The blade was perfection itself… to any lesser eyes, but as the creator, as the master, as the wielder… all Rue saw were flaws. He turned it between his fingers, purest metal, essence drunk off stars, and the blade became his fingers, his fingers became the blade, with a gesture he could send a thousand razor-edged roots churning through the red rock canyon below. He could rend the polyps and gut their attendants. Blood red walls running red with blood.

But such power held no thrill. No longer, no…

Was that not his constant dream and nightmare? His waking and rest? His purpose forged from his stolen fate?

A flower grew from his index finger. Silvered petals, a molecule thin glinting in the light and spinning, hewing the subtle breeze that coaxed dust from the Bloody Eye’s surface. At the core of the flower, sharpened stamen, and a mass of tiny barbed shavings disguised as golden pollen. If dispersed, if touched upon living flesh, the pollen would dig down until it tapped a bloodstream, and then it would grow, and so the bladed forest spread…

He sighed and set the little flower down in a crack amongst the crags on the edge of the canyon. The perfect weapon of war, designed over centuries, and it all started as his minor act of defiance. Stolen from a village of farmers, chained and trained for war, he would make things grow… how his childish rebellion had failed him. Better, perhaps, if he used those early chains to hang himself from his cage as his fellow captives had done on that sole moonless night.

The gentle sound of urine running down a stiff leg, dripping from blood-swollen toes, an impatient tapping in the dark of night as he hugged his chains to him…

But no…

Not then, and not now, he couldn’t bear the thought of going out so easy, and was that not a weakness? This need, this craving for glory? Distractedly, he rubbed at the scar between his shoulder blades, the jagged, grievous Mark of Pride.

Glass broke beside him, and he turned to see Esme swaying beside him as she wrung spilled alcohol from a resplendent red robe.

“You changed into your formal attire?”

“S’formal occasion, yeah?”

Rue pinched his nose. It was a formal occasion, and he could sense, on the edge of his mind, the rest of his cohort preparing to join them for the polyp spawning.

“Esme, you are too drunk.”

She waved him off.

“Shaddup.”

The flower at his feet rustled as the blade entered Rue’s voice.

“I mean it.”

He reached for her, two fingers outstretched, to tap her forehead and draw the alcohol from her body. His fingers moved like lightning, but they were too slow, and before he touched where Esme had stood, he knew his frustration had led him to a mistake.

She was the cohort’s tank for a reason, for who can touch a shadow? His fingers brushed air, and Esme smiled up at him from where her form painted the rocky ground with pure darkness.

“Fighting’s forbidden between cohort members,” she waggled a finger.

“This isn’t fighting,” he gritted his teeth. “This is a friendly tussle.”

He tapped upon the Mountain of War. His power surged in every direction. Down in the canyon, the polyps quivered, and the attendants paled. The weaker amongst them were restrained by their companions, lest they become maddened by the bloodlust that drifted through the air as sweet as spring blossoms.

Who can touch a shadow?

A god.

Empowered by the Mountain of War, everything became a target. The air bled as his clawed hand descended toward the ground where Esme lay. He felt Esme’s power swell, again, and again, and again, as she tapped her Mountains and bloomed.

Shadow swept across half of the Bloody Eye, dividing the moon into halves of gory red and pure black endless in depth. Rue no longer stood, no longer swung, but fell.

Every inch of his body became a blade, and the shadows bled shadows but still, Esme grinned. She would win, he knew, unless he went all out. And he wouldn’t do that, she knew he wouldn’t do that.

Because he never had before.

The Cold Blade, they called him, before he became the Bladed Forest. Before war and death and bloodshed grew from him like wild fruit so heavy it broke his boughs…

Something sick and old and fragile within him… snapped.

He tapped his remaining four Mountains in rapid succession: Forest, Starlight, Sword, Apocalypse. Reality split as power screeched from his body. His Skein blinded all. The Bloody Moon tore itself apart. Every being on Earth received a nightmare, a death, as Rue stood in shadow and became the reaper of all things. His breath a scythe as he reached for the fleeing shadow with the inevitability of entropy —

“Enough.”

Lorrilla’s quiet voice drained the fog from his veins. His Mountains vanished. His power dissipated. The shadows evaporated. He blinked in the bright light of day as he straddled Esme. His hands around her throat. Red blood oozed where his fingers touched her skin.

A weak smile spread across Esme’s eyeless face.

“I yield,” she said.

The fight took less than a second, and now it was over. He removed himself and stood. His cohort surrounded him, all dressed in their resplendent crimson robes: beautiful Lorrilla, joyful Glassik, stout Unren, cryptic Morn, and drunken Esme wobbling up to join the circle.

Stolen story; please report.

Was this a coup? Together, they could overpower him, but if he struck fast enough, he could take out Lorrilla and Unren, and without their heavy hitters… The sick thing inside him coughed, struggled — he didn’t know what it wanted — it didn’t know what it wanted — but he hated it as he hated himself — and he hid it all with a small bow.

“I am sorry for my conduct, it is unbecoming of —”

“I said ‘enough’,” Lorrilla spat at him. “We shall oversee the spawning of the polyps. Retire to your chambers.”

He stood, stiff spine, a hollow smile across his lips.

“I am still Primus Pilis. I integrated this planet. It is my duty to oversee the spawning.”

“Duty?”

