At first I thought Death had come, for this was the form I'd last seen him wear, robed in fire, brandishing rock. His token on the amblush board bore wooden streak tapering into the sky, implying the plummet Quarantown now had to witness and hear as the immolation of the very wind.
Out of the wide air, out of an invisible distance, came streaking a blazing missile of red. Shot at us malevolently, it struck painfully true, piercing and destroying the quivering black flesh of the ducks' cloud and scattering them. All the people would have been cast away, tumbling weightlessly, but as they fled the ducks tore at their scaly ornaments, broke or removed most of them. Thus we fell a little too quickly, injury not entirely avoided.
Nor death. The missile had struck a pair, broke it in two, destroyed one. Doppler and his boy. Upon landing on my backside my chest shot up and I saw the man in a similar position, staring at a crater before him, the clods of the impact still raining around us. At its bottom sat the crumpled and burned remains of Zachariah, his bones broken and his flesh blackened in an instant.
In organizing the people for Wanda's approval, little time had been spent on the children. Their youth meant they had infinite potential, and they would mostly go as their parents did. Naturally they would come to being acolytes on their own, curiosity drawing them to their goddess. And I had my own child to contend with; little Nepenthe had the same habits as regular children, such as putting unwise items in her mouth, only with her heritage those items were sometimes live animals.
It was a blessing that she was far from the clearing that day, watched by her typical sitter in our cozy train stop that was hardly more than a platform and a vestibule. She was safe, but not happy. There was no need to confirm, for she was an heir like her mother, and would've felt the death of one of her mother's people, especially the result of a deliberate attack. Nepenthe surely wept, as did we all.
In addition to his tears Doppler screamed. He scrambled to the edge of the crater. The ground was still hot from the impact, it scalded his hands, but he'd never feared diving into the earth and he would not hesitate now if it meant he could dig his son out of an early grave. The man was prevented from entering by our enemies, who had been contained in the meteoric projectile, and who now stood by as if they'd done nothing less mundane than stroll out of the woods under parasols.
One of them kicked Doppler, tossed him a great distance. A few ducks flapped down behind him to slow his rolling. I was not far behind in my duties even while wiping away tears. This loss was all of ours, a pistol shot to our collective heart, and the difficulty was not in imagining how Doppler felt but in understanding how Wanda would manage to contain her fury enough to direct it effectively.
I felt that too, like a sunrise flashing into a ceiling-consuming fire. It was overhead somewhere though, and my people dashed upon the dirt. I helped up Porter and Giggles, shoved them toward Doppler, ordered them, as kindly as I could, to see to him and get the man back to his family. They obeyed, his wailing all the louder once they got him on his feet, its volume paradoxically maintained despite the growing distance until fully outside the threshold of human ability to hear it.
Only then could I turn back and begin telling the others to disperse, to return to their homes and cower there while Wanda and I handled what only we could handle, for among the two who had dealt this vicious blow one was no stranger to me, and the other I could guess at, painful as it was to do so.
"Let them stay and watch," the one I knew shouted, stepping around the crater, her eyes glued on Wanda as she descended and planted her feet. Her furs maintained a volume of trapped air, doubling her size, each and every strand rattling like a saber. A splash of red on her mouth was not lipstick, but her own blood, as she had bitten the inside of her cheek, unable to suppress her rabid rage entirely. She had to drip feed it her own life just to maintain it.
An heir of Cain she has always been, but the Abel-bodied too know the strain that can come with their mother's visit, especially when she is a critical, conniving, cannibalistic woman like Excoria Vainglory Diatribe. Long of grimace, short of patience, holding herself like a loaded gun with a loose trigger, the eldest heir I knew lifted her burgundy dress with both hands and daintily stepped away from the smithereens she'd made of poor Zachariah, merciful compared to what she'd done to the authors and poets at the Villa Diodati.
With her was, if I guessed correctly, the next eldest. An heir's three names could be like curses, or an incantation, more powerful with each one heard, so Wanda had protected me in shady ignorance under her family tree. By this time however, I already knew several crucial facts about the litter from whence my hellcat had spawned.
There were seven in total. I had met five in person, and we'd tangled with a sixth from a distance: Goriana the youngest, Melmoth, Ruthven, Matilda, Wanda, Devorgoil the stillborn... All but Devor had been referred to as her 'little' siblings at one point or another. The specter-barber was her elder, but never called the eldest.
