Once a smart but unscrupulous brother had asked Father, during one of his horrid summons, as he devoured the bodies of unwilling (But not innocent) victims, how the end of the world would come about. Father had stared at his summoner between bite and bite, and spoken with certainty that it was a mere hypothetical. “Mother falls. Next question.”
Now that same Felsian carried a little sister, one caught on the last rains, and frowned at the cracking sky. For the first time in years Gleur was paying no attention to the brothers and sisters sowing chaos under his very nose, with the opportunist stealing, with the bearers of silver tongues swindling the more innocent of the lot, trying to herd them with the promises of solutions many wanted to believe, but almost everyone knew they weren’t meant to. From his position atop the terrace, with one hand he grabbed onto the wrought iron of the rails, and with the other arm he heaved Kali, whose weeping face hid in his shoulder. Like her, hundreds would suffer, growing up in a dead world, in a society without future. And yet he would do nothing about it. This was death, this was a time of sorrow. Of cracking skies and a goddess soon to fall, maybe crashing down the earth and killing them all.
“Why is mother hurt? Why, sir Gleur?” The scared child cried. Nobody had told Kali the monstrous eyes in the sky were mother. Her children just knew. From the ones committing arson, handing the city to the ashes that now carried the promises of eternity, to the Felsians who hid and cried out their laments, to those like him, that tried to show no fear in the wake of a sepulchral world. He was scared, of course he was. how to not be. But there was also this soothing solace, the knowledge of this being the dawn of a fairer world. The Fall of Mother was the fall of the abattoir of souls.
“Because while most blacksmiths forge tools for war, one decided to forge and polish a tomorrow for us all.”
“A blacksmith? Like Ald?” Kali asked, her copper eyes focusing on the black eyebrows of the sage. In them Gleur saw a simple plea: tell me my dear brother is fine.
“Ald told you he had gone fishing; hunting for the biggest and meanest fish in the Worldvein. And you know what, Kali?”
Gleur gave her several seconds to answer, until he heard a timid “what” in return. The he did something that was, perhaps, unwarranted: he smiled for just a second. “Ald found it.”
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Unaware of the chaos that ensued on the streets and homes of Felsia, Ald couldn’t do anything but focus on the sick-green light that seeped out of the growing cracks in the firmament. His hand met his twitching cheek, and soon enough he placed his fingers in front of his two pairs of nostrils — one pair above the other — just to feel his own breathing. With care and trembling hands he seated, his gaze going form the bloodstains in the tooth he still held onto, to the threatened skies, to his dying father. Moments before, he had thought that he could not kill Mother without offing Father first. Now he understood. As the lights of apocalypse rendered the atmosphere into the equivalent of a fish tank plagued by algae, his spirit felt the cries no ears could detect. Their agonizing mother wailed, and wished to embrace her dear firstborn one last time, for the rest of her life. A life that wouldn’t be long now.
And Ald felt small, and shrunk into a ball, leaving the tooth to a side and pulling his head back. Altasa squirmed at the pain, shuddered, making the whole crater quake, little flakes of stone peeling off the walls and rolling to the floor all around.
But Ald didn’t pick the tooth back up. Not as it made the dust under it melt and boil, not as the flock of ravens came in with the wraps, and despite melting themselves, managed to place it over the pieces of cloth, ending the pain of their equal. Ald just stared at the breaking skies,a nd at the cotton beyond. He had sentenced father to death, and so had he killed mother. And there was nothing he could do — or that he knew how to do — to help them. And Mother cried. She cried not unlike the grieving sisters whose misshapen children had been taken by law enforcers, while they rattled the bars of their cells, where they would remain until the day of their exile.
And when a mother cries, so often do their children. Why? Why were tears rolling down his cheeks? He had murdered Father, all that remained was for him to exhale his last breath. He had rid his people of the worse of fates. So what was there to grieve? He wasn’t crying for Felsia, there would be time tomorrow to do so. His sadness, or the little bit of it he could understand, came from feeling Mother’s heartbreak. Her disgrace overflowed her beign, and spilled into her sons and daughters.