He should have known from her tone that she was done with his antics, but he never knew when to quit. Never seemed to learn.

The smile on his face beamed arrogance.

“Do I need to remind you all who is in —”

Lorrilla’s hand entered his mind. She stood in the circle surrounding him; she stood in front of him; she stood inside him, a soft hand cradled his brain, blood pulsed through her body, endless rivers, and it cycled through her and into him and back and tears dripped down her cheeks as she touched upon the knots of his tangled sadness.

“Go to your chambers,” she whispered, and the rest of the cohort — unable not to hear — turned their heads with discretion. “Contemplate. Meditate. Remove yourself from the field. Go. For your good, for ours, do not make this… something ugly.”

He had underestimated her, all of them, and he stood frozen with her hand inside his brain. The second he thought to move, she could crush his mind. Could he act fast enough? Act without thought?

To what end, such violence?

With a slight nod, her hand slipped from his skin, and she stood in the circle once more. He bowed again, deeper, knees sagging under the weight of raging shame until his forehead touched the red rocky ground.

“I beg forgiveness of all of you,” each word tasted of iron-rich dirt like licking a rusted blade. “I shall retire and entrust the integration to you.”

They all bowed back to him, lower than required, but not quite the level of prostration that he displayed. It would have been unseemly for their rich, official robes to touch the dirt, but more than that…

He was their superior.

Even if he didn’t act the part.

Heart pounding in tandem with the sick thing trapped inside, Rue stood and walked away. Glassik and Unren stepped aside so that he might pass. Glassik tried to catch his eye, the youthful, borderline pleading in her gaze filled him with cold shame.

He nodded to her, the barest gesture, and continued walking into the red desert waste that was the surface of the Bloody Eye.

###

They all knew Rue could have vanished in an instant, moved through space, or simply leaped to his quarters, but his walking, receding back showed a contrition they appreciated.

“Would we…” Glassik started, nervously coughing into an icy fist. “Would we really have fought him?”

“If he fought us,” Urum rumbled.

“No,” said Lorrilla. “If he fought us, we would have killed him without mercy or restraint.”

Morn nodded, his neck creaking with the motion, and the corn husk sound silenced the rest of the cohort.

“We did not fight,” he said. “He did not fight. Leave hypotheticals for Lorrilla’s laboratory, for now, we have a duty to attend.”

“But…” Glassik continued, on the verge of nervous tears as she looked around at the stoic faces of the others. The newest member, the youngest member, still flowering despite the centuries behind her. “Will Rue be alright? He seems so… burdened.”

Lorrilla softened at Glassik’s question.

“He needs time to emerge from his dark mood, which is why we are here at all, but he will be fine.”

“Can we not help him?”

The other did not meet Glassik’s beseeching eyes. How could they express what they each had seen at Rue’s side? For all their travels across worlds, galaxies, and dimensions, for all their power, they were but mortals playing at god. Each of them remembered the faltering footsteps of childhood, no matter how long ago it seemed. Their strides grew longer, but did they ever become sure?

“Go,” said Lorrilla, softly, encouragingly. “Go tend to him as you see fit. All of you go if you desire. I shall oversee the polyps.”

They started at her words. Not orders — as she could give in Rue’s absence — but a friendly request. How often did they forget they were friends?

Glassik smiled, relieved, and faded into translucency before popping like a soap bubble. Her ornate robes rustled upon the ground.

“The young are ever quick to flee the burden of duty,” Morn commented with his rasping, scarecrow voice, “But only because the old grow stiff in joint and response. Were raw power not the Crimson Armada’s measure, you would make a fine Primus Pilis, Lorrilla. I shall take my leave.”

He bowed to her, and she returned the gesture at his compliment. When she rose, he too, had vanished. Urum sighed, and the ground rumbled.

“You are too kind to him. He is not a child playing in river mud any longer.”

“Do you really think that?”

Urum shrugged.

“Would you like me to slap him?”

Lorrilla smiled. None of them really understood Rue. They saw his actions and made their own sense of him, but they did not see the pattern he failed to weave of himself. Did she? Or was this hubris also?

“No,” she said slowly. “But give him this.”

She extended her hand, finger rippling as though underwater, and a pearl of blood floated over to Urum’s hands. He cradled it with the care of a sculptor, the great strength of his green-muscled body belying the sensitivity of his every movement.

“You think this is wise?” he said as he examined the pearl. “I cannot see how such news can —”

“That’s why you’re not in command,” Esme playfully punched him on the arm. “You want to slap him for me?”

“No,” Urum scowled as he vanished.

Lorrilla raised an eyebrow at Esme’s grin.

“I am very annoyed with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

Lorrilla sighed. No, the fight was not Esme’s fault… no matter how irksome she could be.

“Will you join the others?”

“I think he’s had enough of me for a while.”

“Haven’t we all?”

Esme’s grin widened.

“Nope.”

Lorrilla couldn’t help but laugh. Esme had a wonderful smile.

At her feet, a bladed flower bobbed, ready to spill its life-ending pollen in the growing breeze. She leaned down and brushed it with a finger leaking blood and glued the razor dust to the flower's center. No need to pluck the deadly beauty if she could hold it together for a while.

She straightened herself and her robes.

“Very well,” she turned back to the canyon, voice growing louder, sterner, as fitted a Princess of the System. “Attendants! Begin the spawning! Let our polyps bring civilization at last to this wild and backward world!”