Heirs of Cain

Venus in Peril

What had until recently been a long and tall storage shed for mining equipment and explosives was now shrouded in mystery and wonder, cloaked inside and out with black curtains, doors thrown open to entice the townsfolk into its dim stalls, themselves converted to show off peculiar creatures and abominations of an intellectual nature.

"Welcome one and all, to Severin's Hall of Incredible Beasts! Yes, this way, do keep walking, I want everyone inside and hearing me. There will be plenty of time to meet them all and learn for yourself what they have known for as long as they can remember.

Up first we have the genius rabbit, generously lent to us by her owner. She is called Sugarbowl because she is so very sweet. Please Sugarbowl, demonstrate for us. What is... five plus eleven?"

The rabbit, fur coiffed to within an inch of popping out of its follicles, promptly hopped forward, then back, and repeated the action fourteen times more as the small crowd that could fit around her stall quietly counted along. There were mutters of 'sixteen' and 'no, you counted too fast'. I had to usher them forward, as there was so much more to see, and Sugarbowl was just the dusting on top meant to ease them in.

Doppler Burstyn, unfortunately my partner in this affair, in fact deserving partial credit for this harebrained scheme, the rest of it going to one of the hares, waved to me from across the river of people, smiled confidently with a flash of a gold tooth. I didn't want him to be right, so I embarrassed myself thinking it over for hours, hours I did not truly have to spend.

All to end up realizing he had found the best way to demonstrate. Wanda, my eternal love, my Venus in furs, had masked her divine nature so well that there was little proof of it in Quarantown that could be made physically apparent. What we had to work with was not even her design, but mine. It was I who insisted she not further alter the animals wrangled into the shed that day, in the hopes they could live out their lives comfortably rather than returning to dullness and the wilderness at the same time.

Though I had kept only one in my care, as well as in my confidence and good graces (Mergini the duck), the others had mostly done as hoped. Wanda had increased their intelligence, not to make them disciples like the people of Quarantown, but to enrich the flavor of their meat with the various tenderizing terrors of existence.

Obviously this endangered them, and a little cleverness of our own had to be exercised to move them out of the butcher's window and into other interpretations and roles. Enhanced rabbits became pets, chickens egg-layers, ducks accents to the public fountain, and trout... well we figured the river went far enough that they could make their own fates.

We were only partially correct on that front, as when I ran a net through nearby, catching several fish, I asked them if they would be willing to temporarily exist in captivity in exchange for helping me. Instead of speaking they very deliberately circled my ankles, and it was the majority. Those that remained were either regular fools or didn't care for me very much.

"And trout that leap on command!" I claimed, having moved on to a long aquarium set up near the rabbits. The agreeable fish then proved it with synchronized leaps and spins. Children made their way to the front through a copse of pant legs and put their faces against the glass, where the trout met them. Soon they'd be giving them names, which would make it difficult to say goodbye when the time came to return them to their waters, but there was a much larger problem at the forefront.

"Games!" Burstyn shouted in order to draw half of them off me. "Who wants to lose at chess to a chicken, bu-hah! And you will. Step this way Miss Essen, have a seat. Beat me three times this morning this rooster did; he might go easy on you seeing as you're such a dainty young thing. Don't you do it." He picked up the tall orange bird like a watering can of unknown contents and set it down at a chess board, playing as white.

Four more people filled up the games section, with three feathered opponents and one furry. I imagine the fish were just as good, but we hadn't worked out any means of dictating their moves.

All the stragglers, not many now, drifted back to me; our only exhibit left was the ducks. There was actually a third hand in this, if I'm allowed to count the webbed foot of Mergini, which I have just given myself permission to do. He was leading his own kind in a march, back and forth across a long lane of sand I'd laid out up against the back of the shed.

They'd been marching in perfect lockstep since before I'd thrown open the doors, the evidence visible in the sand as two perfect rows of overlapping prints. Training could achieve that of course, so it was time for a dynamic and undeniable demonstration of their intelligence.

"Mergini, if you would please give us a blank slate," I asked of my eldest child. He obliged by issuing an order, the sternest quack I'd ever heard out of him. Then he practically chased his brethren back across the sand, feet storming and bill about to plow. Obediently they scrambled in reverse, swishing their lowered bills to and fro to erase the footprints and leave a blank on which anything might be written. "Go on Emilio," I encouraged Miss Ulterrine's younger boy, "ask Mergini any question." My duck waggled his tail feathers to indicate readiness. The child stepped forward, rapidly went through the process of composing the sort of question one might expect a duck to know the answer to.

