Eldorado

“It’ll cost you.” Bonney drawled laconically, over the top of his dusty boots crossed on the scarred table top, to the scientist trembling in front of him. He pursed his lips, turned his head and spat a thin stream of brown tobacco juice into the spittoon at his side.

The scientist looked like he would shit himself if Bonney’s hand so much as twitched in the direction of his holster. “We won’t take El Dorado seekers. We’re a scientific expedition.”

“Then I guess you’d best fuck off and find someone else.” Bonney, tipped the brim of his hat over his eyes and laced his fingers across his stomach in dismissal.

The scientist blinked in confusion, caught between principle and necessity. “You’re one of those religious fanatics?”

“East, you want to take care of this?” Bonney drawled as he tipped his chin towards his chest.

A tall man rose from a table across the way where he’d been playing cards with two scruffy looking cowboys. He strolled over to stand beside Bonney, his dark eyes on the scientist. “Boss.” He cocked his head in the direction of the other man, “You came to us because…”

The scientist, relaxed a fraction, “We need help. There’s something on the planet that is stalking members of the expedition. We can’t perform our study and defend our people, we need protection.”

East nodded, his face sympathetic, “So you asked around for someone to take the job?”

The scientist nodded, “Yes. They all turned us down. Then someone suggested that your,” his eyes flicked to Bonney who appeared to have fallen asleep under his hat, “Boss might be interested.”

“And he is, for the right price.” East smiled, his face, handsome to a fault, disarming.

“We’re prepared to pay.” The scientist relaxed, returning East’s smile.

“Then the price is you hire El Dorado seekers.” A female voice said matter-of-factly into his ear, as the tip of an unguarded blade probed the layers of clothing covering his ribs.

The man’s body went rigid with terror, the inner seam of his practical light weight space overalls, awash.

East’s eyes went over the scientist’s shoulder, and favoured the woman standing behind the man with a luminous smile. “Heart, I do believe you’ve frightened our guest.”

She returned his smile with a furious scowl. “You were taking too God damned long to get to the point, as usual,” she snarled.

East’s grin widened as he stepped up and slung his arm around the other man’s shoulder, “Forgive my partner’s impatience, I’m sure that for the sake of your own personal safety and that of your expedition we can come to a mutually satisfying arrangement.”

Heart’s eyes flashed with impatience, but she sheathed her dagger, turned her back and strolled over to the table and the two rough looking cowboys,

“Deal the damned cards, Holiday,” she snapped as she sat down.

Heart stared through the flames of their camp fire across the flat expanse of space blasted, flat, godforsaken, asteroid at the arse end of the known universe as she considered their progress. They’d lost Buffalo on the first night, Holiday on the second, JJ was in the scientist’s infirmary with hunks of flesh torn from his back and buttocks. He’d been delirious with fever when they’d found him, he kept whinnying, and laughing like madness.

She and East had scouted the area where they had found him wedged face first into a crack between two rocks, arms curled around a spike of granite in front of him, his back an open wound. The loose dirt around at the base of the rock was littered with hoof prints, his own horse nowhere to be found.

Beside her Bonney stretched, his head tilted back in a jaw cracking yawn his silver-grey hair falling in waves down his back. He lifted his arm and settled it across her shoulders, sliding down to her waist, his hand burrowing between the tail of her shirt and jeans.

She tensed under his touch. He didn’t care.

“Penny for your thoughts, Girl.” His voice rumbled lazy, complacent, as his greedy fingers massaged and pinched her flesh.

“You don’t want to know.” Heart replied her voice frigid as space.

“Well, if you don’t want to talk.” He turned the rest of his body to her, crowded her back against the bed roll propped against their backs.

The weight and stink of him made her palms twitch for her laser revolver. Muzzle against his belly, a pull of the trigger, it’d be quick work with her knife to make the wound look like JJ’s. Her right hand flicked the keeper on her holster free as he pushed the top of her jeans down to expose the ugly thick raised crescent of scar tissue over her womb.

“Boss,” East’s voice called, “you’ll want to see this.”

“Damn your timing East.” Bonney mumbled as the butt of her weapon slid into her hand, “I’ll see it later.”

His fingers fumbled with the button of her jeans.

