Here's the next installment of our Metallum Nocturne story. If you need to catch up on any of the previous episodes, click here.
Episode Forty-Two
Her nakedness brought heat to her cheeks, but the former patron of her Hall stared back with ambivalence. Adolphus wore the mien of a stoner lost in his trip.
"Patron Adolphus?" she asked tentatively.
Rather than answer he turned and headed back the other way. She caught up to him, but he strode forward without acknowledging her presence.
"Are you okay? Is this gonna be okay?"
The longer he didn't speak, the more worried she grew, but Claire doubted she'd find the answers she sought without following him to his destination. The interior of the spire was an architectural marvel, a mix of gothic and abstract styles. The tentacle-people moved around the inside, but avoided their passage—in fact, they barely acknowledged their existence. Stepping into a cylindrical room, Claire started to speak when they rocketed upward. Her stomach dropped into her knees, but after the initial shock, she relished the soaring climb. The "elevator" let them out in a grand space that glowed with strange negative light and shifted with shadowy obscurings.
In the chamber was a figure suspended between long ribbons of shadow making them appear as a spider at the center of the web. The alien being was both horrifying and beautiful like staring at a strange bug that defied expectations. Claire followed Adolphus to the interior, standing before the figure who hovered above her like a god.
"BRIGHT TRAVELER, GREETINGS."
Claire dropped to her knees, hands over her ears to protect against the assault of the Night Mother's voice. It felt like her flesh had been ripped away in the hurricane of volume. Next to her, Adolphus appeared unaffected.
"Traveler. Greetings."
The voice resoundingly echoed in the space, but at a bearable level. Claire struggled to her feet to show that it was an improvement.
"Greetings, Night Mother."
Up close, the Night Mother's face swirled with changes. Claire saw four eyes, then eight, then a normal woman's face, and then an insect's before returning to black mist.
"Time. Distance. Journey."
When the Night Mother spoke, images formed in her head. Claire interpreted the words as an acknowledgement of her travel.
"It wasn't not difficult. The hardest part was..." Claire gestured towards her body. "The final change."
"Weak flesh. Shadows eat."
"I know now. What is this flesh?"
"The Flesh of Gods."
Claire wished she knew more about what Celesse had meant when she said Umbra was like the Infernal Realm, a place of high faez. Her only interpretation was that the rules of reality were less physics based and more reliant on ever-changing magic. The implications were a bit scary, even as the scene before her was terrifyingly beautiful.
"Why am I here?" asked Claire.
"I hunger. Shadows fade. Time endless."
Claire almost didn't want to ask the question. "Hunger for?"
"Bright flesh. Change. Web of Portals."
Claire had the impression that the realm of Umbra was less accessible than the others. The requirement of having one's flesh changed over to night metal probably made that a reality. The Night Mother seemed to be bored, if that was a thing that eternal beings could experience.
"I don't want to kill for you."
"End flesh. Flesh eternal. I hunger."
Claire stared up at the Night Mother. The tendrils of shadow shifted around her hovering form.
"Not eternal," said Claire. "If I kill, that person is dead. I can't kill for you."
"END FLESH. FLESH ETERNAL. I HUNGER."
Driven back to her knees, Claire clamped her hands over her ears. She checked back to Adolphus, who continued to stare ahead. When she returned to standing, she snapped her fingers before his eyes.
"What did you do to him?"
"One with shadows."
"Got it," said Claire, checking over her shoulder. "Is everything in your realm one with shadows?"
The image in her mind was those shadowy tentacles connecting with everything. "One with shadows."
"Great. You don’t see it as killing, do you? You think everything in our realm is connected."
"One with flesh. I hunger."
"You hunger," repeated Claire, dejected. "It's not hunger. It's killing."
"I hunger. End flesh."
Coming to Umbra, she'd thought the Night Mother would be some omnipotent being who'd hovered on the edge of the realms for eternity, but now she realized the intelligence was so alien that it made it hard to communicate.
"No end flesh," said Claire as if she were speaking to a disobedient dog.
When the Night Mother didn't answer, she thought she might have made her point, but then tendrils of shadows broke free and started snaking towards her. Claire backed away, but there was nowhere to go, and from behind the tentacle-people blocked her escape.
"One with shadows."
"No!" said Claire, holding up her hands. "If you one with shadows me, then I can't help you experience our world."
"End flesh. I hunger."
Sensing she couldn't deny the Night Mother in her realm, she decided to lie.
"Fine. I'll end flesh for you."