"Mr. Mergini... What is your favorite food?" Ah, an easy one. It might perturb him to spend his efforts on one so trivial, but soon the adults would want to have at him, and they'd be trying to discredit him with geography and history trivia. Mergini issued another order, with several of his subordinates breaking away from the huddled flock at one end and taking up spaced positions.

Diligent and industrious, each duck went to producing a single letter in the sand with their feet, completing them in unison, spelling out the word 'grapes'. It lingered only long enough for the children to spell out before the others swarmed back in and erased it. After that someone a touch older came in with a more complex query. Considering the exhibit thoroughly handled, I moved away, toward the center of everyone to gauge the atmosphere of their distraction.

First I had to set aside my own fears: ignore a racing heart to hear the beat of the town, swallow bated breath to feel the breeze of their curiosity, and still trembling fingers to sense their rhythm when we shook hands at the end of this day. If we shook hands. This was almost everyone in town, save those too young to participate and those too indigent to move. Quarantown was having a collective daydream, but its many constituents were not obligated to all respond the same way when they came down.

Doppler had taken it extremely well, but a ravenous attention hog like him took every revelation as the next course. Others would not be so straightforward. Who would be the greatest danger, and would it be to themselves? The frightened? The offended? The disbelieving?

Circumstance had forced my hand. It wasn't the right time for them to know, but the only time if I was to create a future that both fit my prophecy and benefited Wanda's ultimate ascension. So everyone must learn of her grace, her power, and the passion with which she had startled wrestling for control of the world. The best way was to tell them.

"Everyone, if I may pull you away from your new friends," I requested at the fullest volume that could be called friendly. Burstyn brought me a box without my asking, and it might have weakened my position to shoo him away, so I stepped up onto it. All their faces had turned, every last one, which I had not expected. To some degree they already sensed something very important had happened.

"Thank you," I said, too obvious in my shock at their speedy attention. "I have brought you all here today not just to amuse you, nor to amaze you. I'm sure you have many questions about these animals that have been living among you, hiding their brilliance, but there is a single answer only... and her name is Wanda Blasphemer Pelts.

Most of you know her as my wife, but she is much more than that. I've made sure she has been in the presence of each of you at least once, so you know what I say is true. You have felt how much more she is, yet you do not know what she is. Your head has swirled with bad guesses, all inadequate to describe her. Beautiful? Not just. Persuasive? Not Just. Spirited? Not just.

No, there is that something on the tip of your tongue, and it stays there, as you cannot put your finger on it to remove it. You are happy to see her, and you are worried once she leaves. That is because she takes most of her authority with her when she goes, but she does not forget you. Never will she forget you. Every thought of hers is a wondrous manifold; always she sees our town in all its possible configurations, hurtling through time, and she bats it this way and that to keep it out of harm, and to remind us of her presence.

Wanda Blasphemer Pelts... is a god."

To say the shed shook would be an exaggeration, to say their souls shook an understatement. All our lights flickered as we rapidly blinked. Nothing to blink away. No false grit. Even without her there they saw a new truth of hers: a path in the mind widening. Tears started to flow. A few collapsed into the arms of their significant others, and a few more into the arms of strangers who would not have been willing to catch them just a minute prior.

I watched the edge of the crowd, expecting... and getting! They huddled closer to each other, closer to me, eyes hungry, cheeks drawn in a sort of bodily disbelief, a retreat of flesh into the more comprehensible realm of gravity as god. Insanity, their bodies told them. No human could be such a thing. Feel this? This drag toward the grave? This is the only power of man. All of us can only fall and decay and bleach and powder. We cannot be gods.

Yet, their hearts thundered, soaring free and high, Wanda can, Wanda is. That was what they'd felt in her presence. Too strange it was, for some, and those were the ones who covered their hearts with their hands, looked anywhere but me, but they too took the most crucial step by accepting it.