“Mother! I am sorry! I am so sorry!” he shouted, part of him aware that doing so would not drown or stop the cries that rattled his soul.
But a voice he did not expect to hear spoke to him.
“Run. Mother falls,” Father hurried in the loudest whisper he could muster.
Ald froze midweep. Father was telling him to run. The terrible beast, worrying for him? It couldn’t be true. Ulterior motives surely plagued such a warning. “Why? Mother falls. You die. She does too.”
Father let out a gurgle, and then a sight. Even while he was dying his children pestered him with questions. Thus with labored breath, and tapping into the last reserves of strength he had, he answered with honesty. “Because I don’t want the only eternal part of me to get trapped under her body or consumed before she perishes. I cursed you with eternal life to preserve my magnificence, in a way.” The god twitched in the puddle of his own blood, letting out another wheeze. “Please, escape.”
Ald persisted in his inaction, not bothering to even answer. This too was a selfish request, in accordance to Father’s nature. “No. Mother falls. I am done. Mother falls.”
Father grunted in a dying rage. “Clivanaratea!” he uttered his claws scratching the ground as spasms coursed through him. “Aid… Ald.”
Unkindness manifested in front of the dying god, her pale hand resting upon the devourer’s snot. “You called me by the name Ald chose.”
“I am past the use for pride or grudges, daughter of the Ratchet. Grandchild.”
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Ald thought he saw her mover her hand a little. A caress to Father’s horrid face.
She then turned to look at Ald, her head slightly askew, her eyelids low. “It’s done. You must go.”
“I am not returning to Felsia, Unkindness. I killed Father. I killed Mother. My siblings wouldn’t want the bringer of such end walking among them.”
But she had not given him a suggestion. She had not given Ald a choice this time around. “You are getting out of here. On your legs, or on my wings.” A raven landed on Ald’s shoulder, and he stared at it like one would at a sword pointing at one’s face. The bird had no facial expression, but to Ald, and under the green light, it seemed as the threat personified.
The shrieking of an eagle reached out to Ald. Birds of many colors and innumerable forms rimmed the crater, and upon the cold dust in the crater’s bottom, he knew himself unable to do anything against them. “I have only one leg. And I cannot count your wings.” Ald raised his hands , as if praying to a cruel deity. “I am at the mercy of you, or of Mother.”
“Mother falls,” Unkindness repeated, and raised a single finger.
The heavenly vault shattered into a tide of leaves of iridescent aether as the massive goddess descended, the cotton peeling off to reveal her underside. The dangling golden hairs. The barbed appendages. All over the carving wolves and dogs snarled at empty air, overcome by fear. Songbirds gurgled ugly cries as they landed away from the trees, into a ground some of them had never had a need to step onto. Flowers closed their petals with unnatural speed. Fish that swam in schools dispersed, and the predators didn’t dare feed on them. Sea lions wobbled inland, running from a sea that filled them with dread. And in those same waters those animals for whom land wasn’t an option swam to the depths, and the lurkers of the bottoms dug deeper into the seabed, and the urchins that lived upon hard rocks almost break their lanterns whilst seeking an out, downwards, always downwards. Some unicellular organisms, unable to bear the sensations, turned to cysts.
That was for the sons and daughters of nature. The children of Mother, instead, each acted according to their nature. Felsians either ran, hid, or even prayed at the raining leaves of light. Elvisat sat in her living, grumpy, and failed to still her tapping foot. She pressed the flat of an old knife against her chest, holding it as she wished to hold he who had forged it.
Some misshapen faced this event with unparalleled fear, and others trusted Dole’s plan. Nails among them, who found the circumstances fortuitous for an unpreoccupied trip to the Worldvein. Nothing dared attack him, nothing dared get exposed. Among the chaos, he was granted a unique opportunity for a relaxing bath. Inheritance decided to turn into a form that could hibernate in a crack among the rocks for a few years, to nap past the end of the world.
Most of the masterworks who cared rejoiced. They didn’t despise mother the way their sister did, but the change in status quo meant there won’t be many more like them. Less disputes, less reasons to worry about whatever held meaning for them.
