeth.
Not sound — vibration. A subtle hum that rattled through his jaw and down into his boots.
The gray sand beneath his feet trembled.
He froze.
The crystal forest around him hummed faintly, crimson light flickering through the towering pillars.
Wind dragged through their jagged edges to create a mournful dirge.
Then the sand ahead of him sagged.
Just slightly.
Anki swallowed.
“No,” he whispered.
The sagging widened.
The surface slowly split.
A single gray, dirt-caked hand crept upward from the earth.
“No,” he begged, louder now.
It groped blindly, fingers clawing at empty air.
Then another hand erupted beside it.
Then another.
The sand churned as if boiling.
Arms pushed through the surface in frantic waves — skeletal, swollen, child-sized, massive. Dozens of them. Scrabbling. Searching.
Anki screamed and ran.
He darted between crystal spires, boots sliding in loose sand. The earth buckled again behind him and something seized the back of his cloak. He tore free, fabric ripping in his hands.
More arms burst from the ground ahead.
They reached upward as if pleading.
Or starving.
One caught his ankle.
The grip was cold and terribly strong.
Anki kicked wildly, heel smashing into a wrist until it cracked. The hand loosened. Tearing free he scrambled uphill toward a ridge of hardened crystal growth.
The sand behind him collapsed inward as something large tunneled beneath.
A sucking noise followed as the ridge crumbled under Anki’s weight and he fell face first into the sand.
Hands burst up all around him.
He rolled, shrieking as fingers scraped across his ribs and neck. One seized his wrist. Another his shoulder.
“Let go!” he screamed, kicking and biting futilely. There were too many.
Then—
Something yanked him violently upward.
Hard.
The hands tore away from him, fingers broken and splintered.
Anki left the ground entirely.
For a single breathless moment he was certain he had been caught.
Not by this creature.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
By something worse.
The voice in the flame…
He swung wildly, slamming his fists backward at whatever held him.
“Don’t touch me!” he cried.
The grip tightened.
He twisted enough to see a dark hooded shape looming over him.
Too tall.
Too still.
Too close.
The face beneath the hood was split with scars.
The eyes were shadowed.
The mouth was a hard, humorless line.
Human.
But wrong.
Anki screamed again, thrashing harder.
“Demon!” he spat.
The man’s jaw flexed in irritation.
“Idiot.”
A leather-gloved hand cracked across his face.
The blow snapped his head sideways, clearing tears and panic from his eyes. He blinked up to see the man, hood now thrown back.
He was younger than Anki would have guessed.
Handsome in a severe, broken way.
Thin scar lines split his face into a jagged map of old wounds. Short black hair clung thick with sweat and gray ash.
He glared down at the boy, teeth bared.
“Get out of my fucking way.”
He hurled Anki aside like a rag doll. The boy struck a crystal pillar with a grunt, pain flaring through his shoulder and leg.
The man stood utterly still, attention fixed on the road ahead where the earth continued to churn and rumble.
With deliberate calm, he slid a massive leather-wrapped bundle from his back, undoing the straps with slow, practiced motions.
The ground exploded.
Something surged upward — at first just a round, bald infant’s face pushing through the sand. Corpse-gray skin. Bulbous eyes darting between the two humans.
Prey.
Its mouth split open, revealing needle-thin teeth and snapping mandibles. The rest of it followed — a long, serpentine body rising on muscular, insectile legs, each one ending in a grotesque parody of a human hand.
Arm after arm after arm.
It kept coming.
Ten feet tall already and still pulling more of its length from the hole.
The strange man tossed the leather wrap behind him. It landed over Anki in a heavy sheet of hide. As the boy shoved it aside, he saw the man standing with something enormous in his grip.
A sword.
Made of stone?
It looked less like a blade and more like a slab of polished black pillar torn from some ruined cathedral. Taller than the man by several inches, its weight seemed impossible. He held it by a black metal haft that jutted from its base.
The strain was visible. Muscles corded and swelled beneath his skin. Veins rose along his neck — darkening.
Black.
Anki’s breath caught.
Strange markings began to crawl across the blade — sigils burning outward like veins beneath skin.