A new ultimate truth, up there with the spherical Earth and its revolution about the sun, was in them. Everything that came after would seem so much lesser, so I continued my speech and told them the most vital facts of our circumstances. Wanda was the caretaker of Quarantown and all its people. She protected us from harm of all sorts, including Throng's Delirium. Her line was descended from Cain, the gates of power unlocked through an ignoble act. There were others like her, but they could not be trusted, and she sought to rise above them all, reclaiming not just the name of Cain, but the legacies of man in their entirety.

"Alas, now I come to the most trying news of all," I said to the huddled who were about to call themselves disciples. "I have shown you one of Wanda's minor acts of power in these creatures, as evidence, though I see now I barest needed them. Nonetheless, that effort was gone to because we could not take the simplest path, on which a single word from her mouth would address any concern.

My friends, my newfound family, I have revealed this to you prematurely because... Wanda has gone missing."

Now it wouldn't do for us to dwell on their immediate reaction, suffice it to say that I delivered a gut punch straight to the center of their last gut punch. We were all doubled over in grief we did not fully understand. I had to find some more breath, for my work was not yet done. With my beloved gone, all of them would need to contribute to Quarantown's immediate defense.

I swiftly made them aware of the infiltration attempts of her siblings, and together we developed ways to keep watch, to alert, and to react should any of them come calling when we were at our most vulnerable (something one of those siblings did as a physical reflex). Guards were posted on Ruthven's grave, illustrations of Goriana were passed around, and everyone revealed their lower backs to prove their spines had not been sabotaged by Matilda.

Everyone did their part, which was a mighty relief to me, as it allowed me to focus on the problem at hand: her absence. Already it was the longest I'd been without her since our first night on the train when I swore fealty and the other three chambers of my heart: affection, curiosity, and intelligence.

The sensations stretching within me were most peculiar, as I felt incredibly drained, but I could still recall my sorry state before a goddess entered my life, and I knew that even a weakened and heartbroken self was stronger than that window-watching nobody. Still, it was difficult to think.

Trains of thought were constantly derailed, cars tumbling explosively and falling open to reveal her face painted on every interior wall. Perhaps I had come close to guessing where she'd gone more than once, but each time a barrier of lamentable beauty stalled me and erased my memory. My first idea became the electric patter of her green eyes, my second the bundled freckles on the bridge of her nose, and my third the tufts of hair hanging over her ears like fox tails.

In stabbing contradiction stood my ability to recall precisely how she disappeared. I woke up. That was how. The simplicity of it hurt the most. Her side of our bed was empty, and I could still feel the pressure of her teeth on my scarred ear. The window was open; the cold intruded. It woke Nepenthe, whose crib we keep nearby most nights.

I went to her, picked her up and held her. Together we looked out into the night and found clouds hiding the moon and stars. Our daughter started to cry, and no night air could damage her constitution. She felt what I felt, the plunging, the sinking, the absence. Waiting up all night for her return provided no reward. This was no midnight rendezvous with a migrating familiar or pagan banishing of a minor demon. It was enough to rend our family in two, and offer no explanation to stem the bleeding.

Not a soul understood Wanda better than I did, so if there was anything to figure out I had to do it. What could take her from me, silently, instantly, seamlessly? In her realm, her house, and with her arms and fangs wrapped around her love, nothing was the only acceptable answer. She had left of her own volition, intentionally used her control over me to keep me from noticing for a brief time.

Wanda would sooner die than abandon what was hers; there was no point in entertaining the idea that she would not return if she were able. However, any number of pressures and mechanisms of dark magic could have convinced her that she needed to depart for a time in order to protect us.

We had discussed such a thing at length, as the first time was in the past, how far I cannot say. 'Previously' will have to do. Previously she had denied me information regarding siblings like Devorgoil and Goriana, and after those debacles agreed to fight the impulse to keep me in the dark.

So, if I gave her the benefit of the doubt, which was not just my obligation but my privilege, she had all of that in mind when she slunk off. That meant she intended for me to know or learn enough of her plan to steady myself, to keep things running until she could return, which she would do at the first available opportunity.

In short, this was a test, perhaps premeditated and perhaps not. Either way, she trusted me not to sit there, arms full of babe and nothing else, howling at the moon until someone came to help or put me out of my misery. And as a man careening completely out of control on his track of time, I needed to do everything with a sense of urgency.

After all, I did not know how long it had been since our last charitably-described adventure, in which I argued with some ghosts over poetry until we wrote a prophecy while she took a very long bath. Weeks? Possible. Months? Also an option. My best way to sound the depths of time was to monitor our daughter, who in this early stage of life grew and developed very quickly.

