“Take a lesson from the old Amricians. It doesn’t matter how much power a man’s got. Doesn’t matter if he’s, Gehenn, born with the Symbiont and able to grow a forest with a snap of his fingers. Adon is Adon and Yesh is Yesh and man is man. This thing inside me doesn’t change me. I’m same as you, same as any Generosus no matter what they say: I’m a man, and proud to be.”
—Comments of Governor Stephald of the Free City of Hallard to the Board, 1884 CE
----
Nowhere
Eternity
Something enters Tvorh. It writhes, seeking its place.
Hello? he calls, but it does not answer. It cannot hear, or it does not care. He raises his arm, if he has an arm in this place, but it does not see. It does not smell or taste him. It cannot feel his body, because his body is its world.
It senses only his genes. It hungers for them, slavers for them; it knows that in them it might find its immortality. And that would be his death.
It tests him, reaches out to cleanse his mind of all that he is, that it might overwrite him with its own mad will. It too suffers from the insanity of the genophage. Calling up all his will, he resists its overreach. He will not give in to it.
Submit, it seems to hiss, though it has no words.
To submit fully, utterly, is to become a Tool. It is to bypass the Chimerization struggle and transform into the Symbiont’s perfect will. But he is a man, not a martyr, and his will to survive is too strong. He sets his will against it.
It wrestles with him. It coils around his spine, grips his soul hard, and squeezes.
If he submits partially, then he Chimerizes. But he is a man, not a monster, and his heart is too strong. He sets his will against it.
Meeeeee, it screams in his head.
No. Me. I am myself. I will be myself.
His eyes burn with the fire of two white-hot suns. Pain? I’ve felt more than enough of that. He snuffs the flame.
Chaaaange.
Same. Staying the same for the women he cares for. Mother. Hrega. Bilr. Senrii.
Chaaaaange!
Aoife.
He will not change. His skin becomes scales become skin. Fingers to talons and talons to fingers. Legs become flippers, arms become wings, man becomes beast. By his will he causes it all to cease.
Miiiiine.
No. Mine. You are mine. Be still.
It moves.
Yes. Stillness. No writhing. Silence.
Noise.
Settle. See me.
A boy in Acerbia, riding on his father’s shoulders into the Library. A hungry youth living beneath the Table. An eyeless young man, devoted and certain.
In exchange: a silver desert beneath two suns.
Love, hatred, motion, stillness. Humanity. Everything important, a single sphere of mortal reality, forced on the Symbiont.
Take your place. Be with me. Eyes? I have none. I have no need of them. I am whole. Rest in me, and join me.
Tvorh raises a talon and cuts through the cocoon.
***
“Blood, bone, and bile,” Senrii shouted as Tvorh, beclawed but otherwise himself, climbed out of the chrysalis.
“How long?” he asked as he stood to his full height.
Senrii looked like she’d swallowed a mouse. “Two… two hours.”
He could sense the four priests monitoring the health-flowers deeper in the foliage. They were all staring: at the chrysalis, at him, at the flowers.
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“Two hours, Tvorh,” Senrii said softly. “One treatment. That was all it took. They were getting ready to push in a second one, and then you burst free.”
“One treatment?”
“One. Just one. Father of my father, Tvorh, that never happens.”
He glanced dazedly — an old reflex, since he saw through his ears now rather than through useless eyes — at the forgebone spikes extending from his wrists. “You gave me this STIGMOS?”
“Yeah. Sort of a rite of passage, cutting out of the cocoon. How do you feel?”
He felt inside himself. There was the Symbiont, coiling at the base of its spine, perking up its nonexistent ears and flicking out its nonexistent tongue as it realized he was considering it. There was his body, hale and hearty. The minor aches of life and the gross pain of his ravaged nerves were gone; there remained only a gentle glow, the energy that his muscles had carried but never tapped brimming to the surface. “I feel… stronger. Faster. Whole. And— something else, whispering in my mind.”
“That’s your old lady. Get used to her. She’s a witch with a capital B. Now, try to deactivate the claw STIMOS. Slowly. As it goes away, the Symbiont’ll try to use some of its freed up attention to Chimerize you. You’ll have to force it back into quiescence.”
Take the claws away. The talons retracted, the skin closed up, and Tvorh felt his wrists changing back to their natural state as the mass of the bone was restored to his body. Then he felt the attention of the SOPHIOS turn from the vanishing talons to his natural form. It was groggy, half-asleep; he subdued it instantly.
“Doesn’t seem so hard.”
“It’s harder when you’re juggling a dozen STIGMOS at once. Deactivate them slowly, so the SOPHIOS never has too much free energy before it dissipates.”
