A Discourse in Steel Read Online Free PDF Page A

wondered if the portal had taken them into one of the Eleven Hells, where the evil were reborn only to suffer.
    He realized that the crystal’s light was faintly penetrating a few paces into the black. The dark earth felt spongy underfoot, organic, like walking on flesh.
    Warmth in his cloak. The journal! They were getting closer to Drugal.
    “We’re getting closer,” he said, but Egil appeared not to hear him.
    “Who’s out there?” Egil shouted, startling Nix.
    “Gods, prie—”
    “Hulda? Asa?”
    Nix hadn’t heard his friend say the names of his wife and daughter in many years. He cursed, pointed the crystal at Egil. The priest’s shadowed face showed wide, unfocused eyes.
    “Egil?” Nix shook him. “Egil?”
    The priest looked past him, nearly shoved him aside. “Asa, where are you? Hulda? I should never have left. I’m sorry.”
    The priest’s speech was slurred when he said “sorry,” as if he were half asleep. He started off through the darkness, trying to shake Nix loose as he went.
    Weeping sounded on all sides of them, forlorn, bereft. Nix lost track of the direction in which they were moving. The journal in his cloak went cold.
    “Egil! Godsdammit, Egil!”
    He tried to pull Egil to a halt, but the priest was a mountain of muscle and Nix could barely slow him down.
    “Hulda! Hulda!”
    “Dammit, Egil! Your wife and daughter are not here! Egil!”
    Nix glanced over his shoulder and saw the twin points of his magefire growing fainter, like distant, dying stars.
    “We won’t be able to get out!” he said, grunting against Egil’s pull.
    But Egil didn’t hear him and dragged him onward and soon the darkness had swallowed the magefire entirely.
    “Shite!” Nix cursed, and tried to plant his feet. “Stop, Egil! Stop!”
    “Asa!” the priest said, his voice breaking with tears. “Asa, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
    The journal against Nix’s chest warmed.
    Egil slumped to the spongy earth, weeping. “Asa. Asa.”
    The darkness around them deepened, perhaps fed by Egil’s thoughts. Nix fought it with thoughts of sun and laughter and love. A presence manifested off in the black. To Nix it felt like a door had opened and something big and dark and terrible was looking through. Nix sensed the weight of an alien regard as it settled on him. His teeth chattered. A breeze picked up, warm and damp, like the breath of something unimaginably huge.
    Nix’s mind roiled, memories assaulting him, hateful things, matters he regretted, things that made him loathe himself. The darkness grew more profound. He could barely see. The light of his crystal was dying. He wanted to cry, to curl up and cry. He ran his finger over his falchion’s edge, drew blood, and hissed at the pain.
    “Keep yourself, keep yourself, keep yourself,” he said over and over. He dug a fingernail into the cut on his thumb and the pain gave him focus. The darkness relented a bit. But something was coming, something dark and spiteful and beyond Nix.
    “Asa,” Egil pleaded, sobbing. “Oh, Asa.”
    Nix kneeled over the priest and smacked him hard, once, twice, a third time.
    “Egil! Egil!”
    The priest bled from his nose and Nix hit him again and again.
    “Egil! There’s something in here, something that feeds on sorrow and hate and regret. It’s coming for us now and we have to get out! Get up! Get up!”
    “What?” the priest’s eyes gained focus. He daubed at his nose. “What? Oh gods, Nix.”
    With the priest freed from the cage of his thoughts, the darkness lifted still more. Nix thought he heard a slithering out in the black, something huge and serpentine sliding over the spongy earth.
    “Come on!” he said, and they staggered through the dark, nearly blind, both terrified, as something awful squirmed after them.
    The journal in Nix’s chest went from warm to hot. He wanted to ignore it, but he couldn’t.
    “Wait, wait! He’s close, Egil.”
    “I know!”
    “No, I mean Drugal! Professor Drugal!