All I knew of this new creature was that she had murdered Zachariah and that she was the firstborn of Diodati, perhaps most infused with the evils of what fed her mother in the later stages.
Excoria had subtlety, hidden away somewhere under smug dismissiveness; this new heir was forged from the stuff. And yes, I do say that in light of their bombastic and fiery entrance, which I suspect was the mother's idea.
The eldest was tall, elegant in thinness rather than gangly. Flat dark hair was pulled back, tucked away under her clothes, which I could not categorize for they bore no era or style. If I had to make a comparison I would say she had just removed the face mask from a fencer's outfit. It was like cloth armor, and as I realized that I thought it might protect against some of that otherworldly cold one encounters when they pay a visit to the world serpent.
Her eyes were like that distant compacted death, black and bordered with ghostly wisps of white-gold. She was tight-lipped and of earthen skin, which had a red undertone like an orange dune under a once in a century rainfall, compacted darker and more aware. This new creature examined not us, but our town and the many invisible modifications Wanda had made to it.
Before I had even the first of her three names I saw what Wanda saw, and as with the serpent's knowledge we both knew what it was though we had never seen it before. In her eldest sibling's hand there was a rock, shaped as a wedge, weathered smooth by time, its flat side's slightly curved edge not chipped as it should have been.
Upon that side was a dashed stain, a darkness suggestive of crimson. Across that stain was writ the whole history of the heirs of Cain, for that was the hand ax that split the human family tree in twain. Here, having already murdered on our doorstep, was the first object ever used to perform such an act: a meteor cast between men. All warfare, all strife, all the strangling betrayal that silenced contentious households behind closed doors and drawn curtains stemmed from this, what had smote my ancestor Abel upon the blank canvas of his ignorance, the first stroke of an incomplete portrait of our kind that might receive plenty of new color this day.
"The rock of Cain!" Wanda shouted as she came to my side. Her furs were so alive that individual hairs in the sable collar were launching, arcing like dolphins, and disappearing back into the sea of their brethren. Her fear would never be as strong as her resolve, or even her anger, but I'd never seen it at such an obvious height.
Why shouldn't she be afraid? For while it is true that no heir can kill another directly, having never earned the indivisible power and right as they had with my branch, her elder sibling now held what had been used to alter such facts before. We had spoken of the rock prior, of its lore, of its supposed location, and of its likely power: with it an heir could strike down another.
Colossal implications were but mist I blew away. It did not matter to me if such an act would cause another fork in the road of man, if it would then allow all heirs to destroy each other, for the only outcome that mattered to me was the endgame of that day, that clearing, that showdown between my wife and her jealous family.
Here was a way I could lose her. Not to denigrate the many wonderful women of the world, but Wanda was different, even more than her bloodline would suggest. Her possessions are a part of her, and I had worked my hardest to become one of those possessions. When I gained a skill as I did with prophecy I did so for her, to justify more time in her hands and under her focus. Life was finding uses for myself so that I would be used, by her, and by no other. I would crumble in anyone else's hands.
If she lost her life mine would go with it. Even my concern for the people of Quarantown would not keep me tethered to the Earth. Life would remain, but lose all vitality, a wooden carving petrified to an inert stone, a mere grave marker. Nor would our daughter keep me, Wanda's blood in her veins gifted, not possessed by the true Venus of furs. Nepenthe needed only a push away, as if on a raft, with one trusted person to watch over her, and she would survive, grow into a mighty heir herself. She did not need me, which I was glad for.
"I'd best say it," Wanda addressed us all, "and call you a trespasser before you say it and call yourself a conqueror. You are not welcome here Janizary Adjitant Judgment. Nor are you mother! Nor is that rock! You've just killed a child of mine, an orphan of this cruel world nestled under my wing, and for that you should suffer eternally." Her eyes crackled to life, bolts of hatred streaming up out of them as I'd only seen when she charged her sister Goriana on all fours before expelling her from the city, as she surely planned to do now; that particular rock was not immune to becoming nothing more than a stepping stone for her enemies to depart on.