“All right. One treatment. STIGMOS. Good. This is good, right? What else have you got for me?”
“I need to tell mom and father first.” Senrii grinned. “But after that, I’m sure we can come up with some fun stuff to show Nxtlu…”
***
“Eztli,” Rosabella moaned, but Eztli refused to even acknowledge her presence as she crossed the room to the sarcophagus.
And then Rosabella burned.
“For every word you speak, you will endure one minute of pain. For every reference you make to love, or to devotion, or to me, or to my family, I will increase the pain. Are we understood?”
“Eztli.”
The pain increased.
“Stupid, treacherous whore.”
“Listen to me, Eztli.”
The fire burned hotter, and Rosabella screamed as the minutes leaked by so slowly. She could find no breath for speech; she spent every molecule of air as soon as she breathed it in.
“So tell me, betrayer, what I should do with you?” Eztli said as the pain faded away. She fingered a twig on the verdant catafalque. Rosabella shut her eyes. “Yes, I could burn out your eyes, as with the child. Who would kiss your grotesque face after that? Or…” Rosabella felt Eztli’s fingers caressing between her thighs. “Or I could make sure that you never feel an ounce of pleasure again. Or maybe… but no. Bursting your heart wouldn’t work, for you don’t have one.”
“Please.”
“You beg?” The agony returned, and as she thrashed, all Rosabella could see, could imagine, was the feverish face of Oralie as it had appeared in her pain-dreams the night before. The torture-sarcophagus’s induced agony was nothing compared to knowing that by way of a single golden hair she had been the poisoner of a woman she loved, was nothing compared to the torment of hearing from that woman that the ancient horror that had ended the Last Era was even now being unleashed on the family of the man she loved.
“Your family,” Rosabella heaved, when her breath returned, “has delved into a great abomination.”
Great torment that lasted until the sea had worn down the mountains.
“Your family… has recreated the genophage.”
“Lies!”
“I speak the truth, love.”
The agony gripped her spine, bent it in an arc, and Rosabella felt or imagined the fluids draining from it as it cracked and split. A powerful grip fell on her neck, squeezing away the life of the breath. “You bitch!”
There was a sharp pain in Rosabella’s breast, and then white fire burned within her chest.
“How dare you speak to me so? Now we will discover whether you do have a heart.”
Tears streamed from Rosabella’s eyes as she tried to fight back the agony, but it was too much for her. She screamed with what little air she had, but no matter how she emptied her lungs, the fire burned brighter and brighter. The grip on her neck had released, but she had no knowledge of it.
Her breaths came faster and faster as her heart pounded madly, fighting the poison within, but it was no use. She could feel her very muscles burning away.
“Please,” she mouthed. “Please.” No words came. “Please. Please, Eztli.”
The end was coming. It was no use.
Her eyes met Eztli’s, and though she could not see clearly through the pain and the tears, she held that gaze as long as she could. She had loved this woman, after all.
Eztli blinked.
“Please. Please, my love.”
Eztli pressed her lips together.
“Please.”
Eztli furrowed her brows but held the gaze. Rosabella opened her eyes as widely as she could. If this was to be the end, then she could not have chosen a worthier executioner.
“Please.”
Eztli gritted her teeth and shook her head.
“Please.” Rosabella smiled through the pain. It was over, and she had always wanted to die smiling.
Tears filled Eztli’s eyes, and she unleashed an unearthly scream as she turned away. The agony vanished. Rosabella collapsed in on herself.
“How could you?” Eztli’s voice was muffled and came through sobs. Her face was in her hands. “How could you betray me, when I loved you so deeply?”
“Kill me… Eztli.”
“What?”
“Kill me. I deserve no less. Burn me alive. Burst my heart. But after you do, go to the laboratory… that Maga Senrii Generosus Ortus Nethress robbed. Inquire about the research, and you will find… that your house has gengineered an abomination fit…” Rosabella drew a breath that torched her throat. “…Fit only for murder, and that it is murdering all of Gens Nethress. Including Oralie Generosus Nethress. Because one day not long ago, I gave you a hair… from her head.”
“You betrayed me.”
Rosabella’s lungs clawed at the air, refusing to let it flee from her until she had had her say. “I’m sorry, Eztli. I am so sorry, my beauty. Shed your wrath on me… and end my life. I will not ask for mercy that I do not deserve. But once I’ve passed, go and learn the truth. I have lived six decades and loved well… and one woman I loved is standing here before me as witness. My only regret… is that I misled you.”
Rosabella closed her eyes and waited for death.