The man’s posture shifted.
His muscles strained harder close to ripping the patchwork skin afresh. The veins swam an inky black color.
The demon roared — rage and something else.
Confusion?
The man howled with laughter.
Mirthless. The hooting call of a slathering beast.
The swordsman swung the massive blade over his shoulder with visible effort and planted his feet firmly in the sand.
He waited.
The demon answered immediately, charging on a sea of thrashing limbs and gnashing teeth.
Then the swordsman did something strange.
He closed his eyes.
He bent backward, arching until his face nearly brushed the ground. The tip of the blade sank a few inches into the soft gray earth before him, so close he could kiss it.
He breathed.
The sword breathed with him.
The runes flared in time with his lungs and heart.
The demon lunged through the air, reaching for the man’s exposed belly.
The swordsman’s eyes snapped open.
They were pitch black.
Bent backward toward Anki, he met the boy’s gaze.
And winked.
Then like a coiled spring, his body snapped upright bring the blade with him.
The swing was catastrophic.
Anki heard something crack — bone? spine? — as the force tore the man off his feet. Yet his hands never left the grip.
The sword launched ahead of him with all the certainty of an arrow in flight.
The demon tried to rear back, twisting to get away.
It whined and groaned wetly as the blade passed through its guts like a hot knife through butter and kept on.
Man and blade slammed into the ground beyond it, and remained still.
For a moment — silence.
Then the wound opened.
Viscera spilled. Acidic black blood hissed as it hit the sand, eating outward in widening rings. The demon screamed, trying frantically to push its organs back inside with its many hands.
It only made things worse.
Slowly the demon's movements grew sluggish.
Anki rose from underneath what he knew now to be the sword's enormous sheath. The demons eyes snapped on him.
Even as blood pooled from its lips they curled into a cruel smile.
Slowly it began to drag itself towards him.
Anki struggled to get up, but a twisted or broken ankle from when the man threw him erupted with pain.
He fell back down and could do little more than crawl backwards through the sand.
The creature reared, preparing to swallow him whole.
A black stone blade split its head in half.
Gore erupted in a stinking wave.
Blood splattered across Anki’s face and into his left eye.
It burned.
White-hot.
His skin sizzled. He screamed, wiping desperately at it.
A waterskin struck his chest.
“Use water.”
Through blurred, burning vision, Anki saw the man standing atop the demon’s corpse — alive, intact, drenched in midnight blood.
His eyes were brown now.
His veins invisible.
The man rolled his eyes. “Quickly. Gawk and you’ll lose the eye.”
Anki dumped the water over his face. Relief came instantly, blessed and cold.
Suddenly the man was behind him.
Anki flinched violently.
The warrior crouched, tore a strip of cloth from his cloak, and wrapped it tightly around the boy’s head.
“Keep it on until it stops hurting,” he said gruffly. “If light through the cloth still burns, don’t take it off.”
Anki nodded.
“Thank you,” he said quickly.
The man groaned as if the words offended him. Turning away, he bent to retrieve the heavy hide wrap and began resheathing the enormous blade with efficient, practiced movements.
“Forget it,” he muttered. “I didn’t do any of this for you.”
Anki blinked. “If not to save me, then why?”
“That—” The man gestured lazily toward the rapidly dissolving corpse. “—is a demon of gluttony. And not even a large one. And I hunt demons.”
He said it plainly. No pride. No ceremony.
Just fact.
In all Anki’s years, he had never heard such nonsense.
Demons hunted humans.
Never the other way around.
And yet the thing behind them was proof enough.
“Fat, lazy little things,” the man continued, tone bored. “They won’t risk prey that might fight back. Prefer the wounded. The sick. The old—”
“The young…” Anki finished, horror blooming in his single uncovered eye. “You used me as bait?”
The man gave a short, humorless chuckle.
“Hardly. You’ve been wandering straight through its hunting ground since dawn. I’ve been waiting a long time for it to show itself.” He shrugged. “So I waited.”
“That sounds like bait.”
A sigh.
“No, we can’t kill him. He’s human.”