Heart watched him, her gaze dispassionate, detached. He’d told her the price for joining his crew, she’d agreed, the only place for her was with folks with hearts as mercenary as her own, folks who craved the same dominion that finding El Dorado, the barrow of the Creator God would bestow.

Bonney was a pig, but he’d kept his word, and taken her to the furthest corners of the universe that he could, the only places not explored and discounted. They had an agreement. She slid her weapon back into her holster and closed her eyes.

“I think you’ll see it now.” East’s voice close, filled with a note she had never heard before, accompanied a yelp of pain from Bonney and a hot liquid spray across her face and chest.

Her eyes opened, blood spangled her lashes and glinted in the fires’ light like rubies. East stood over them, bowie knife in hand, silver hair twisted in his fist. Bonney’s throat gaped in open mouthed surprise, as East, pulled the corpse to the side and let it thud into the dirt.

“I never understood why you made that deal.” East said, as he looked down at her, his head cocked to the side.

Dressed in black he almost seemed part of the night itself. Black jeans, black shirt, black duster, black hat. The only relief from shadow were highlights of silver at his cuffs and on his boots. Bending over, he wiped the blade of his knife on Bonney’s jeans and slipped it back into its sheath in his boot.

“Dammit, East,” She looked up into his face. A face that belonged in songs and stories.

He smiled, his teeth white, straight and even. It was a smile that should conceal an ugly heart but she knew it didn’t. The need to smash her fist into it churned in her guts.

“I had it under control.”

“I didn’t do it for you.” He said as he turned to warm his hands by the fire, “It’s your watch.”

Heart scraped Bonney’s blood from her cheeks and flicked it into the dirt, as she rose to stand beside him, her face streaked with gore. “What’ll you tell Wild Bill when he gets back?”

East shrugged as he squatted down and used a stick to shift wood in the fire, sending sparks spiralling into the dark velvet of the night sky. “Accidents happen.”

Heart considered his answer, amongst the gunslingers he wore kindness like a shield. It made the others lazy and slow around him. Cloaked in their mis-perception he hid in plain sight, a wolf clothed in the still dripping skins of slaughtered sheep. It was she realised, why she hated him less.

“We can’t afford to lose any more personnel.” She commented as he swung the billy over the flame.

“I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” he said, as he turned his head to look up at her, a smile in his eyes, “You want some tea?”

She turned and stalked away without responding. She couldn’t afford to like him; it was harder to remember that when he smiled with his eyes too.

The guard post they’d chosen was wedged between two huge battered spheres of red ochre. From a narrow shadow hidden between their crushing weights she could scan the high plateau before her as unfamiliar stars climbed into black velvet sky.

Her back against the cooling stone, she faced away from the camp. The front of her shirt and thick fleece jacket stuck to her skin smelling like metal and death. There was no extra water to wash, it didn’t matter, she’d shed enough blood of her own and would shed more, for it to bother her.

Here on the edge of the ‘verse as far as anyone could run there was no comfort. There was only the sharp line, life and death, a step, a hairs breadth away from each other.

Movement on the plain. Caught only in her peripheral vision, a variation in the darkness. She turned her head; a sigh escaped her lips.

Four horses, spectral, indistinct stalked across the plain, outlined by starlight. The first seemed to be made of night itself, only the star-sheen on its coat, marked it as separate. The second amplified the weak silver light until it shimmered across its flanks like heat haze. Crimson, the third horses’ eyes glowed the colour of Hell-fire. The last horse was cast in moonlight, pale and impossible as this planet at the end of the world owned no moon.

For years she had courted, sought, longed for death. Now as she watched it grazing the plain before her, she realised it was not death that she wanted. Her heart beat like a fist pounding against the walls of her chest. She swallowed, the sound loud and dry.

As one, the horses lifted their heads and cocked their glistening eyes in her direction.

“Whoa,” East’s voice soft, soothing, came from the other side of the gap. “Don’t be scared.”

Heart watched as he stepped out from cover, Bonney’s stripped corpse cradled in his arms, its head lolled back, throat gaping.

The horses’ attention shifted; nostrils flared. They shuffled closer skittish and untrusting, drawn by the smell of meat.

The utter bastard.

