Eyes not his got opened, and through them he beheld the iridescent miasma that intoxicated the atmosphere. His arms were flapping, and, whenever he got a glimpse of them, he noticed they were bedecked in black feathers. The black tapering form in front of him that he couldn’t make out, then, had to be a beak: he was riding on a bird’s body, trapped in its head. They soared over a circle of floating bridges and golden platforms, lined on the outer ridge by bars that extended infinitely upwards, a giant cage with a cotton sun at its center.

Behold Mother, resonated a thought inside the bird’s mind, one Ald could hear, the ball of fuzz, the ball of fuzz. To their left it hovered, a star of white fur in the center of all that there existed, uncountable times bigger than them. Through bird eyes the glitter of Mother’s teeth could be seen, despite the cottony cover. A garden of forking maws, little blades shining through the wool in colors the Felsian couldn’t see. But a passerine could, and more so a raven brought forth by Unkindness.

The bird glided flawlessly through the airless environment, no breath to be felt on its chest. Flawlessly, but still disturbing the fabric of Mother’s abode enough to warrant the attention of the house owner, to make the mass under the cotton stir.

Steering softly to the left they orbited this core, whose identity as Mother Ald couldn’t deny. The shivering hell to their side called to him, it emanated the same foul aura as the tooth.

The fuzz peeled down on the sector nearest to the raven, crashing towards infinity and revealing the pus-leaking pupils, the fleshy irises underneath. Ald wanted to scream, to gasp. His soul was aware, his soul feared, his soul knew. And he was the raven’s hostage, or so he felt.

As for Mother, all she knew is that there was a soul close by, and she was hungry. Or, rather, she was hunger. Not a fiber of Mother existed in a state of bliss, of satiation. She had split herself into the hunger for the spirit and the hunger for the flesh just so she could engender beings that would sate both. And now one of their sons had been sent here; unusually packaged, if she were to complain about something. But for the hunger all vessels were alike.

Thus Mother extended forth her tendrils, her tentacles of sheathed ovaries and veins and arteries. In her vision of the world, every Felsian deserved to be embraced by them, to be consumed, to return to Mother. They struck the ill omen like a lightning of flesh, entangling onto the wings, and drawing it towards the mouths at a vertiginous speed. And the instant before the bird and the panic-infused Ald crossed that line of no return, Ald Blinked, finding himself again on the crater, kneeling over the rough stone, the masterwork’s cold hand retreating from his face.

“Mother… that was mother,” a trembling voice came out of Ald as he grabbed his shivering shoulder with the free hand. “Mother… Mother almost eats me. Mother.”

“How easy you are to break, son of mine. Zaburanatea lies. That was just a vision, not unlike Caretaken’s vile illusions. Mother is my counterpart, a beacon of love unending.”

“Her love is burning my hand, brother. Our mother’s so-called affection is hurting me.”

Ald changed Mother’s tooth from one hand to the other. He dragged his hurt leg as he paced around father, slowly describing a circle, taking in the image of the desperate beast from every angle, one step at a time. Its multiple appendages, some legs, some hands, some senseless hybrids of both. Its tails, some ended in stingers as white as him, others in tri-partite, tapering pincers. Father could crush him easily with his size, and yet it was well-tied by those delicate strands of intertwined hair. “I,” he stuttered, as if the use of the pronoun was wrong in itself, “want the truth, Father.”

“The truth is that Zaburanatea is a liar. Nothing less, nothing more.” Father’s eyes were to never the tooth on Ald’s hand, as long as he was able to turn his shackled head enough to follow him, at least. “But if you insist on believing her, so be it. Mother may damn everyone in the afterlife, but I can damn anyone in this one. Free me and we shall deliver the worst of torture to your enemies, Ald.”

Ald couldn’t help but let out a pained chuckle at the idea of having enemies that deserved such fate. “If you wish to use your magnificent powers to curse a bunch of catbirds, moles and prairie dogs, be my guest, brother.”

“Why are you so cocky? I could make your life an eternal torture if you give me reason to. I don’t need to be unbound to curse beings, Ald Elvisatcaught. Less so when they descend from me.”

Ald returned to the twelve o-clock position of his circle, and stared at his maker in a couple of the eyes. “Then I have a request, Father. A small price for you to pay in exchange for freedom.”