"Please, child of mine, stop this ghastly display," Excoria demanded. "You knew I was coming, or you would have if you had interpreted your own pet's prophecy correctly." She referred to the one I had made when Wanda was ill with the delirium, still my masterpiece at that point, torn from the mouth of one of the men Lady Diatribe had flayed and devoured as he screamed his last. "The hour arrived and it became a wandering mass of shapeless flame, a pathless comet, and a curse, the menace of the universe; still rolling on with innate force, without a sphere, without a course, a bright deformity on high, the monster of the upper sky," she recited.
Those were Byron's words, and then mine, now Excoria and Janizary attempted to make them theirs. Prophecy was a matter of interpretation, of applied heir power after the fact of its authoring. Wanda and I had already processed it in our own way, used it to gain the serpent's knowledge and rid ourselves of flaws. But her mother had heard it too, used it in her own way. Somehow those words that had most certainly, fatefully, referred to the world serpent for me now referred to Janizary for her.
"Have you nothing to say sister?" Wanda asked she who had not yet spoken, who had not yet looked us in the eye. When she did there was harsh disgust sculpted onto her expression. I knew nothing of her but that she was our enemy. The other siblings were more complex, or at least did not hide their complexity. Several of them had or pretended at kindness, affection. Not this one. She came with a rock, already lubricated with blood for its utilitarian purpose, seeking to make it industrial by its repetition. "Are you but mother's puppet in this!?"
"No one who wields this is a puppet," our invader finally said, hefting the rock. "She told me what goes on here, obviously to convince me to intervene and thus risk nothing of herself. What you do here threatens my journey."
"And you've threatened Wanda's prophecy," I asserted, knowing that anyone Abel-bodied had to act to be truly seen by the heirs. "Already sullied it in fact. What journey could justify these heinous acts?"
"She's been in the desert," Wanda answered for her, "doing nothing."
"Lasting," Janizary countered. "When I am as timeless as death it will be conquered. The sands mummify and bury. They preserve. Together with them I will wait out the rot of Abel, emerge into a scoured and clean world where our line, the true line, may properly begin.
Nothing they do could bring me out of my trance prematurely. It is you, sister, who has forced this. The time to try and master these monkeys is long past. Be as the leopard, and take them from the trees as food when needed, and do not try to inculcate ambition into minds that cannot grasp it. You might as well dash their brains with this; the end result will be the same."
"One day I will see a future that far, to the very hour you emerge expecting a clean slate," I declared, "and the both of us will see nothing but the domain of Wanda Blasphemer Pelts: a world thriving in her presence, flourishing in her demands, rising to her expectations. What you have come to stop will be made inevitable, by our faith."
"Do you ever shut your mouth?" Excoria asked of me, polite pretense cast aside. "If you could we wouldn't worry so much about you two exposing the heirs to the world at large. They won't let you take over their governments, their industries, their false gods, no matter how insidiously you try, nor will they differentiate between you and us after they've mobilized! And by that time they'll have guns that can march all by themselves or some other absurd blasphemy against nature."
"Your cowardice at the reach of my power is no concern of mine," Wanda snarled righteously. "Drop the rock as payment for the life you have stolen, then depart." I looked over my shoulder, saw that not all the townsfolk had obeyed me. They watched from behind trees, around houses, and there was a cluster of them on the overlook in the distance. This was the fate of their goddess; of course they would bear witness.
"Aren't you the least bit curious where we came across such an antique?" Excoria asked. "It's not been seen for over three hundred years."
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"It belongs to me now," Wanda claimed with such authority that my skin prickled, conditioned to become more sensitive when she used that tone with me in the intimate dark of the bedroom. She could find me in pitch black, from a pasture away, by just the way the rise of my gooseflesh caressed the air. "That's all that's relevant."
"From thy own lip I drew the charm," their mother reminded, again from my prophecy, "which gave all these their chiefest harm; in proving every poison known, I found the strongest was thine own. And on thy head I pour the vial which doth devote thee to this trial." Her reading of that section was now plain to us. 'Thy own lip' referred to my prophecy, used by her. 'On thy head' was interpreted as the weak spot for which they should aim. A blunt reading in my opinion, one that led them to choose a blunt instrument. The line about the trial probably pointed in the direction of the rock, which turned all of Cain's existence into a trial of isolation, suspicion, and endless attempts to master the world rather than live in it.