Sometimes those developments were out of order, owing to my condition rather than one of hers, but the trend was always upward, or downward if you go by her weight when attempting to lift her into her crib or keep her away from other children she would almost certainly frolic with too aggressively. Left to a typical play date, a child appearing her own age might wind up as little more than a grass stain on her knee.

Especially now that she was large enough that I deemed it months since the prophecy. Ah, there was the key. The prophecy had been sitting in a journal, and in my mind, inert, for too long. Perhaps the error was mine, and not just in letting my own life's work fester. When constructing it I had failed to develop any sort of definite timeline for its completion.

Was this the prophecy that would be the culmination of Wanda's entire works in Quarantown? Judgmental comments, aimed at my ineptitude in foretelling, had come from her mother that suggested otherwise. In them was likely a grain of truth, that as the ability was honed its effective range would grow, but that meant my initial effort would come to pass sooner rather than later.

My muse and I had discussed the steps that followed making prophecy. Each of us had a role, similar in nature but differing in leadership. In order to make use of the art, rather than fall victim to it, which was best achieved by ignoring it as one might an ingrown toenail or an expanding hornet's nest, Wanda had to find something to do that fit the prophecy's description of events, something that also benefited her.

So the strategy was hers to dowse. My role was to also seek overlap with what was written, but within the additional constraint of her developed strategy. Thus my frustration. She'd left me with no strategy, just a precocious child and a town full of people who wouldn't understand why I was fretting so uncharacteristically.

That wasn't quite accurate though. My goddess had also left me with my trust, which was exactly as strong as I chose to make it. With that trusty trust in hand I made several assumptions that few other men could make and remain surefooted: Wanda tested my ability with good reason, she trusted me to make decisions of consequence as much as I trusted her, and this was part of my prophecy's realization.

Once all that was managed in my mind I went about the task properly. The timeline was a greased rope to me. Others would need to manage it until she returned, and the only other human soul that knew of her nature at that point was Doppler Burstyn. A good strategy could not rely on him, for while I doubted he would ever betray Wanda, I was not her. He knew my position as chief disciple could be his position if I failed.

Rather than narrow down the whole town to a handful of candidates, what would be a taxing process that would leave us defenseless all the while, I instead chose to host them all at Severin's Hall of Incredible Beasts and get it over with promptly. Now I had an army at my disposal, one I knew intimately, and could dispatch the right soldier to the right task at my leisure.

I had hoped there would be leisure anyway. It was not so. Attacks came almost immediately, by my perception. Suddenly we were awash in potential citizens coming off the one and only train that stopped outside Quarantown. All of them had the necessary prerequisites, including some connection to a person already living there.

Our collective suspicion was aroused, and sure enough the true cause was revealed in the quarantine houses we had on the outskirts where people were meant to wait out any possibility of passing Throng's Delirium to the citizenry. Normally those places were empty, but now we had a crowd pooled around each building, all of them sweaty and shifty-eyed, refusing to explain themselves fully. Tempted as I was to dictate the task to Doppler, I was the one who had some experience with the prime suspect: Matilda Screwshaft Nunbleeder.

It was her who had managed to wound Wanda the most, surreptitiously infecting her with the plague in the hopes of destabilizing Quarantown enough to waltz in and take it over... or perhaps destroy it outright in the names of the Diodati matriarch: Excoria Vainglory Diatribe. My Venus had recovered from that plot, made herself invulnerable to other iterations of it, but we could do nothing of the sort.

Ninety percent of the new arrivals were carrying a screw of bone on their body somewhere, most of them threaded all the way down into the flesh and anchored in marrow. Matilda must have been amassing them over time, sniffing them out from the edges of wealthy social webs surrounding the blank space that was Quarantown.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Somehow she had gotten word that Wanda was not here and decided to throw the entirety of her investment at us. Managing them was a nightmare, as they all had to be held down, searched, and freed of their screw by means of blunt iron tools. Remote control was exercised over their actions, and Matilda tried everything from confusion to pleading to threats of hellfire. Some of her victims were close relatives to my citizens, siblings even, and they could not be allowed to be in the same room or participate in those extractions for reasons of conflicting interest.

