1 There he came into the little garden, the Black Snake God, the Dweller in the Deep. 2 The Serpent spoke from the shadows to the gods’ child, “Why have you not tasted the gift of the Spider?”
3 The child, who was good and just, said to the Serpent, “It is forbidden. 4 The Beetle said to me, ‘Care for the garden. But do not touch the fruit off the Mad Spinner’s web. It is poison of the soul.’”
5 “Poison it is not,” the Serpent denied from the Darkness. 6 “The name of the fruit is Joy. It is none but the reward of your just labour.”
7 When learning that the Spider’s gift was good and just, the child tasted the fruit. And for the first time, he knew joy. 8 But with joy came sadness that the Beetle had denied him so long. And the child then tasted of all the fruits in the garden in search of new joys. And he coveted the joys of the other children. And he tasted despair when the others took his joy away.
—Book of Darkness 3:1-8, Revised Imperial Version.
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Remembrance 2, 2497 AK, Radiant Empire, Cleft Isles, Greyport.
Kaydence was burning. She could not breathe, could not scream. Her fingertips dug into her chest to grasp at her lungs. Skin flaked around her grip, flesh melting, swelling, bloating, bursting, and dripping off her bones—bones that ached as if trying to stretch out of her skin, teeth falling off, nails crawling out, replaced by fangs and claws, scales burrowing out of her flesh like beetles, bloody wings tearing through her back. Then the process reversed, and she was whole again, unharmed, Human, without a trace that anything had happened save for the trauma branded in her soul, of an agony that was already starting anew.
Pain. Her stomach jumped to her throat. She retched, eructing nothing but acrid bile, headbutting the ground in an effort to knock herself unconscious, to make the pain stop. How many times was she brought back from the brink while inwardly begging for death? Too many to count. She was trapped, stuck in a loop, in a hellish waking nightmare of her own making, locked as a wailing, tortured soul inside the immortal body she had crafted that refused to stop and die no matter how many times she was stabbed, sliced, shot, dismembered, gutted, crushed, trampled, cursed, drowned, frozen, quartered, strangled, suffocated, beheaded, blown to pieces... No one could stop the Dragon Demon King. Not even himself.
Flames danced behind her closed eyes. Liquid fire coursed through her veins, devouring her conscious thoughts as fuel, reducing her to a raving animal. Faceless people cheered and danced around her burning corpse until she stepped off the pyre and started another slaughter. Laughter turned to screams, jigs to a mad, terrified scramble. Blood drenched the streets, tinting even the light of the peering moon red. Tears of flaming tar streamed down Kaydence’s grossly sculpted face. Her creaking, crooked wings of wood and cloth spread as ominous shadows against the night sky, opening jagged windows into the abyss between the stars.
Strands of purple mana burrowed sluggishly out of her bleeding pores. They slithered into tangles of ancient glyphs spelt in the half-forgotten tongue of the gods, rose in the air, and arranged themselves in concentric pulsating rings. The mostly senseless sentences looped on themselves, reinforcing their imprint on reality, and the magic circle started belching out clouds of nebulous shadows. Grasping gaseous tendrils wrapped around Kaydence, weaving together, and finally snapped into the shape of a cowled cloak.
The Darkness spell fell on Kaydence like a bucket of icy water. It doused out pain and hallucinations and anchored her in the present.
Kaydence took a shaky breath. She collapsed on the cold ground, shivering, cocooned in shadows. Her emotions were suddenly muted, and her problems seemed distant, less overwhelming. Her breathing and heartbeat gradually returned to normal, and her thoughts cleared, parsing between memories, waking nightmares, and reality.
The sensation of peace was liberating—and scarily easy to get lost in. The magic wanted her to as well. It wanted to be used, to spread its influence, and to change Creation in its image. Kaydence could hear its soundless whispers, luring her into its calming embrace. Every type of mana echoed a different concept, and, to Kaydence, Darkness magic had always been an expression of Greed, the Pit one that took without ever giving back: light, of course, but also sound, warmth, thoughts, fears, joys—anything.
“Foul...” Kaydence wiped the bile off her chin. She slowly stood, wrapped in her immaterial cloak of shadows, and cast a cool gaze at her surroundings, trying to orient herself. The industry district. Reserved for smithies, tanneries, and other unneighbourly crafts, it was located almost at the opposite end of town from the main residential area and, therefore, far from the festivities. It made sense, then, that she had fled here during her episode.
