“There’s not a fiber of evil in Lyssav. She’s even rather tame in her goals. I mean, Dirofil wants to erase this reality to replace it for another, Babesi wants me to pay attention to her, Leptos refuses to pay attention to me, and Morbilliv wants to grapple big bad dogs without knowing the horrors that await out here. That, and the fact that vampire bats are not good sources of fiber.”
—Parvov, bothering Doratev as the latter tested a recorder.
The spire spoke softly, and soon the occupant stirred awake. She stretched her arms and curled her nightmarish claws. Runila once more climbed the steps of her tower and prison. Three eyes blinked, one at a time. Why was she alone? The useless thing was tasked with bringing Leptos on tow. Had his brother decided to loll on his throne another while, and sent the Splinter back with news of soon-to-come visit? She was growing impatient, but the reasons of Leptos were not to be argued. Lyssav clawed at her face until the claws dug down enough to touch the static fangs embedded in her red-tinged slime. Anxiety overcame her. Not anxiety to run out, but to be free to do so whenever she pleased. To know herself prisoner of Parvov felt far worse than being one.
A little cackle gurgled from her voicebox, embedded deep inside her terrible parody of a cranium. The tangle of hemoglobin-rich-blood-colored metal held it all by thin extensions sprouting from the jaws: the eyes, the voicebox, and even its connection to the succession of thorny and twisted vertebrae. She had an idea, somewhere deep inside her core.
The Splinter of Mardhaka stepped in with her mask held firmly in place for the last time. Her crown of feathers pricked up as she spoke. “Leptos is unable to leave his throne, Lady Lyssav. His core has sewn him to his seat of power.”
Behind the curtains of chains and liquid fear incarnate Lyssav repositioned, leaned forward. “I see. How unfortunate for me, that I now need to visit him instead.”
“I beg your pardon, mistress, but there was nothing I could do to set him free. Is there anything else of use for me to do?”
“Yes, there may be. I have grown bored of these: I want the curtains removed. But I cannot bother doing it myself. Would you be a darling, Runila?”
“If you’d allow me to speak with Desmodus, if just for a second, Lady Lyssav, I’d lift the sea itself.”
Lyssav blinked slowly, as if her tears had suddenly turned to tar. “I should have expected such a petition from you. There are no words left to be parsed in the echoes of Desmodus. No suffering either. Just husks of him, and of his strife against an unrequited love. Knowing this, do you still wish to hear them?”
Lyssav could barely make out Runila’s outline behind the chains, but she would have needed to be blind to not notice the Splinter bowing. “You don’t have the slightest idea of how much I miss him. Even the dying throes of his mind would soothe my pain. Please, Lady Lyssav, channel his will out of your soul, and I shall obey.”
There was a feeble weeping, but it didn’t make justice to Runila’s inner turmoil. Lyssav’s alternociception revealed the Splinter’s pain, no gram of it going unheeded. Lyssav had always come across as a dark empath to her siblings, but nothing could have been further from the truth: it wasn’t the capacity to understand others without feeling pity that allowed her to mock their worries and pains. She had been blessed with the capacity to feel it, viscerally. And it was a delicate delight she wanted to consume, to make hers.
“First comes the assignment, then the payment. I am a Thinker of my word, Runila: I will let you hear the extinguished voice of your beloved once more. Their tattered soul, even. But only if you remove those ugly things and drop them in a corner. Be careful; don’t break the delicate vials. They are a gift from my dear brother all the same.”
Runila reached for and let one of the golden chains slide against her hand. The weight of the vials hanging from it like mature figs was palpable. Looking upwards, Runila noticed that the chains were attached to the hematite-resembling ceiling with hooks. She thought them bolted deep into the stone, but soon noticed that around their bases the tower’s fabric was… wrong. Recrystallized. They had been inserted into partially molten stone, fast enough for the stone to not deform under its own weight. “The heat needed to do this…”
“Parvov, Flametamer. His control over heat and states of matter remains undisputed. Only him and Morbilliv ever managed to turn soul energy into true fire, and the Fifth’s control of flames never measured up to Parvov’s,” Lyssav informed with unusual pride. She wanted to punish Parvov, but his merits in battle were not to be understated. She envied his skill to turn his thoughts into veritable phlogiston, to melt materials with the sole infusion of his burning anima.
Standing on her toes, with a deft flick of her wrist, Runila managed to free the first of the chains, prompting a startled hop of Lyssav on her throne.
“Careful with those!” she chided, barely managing to dress up her disquiet as worry about the “decoration’s” integrity.
“Yes, Lady Lyssav,” Runila said, feathers tilting as she carefully piled the chain and vials on the furthest corner of the chamber, by the doorway that spat out the spiral stairs.