What had felt like an army dwindled so swiftly I experienced a pit of fear in my stomach, the footprint of the lumbering dragon of failure. Attached to each screw of bone was some manner of invisible contagion, just as before, bearing the delirium. Knowing what I did, all who performed removals were isolated immediately, regardless of symptoms, and to my horror they all came down with it.

One man had had it before, and it was by then known that second infections were very rare, so some relief came in his leading of the efforts to free and turn away the influx, but there were too many for him to handle alone. We were going to run out of makeshift doctors, nurses, and orderlies in short order, with precious few left to attend to the rest of the town's security needs.

More big black dogs of decision accosted me, hot breath on me, teeth ready to settle for my face if I wasn't going to offer up anything more immediate as food. To freeze up was to fail, be nothing but an altar to Wanda when I needed to lead the flock.

During the briefest respite, a moment alone in the washroom, I delivered a powerful slap to my own face, an intimidation tactic to slow my breathing and dislodge any ideas shirking their duties on some recessed shelf of the mind. All I found was the notion of expediting my efforts.

I needed to learn (or forge) my role in the prophecy now, before we were overrun, and for that I decided to take another drastic step: recruit from the next highest tier of humanity. Lord of the chronically dead, Ruthven, had technically assisted me in the development of my art, presumably because he had nothing better to do at the moment, which led me to believe any other heir brains I could pick would both be able to assist and less likely to mislead than the vampire I had to keep stomping back into the earth like an incorrigible gopher.

Summoning them wouldn't be quite so easy as digging them up unfortunately. Of the two candidates who had not yet displayed outright hostility toward me, Devorgoil and Melmoth, I was less sure of how swiftly Melmoth could travel there, so I attempted to invite them first to allow more time.

I hadn't done such a thing before, but luckily something had dropped off those dusty brain shelves of mine some time prior and I'd just been waiting for an opportunity to use it. You see we had in our possession a part of their body: two vertebrae. They clung to each other aggressively, presumably through the hateful force that normally held their stalking skeleton together. That inner entity, forever vengeful that Melmoth had made it outer in order to maintain their shape and sex-shifting abilities, had come calling in Quarantown; we had disassembled it for them and scattered it in the currents. The way I saw it Melmoth Sympathy Dunajew now owed their sibling a favor, one that could be fulfilled through assisting me.

The shapeshifter was an empathetic being, so it seemed likely that they felt everything in a divided nature. If I handled the vertebrae they would sense it, but not necessarily come running. A coded message could be delivered through it with tapping if both of us knew such a code. Without one I had to rely on their common sense, an understanding that any rhythmic pattern from us was intentionally meant as a summons.

Utilizing nothing but a fingernail, I tapped on the section of spine, once, then twice more in rapid succession, and repeated in this fashion for a full ten minutes, the time overseen by my friend Porter to make sure I didn't lose or gain any. Three times, at the start of three successive hours, we sent this message in the hopes it would be enough.

After the task was complete I stashed the bones away, knowing Melmoth would hate to see them at all, and moved on to reaching Devorgoil Oblivion Goblinry. This should've been trivial. Granted a more peaceful nature than the rest of the brood by his stillbirth, Devorgoil treated the most delicate of situations as nothing more than his patio on a brisk autumn morning, a place to sip at a warm drink and greet songbirds that fluttered by.

I went to shave, out on the duck pond dock where I'd first met him. The presence of the razor against my throat should've tickled his awareness, brought him forth, but to my consternation nothing at all happened.

Actually, something did interrupt me. Three separate times. A concerned disciple rushed up to me and shouted that I should not end my life; they were certain Wanda would return soon. Their sentiment was touching, but ultimately frustrating, forcing me to explain that this was a ritual that very much served a purpose, and that they should kindly depart as to increase the chance of its functioning.

Yet even when I had the space to threaten myself undisturbed there was no response from him. Gritting my teeth, I pressed harder, drawing blood. Still nothing. I moved the razor lower, over what felt like the largest of my veins, and barely scraped the surface.

"I'm in no mood to be ignored Devorgoil!" I grumbled, standing from my chair and marching to the edge of the dock, scaring away the nearest ducks. At least they took my threats seriously. My Wanda was gone, so there was a genuine kernel of suicidal urge somewhere in me that I was not afraid to utilize.