“Another deranged request? Let me hear it. Just know there’s no way to change our nature. I will always be your Father, and she, as horrible as you consider her, will always be your Mother,” Father licked all of his teeth once again, making a shudder course through Ald’s body. Unkindness observed without moving an inch: She simply had no need to.

“Curse all of our souls to wander this realm after we die. To be forbidden from entering Mother’s heaven. If Mother isn’t eating souls, you should have no quarrel granting this wish of mine.”

Father blinked slowly. He opened his mouth and showed Ald the endless pit of his gullet, dark and sharp. Then he snapped his jaws shut, the cracking of an ominous whip. “Mother would hate to see her darlings suffer like that, son. I prefer not to mess with the afterlife of my delectable descendants.”

“Liar… Clivanaratea is the one that doesn’t lie, then.” Ald said with a voice forged out of sorrow. There was immense grief in his words, for something had died. “I promised Kali I would bring the rains back. I promised her she would have a little brother or sister to hold in her arms one day.” He pulled his head back briefly, the habit of silently praying to Mother almost impossible to leave behind. But he resisted the temptation, focusing on the burning feeling of his palm and fingers. A raucous laughter erupted from his lips. “To come all this way— to suffer one loss after another.” He shortly gestured at his wooden leg. “Only to find out I cannot fulfill my promise without damning the souls of everyone I care about. Yet… I am not Clivanaratea. I am no manifestation of justice. I am a blacksmith: I provide tools for those that need them. I am a farmer: I grow food to nourish myself and whoever would like to buy my produce. I was Kali’s caretaker: now that role falls upon Gleur. I was Elvisat’s ward. Ask her to add another clause to that statement.”

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Father strived against his restraints, clawing the ground that was, also, Altasa’s ever-regenerating skin. “Get to the accursed point.”

“I…” Ald turned to look at unkindness with teary eyes. “Have no right to end your life. If there’s no eternal life after death, we Felsians will need to learn to live with the time we have allotted on this world. The others, anyway: I know that as soon as you are free, I will be devoured. I hope Kali has a good life. I hope Elvisat gets over my disappearance before her death. I hope Gleur lives as long and as peacefully as he deserves to.”

“You will sacrifice your people’s eternity for a continuation of a city,” she snarled, leaning against a wall made of deformed birds. “I am disappointed, slightly so. But I brought you here for you to choose, Ald, and if you have made your choice, go ahead and enact it.”

“And you lied to me.” Ald said, the words tasting sour to him as he pointed the tooth at his interlocutor. “You said Felsians would walk Felsia’s plains in a thousand years. That we would stroll along the walls, singing songs. I may not remember the exact words, but you promised that if I picked the right choice.”

“That’s not what I said, Ald. Exact wording is of utmost importance in my statements. Go ahead. Free Father if you wish to.”

Ald felt another voice intrude in his mind. “Torture him a little beforehand. That thing burns. He will eat you anyway. Cauterize a few doodles on his skin before becoming history, farmer.”

“Shush, Caretaken!” he shouted at the nothingness above him, swinging the tooth against empty air as he had so many times swung a sword. “I despise you.”

“Interesting, common ground with my dear son.”

“Shut your trap you too, or I will take his recommendations into account.”

Father had no idea what Caretaken had said to Ald, but he knew the creature. I couldn’t be anything good, and Ald had a mean to hurt him in his hands. For now, he would comply. “Hurry up, son. The longer you take, the more Felsians will lose hope and take their lives. One already did.”

Ald shook his head. All of this suffering, all of this strife, for such a scant reward. HE approached Father until he was barely out of the reach of his twisted claws. “Let me climb on your back, I will release your neck first, and that seems the safest spot.”

Father let out a loud snore. “Some deranged leaps of logic you must have taken to decide that, son.”

“You have pretty good control of your limbs. If I release them, you can use those appendages to drag me towards your mouth. Your tails, all the same.Your neck is shot, your head would need to spin for your mouth to face me. And once I have released one of your bindings, I can draw back and wait for you to get your hunger under control before undoing the next.”

Father considered Ald’s word for a mere second. “You seem to regard me as nothing more than a basic animal.” He pushed against his restraints once more, and then let his body go limp. “But you come to help me, so I can spare you. Even the hunger knows which hand feeds it. And what a better way to feed me than by granting me the freedom to do so on my own once again.”

“If I free you, you are not hurting a Felsian until everything returns to normal. Eat some misshapen,” Ald Demanded, maneuvering slowly around Father’s limbs, approaching his side to climb onto his back.