Anger burned through her like fire. Why wasn’t he where he was supposed to be? Safe by the fire: making tea. How dare he continue to presume to attempt to save her. As if she was supposed to be grateful.

Her boots slipped on red ochre as she scrambled out from between the boulders and crunched down on to the loose dirt of the high plains.

Five pairs of eyes turned to regard her.

“Heart!” Emotion she refused to name laced his voice with warmth as she approached. His eyes warned her to stay back.

She declined the warning and strode forward ,her tongue poised ready to spit poison.

The pale horse snorted, its head swung towards her, sharp hooves pawed the ground, powerful hind quarters bunched. Its compatriots focused their attention on her, ears flicking back, eyes rolling to show the whites as they whinnied in response.

“Shhhh.”

The sound spread like balm, over equine nerves.

“Come now, I’ve brought you a little treat. No need to fuss.” East stepped forward and laid Bonney’s corpse on the loose soil, he drew the bowie knife from his boot and sliced it open from sternum to pubis, steam rose from the incision, inside the wound intestines glistened.

The horses responded: shadow; silver; and blood. Impossible. Fast. Their muzzles burrowed into the gleaming mass.

The pale horse stood its ground, it pawed the air in defiance, its hooves crashing into the earth in front of Heart. She lifted her chin, and stared into its moonlit eye, refusing to take a back ward step.

“Come now, a little sugar,” East stepped between them his palm raised, a sugar cube gleamed white under the starlight, at its centre, “a treat. You’ve not had one for so long. Just a taste.”

The horse flicked its mane, its attention caught between East and Heart. It released an equine shriek. Behind them the other horses drew fat loops of intestine from the corpse and gulped them down with relish.

“Don’t be scared, I won’t hurt you.” East stepped forward as the horse reared, its razor hooves slicing the air close to his outstretched hand.

Her hand slipped to her holster, fingers tightened around the stock of her laser pistol, as she drew it, a tiny red light marked the horses’ barrel chest.

“Heart no.” He used the same tone on her as he did on the horse, his eyes on the animal before him.

“I didn’t make any promises.” She spat as the horse pounded to the ground, the tiny red dot now centred between its eyes.

The shadow, silver and blood horses stopped gorging on the corpse, moving faster than her eyes could track, coming to flank their pale friend, their faces drenched in blood and gore, their eyes for her.

His hand dipped into the pocket of his jeans and produced three more cubes of sugar, he placed them on his palm. “You are a marvel. A wonder, stories ache for a horse such as you. Take my gift.”

His voice was oats, fresh hay and salt lick.

The horses on either side of the pale horse whinnied and pressed closer to its flanks. Flank to flank, they merged until one bled into another; Shadow, Silver and Blood became one horse, the pale horse. It dipped its moonlit head and with a soft scrape of its lips against his palm took the sugar.

“That’s right beautiful.” He murmured as his other hand stroked down the side of the pale horses’ neck. “No-one’s been gentle with you for a good while have they?”

Heart lowered her revolver; the targeting light painted the earth at her feet as she watched him touch the horse. If she had been a horse, she might have loved him too.

The horse blew out a sigh and leaned into his touch.

He walked down first one side of the pale mare his hand gliding over her hair, then came back up the other. The horse pushed its face into his gentle hand and whinnied, the sound soft, pliant.

“Who could be worthy of riding a horse like you?” He breathed in wonder.

The horse shuffled, swung its head to hit his shoulder.

“I would be honoured.”

A handful of mane, a spring and he was astride the horse.

She watched as man and wild thing, separate parts of the same creature recognised each other, no longer horse and man, but Horseman. The pale horse moved, until it was standing beside her. East’s beautiful eyes smiled down at her as he considered her for a second, leaned down and extended his hand to her.

“Are you coming?”

She did want beautiful things; she wanted this beautiful deadly horse. Grab his hand, yank him to the ground, she’d be gone before he hit the dirt. She reached for him.

The horse snorted, moved a step to the side swinging its hind quarters to swat her away from his hand.

He leaned further, more off balance.

Her fingers reached.

The horse whirled and screamed as it reared, silvered hooves flashed inches from her nose.

“That’s no way to treat my friend.” East whispered his lips against the pale hair of its throat.