The pressure I now put on the blade was insufficient to cut through, but it wouldn't be if I smacked into the pond face first. A lean of just a few degrees. A few more. More. Fine then, watch me, heirs of Cain, as I show a devotion most of you will be forever incapable of. Over I went, with ducks as my witness.

I was Wanda's greatest treasure and most reliable weapon; without her there to hold the hilt I fell. That role was so crucial to me that I kept myself a statue, as I could not act even in my own defense unless she approved it.

Finally, at the last possible moment in the last possible second, a pair of hands caught me and maneuvered me back to the dock. Our positions were so unbalanced that I wound up splayed across the boards, frantically checking for a crescent of spilled blood along my path. The razor was lost to the depths, but Devorgoil had a hold of me, forced to fall into an awkward sit by my shenanigans.

"What are you doing Severin?" he asked, panting. The man was shocked at his own exertion; once I was secure he moved a hand to his chest to feel its rise and fall.

"You weren't responding," I complained. "I felt I had to take drastic measures." His eyes rolled.

"Yes, it takes much more peril for me to notice if you're trying to call me," he explained. "Your intent makes it false. I didn't even 'hear' you until that last board squeaked. You could've died! And you know what that would've meant!"

"Wanda would blame you," I acknowledged, "before making sure you suffered the same fate. I'm sorry. It wasn't my goal to put you in any danger... but we're already in a boiling pot over here. I need your help." Devorgoil looked out at the town, assessing with far-reaching eyes I didn't comprehend.

"Any time," he eventually said, which I took to mean 'this time anyway'.

That was the first occasion I'd gotten so much as a whiff of negativity from him, reminding me he was an heir of Cain just like the others, regardless of his blood running gaseous and cold. Heirs were not to be trifled with, and thus the question was raised: am I trifling? The only way to find out was to explain the situation to Devor just as I had to Quarantown, which I did in the relative quiet of my home, the kitchen to be exact, the place I was most comfortable outside of the boudoir.

"She's taking an aggressive approach," was the first thing Wanda's brother suggested to me after he was caught up. He wandered over to the stove, busy with empty pots I hadn't organized since this affair started, and sampled some of the nothing within using a wooden spoon. His eyes closed and he sighed with satisfaction, able to taste a meal as dead and gone as himself. "To protect not this town, but this enveloping home." He grabbed his own arms in a self-embrace, wooden spoon pressed against his bicep as prisoner.

"What has happened, historically, when someone tried to rough up a prophecy?" I asked him.

"A rushing. People who try to catch destiny by the throat are the first to run out of breath. Wanda is sprinting through every step. Obviously she hasn't shared her plots with me, but I think her goal is to ascend as quickly as possible to deny as many opportunities for opposition as she can. It puts much pressure on you."

"Pressure I will withstand. I believe right now she wants me to be a steam engine. This conversation is but a venting whistle of my activity." He grinned dismissively. "There is no time to slow down. Will you examine the prophecy with me and help me determine where Wanda's gone? What she's doing?"

"I am curious to see it." He turned back to the pots, sampled something else I hadn't cooked for months. "Oh, basil."

"Pesto."

"With toast?" I pointed to a cutting board, the one on which I laid out sliced bread in order to slather it with butter and, sometimes, my famous pesto, famous at least among Wanda, Nepenthe, and Mergini. Devor shuffled over and wiped a finger across the air over the cutting board, then put it in his mouth and sucked. I was accustomed to his slightly transparent form, like fog, but just then he left his mouth a mystery for some reason. Hiding his joy?

"If you help me find the secret ingredient in my scribbled omens I will tell you the secret to that sauce." (It was pine nuts.) He threw out a flat-handed gesture, inviting me to fetch it. I did so, and when I returned he had pulled a stool up, from another room, near the stove and was helping himself to the air in my imported tajine. As authoritatively as I could I snuck the pot away from him and put the papers in its place, sampling its apparently delicious air with a finger myself to keep the mood light. "Needs more turmeric."

"Tell that to the chef who had it two owners before you," he said with a snort. "She couldn't cook her way out of a campfire." Rather than boost my culinary confidence (which was hardly needed and may have been a detriment given my ego on the subject), his criticism made me worry about how amateurish my prophecy might look.