Anki scrambled backward in the ash, pulse hammering. Was the man mad?
“Look, you’re scaring him, you homicidal moron.”
The words weren’t directed at Anki.
The man’s irritated glare shifted downward — toward the titanic blade now sheathed across his lap.
“Lose some weight or shut the f*** up for a minute.”
He smacked the weapon’s surface with his palm, then heaved it back over his shoulders, securing it in place.
Anki stared.
“Are you… talking to your sword?”
“He has a name.”
“I’m sorry?”
The man pinched the bridge of his nose as if enduring a headache.
“He wants me to tell you he has a name.” A pause. A visible internal argument. “I’m not saying that.”
Another pause.
“He’s being rude. Just… don’t call him a sword if you can help it. He’s sensitive.”
Anki swallowed. “He’s… not a sword?”
“No. He is Nahmaaris. Demon of Want.” The man adjusted the strap across his chest. “The sword is… temporary.”
Anki attempted to stand.
Pain detonated through his ankle and he collapsed back into the ash.
“I wouldn’t,” the man said mildly. “It broke your ankle. Surprised you stayed on it as long as you did. Adrenaline’s a powerful thing.”
Anki remembered the moment — when the creature had nearly torn his boot off.
“We’ll take you home,” the man continued. He gave the demon’s split skull a dismissive kick, shattering it further. “No reason to linger.”
“Where’re you from? One of the Pact Cities?”
“You—you can’t!”
The man arched an eyebrow.
“Can’t what?”
“You can’t take me home! If you do, everyone I know will die!”
He seemed to consider that seriously.
“I agree,” he said finally. “That’s a dramatic outcome.”
Anki let out an exasperated cry, fear finally giving way to frustration.
“My home is marked! A demonlord has been called down upon us. Vrak. And when he comes—”
The man’s posture shifted.
Subtle.
Dangerous.
“I must reach my destination,” Anki pressed. “Please. It’s our only hope.”
“How do you intend to save them?” The man’s voice had lost its lazy indifference. It carried iron now. “By yourself?”
“I mean to bargain,” Anki said. “With a greater power.”
Understanding dawned immediately.
“Ah.”
A slow nod.
“You’re going to the Ragpicker.”
Anki’s head snapped up. “You know of him?!”
“It,” the man corrected. “Crossroads west of here. Not far.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “I have business there myself. I do wonder how you came by that name.”
Anki’s panic returned in a flash.
“I won’t take you if you plan to kill it! I need it alive!”
“Relax,” the man said. “I kill demons. Whatever the Ragpicker is… it isn’t one.”
“But what else could it be?”
A shrug.
“Plenty of strange things in this world. Nahmaaris would know if it were a demon.” A slight glance toward the blade. “Now come on. You have a village to save.”
He turned and began climbing the hillside.
“Wait!”
He stopped without turning.
“What now?”
“What’s your name, sir?”
A long pause.
“It’s Axe.”
He said it like someone who didn’t often use it.
“Yours?”
“Anki.”
A brief nod.
“Anki,” Axe repeated, testing the sound. “Good name.”
Then he resumed his steady trudge.
Anki hesitated a moment. Could he really trust this man who worked with demons? Thinking of his father, Anki sighed deeply once before wrenching a long shard of demon bone from the corpse and using it to lever himself upright.
Grimacing, he followed, using it as a crude walking stick.
When they crested the hill, the valley beyond revealed itself.
Anki forgot his pain and doubt.
Red stone structures sprawled across a vast bowl-shaped depression, their architecture twisted and half-sunken into the earth. Fleshy growths clung to walls and streets like invasive flora. Veined. Pulsing.
Above it all churned a massive black storm.
From that roiling cloud poured a constant deluge of crimson rain. It struck rooftops and stone in wet, heavy splatters before flowing into slow-moving rivers of blood that filled the streets ankle-deep.
At the center of the ruined city stood an immense cathedral.
It burned.
Not with flame.
With light.
“What is that?” Anki whispered.
Axe pointed, unnecessarily.
“That,” he said, “is the Sunken City.”
“And it’s where you mean to go.”
…