The horses’ hooves smacked down onto the hard packed red earth. It shook its head, whinnied and danced a step back from where she stood.

“I won’t come if she doesn’t come too.” His fingers threaded through the pale mane tugged as if to add emphasis to his softly spoken words.

The horse snorted and pawed the ground with a forehoof.

A poisonous smile spread across her lips; the animal knew a predator when it saw one.

“Decide.” He said his eyes on her.

She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or the horse.

Heart held her hands up as if in surrender as her eyes flicked to meet the liquid gaze of the equine. “I won’t hurt him.”

Star shine flared across the wet surface of the horse’s eyes. Liar.

He moved as if to dismount. The horse snorted and threw back its head, as it danced a step to the left, right, then still.

She took his offered hand and let him pull her up to sit behind him, her arms wrapped around his waist as the horse moved, walk, trot, canter.

As the horse hit gallop; the universe shifted. The horse phased into the shadow on the edge of the plateau until they ran through the fabric of the universe.

Impossible horse, impossible man, impossible woman, they were at once, nowhere and everywhere.

The liquid thickness of sub-space slid between her body and his back, it oozed supple and grasping. They were simultaneously everything, nothing. Power rushed through their nerve endings as the universe filtered through the inadequate fibres.

Heart let go of East’s waist, spread her arms wide, the syrup friction of existence dragged on her clothes as she loosened the grip of her thighs on the flanks of the horse. She closed her eyes, waited to fall back, drift away, embrace her fate.

Her slow drift to nirvana ended as she was wrenched to a stop. Her eyes flew open; East’s hand crushed the woollen lapels of her jacket in an iron grip.

He was half turned towards her, his other hand wrapped in the strands of the horse’s mane.

Her body pulsed with the heartbeat of the universe, as she revelled in the power that filled her. She did not want to be saved.

“Let me go.” The words gurgled thick in her throat.

“No.” His answer vibrated through the power that filled her, slid in through her ears to settle in her chest uncomfortably near to her heart.

With a jolt the horse galloped out of subspace and into the shadow of a different escarpment. The abrupt collision between real time and space threw them both off the animal’s back. She landed on her arse on coarse red sand; pain throbbed through her coccyx as he landed on top of her.

For a second, they lay winded; his face inches from hers.

“Now that was unexpected.” East said, his mouth curving in an infectious grin.

She shoved at his chest, “You need to check your hero complex.”

His eyes twinkled at her as he rolled off her, “I’m no hero.”

She snorted as she dragged herself painfully to her feet. “I don’t want your help.”

He stood and moved to stand beside her, they both watched the horse, a distant speck on the horizon turn. The landscape around them was mutable, in blinks of an eye lush, dense, alive and then dry, barren, dead.

“What is this place?” His question drifted on a breath of wonder.

Her gaze ran across the landscape that was, is, would be – never. “Hell. You’ve brought me to Hell.”

“Nope.” He walked forward, his eyes on the horse as it pounded back to him.

“What makes you so sure?” She tracked his movement.

“Can’t take you somewhere you already live.” He turned and made eye contact with her as the horse arrived, coming to a stop in front of him. His hand drifted over its steaming flanks, as he continued to watch her.

For the first time she looked past his handsome face and saw in his eyes a mirror of her own pain. Empathy, understanding, synergy. Her pistol was out of its holster the red light of the sight steady in the middle of his forehead.

“I hate you.” She hissed between clenched teeth.

“No, you don’t.” His tone maddeningly calm, his face unconcerned as he stared down the barrel of her gun.

“Why are you so sure?”

“You’re too busy hating yourself.” He stood still, watching her absorb his insight.

“You’re wrong.” Her voice was flat, matter of fact.

“Am I?” He walked slowly towards her, his hands held up away from his guns.

The red dot of her laser sight rested on the bridge of his nose.

He stopped in front of her. Slowly he reached for her gun hand.

Her grip on the trigger tightened.

Their eyes locked.

Gently he pressed the barrel down until the red dot lined up with his heart.

“Go on Heart –it’s yours anyway.”

Tension sang between them like a flock of angry song birds.

She broke eye contact. Her pistol slammed back into its holster. “So where are we?”