“Some Felsians are born for greatness. You were born to test my patience it seems. But we need each other, Ald, so I will do my best to comply. Don’t ever say your father isn’t generous.”

Clivanaratea dissolved into an unkindness, the birds flying through the feather ceiling and losing themselves into the sky. If Ald had decided to release Father, there wasn’t much to say, there wasn’t much to do. Ald was right to claim he wasn’t her.

The Felsian reached a spot where his Father’s arms joined his massive body, and analyzed it for a moment to devise a plan for climbing. The tooth needed to not touch Father, as causing him pain would not be a wise course of action. The wooden leg would make the task harder than it had any right to be. With four limbs, he could manage to scamper up while holding the tooth apart from Father with a hand or foot.

Yet, bedeviled by pain as he was, and being only able to image how much it would hurt to get one’s teeth burned, he bit onto the tooth, struggling a bit to hold it with his mouth, feeling his tongue ablaze and his lips blister, tears running down his face as he grabbed onto Father’s fur and wondered if he could tie the damn thing with his hairs. No, they would burn , get brittle, and the tooth would fall. He needed the tooth to release Father.

Weeping and whimpering due to pain Ald clawed Father’s impenetrable skin, climbing with a salamander-like movement onto the colossal back, feeling his progenitor’s labored breaths under his fingers and toes. He clambered down to the neck, grabbing tufts of white hair and fighting a fear so ancient and deeply rooted that it made him feel nauseous. A wolf pup nuzzling the wolver as he held a sword to his face.

“Make haste, child. I don’t deserve to suffer your clumsiness.”

Ald wanted to tell Father he wouldn’t “suffer his clumsiness” long as he took the Tooth and touched the skin with it, as if to slide the makeshift blade under the threads of golden hair and cut them from below. Father trembled as the artifact burned him, overflowing with hatred but resisting the temptation to snap and throw his rescuer off his neck. After all, Ald wasn’t like Zaburanatea.

And Ald was aware he wasn’t like her in a key aspect: Ald breathed steadily, especially when he lied.

Instead of cutting the hairs, the son turned his wrist in a deft movement and used his other hand to add thrust to the strike, making the tooth easily pierce skin and flesh that no metal instrument could harm.

Father let out an ear-piercing howl, first out of surprise and pain, and then out of realization and fear. He tried to buck, to throw Ald off by contorting the muscles of his neck all he could, up and down, left and right. But his son had straddled it, and was holding steadfast to the tooth he was burying into his father’s spine: struggling only aided the killer in his task. “Traitor! Scum! You have damned your people to extinction!”

As boiling blood the color of a noon sky gurgled out the wound and around the silvery tooth burning his mistreated hand, Ald spat to a side, and despite the blisters in his mouth and the damage to his gums, he spoke. “They will thank me in heaven.”

“No!, you won’t have that afterlife you so desire, traitor! I still draw breath.” Father whistled pathetically and puked blue blood, that flowed between the teeth of his lower jaw, dripping in several threads, dense and slow. “And with my last breath, I curse you, Ald. In a thousand years a Felsian will walk your beloved plains, and that Felsian will be you. In a thousand years, a Felsian will walk the decayed walls of your dear city, and that Felsian will be you! And in a thousand years, a miserable Felsian will do everything you rats do, and that Felsian, Ald, that Felsian will be you. Live forever, son; lose everyone to an afterlife that you cannot ever reach.”

Shock coursed briefly through Ald’s face and then a smile creeped in as he remembered that fateful day when Unkindness had ushered him into this ordeal. A little laughter was born and soon grew. Exact words, what a despicable thing they were! Fueled by hatred, he pushed his body to the side and let himself fall, still holding onto the tooth, opening a shining, foul smelling gash on the left side of father’s neck. He feared not anymore: the god’s body was limp, and his breath’s feeble. The tongues weren’t licking the inside of the eyes frantically as the god battled to focus them on his Son, that, crawling before him, and drenched in blue, steaming blood, had murdered him. “Have fun sharing eternity with damned Masterworks, Ald… Mother take me.” Father said, the tongues abandoning his eyes as the pupils began aiming upwards, towards the sky.

Sky that, when Ald followed his father’s gaze through one of the holes in the feather ceiling, was cracking like a shattering glass made of light. And against the glass, endless fluff pressed.