As he took the book from me and examined the page, mumbling the words, I suddenly felt like a child bringing his pencil drawing to a father who could paint a landscape during his progeny's midday nap. The words weren't mine, they would have belonged to Lord Byron if he hadn't been devoured by my mother-in-law, but to not accept responsibility for them is to state the artist who merely curates is no artist at all, not something I take up with as a man who has read a hundred poetry books yet produced not one original poem. One would think I had composed one by now simply by muttering badly recalled lines in a fitful sleep.

In full my collaboration with Byron went:

"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!

And thou! beneath its influence born—

Thou worm! whom I obey and scorn—

Forced by a power (which is not thine,

And lent thee but to make thee mine)

For this brief moment to descend,

Where these weak spirits round thee bend

And parley with a thing like thee—

What wouldst thou, Child of Clay! with me?

Though thy slumber may be deep,

Yet thy spirit shall not sleep,

There are shades which will not vanish,

There are thoughts thou canst not banish;

By a power to thee unknown,

Thou canst never be alone;

Thou art wrapped as with a shroud,

Thou art gathered in a cloud;

And for ever shall thou dwell

In the spirit of this spell.

From thy false tears I did distill

An essence which hath strength to kill;

From thy own heart I then did wring

The black blood in its blackest spring;

From thy own smile I snatch'd the snake,

For there it coil'd as in a brake;

From thy own lip I drew the charm

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;

Nor to slumber, nor to die,

Shall be in thy destiny;

Though thy death shall still seem near

To thy wish, but as a fear;

Lo! the spell now works around thee,

And the clankless chain hath bound thee;

O'er thy heart and brain together

Hath the word been pass'd—now wither!"

"Beautifully done," Devor complimented when he finally glanced up at me and saw my nervous wringing hands.

"You really think so?" I gushed.

"Absolutely. Mind you, prophecies can't be written about me, seeing as I'm too dead for them. That could be good however, as it makes me an impartial observer. I've appeared in all sorts of places and bumped my toe on the heads of many a fallen man and woman, still clutching a crumpled prophecy they obviously had not worked out well enough."

"Can you tell me anything about it, so that Wanda and I might avoid such a fate?" He sighed, an indecipherable sigh, and reached into his pocket. Out came a pair of half-moon reading spectacles that he donned at the very tip of his nose. Why would he need such things, given that he'd just read it? The answer came in the way he looked at me. I was what he needed to see in better clarity, presumably, as he did not feel the need to explain.

"A prophecy is a tool that you have to learn how to use," he explained at an exacting pace, "and like many others it is composed of pieces. If you understand the pieces you can better understand the whole. Every word, every phrase can be used to construct a hidden meaning, often to multiple parties.

Why don't we try an exercise where I will read to you the phrases that sound most sharpened to me and you give me your immediate guess as to its reference. The openings are often the vaguest, so let's take that as example. 'The hour arrived' is broad, but not in your case, as I think it's clear that the hour that has arrived is right now: the time you have chosen to untangle the prophecy.

What follows is 'a wandering mass of shapeless flame', which I believe is leeway for you, as it could mean just about anything active, anything burning. If I say something and nothing jumps out at you, let it lie, otherwise speak."

"Yes, a wonderful idea, thank you Devor." I sat down at attention and slapped my knees. "Feed them to me." Forgive me as I cut most of the hemming and its spouse hawing from the rest of the exchange, for clarity's sake.

"The menace of the universe—the monster of the upper sky."

"The world serpent! Oh, that just bubbled right up. Keep going!"

"Where these weak spirits round thee bend..."

"The mine shaft! There I conferred with spirits and dredged up these lines. It means I need to go there again..."

"Oracles are often strongest at specific locations," Devorgoil said, adding to my confidence, before returning to the bright spots in the text. "By a power to thee unknown, thou canst never be alone."

"And I am not alone, for love joins Wanda to me eternally... but that power is not unknown. So what keeps us together, but is unknown to me?" Something lurked under my thoughts, moved my brain stem for me, almost physically, the tremble of a newly boneless limb. "Death. Death unites us all... and only the heirs have seen its nature. I know of it, but I do not know it."

"No, you don't," Devorgoil confirmed gravely, as if to cool our speed moving through the words. "The serpent was the first to know, and he does not die, until he does."