“I don’t know.” He turned away from her to survey the landscape behind him.

“Well, ain’t that just grand?” She turned on the spot hands on her hips taking in the mutable landscape surrounding them.

He faced her and grinned. “Whatever happens, it ain’t gonna be boring.”

The wicked joy behind his expression was infectious. She laughed, then caught herself.

He shivered, rubbed his hands against his arms and stamped his boots, “You feel that?”

“What?”

“I think Hell just froze over.”

She stared at him.

He winked.

Another laugh escaped her lips.

“Yeah, the Devil’s definitely skating to work today.”

“Asshole.” Her heart sank like a lead weight in her chest. Thinning hatred rubbed raw over potential happiness, happiness that she knew she didn’t deserve. “You should have left me behind. I will kill you one day.”

His lips quirked up in a self- mocking half smile, “We all die.”

He mounted the horse, leant down and held out his hand to her. A pin prick of hope, a bright diamond amongst her rage and gloom flared as their hands met palm to palm. He pulled her up into a seat behind him, her arms slid around his waist.

Once she was settled behind him, he leant forward to lie along the animal’s neck and whisper in its ear.

“Now show us your secret.”

Her hands brushed the butts of his antique pearl handled guns. She caressed the smooth cool pearl surface, felt the chill metal rivets. His guns were works of art, beautiful weapons of death. It would be so easy to slide them from his holster, jam them into his kidneys and end this troublesome man.

For a heart beat her hands lingered, then slid from the weapons, around his waist, under his duster and spread against the muscles of his stomach as they clenched and released in unison with the horse’s gait.

As they rode she buried her face in the back of his jacket between his shoulders and if he felt the dampness of her tears, he did not mention it.

They rode for what might have been days, hours, minutes or seconds in this place, time held no meaning. The star above them cycled through white, yellow, orange, red – swelling and exploding – only to reappear as a speck of brilliance in the black heart of the universe.

The horse stopped in front of an unbroken golden wall and dropped its head to crop at a patch of alternately lush and withered grass that stubbled out of the rich red earth.

Heart released her hold on his waist and dismounted. East followed.

“Eldorado.” She breathed the name in awe. “The Barrow of the Creator the power of life and death.”

“Gold enough to last a thousand lifetimes.” His hand reached forward to touch the smooth metal face of the wall. His eyes weighed her. “Are you a Seeker?”

“Aren’t you?” She raised an eyebrow in challenge.

“No darlin’ I’m a Finder.” His face and tone solemn.

Tension climbed, collected, balanced on a knife’s edge as they each regarded the other.

Behind them, the horse lifted its head, snorted. They both turned to see it shiver into its four parts and spread out in different directions. Foliage withered and blackened where the pale horse stepped. Blight spread from the hooves of the black horse. The red horse disappeared in a whirl wind of destruction that ripped and tore at the earth. Whilst the landscape around the silver horse melded, transformed, into rolling grass plains.

She turned back to him, anticipation burning low in her gut, “Then show me what there is to find.”

“Okay.” He walked forward his outstretched hand appearing to press through solid stone. He took a step, continued to walk forward until his fingers brushed the warm golden surface of an inner wall.

They stood inside a long unbroken passageway; continuous in both directions as far as the eye could see.

“A labyrinth.” He breathed as he turned and grinned at her.

The tips of his fingers brushed over the polished surface of the golden wall, flat and smooth.

A clunk and groan of machinery sounded behind them, Heart turned to see a section of wall rising from dusty red earth to close the opening. Stepping back she searched for a latch, a switch, some way to stop it from sealing them inside the passage.

“I’m sorry I got you into to this.”

“Don’t just stand there. Help me find a way to shut it down.” She snarled.

“You should run.” His voice was low, soft and gentle.

She turned, her vitriol died on her tongue as she saw that the golden metal of the wall had engulfed his hand and spread up his arm and shoulder to climb the side of his throat.

Her eyes flicked back to the swiftly rising wall. She could leave now but once outside what were her options? The horse would not serve her. She could not get back without it – stranded in the alternately blooming and dying landscape her death was inevitable.

The rapidly closing gap in the wall did not represent escape as much as a solitary lingering death and for the first time in years she understood that she did not want that.