Lyssav’s claws drummed on her armrests as she witnessed the horror of Runila’s task. How careless some of her movements were! The vials trembled, the vials threatened to fall. Risk of rain of kamikaze jailers in front of her, prompted by this annoying Splinter! But this was also her chance at freedom, of casting the water aside. She had to endure this test of patience, of sanity.
The shattering of a vial caused her abdomen to churn, her many legs to perch high on her throne, her flesh to bubble as her soul refused to let out a silent scream. So close, water had been so close.
“My bad! Pardon me, Lady!” Runila pleaded without stopping the unhanging and relocation of chains and little bottles
“Less talking, more toiling,” Lyssav barked, leaning forward against her best judgement. She hoped she knew Mardhaka and her Splinters, that there wasn’t some hidden capacity to sense fear in others like she could pain.
Minutes went by and the slit pupils quivered incessantly. One chain at a time Runila detached, one of hundreds, golden and fateful. The light of the Splinter’s core glistened off of them, reflected off the links, myriads of nefarious mirrors mocking the Second Envisioned.
As for Runila, she thought that Lyssav was just playing with her. But she would play along with the terrible entity, for only in her flesh and soul any echoes of Desmodus remained. Mardhaka wasn’t half as powerful as Lyssav, and a Splinter wasn’t half as powerful as their Original. Only through cooperation with the object of her hatred she would bask in the memory of the beloved. What a tragedy it was to be a Splinter, to be Runila. A victim of unrequited love of a victim of unrequited love. Sick was the sense of humor of the creators, she thought once and again, every single tide of wakefulness.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
One chain at a time, and soon enough a path was carved, from Lyssav to the stairs, from the throne to freedom.
To run, it would have pleased Lyssav to run and run and jump over spheres and climb into Parvov’s spire and occupy it until it fell. But she wouldn’t abandon her darling, her spire, and wouldn’t show cowardice in the mask of Runila. Besides, there was this scrumptious mound of pain working in front of her. “I am satisfied with your diligence. Come closer, I shall reveal Desmodus’ remnants to you.”
Runila left the chain she was holding neatly piled by her side and advanced with shaky knees. She wished she could close the eyes behind the glass lenses of her mask, to not look at Lyssav. She was not only despicable: she was horrid; born from a corrupted vision, or depicted by a twisted mind. The fingers with more bones than they should have had, the metameric abdomen that reminded of a myriapod’s plagued by unseen tumors. Wings resembling those of Desmodus, but with tattered membranes of ever-rotting mucilage. And the mouth. Who, or what, could conceive that mouth, that seemed woven from uncountable vessels ending in one tooth each, be them flat and blunt as the ones on the palate or base of the mouth, or sharp like those that plagued the borders? And from these jaws her skull, freakish root system of an aborted underworld tree. No eye sighted could welcome her image.
Horrors permeated the spire of Lyssav. The horrors of the occupant, and the horrors of the water. And yet Runila advanced undeterred, her grace exiled as she tripped on her own legs and found herself crawling up to Lyssav.
“Ask and you shall regret, Runila.”
“Show me, Lady Lyssav.”
“Call me what you want to call me,” Lyssav smiled with all teeth sharp, looming over the Splinter, raining the bloody light of her core over her soon to be victim.
“Show me my adored, monster! Murderer! Cannibal!”
“Cannibal?” Lyssav smiled. “What are you saying, darling? I have eaten no god yet.”
As Lyssav’s face drew closer Runila cringed more and more against the floor. “You promised…”
The flesh around Lyssav’s core bubbled once more, and, if only for an instant, Runila thought she could hear Desmodus voice calling, the soft ochre light of his core bathing her instead of Lyssav’s vile crimson. But as soon as the sensation of familiarity and reciprocated affection washed over her, it died out, giving way to the bleak reality, to the slab of silence that inhabited Lyssav’s spire, to the unchanging red light that dripped from the Second Envisioned’s heart.
“I can feel your pain, Runila. Know that you don’t need to suffer for Desmodus. He’s devoid of all pain inside me. Pain that I have devoured, pain that nobody suffers anymore. Pain that I bear like a badge of honor.” She drooled onto the scared Splinter’s mask, as her jaws moved without matching her words, tooth by tooth. “You are in presence of Lyssav, Devourer of Sorrow. I can hunt down your pain, Runila. Consume it whole. The world hurts us all, but so long as I live, suffering is merely a choice.”
The mask shook meekly in place. “No. No. I don’t believe you. If there’s true silver to be found in this world, it shall be mined from your tongue.”