"If you got the idea from my work you must have then decided to visit the 'monster of the upper sky'," I said, working through it myself, "where you found the 'blackest blood' in the 'blackest spring'." Death, wrapped in the shroud of the world serpent. It struck me, again meteorically. He'd been in possession of it, the slippery devil. If I wasn't so utterly destroyed by gaining the knowledge I might have been able to claim it from him, prevent all of this.
"What would make the world serpent give that to you Janizary?" Wanda asked, having arrived at the same conclusion. "I know mother didn't bother to go."
"The cold gets into an old woman's bones," Excoria dismissed.
"He was returning it," the eldest daughter claimed, stepping away from the crater and the evil smoke it still issued. We'd emptied the air of onlookers, yet the space tightened about us as a knot: two strands of prophecy weaving skillfully until the conflicting conclusions balled it all up. "He has received too many visitors of late, disturbing his slumber. He thought perhaps they were after this, so he sent me away with it.
Where its absence will grant him peace, its wielding will grant me the same. I will return to my shifting tomb once you, the most unworthy of us, have been pruned."
"Unworthy!?" I honked, better than the drunkest and most amorous of Christmas geese. "Wanda has founded paradise! Her love for us is the exact opposition of whichever desert you washed up from! Bite your tongue... off! And leave it alongside the rock!"
"Thank you darling," Wanda complimented me sweetly, still finding time and space for me under the threat of Cain's granite guillotine. Her face darkened as it turned back to her family. "Yes, I'll have the tongue as well, if only to end this interminable jabbering."
Her confidence had inflated mine, but it came sputtering out of me when Janizary, without the necessary build-up as far as I could perceive, leapt the remaining distance between their arrival point and Wanda. Her landing sprayed me with dirt, knocked me over, but didn't cause Wanda to blink.
The two heirs were a hair's breadth apart, Janizary far the taller, staring into each other, daring the other to be one iota less godly, thus granting an opportunity to strike. None came, so Janizary resorted to the terms planned, no doubt contributed to by my considerate mother-in-law.
"If you are truly divine then you have nothing to fear from this," the elder challenged, brandishing the rock. This close I felt its aura: a dull knife under my scalp. A mountain rising between me and my own life. "We will have a duel. You wield this town and your disciples as you wish. I will wield but a simple rock, chosen only through an opportune and furious moment, the briefest of starts in my long rest."
"To the death for me, to forfeit for you sister," Wanda hissed back; I expected her to call the terms egregious, unfair. They were. If she'd had a second tongue, not impossible for an heir I assume, I would've demanded that one as well for the sheer gall.
"Yes," Janizary confirmed. Wanda bristled; her pert little fangs seemed to lengthen more than I'd ever seen. Weapons hidden and primed shuffled under her furs, rearranging themselves in the hot air of her intention.
"A duel it is then."
"What!?" I blurted again. My Wanda looked to me, all the electricity passing from her eyes. Her message rooted me, installed itself in my every nerve, prepared my muscles under my hide just as her secret claws and devices did under her exquisite pelt. My body already knew what to do, but she chose to inform my soul aloud.
"Severin, be a dear, and fetch a way to make her forfeit." I would never contradict her. Any prophecy that said I would was a forgery. I had no desire to do so now, but I did not know how to grant her request.
"H-how much time do I have?"
"Until I get tired," she answered with a smirk that sharpened all her teeth. And with no further warning her hand shot out, clamped around Janizary's rock-wielding wrist, locked it in place so Wanda's second paw could strike, not from across her waist, but out from the same sleeve.
A metal maw on a chain slid across my Wanda's feminine wrist and bit down on Janizary fiercely. That was a favorite toy of hers, a hunter's trap in our woods disarmed and turned traitor. Now was the highlight of its adventures at her side, for it chained the two heirs together and enclosed the rock of Cain, preventing it from being swung effectively.
But no cry of shock or pain from Janizary. Her face was a wall of slate under a glistering sun. The trap loosened only enough to bite further and further up her arm, but all that fell from the first punctures was a stream of red sand. There was her power. All heirs chose what to invest their godly strength in. Wanda had chosen her furs, the animals of the wood, the trap, me, and Janizary had the desert she had perhaps already spent a lifetime with. Each day she became more like it, more immune to what harmed wetter flesh and faster hearts.