Gold began to dribble from his fringe onto the sweep of his forehead as it consumed his face. An inexorable unseen force pulled him into the wall, the left side of his body already enveloped.

She shrugged out of her fleece coat, wrapped the fabric around his free arm and tried to yank him away from the wall.

“It’s like quicksand.” He told her as dribbles of gold cascaded from his fringe. “The more you struggle the quicker it takes you. You need to leave me.”

A drip of gold caught in his lower lashes and pooled until it obscured his open eye.

“No.” She shuddered and avoided that blank dead gaze as she intensified her struggle. She dropped her fleece and gripped his arm, hauling at him with all her might, as the gold began to coat her own fingers.

The message in his one remaining eye implored her to let him go. He tried to shake her loose.

Without him she was already dead.

Heart stepped into him, pressed her body against his, her lips to the metal covering his mouth and let the gold take them.

The sensation of the metal warm, liquid and alive slid over her skin. Her lungs constricted, as she tried to drag in some semblance of a breath, but the metal held her in a supple, unbreakable cocoon. Her thoughts blurred, she leant into resignation and oblivion at last.

Frantic fingers cleared her nostrils, her lips, forced her jaws open. Warm lips covered her mouth; breath forced into her lungs. Once, twice, three times.

A fist thumped her chest.

She hauled in a first gulp of air.

“The next time I tell you to leave me, I’d be mighty obliged if you’d listen.” East said as his gentle fingers smoothed over her eyelids brushing gold from her skin.

“Maybe you’d have more success if you took your own advice.” She snapped as she found the energy to force herself to sit up without his support.

“Take it easy there’s no rush.” Through her gold encrusted lashes, she saw him move to help her. “Keep your hands to yourself.”

“As you wish.” He turned from her and knelt at the edge of what looked like a shallow pool of water that coated the floor of the room before them.

His clothes were caked in gold that cracked and flaked as he moved. Gold encrusted his hair; as she watched it began to soften and dribble down his neck to harden on the collar of his clothes.

“We need to get out of these clothes before the gold sets.” He said as he shrugged his duster from his shoulders. It hit the stone floor with a clank and settled in an awkward slump. Gold stained his shirt at collar and cuffs, he peeled it off; the gold clattered against the floor; the rest followed like a punctured balloon.

Her eyes traced his naked back, his muscles outlined in rivulets of molten gold. He forced his gilded jeans down his legs, shucked his boots and stepped into the water. Standing in his underwear and bare feet he was a sight for a hungry-heart.

He turned his head to look at her over his shoulders, “You’ll be too heavy to swim, if you wait much longer.”

“Swim?”

He gestured to the water that had crept over the top of his feet and was now beginning to lap at his ankles. “It’s a trap.”

She considered the space around her, a small chamber walled on one side by gold and stone on the other three. Across the chamber in the opposite wall the entrance to a tunnel glistened as water flowed through it into their space. Around her empty golden clothes formed sarcophagi for mouldering bones. Some of the bones clean and white, others cracked and yellowed with age.

“I’ll find the way out and I’ll come back for you.”

“You don’t know where that leads. We should search together.” She said as she struggled against her solidifying clothes.

“Don’t worry darlin’ I’ll come back for you.” He walked into the deepening water towards the tunnels entrance.

“Asshole.” She cursed as he disappeared into the tunnel.

Grabbing the front of her shirt she tore it open, ripping golden buttons from their holes. Shirking it she immediately went to work on her belt and the fastener of her jeans. The formerly worn soft material was stiff and brittle. After several minutes of struggle, she managed to work the zipper half down and push the fabric off her hips. The bottom of her jeans had fused with her boots. She squirmed pulling her feet out of the boots and into the legs of the jeans. More undignified wriggling and she was free.

Standing in the now calf deep water she watched as the entrance of the tunnel submerged. He didn’t even know if it was a way out; maybe he was floating drowned caught somewhere further down a tunnel to nowhere.

She waited as the water rose, her eyes fixed on the place where he had disappeared. No bubbles, no signal of his return.

Maybe he’d emerged at the other end of the tunnel and decided to leave her behind to drown. It was what she would have done.