The tips of the tendrils undulated nearby. Claire felt like she was surrounded by shadow snakes.
"I'm Claire," she said, pointing at her chest, hoping to get through to the Night Mother in another way.
The Night Mother didn't speak, but an avalanche of images left her stunned for a few seconds. Claire didn’t know how to comprehend most of them, but she was left with a single word in her head.
"Nocturna. That's your name."
"Nocturna," said the Night Mother as if it were the first time that word had been spoken aloud.
"The song of shadow. Nocturna." Then under her breath. "How does one reason with an alien god?"
"Night metal. Bright traveler. Trade for flesh. Trade for not one with shadows."
"Great," said Claire. "Yes, this bright traveler will trade that flesh for not being one with the shadows and night metal it seems. Is that what happened with Adolphus? Did he refuse to trade?"
"First traveler. One with shadows."
"Something I'd like to avoid."
"Trade for flesh. I hunger."
"Yeah, you've said that already," said Claire.
Before she could dodge it, a tendril shoved its shadowy tip into her head and Claire could no longer see the Night Mother's chamber. In its place, she was back in the city of Invictus, standing in the courthouse bathroom with Annette Block. In the vision, Claire surged forward with her hands around the mayoral candidate's neck, squeezing until the woman's face was bright red. Her security detail never came through the door and after a minute, Annette was left motionless on the tile floor, splayed out like a forgotten marionette.
"Merlin's tits," muttered Claire when she was back in the Night Mother's chamber. "You want me to kill Annette Block."
"Claire hungers for flesh."
The meaning was clear. The Night Mother had seen her hate for Annette Block and saw it as an acceptable trade, not understanding how human society worked. In her own, alien way, the Nocturna thought she was being benevolent.
"No, I can't. That's not how it works."
The tendrils shifted closer. "One with shadows."
"Fine," said Claire, holding her hands up. "Fine. Whatever you want. Just as long as I'm not one with shadows."
Before she could move again, the tendril slammed into her head again, sending a new round of lifelike images into her brain. She was walking down the street at night when the shadows came alive, tendrils reaching out and capturing her, dragging her back through a hidden portal until she was kneeling before the Night Mother once again.
"Got it. If I don't kill Annette Block, you bring me back here, somehow."
The tendril patted her on the arm where her flesh had been turned to night metal upon entering Umbra.
"I see. This night metal protects me, but it's also my leash."
A pit opened in her stomach. She'd hoped for answers, and gotten them, but was now confronted with a task so onerous she didn't know how to complete it. Lost to her thoughts, she didn't notice the tentacle person approach until it handed her a lump of warm metal that fit into the palm of her hand. Night metal. An astronomical sum.
Claire almost threw it away from her. Night metal had been the source of everything that had gone bad.
"Did you do this to me? Did you somehow make the explosion happen so I'd end up coming here?"
"I hunger."
"Right, yes, of course you did. You're a fucking bored, sociopathic god in a realm you conquered eons ago and now you're looking for new experiences and I'm that conduit. Fucking great, Claire. You should have listened when everyone said night metal wasn't worth the trouble."
"Bright traveler return."
Adolphus turned the opposite direction. Claire considered for a half-second staying and arguing with Nocturna, but the idea she could convince this god to change her mind was ludicrous. She followed the former patron into the shaft, dropping slowly through the spire until she reached the bottom floor. She thought he'd lead her back to her point of origin, but he took her into a room off the main chamber with a glistening wall of shadow on the opposite side. It looked like an oil slick suspended vertically.
"Am I supposed to go through that?" she asked.
Adolphus' eyelids quivered before snapping open. The slackness of his face grew rigid. He glanced around the area as if he were waking up.
"Claire?"
"Yes," she said, stepping close. "Is this Stephen Adolphus speaking?"
"I think so."
He screwed up his face, half opening his mouth before returning it closed.
"What happened after you came here?"
"It doesn't matter," he said. "What matters is that if you don't do what Nocturna says, she'll drag you back here forcibly and you'll end up like me. I'm sorry. I never should have brought night metal into our realm, but I was so determined to prove the importance of our Hall that I didn't listen to him."
"Him?"
"Invictus. He warned me."
Claire stared at the lump of night metal in her fist. She thought about dropping it, but decided she'd already been transformed by its touch.
"She wants you to go back through the portal."
"And kill Annette Block."
"Yes," he said, blinking. "I'm sorry. You have to go now."
Claire strode forward, hesitating briefly before passing through the oily wall, which felt cool across her skin, and then the world went sideways.