With a stomp that dented the Earth and a mighty grunt Janizary grabbed Wanda by the shoulders, ignoring that her furs had become stabbing needles, and hurled my love a great distance, cut short only by the chain keeping them connected. The two entered into a tug of war, but Wanda shot me a glance, giving me permission to get on with it.
Awkwardly, stiffly, I turned and started walking. Where was I going? I had no idea. Things had to start somewhere though, and that field wasn't much of anywhere. If any tool could help us it would be in town, so with each step I flipped through the inventory in my mind in search of anything that could possibly go one on one with the very rock of Cain. The process was interrupted by Excoria coming up alongside me. I chose not to look at the smile I sensed on her face.
"Where are you going Severin? Don't you want to watch the fight?"
"Do you intend to interfere with me mother?"
"Stop with this mother nonsense you barely-Abel! If I felt like interfering I wouldn't have brought a daughter at all."
"And you've brought the only one you have that wishes to obliterate Quarantown completely, rather than usurp her throne. One might think, if you had the confidence of a true goddess, you would just keep to your own business, cognizant of the fact that no coalition of barely-Abels could ensnare and destroy you." There might've been rage on her face, but I couldn't see it as she checked over her shoulder. At least one of us wanted to watch the fight.
"With all this talk of tongues perhaps I should have yours."
"One might think that, not this one. My job is not to think. I but peer into the distance from the metaphorical crow's nest."
"And what do you see on the horizon?"
"Victory." Excoria scoffed, but her love of bloodshed overpowered her curiosity into my strategy; she fled back to her warring children. Only then was I free to panic in my search for ideas. Wanda kept all of her most invested items on her person, which was her furs, as her body was her god.
She'd opened the fight with the animal trap. The furs themselves could capture the rock, sequester it away in her hot hidden shadow where she kept many things, but Wanda must have believed Janizary's grip on it was unbreakable, otherwise she would not have sent me off in search.
We had her dead brother Ruthven close by, and he might help defend Quarantown so there was still something to steal for himself, but his next resurrection could have been months away. In addition he was weakened in strong sunlight, the tragic meteor having arrived out of a cloudless sky.
I stopped cold. The meteor. Not the one out of the sky, not an interpretation of my (latest?) prophecy that favored the invaders, but the one we'd discovered in amblush. We'd already encountered the 'contagion of a mother's hate breathed on her child's destroyer' come out of 'yon wide air', and now it was time for the 'inarticulate people of the dead' and their 'treasured spell'.
Amblush was the game of all heirs, not just the clan Diodati. Its pieces were moved by Death and the dead alike. Always he participated, evaded their search for his weakness, one merely assumed to exist. The game had been played across many expansive generations of demigod, yet as far as Wanda and I knew, no one had discovered death's third player status.
When Janizary emerged from her shifting tomb, after Abel-kind's end, she would then go to work trying to defeat death, now that all the distractions, now that all his unwitting minions, had left existence. To do that she would still need tools to fight with, clues to the truth, and I believed the meteor on the amblush board was one of them. If she had it she might even be anxious enough to pursue death immediately that she would disregard all of humanity still being in the way.
It was a lofty hope, and the only idea I had. All it required was showing her the meteor token, and her being curious enough to ask after it. So what I needed was the amblush board. Our home. Our game cabinet. Not far.
Wanda kept me in the best shape she could, but I was never one for strenuous exercise outside a tangle of bed sheets, which left me huffing and puffing by the time I got indoors, dropped painfully to my knees, and ripped the board from the cabinet. The pieces went flying; I scrambled to gather them and practically stamp all eighteen to their starting positions.
"I already know you're there!" I barked at death, but the meteor did not appear in the dark center. The ritual had to be repeated. Recalling which pieces remained in play and their exact positions at the time was not difficult. I went to rearranging them with devilish speed, snatching away the defeated, retreating to the edge of the world with the others, turning them inward to create a web of sight lines that covered all blind spots. He could not hide from me.
Somehow, the meteor did not strike. What was wrong? The answer needed to come quickly, still hurting me when it did. The ritual was not properly repeated. Amblush's first real lesson to the novice player is that they cannot practice away their foolish mistakes in isolation before debuting. It only functions with a true opponent; how else would death get the conflict desired?