Self-interest was life’s only motivator; she knew there was no reward for selflessness.

She walked into the water; there was only one who could save her - herself.

As the water rose the walls and floor submerged into inky blackness. Her feet lost the floor, as she breast stroked across the room to the far wall. The water was rising more quickly now, at this end of the room there was about a metre of clear air between the ceiling and surface. Her hands searched the stone for a finger tip grip as she probed the black water with her feet to find the gap in the wall beneath her.

Toes stubbed as she worked methodically, the water consumed her collar bones, lapped under her chin, as the air pocket diminished.

Rage warred with despair and a disappointment she was loathe to acknowledge. Clinging to the wall she looked back, the water was climbing the other wall but was still shallow enough that she could buy a few more minutes of air.

For what? Her internal voice lashed razorlike against her. You think he’ll come back? Fool.

An explosion of bubbles shattered the surface of the water beside her and he was there. Water and gold caught in his eyebrows as he gulped in a breath and grinned at her. “Ready?”

“You took your sweet time.” She snapped even as her heart expanded with hope.

“I told you I’d come back.” He cupped her cheek with his palm. He held up a loop of knotted cord, “Take a deep breath, you’ll need it, and follow the cord.”

She took the cord with numb fingers and slipped it over her wrist.

“Come on.” He filled his lungs and disappeared back under the surface, she felt him tugging on the cord.

She took a deep breath and dived under the surface. She followed the pull of the cord on her wrist. The cold water pressed against her skin, leaching her warmth and strength, her lungs beginning to burn.

She couldn’t see anything but she could feel his movement in the water, the tug of his forward momentum on the cord.

They swam, in total blackness, hands and feet brushing occasionally against the sides of the tunnel that encased them. The cold made each stroke she took slower, the burn of her lungs more excruciating. The pounding of her heart was loud in her ears, her chest tight, tighter. Jaw clenched so hard her teeth groaned with the pressure.

Another stroke, another, just one more, squeeze in another, before her mouth opened and her lungs filled with death. Her hands clamped over her nose and mouth as she began to convulse with her need for air.

Her body fought her will.

Water streamed into her lungs. Gagging and convulsing she flailed under the water.

Pain in her scalp. She exploded to the surface of a dwindling pool coughing and gagging. She wrenched her head to the side; his hand came free and she crashed back into the water as a half-soaked breath sucked into her starved lungs.

She pushed at his hands as he tried to find purchase and drag her to land.

“It’s gonna be alright. We made it.” He rasped, his arms stronger than her protests, held her and pulled her to dry land.

“Let me go.” She ripped the words from her abused throat.

He let her go immediately. She fell thrashing onto cold stone.

She gasped and retched on to all fours. Her stomach splattered gouts of water on to stone. Finally, she dragged in a full breath, another, exhale, another. The sweetest breaths she’d ever taken.

“Are you alright?”

She flung herself over on to her back so she could look at him. “Why did you come back?”

“I said I would.” He stood a few paces away, water droplets glistening on his skin.

“I wouldn’t have.” She dragged herself to a seated position, and looked down at the cord still attached to her wrist. Her eyes followed the blood red cord to the hacked remains of an antique carpet, that lay partially unrolled, a dagger glinting in its folds.

“I know.” His dark eyes rested on her for a moment, then turned to look deeper into the room beyond. “I think you’ll want to see this.”

She dragged herself to a crouch and then staggered to her feet. “What?”

“I think we’re in the barrow.”

She stumbled over to the carpet, her hand searching for the dagger. The smooth surface of the steel under her fingers was worked into an intricate symbol.

The Creator.

It felt right in her hand. Right like it was hers.

“I thought you were a finder not a seeker.” She said as she stood the dagger in her right hand.

He appeared from deeper in the gloom. “I am what I am.” He jerked his head towards the soft glow emanating from deeper in the room, “You should see this.”

She followed him. Around them treasures listed in piles. A king’s ransom spilled from the open mouths of sacks slumped at the foot of the golden sarcophagus in the centre of the room. The symbol raised in gold on its surface was that of Aegis the Creator. Their skin still glistening with gold and water they stood at the heart of Eldorado the famed lost resting place of the Creator and Destroyer of All Things.