“Oh, so that’s how it is going to go down.” Lyssav retreated, climbing back onto her throne, letting Runila prop up on her elbows. “Do me a favor and tear your mask off. Let me feed on that pain, and I shall grant you a second basking in the memory of Desmodus. Go on, tear away your mask. Rip it off, as painful as that may be. And when you get blessed with the relief of a pain that got extirpated, you will also grant me the pain of your soul, Runila. Dirofil wants to create a world without pain by killing us all. I can make it so without such dire consequences.”
Runila raised to a sitting position, her fingers reaching under her mask. “You want a world where everyone suffers to feed you, correct?”
“Where everyone may ache, but nobody suffers, for I consume all the pain. The sea doesn’t have to swallow the world. The dogs don’t have to descend upon my people, or rise above the palaces of yours. I have been born blessed, untouched by the taint of those afflicted by dolor. I don’t enjoy pain, but I don’t mind it either. It’s there, it encompasses me and wraps me in its warm embrace. I had to be explained what suffering is by my brothers: it took me a long time to truly grasp the concept.”
“How long will you expose me to Desmodus presence, Lady Lyssav, if I tear off my mask?” With difficulty she incorporated, legs still shaky, both hands digging in her mucilage.
“Long enough, child. Long enough.” Lyssav’s conical tongue came out. It licked her fangs, one by one.
Runila had no more questions for the injustice in front of her. For a chance to bask in Desmodus’ light a few instants more, she would tear off the mask that was visage.
The hands pulled. Runila screamed. Lyssav rejoiced at the taste.
Pain receded. The Splinter could feel it as she buried her fingers deeper under the contour of her face. It was being aspired out of every crevice of her body. Suctioned by a magnetic presence, whose outline she couldn’t see, but felt all the same. An event horizon for pain unveiled before her, solid and unwavering. For a fraction of a second her flesh ached, and then a numb void replaced all discomfort. A void one should fear, a void that felt inherently wrong, but resulted soothing all the same.
She pulled further, tendrils of slime clinging to a mask that refused to detach from the outline of her head. The eyes were left behind, rebounding back into the head with a popping sound. But there was no suffering to be had, no anticipation of lasting torment.
Like Lyssav’s, the parts of Splinters of Mardhaka—and of the original herself— were firmly held onto her bones by clusters of high-density mucilage. And so easily, so painlessly, ah, it was coming out! An ecdysis of the inherited visage, a shedding of Mardhaka’s seal. A metallic bone shaped after another, how could she wear that face so meekly, so uncomplainingly, if tearing it off wouldn’t hurt? Everything original and souled cast countless shadows upon reality, and those shadows were named Splinters. Spires had Splinterspires; Palaces, Splinterpalaces. Dogs, capable of spawning by means unknown, were the one exception. And Runila didn’t like being a Splinter. She wanted to be an Original, for had she been, perhaps Desmodus would have loved her.
With trembling hands she finished her task, the left eye dangling, unable to return to its position for the time being, the spot where the mask had been marked by many amputated and wriggling tendrils, barely distinguishable from the surrounding tissue, an orgy of decapitated, transparent roundworms embedded in gurgling spittle.
The mask fell to the floor with a tinkle as she stood hunched and quivering in front of Lyssav.
Four of the hands of the Second Envisioned joined in a satisfied rub, the unpaired one beckoning the effaced Splinter to step closer. “I shall reward such sacrifice and obedience.”
“Yes, mistress.” The voice of Runila came distorted, her voicebox tugged out of place, partially emerging from the parenchyma of her body. “Gift me his light once more.”
Lyssavs arms shoot forward, grabbing Runila’s shoulders and arms in less than a second. “I’ll gift you his light forever.” Lyssav’s core began shining brighter and brighter, without a trace of Desmodus’ soothing light amidst the waves of crimson.
Runila was paralyzed by the sheer power exuded, by the stare of the three cleft suns that threatened to burn all she was. Her body didn’t react when she realized Lyssav was behaving as a Thinker of her word, but also one who chose what she said very carefully.
One by one the branches that composed Lyssav’s maw stirred to life, revealing a direct path to her core as the teeth danced around, hopped or dived from side to side, above or under each other.
It didn’t take long for the hands to tear Runila’s core from her torso. It took even less for Lyssav to slurp up the weak thoughtcrystal just like she had the powerful heart of her suitor and Runila’s bodily pain.
Leaning back in her throne, she licked the dripping remains of soul from the sockets of her sharp teeth as she relocated them to return her shifting jaws to their resting position.
“I should have tortured her a bit more. A little taste of pain always opens my appetite,” she lamented, closing her eyelids and preparing to fall into deep meditation, to add all that Runila had been to her soul, obliterating whatever could survive of the Splinter.
Soon enough, Lyssav fell asleep, and Runila from existence.