Covet Not

By Steve Rzasa

Jagged pumice scraped my palms bloody.

The sword loomed above me. I was nearly within reach. Violet lightning reflected off the four-foot blade. My bearded face stared back at me, distorted by the weapon’s bulging middle.

Almost there.

“Haggai!” Tashmetu’s voice was faint beneath the thunder’s rumble. It mingled with the beasts’ shrieks.

Ignore her. I shrugged off the now dead creature’s tentacle. Blue sludge mingled with the crimson blood coating my arm. The stench did not stop me, no matter how my stomach heaved. The prize was in reach.

My fingers brushed the sword’s curved edge.

Power surged through my body. Aching muscles, bruised bones, torn flesh… None of them mattered. This was everything I’d sought. Not even the bodies had stopped me.

I dug my boot into the mountainside and pushed until my hands wrapped around the hilt.

At last.

A bellow rose from the beasts below. Tashmetu’s anguished scream fought through their cacophony.

Let them wail. I needn’t fear them.

Not with this power in my grasp.

I yanked the sword free. Purple sparks mimicking the lightning flashing around me scattered across my trousers and boots, burning tiny holes. They stung my skin. I didn’t care.

A steady hum cocooned me in sound, drowning the noises of the dark landscape below while filling my head with a steadiness so profound, tears filled my eyes.

The blade was mine. I could rend this foul place.

I swung the blade around my head, and with a hoarse shout, thrust it straight ahead of me at waist level. It sank deep into the air, as if I’d pierced the hide of yet another beast.

Light exploded. I ground my teeth as I wrested the blade up, then down, widening the gash in the universe.

Warm air and sweet smells washed over me in waves of pure joy. The landscape beyond brimmed with life. I gazed upon sprawling emerald plains hemmed with rivers. Amber leaves shivered from alabaster branches. A spring breeze carried their fragrance.

“Haggai! Please!”

I turned at Tashmetu’s plea. Singed tentacles recoiled where they smashed against her golden shield, its blazing edges as intense as the midday sun. Black hair whirled around her, wild as stampeding horses. Fear contorted her features as she bashed monsters aside. They screamed from gaping, fang-filled maws. “You’ve forgotten everything! Do not let it take me from you! Not like Mixalis!”

I froze. The sword’s hum intensified, but I refused to budge.

Tashmetu’s warning had pushed aside the visions of victory, replacing them with smaller but stronger pictures—two brown-haired boys playing in the same fields I had glimpsed through the rift…

Mixalis.

Winds rushed around me. I shifted my stance again so they couldn’t blow me off the mountain, but when I did, the crunching underfoot felt different.

My boot wasn’t grinding rock beneath its tread.

It instead broke bones in my brother’s wrist.

Mixalis lay still. His eyes were wide and pale, catching what little light seeped through endless storm clouds shrouding the desolate landscape. Blue ichor soaked his tunic and dribbled from his steel armor. The severed tentacle I had pushed aside remained wrapped around his neck, fingerprints visible on the swollen hide.

My fingerprints.

I had strangled him. And for what?

The blade hummed until it scraped against my mind.

I released it but it remained wedged between worlds.

“Haggai!” Tashmetu swung at the nearest beast. She missed. Its tentacles wrapped around her midsection. Her cries melted into moans and her eyes went glassy. Sucking sounds echoed in the chamber as the beast fed. Her life would seep away in minutes.

And I had killed my own brother for the strength to rend the walls between universes.

I wrenched the blade free. The barrier snapped back into place, waves of power slamming across my body.

I would not fail another loved one.

The beasts stood in my way but with the blade in hand, they burst into mist as I cut through their ranks. Blue filth stained me from head to toe. Misshapen bodies and severed tentacles lined my frantic slide down the jagged peak.

There was no counting the slain I left in my wake. I glared at each screaming monster as I killed it, desperate to memorize each hideous visage in hopes I could banish Mixalis’s tortured face from my mind.

So much suffering. Never again.

I bottomed out in the valley mere feet from Tashmetu. She had gone deathly pale, but the instant I sliced away her captor’s tentacles, color rushed back into golden-brown skin.

Tashmetu staggered against me. “Please. We must leave this place. It has turned you cold and me violent.”

More beasts slithered in from the surrounding ravines, blocking every path of escape.

I slit the barrier between worlds again. The blade stuck, having opened a gap big enough for only one.

I smiled. Perhaps it was fitting. I had grappled with fate and proved avaricious. I could not return Mixalis, but I could save Tashmetu.

“My love.” I kissed her. “Go.”

She pressed her hand to my chest, leaving its imprint in ichor and blood.

“I can’t leave you.”

The shrieks battered us. The beasts slithered closer. I could feel their hunger.

“But I can’t let you stay.” I broke free and pushed her into the simmering breach.

Tashmetu threw her arms wide, mouth forming words I couldn’t hear. She stumbled back into a vast seascape of shallow waters and sprawling trees.

I picked up her shield. It melted into a tattered, heavy journal with glowing pages. “Keep her safe, Tome.”

“Always do.” Tome’s reedy voice sighed. The sound reassured me that Tashmetu would never be alone. “Are you sure—?”

I tossed the mystical book through the gap as the tentacles took me. Searing cold froze my blood and bones. Stinging pain abated, faster than I expected.

The rip between worlds vanished right before my vision faded and my heart stopped.

Brother.

Wait for me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steve Rzasa doesn’t slay monsters, but he defeats word count goals and vanquishes overdue books. He’s the author of many novels of science-fiction and fantasy, including the award-winning tales Broken Sight, Mercury on Guard, and Mercury at Risk. When he’s not writing, he’s running a library in Wyoming. Find his stories at his website.

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