“Do you think it’s true?” She asked stepping up to stand beside him.

“What?”

“That if you are the first to find the Barrow, you claim the powers of the God for yourself?” She ran her fingers over the symbol embossed on the warm gold surface of the outer sarcophagus.

“If that’s what they say, then I’d say, probably.”

She felt his gaze on her. She turned to face him. He mirrored the movement. His dark eyes alive with question searched her face.

“Let’s find out.” She said as she raised herself to her tiptoes, brought her lips within a breath of his and thrust the dagger into his belly.

His eyes widened; his mouth opened in a soft exhalation of surprise and pain.

“Heart!”

His hands clasped over hers on the hilt of the dagger the blade buried deep in his belly. Each breath painted his lips red.

“I told you I’d kill you.” She met his eyes expecting an accusation of betrayal.

“I believed you.” He lowered his head so that they stood forehead to forehead her hands wrapped around the weapon between them. “You can’t run from what you deserve.”

He kissed her with bloody lips. She pushed the blade in deeper and kissed him back.

Power exploded between them flinging them to opposite sides of the barrow.

The dagger suspended between them glowed. Energy burst from within it in two streams, one drained into his body while the other filled hers.

Her back arched, light streamed from her ears, her nostrils, her eyes, her pores. She screamed as she was unmade and remade in the same instant.

The dagger clattered to the floor, spent.

She groaned and propped herself up on her elbows. East was slumped crumpled against a pile of collapsed treasure, half buried in a spill of silver.

She felt charged, buzzed with life.

Heart looked up to the glowing ceiling and now could feel the lives of the tiny creatures that clung to the rock there. She could feel their being like a tiny pulse. She raised her hand towards them and they swarmed down to her. They surrounded her hand and forearm, became a glove of living light. She laughed.

It hadn’t been a lie.

The power of the Creator pulsed through her.

She was now Aegis reborn, a God Free to wreak her vengeance on those who’d wronged her and what glorious vengeance it would be.

She focused on the tiny lives that gloved her arm and willed them to die.

They didn’t. She stared at them, willed them with all the focused rage of her dead heart, to die. Still, they swarmed.

She plucked one from her skin, shook the others loose. They floated, motes of light drifting on the stale air current of the barrow.

She mashed the tiny insect to pulp between her nails, it lay mangled; dead. She sighed in satisfaction. Then it wriggled, righted itself and flew off to join its swarm.

“No!” Rage tore from her throat.

She turned to watch the swarm as it swirled into the chest of a dead man.

They fell to the floor a patter, of tiny dead bodies.

She stared at East.

A wicked grin spread across his too handsome face. “Seems we get to share the gift.”

With a sharp snap the roof overhead cracked and the light of sunset poured in as the roof crumbled. Red sand rose to engulf the sarcophagus and treasures.

Neither moved towards the other, as around them Eldorado disintegrated.

They were left standing on the bare red sand, as the landscape stretched away before them under the dying sun.

The pale horse butted its head against East’s shoulder. He turned and rubbed his hand across its velvet soft nose. “I guess it’s time to leave.” His eyes flicked back to her, “Coming?”

“You’re better off without me.”

“You think I want to live without my Heart?” His voice rumbled like gravel in his chest.

“My name,” she said her tone cold, “is Kasia.” She let the revelation hang between them, waiting for him to whisper the magnitude of her crimes, to acknowledge her monstrosity. Waiting for the dawn of revulsion inseparable from her infamous name.

“I know.”

A simple statement of truth.

“I’ve always known.”

She stared at him as the horse nudged his hand demanding to be stroked. His smile widened, he wound his fingers into the horses’ mane and pulled himself onto its back. The horse snorted and pranced in a circle flicking its head and ears.

He used his knees to turn the horse towards her.

“You knew?”

He leant down; his hand extended to her. “What’s it gonna be, stay here alone or come with me?”

She eyed his offered hand. “I’m not capable of loving anyone.”

A self-mocking smile quirked the corner of his mouth, “I know. Stay or leave, it’s a simple choice.”

She slid her hand into his and let him pull her up on to the horse behind him. ““I will betray you.”

“We can only be what we are.” He clicked his tongue and urged the horse into a trot.