"Yes, the world serpent lives to this very day. He is relevant here. The knowledge he can give I imagine, seeing as he has never given anything else. And the mine shaft." I stood, paced around. Pans clattered as I struck their handles, for the first time oblivious to their position relative to mine. I was worlds away, or rather, I soon would be. "In the shaft I will acquire, or learn how to acquire, the knowledge of the world serpent. Is that it? Does that sound right Devor? It feels right."

The heir leaned back, arms crossed, so far that the front legs of his chair were airborne; yet he did not topple. All his concern appeared to be for me.

"There is still half the prophecy."

"No, there isn't," I said, having launched myself continents ahead. "Those lines in the middle- 'from thine own heart' and on, those are for Wanda. It is her half. It talks of snatching the snake from her mouth, and the snake must be the serpent, so figuratively that would be his knowledge, which could only be snatched if she already had it." My eyes must have been as wild as rutting porcupines, eyelash quills shaken loose by prickly obsession.

"Severin," Devorgoil said to anchor me back to that planet, that house, "are you aware of what you're suggesting?" I sounded it out for the both of us.

"Wanda wants us to be united in understanding. She has gone off to handle her end of things, and expects me to hold up mine. Mine is not just maintenance of Quarantown. I must gain the world serpent's knowledge, just as the heirs have."

"She is not asking you to become an heir," he said, much more definite than everything else he'd offered. "The heirs were made not when Cain learned the knowledge, but when he split himself from those who didn't with an act of fratricide. He acted in haste, and I don't believe was fully aware of what he was doing."

"Are you saying that if I gained the knowledge as he did I might kill someone?"

"I'm saying everything will, at least immediately after, feel lesser than what you have just learned. Trust me Severin, as I have known death more than most heirs even. It pulled me from the womb and swaddled me in snow. In its wake, no single life will seem to matter."

"I understand, but it does nothing to sway me. I'm certain this is my path through the prophecy. So... how might one get in contact with Mr. Serpent? I don't suppose he has a mailing address?"

"As far as I know he has not descended to our level since the days of Cain. He's out there somewhere, in the darkest sky."

"Then I must ask what has long had a vice on my curiosity. How is it that you heirs come by his knowledge? Are you born with it, does he communicate it to you across the distance, or do you meet him?"

"We're born with it," he answered plainly, which a more lively heir might not have done. They usually think there's no point in trying to explain its nuances to a lowlier type of mortal. "Some do try to reach him, take the journey to the knowledge themselves."

"And how is this journey undertaken if he no longer stops by for tea and coffee?"

"What does every snake leave where it has visited? There is plenty of his shed skin here on solid ground. There would be more, but every scale of it is imbued with his power of flight. If they are not held down they rise endlessly. If you can find one such scale, attach yourself to it, you will find him.

But I will not have Wanda hunting me down, accusing me of not warning you sufficiently. There are a hundred ways you could perish Severin, the easiest of them being a strong wind. And I do not know what will become of you even if you succeed. I've never heard of any prophet or chief disciple among the Abel-bodied attempting it."

"That's why Wanda expects it of me," I said, nodding along to my own ideas. "She knows she is pushing the boundaries of what the other heirs have tried. She moves toward deification now, even in the face of steam engines and newspapers that could carry warning of her across the globe in mere days.

And she does it faster, I'm now realizing. I've been protected from this by her grasp on my time. She shields me from any whiplash. But she chose me because she thinks I can do the same. I can surpass these boundaries, for I am wielded by her. She has always been a heat in the darkness, and now that will fuel me, ward me, against the cold of the skyless sky."

"You are, perhaps, too good for my sister," Devorgoil said, removing his glasses. He anticipated my objection. "Which isn't meant to impugn her, no more than I would our entire kind. Your love is real Severin, but an heir may not be able to reward it properly."

"Someday there will be someone like me who loves you the same Devor."

"And I would be forced to never satisfy that love, not fully. For if I did they would be content, and if they were endangered I couldn't come to them, as they would die happy. Dying happy is something heirs of Cain refuse to witness." He walked away, sampled from the pots once more (one of my past dishes I think). "People have seen the scales of the world serpent whether they remember them or not. They would always be partly buried just as they are in memory, otherwise they would've drifted away.

Take your citizens to this mine shaft. The spirits there will help you rummage through everyone's past as with your prophecy, until the treasure is found."

"Won't you join me?"

"I came where I was called, and I prefer not to follow those who have taken control of their own destiny. Good luck brother." And then the specter-barber was gone.