Black Halo by Sam Sykes

flapping. Opening her eyes and seeing nothing standing at her balcony, she rushed to the edge and watched him sail over the rooftops of Cier’Djaal on the leather wings his coat had once been. And with each breath, he shrank until he wasn’t even bigger than her thumb.
    And then, Bralston was gone.

Four
THE PRISTINE MADNESS
     
    ‘P retty,’ he whispered.
    ‘ Hmm? ’ the voice replied.
    ‘I was simply noting the beauty of it all,’ Lenk replied as he stared out over the vast, dreaming blue around him.
    The ocean stretched out, engulfing him in a gaping, azure yawn. A yawn seemed fitting, Lenk decided, for the sheer uncaring nature of it all. It did not move, did not ripple, did not change as the sky did. There wasn’t a cloud to mar his perfect view of the sprawling underwater world.
    The sky had betrayed him too many times. It had hidden his sun behind clouds and sullied his earth with rain. The sky was a spiteful, wicked thing of thunder and wind. The ocean didn’t care.
    ‘The ocean … it loves me,’ he whispered. His face contorted suddenly and his eyes went wide, not feeling the salt that should be stinging them. ‘What did I just say?’
    ‘ I wasn’t listening ,’ the voice said.
    ‘No, I said the “ocean loves me.” What a deranged thing to say. I said the sky was spiteful, it betrayed me.’
    ‘ You only thought that .’
    ‘I thought you weren’t listening.’
    ‘ Not to your voice, no .’
    ‘Then …’ He clutched his head, not feeling his fingers on his skin. ‘It’s finally happened. I’ve gone insane.’
    ‘ You didn’t stop to think that when you realised you weren’t breathing? ’
    Lenk’s hands went to his throat. The panic that surged through him left his heartbeat oddly slow and his pulse standing still. He knew he should be terrified, should be thrashing and watching his screams drift to the surface in soundless bubbles. But, for all that he knew he should, drowning simply didn’t bother him.
    But it should , he told himself. I should be afraid. But I’m not … I feel …
    ‘Peaceful.’
    The voice, or rather voices, that finished his thoughts were not his own, but they were familiar to his ears. Far more familiar, he knew, than he would have ever liked. He recognised them, remembered them from his dreams and heard them every time his leg ached.
    It would have seemed redundant to call the Deepshriek by name, even as it drifted out of the endless blue and into his vision. Three pairs of eyes stared at him. The pair of soulless black eyes affixed to the massive shark that served as the abomination’s body was simply unnerving. He didn’t truly begin to worry until he looked into the glimmering golden stares of the two feminine faces with hair of red and black, swaying upon delicate, grey stalks from the beast’s grey back.
    ‘It could always be this way, you know,’ the one with the copper hair said. ‘Drifting. Endless. Peace. Lay down your sword.’
    ‘I can’t,’ he replied.
    ‘Why do you want to kill us?’ the black-haired one asked, her lips a pout. ‘We merely wish to deliver the peace you feel now to all who have been lied to by the sky.’
    ‘It deceives,’ the red one hissed. ‘Tricks. You are told to pray to it, to give your troubles to the sky.’
    ‘It gives warmth,’ Lenk noticed, seeing the beams of sun that even now sought to reach him below. It was warm down here, far too warm for the ocean he had come to know these past weeks.
    ‘Fleeting. When you need it most, where is the light? What does the sky offer then?’ the black one sighed. ‘Rain, thunder, sorrows. How can you trust something that is so fickle? So changing?’
    ‘It lied to you,’ the red one growled.
    ‘It sent you down here,’ the black one snarled.
    ‘But we embrace you,’ they both replied in discordant harmony. ‘We give you peace. We give you …’
    ‘Endless blue,’ Lenk finished for them. He narrowed his eyes. ‘I’ve heard that before.’
    ‘Have