This presented a much greater problem. No ordinary opponent would do. They would be completely lost without what I knew, just as I was until I knew it. Doing their absolute best would result in pieces going missing, in even my pieces being somewhere nonsensical. That was the game I played so long with Mergini, and while it was good fun it only ever felt like we were getting closer to understanding the rules.
Nobody who knew was available to play out the meteor scenario with me. Wanda was occupied, Excoria was against us. She thought so little of me that she would not acquiesce to a challenge that would force her to take her eyes from the only contest she cared about: one of her children bludgeoning the other to death.
Ruthven too dead. Devorgoil would help, but the last time I summoned him I was only barely successful, nearly lost my life in the process. The knowledge would have to be bestowed then, and the only way was to send one of the Quarantowners to the world serpent, now with the additional danger of him being irritated, since he had apparently sent the rock hurtling back to Earth to dissuade visitors.
Did we have time? Hours it would take, at the very least, and I had no idea if Wanda could last that long in sustained combat with another heir, let alone one wielding the rock of Cain. And if so, who? To send someone to receive this knowledge was an act of cruelty. Even Wanda, who spoon feeds me cruelty in a controlled manner to take pleasure in my fits, had not sent me. I had tasked myself with its acquisition.
The people had pledged themselves to Wanda, would do it if asked. I didn't want them to suffer under such a burden, not Porter, Giselle, Giggles, or any of the others. Arguably Doppler was the best candidate. He would be the most eager to volunteer, for power, for vengeance over his son, and once he knew he would shut his mouth about certain things in the future.
Alongside the stone I swallowed as I stared at the board was the realization that I would not send him either, not after what he'd just suffered. He couldn't make the decision responsibly. Desperate beyond measure, I settled on rushing the board over to the cave of prophecy, where dwelt the spirits of heirs long past. Perhaps one of them could become corporeal enough to assist me.
It was a long shot, and I only took part of it, for a third of the way there, under a sky that now couldn't stop issuing developments, I was met by a godsend, a Wandasend, an angel on black wings delivered to me across the twine of time she stretched to its breaking point: Mergini. He landed right in front of me to halt my sprint, causing me to spill amblush pieces.
As I bent down to gather them he waddled close, let me see what had granted him his uncharacteristically elegant glide. About his neck there was a brace of gray world serpent scale, cut to a custom fit. The sight brought back a memory that was not of note until just then. Mergini had not been in the charge of all the other ducks. Of course he would have a high rank among the birds now guarding our sky; the only reason he would not have been present, issuing quacking orders, was a task of even greater importance.
And one he had assigned himself. I always knew that duck had ambition, that he wished to make Wanda proud just as the rest of us did. Now that all the ducks were to be entered into active service he thought he needed something to distinguish himself from the flock, choosing the loftiest goal possible.
He wished to know. Understanding death was an even dicier prospect for a creature so likely to wind up plucked and hooked in a butcher shop window, but he had taken to the challenge regardless. We still did not communicate with words (we had no need of them), so it wasn't immediately clear who had fitted his scale.
Of course, Zachariah. He had been manning them at the flight practice, for an unknown amount of time before I arrived. The young man was old enough to do it skillfully, but still invigorated with enough childhood whimsy to both descend to Mergini's level and try and interpret his requests. As soon as I could, assuming I survived, I would tell Doppler and the rest of his family that he had saved us all from being shattered upon the brutal bluff of the heirs.
"Mergini, my son! You have no idea how happy I am to see you!" I embraced him, let him nibble my tattered ear affectionately. In truth, it might not have been affection. This was his return from truly learning of death, which had made Cain, and myself, homicidally turbulent. Heirs, born with it, treated their fellows as, at best, rivals. Again my dear ducky boy's brilliance shown, glossier than his black coat and regal olivine bill. As a duck, a possession by a predatory instinct had very little to subvert into weaponry: no claws, no fangs, and no mass to throw around.
He could be distracted by something he loved, those chaotic destructive urges redirected, just as Wanda and I had made dangerous love in the aftermath of my history lesson, all my hostility diffused into bumps and bruises on knees and elbows as we rolled across the hardwood. Mergini would instead have a game of amblush.