The sheer amount of suffering all over the globe delighted Caretaken, and worried him too: nothing in the times to come would surpass this fateful day.
And the only birds that sook no refuge descended upon Ald with claws extended, stabbing his flesh in way he didn’t expect them too. He didn’t ask why as the motley flock heaved him, not without certain difficulty. He didn’t ask why, because what was the point on complaining about bodily harm, if he had been cursed to not die. The wounds would heal. And he screamed, because all the wounds on every arm and leg he would ever have and on ever face he would someday don would always heal.
The birds didn’t attack his face, though, and, as they carried his limp and mangled form away from the crater, Ald beheld how mother’s chained ovaries descended, several lines cast down from the mouths around the patch of golden hair. And with immense love and care they reached out to Father’s dying body, cradling it, and slowly lifting it towards the crying goddess. How it pained Ald to see what he had done. To hear Mother’s cry in his soul, the flaps from the wings on his ears.
And when Father got drag into one of the mouths of Mother, and lost inside her maw, the devourer devoured, whatever was holding Mother together disappeared. Like the sky she had broken through to kiss his darling, she shattered, blowing up in a spectacle of pus, fluff, silver teeth, and golden hairs.
With this, and in part due to the shockwave sent forth by Mother’s finale, the birds let go of their load, the Felsian plummeting down faster than the blood that gushed from his wounds, his belongings coming out his bag and their sheaths, his artificial leg detaching as he was battered by the confused winds.
The impact on the dune was pure pain, as it was rolling down its slipface. Father’s shadows had only left traces that he could already consider ichnites, for all that was worth. AS he lay upon the dune, as he cried and bled. With his head turned to the side, he could see it, shining in the blended light from the sun and from the afterlife, the engraved dagger, drenched in bloods. His, and Father’s. He mustered strength to open his palm and to call. First, a gurgle came from his battered insides, and after managing to drool off the blood, saliva a snot that obstructed his throat, he finally spoke. “Faithful.”
But the dagger remained there, half buried in the sand.
“Faithful!”
Ald called and called, in vain.
After an hour or so, when the all-encompassing pain had numbed him enough, he tried to sit and draw heat runes on the sands, to fend off the cold he was feeling. When he stained them with his blood and they didn’t work, he realized that it wasn’t that the engraving on the dagger had chipped or gotten damaged in any other way: The magical heart of Felsia had stopped beating. The blood-clock hands, stilled forever. The connection to the All-carver, severed.
And so, Ald wept. He wept as he dragged his broken body over the rough sands, not bothering to pick up the dagger because doing so would get him further form Felsia, and he wanted to attend his city’s funeral. With great difficulty he climbed a small dune, and his eyes shot wide open at the image at the other side. At the tentacles of flesh rising from beneath the ground.
“I may have brought him here to celebrate. So enjoy your reward, savior of the Felsian souls.” he felt Caretaken mock as the forked tongues shot straight for his head, encasing it at the first try.
Ald screamed, and the screams delighted Leclerglossa, who had waited patiently, buried among the dunes, just to have another shot at catching the most delicious prey it had ever tasted. Ald screamed as the saliva threatened to drown him, as he got pulled deeper into the mass of tongues, as the appendages tasted his whole body and constricted him, making breathing impossible. His insides burned, for a second and for a thousand, and thirst and hunger grew endlessly as the monster toyed with him, as he tried to shout, call for help, despite knowing deep down that nobody could help him. struggling was useless, asking for pity too. He couldn’t escape, he couldn’t eat, he couldn’t drink, he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t die.
After several hours, he fell unconscious. During the first month, every incidental bout of consciousness brought the hell back, the anguish, the pain, the desperate calls for Elvisat, like he had called in his years of youth. Afterwards, it was just silent laments. Bound, sometimes gagged, and blinded. Unconscious when fate was kind. That’s how he spent year after year, as Felsia decayed, as Elvisat waited for him or for her last breath, as Kali’s hatred grew, as the soldiers stopped manning the ballistae, as Wildfire fed on the multitude of flames she had always wanted to. As his leg grew back and his wounds healed.
And, most importantly, as the masterwork slowly got tired of his taste.