The Skybound Sea Read Online Free Page A

under his hiding place. He ran to his mother’s blood-covered arms.
    “That’s right,” she said through the tears. “Come to me, darling. We’ll end this all together.” She collected him up in her arms, stroked his sticky hair and laid a kiss upon his forehead. “Father’s down there. You’ll see.”
    She turned toward the ocean.
    “Everything we’ve ever wanted … is down below.”
    “NO!”
    He screamed. It was lost in the storm.
    So, too, was the sound of two bodies, large and small, striking the water and slipping beneath the waves, leaving nothing more than ripples.
    The creature turned to him. The blue light illuminated the frown of one of its mouths, the perverse joy of the other.
    “Cou​ldh​ave​sav​edt​hem​cou​ldh​ave​sto​ppe​dth​isc​oul​dha​veg​one​muc​hea​sie​r …”
It whispered to him and only to him
.
“Yourfaultyourfaultyourfault …”
    The beast lowered itself to the ground, hauled itself to the edge of the water on two thin limbs.
    “Bet​ray​edH​era​ban​don​edH​erf​ors​ook​Her​aft​era​llS​hep​rom​ise​d …”
    It looked at him. He saw his horror reflected in its obsidian eyes. It spoke, without whispers. And he heard its true voice, thick and choking.
    “But She will not abandon you, Mouth.”
    He saw the creature disappearing only in glimpses: a gray tail slipped beneath the water, azure light winked out in the gloom.
    And he was left with but ripples.
    His back buckled, struck with the sudden despair that only now had caught up with him. Realization upon horrifying realization was heaped upon him and he fell to his knees.
    Hanth would die here.
    Daga-Mer had risen. The faithful ran rampant throughout Yonder, a tide of flesh and song that would drown the world. Ulbecetonth would speak to that world and find ears ready to listen, ready to believe that everything they wanted lay beneath the sea. His family was dead.
    Kasla was gone.
    He remembered despair clearly.
    “No …”
    Denial, too.
    He clambered to his feet. Hanth would die soon, but not yet.
    Where? Where could she have gone? She had said something, hadn’t she? Before he left, she had said … what was it? Something about them, not leaving
them
. Who were they?
    The sick. The wounded. She would have tried to find them. Because she was the person he would run through hell to find.
    He slipped through the alleys, found himself back on the streets. The tides of panic had relented, the people vanished. Those who hadn’t been hauled away lay trampled in the streets.
    He could not help them now. He walked slowly, wary of any of frogmen that might lurk in the shadows. It only took a few steps to realize the folly of that particular plan. If any frogmen came for him, they would be aware of him long before he was of them.
    The Omens, lining the rooftops in rows of unblinking eyes, would see to that.
    “Denial is a sin,” they chanted, their voices echoing each other down the line. “The faithful deny nothing. The penitent denies heaven. The heathen denies everything.”
    Empty words to those who knew the Omens. Risen from the congealed hatred that followed demons and the faithful alike, they were merely parasites feeding and regurgitating the angst and woe their demonic hosts sowed in quantity. Without anything resembling a genuine thought, they could say nothing he could care to hear.
    “She’s going to die, Mouth.”
    Or so he thought.
    He looked, wide-eyed, up at the dozens of chattering mouths, all chanting a different thing at him.
    “She’s going to die.”
    “You’re going to watch it.”
    “She’s going to suffer, Mouth.”
    “Sacrifices must be made.”
    “Promises must be kept.”
    “You could have stopped this.”
    And he was running again, as much to escape as to find Kasla. Their voices welled like tides behind him.
    “Why do you deny Mother Deep?”
    “You could have saved her.”
    “This is how it must be,