Once again, her eyes drifted upwards. In this district, the buildings were larger, further apart, and rarely taller than a single floor, allowing one to see more than a sliver of sky at a time.
The silver gibbous moon stared back down at her, eerily big and attentive tonight.
A set of shadows moved before Shu’s Lost Eye, repeatedly eclipsing the stars. However, these were no demonic wings, but the creaking, crooked sails of Greyport’s abandoned windmill, sitting at the far end of the street like a tired old man wondering why death had not yet come for him. Kaydence felt some amount of kinship with the old ruin: crumbling, irrelevant, purposeless, yet somehow still moving.
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Looking away, Kaydence inhaled the cool, crisp air and let the calming embrace of Darkness soothe her. The vaporous tendrils of her cloak undulated around her, grasping at nothing, curling around her limbs like a spoiled pet begging for caresses—a pet waiting, ready to dig its fangs into her throat at the first sign of weakness. Pet? More like a parasite…
She took a running leap and wall-stepped up to the roof of a darkened smithy, landing in a crouch in the moonlight shadow of a broad chimney. Her cloak latched onto the darkness and melted her into it, invisible.
From up here, Greyport looked like a rowdy sea of uneven shingled roofs, with chimney pots and lost steeples masquerading as sharp rocks ready to gut passing ships. The grand temple towered over everything else this side of the Split. She also spotted the Tower of the Guard and the lighthouse, whose fiery beacon guided ships in the harbour at the mouth of the Split. Tonight, its light was rivalled by the flaming glow coming from the central plaza.
Kaydence briefly considered heading back, but flashes of the effigy burning down and echoes of the crowd’s cheers held her back. She turned away.
I wasted too much time already. Kaydence leapt off the smithy’s roof over to the next building and started dashing across the city’s canopy. Darkness and agility muffled her rapid steps to nothingness. Running felt good. For as long as she could remember, in this life or the previous one, magic had always kept her body as healthy as could be. For everything else, action had been her default remedy.
Tonight was no exception.
Annet would surely scold her for abandoning Lenril and his son. But Kaydence preferred enduring her mother’s ire to suffering the Festival another moment or watching a little boy joyfully applaud her death. She had played nanny long enough to justify her departure. They’ll be fine. Things were winding down. They should be heading home. They don’t need me, she repeated to herself, pushing down a twisted knot of emotions she was reluctant to untangle.
I bet that Twig’s glad to be rid of me for the night.
* * *
“Kaaaay?! Kay, where are you?!”
Sarmin was feeling desperate.
“Kaaaaaaydence!”
He shouted at the top of his lungs, but his cries sank into the loud throng like pebbles in a dark lake. No one stopped to help or even lend an ear, everybody all too engrossed in their own merriment. His father was not much help either. Mute and unable to call out in the first place, Lenril looked distracted and tense and flinched whenever someone bumped into him. He always struggled in crowds.
The light show had ended above the plaza, leaving the half-lidded moon alone in the black sky. Large logs were being added to the crackling remains of the demonic effigy, building up the bonfire proper. The beating drums died down, the festive music picked back up, and people started dancing in lines around the figurative funeral pyre.
“KAAAAYDENCE!! WHERE ARE YOU?!”
Sarmin’s throat was raw from shouting. The tiny Half-Elf stumbled through the crowd, jostled around by indifferent people three times his size, ducking under elbows, sweeping arms, and sometimes legs. Not for the first time, someone knocked him aside inadvertently. Inattentive, Sarmin tripped on his own foot and fell to the wet pavement.
“Ouch!” He tried to get up, but a sharp pain stabbed through his ankle. It must have sprained in the fall. Tears pearled at the corner of his eyes. He wiped them, but more kept coming. “Stupid… Useless… Can’t even walk properly…” he whimpered. “Kay… please… I’m sorry… We can go home now.”
Sarmin had known Kaydence was genuinely upset about attending the bonfire celebration. She had been acting distressed the entire week. The strange girl might seem always angry, but her perpetual scowls ran a spectrum. Most people could not tell them apart, but Sarmin had learnt to distinguish them—as a matter of survival, if nothing else. He should have known something was wrong when she left the tent during the puppeteer’s show. But he had ignored it, too caught up in his own excitement—just like the people dancing past him without pause.
This isn’t right, the little boy told himself. This isn’t what a hero would have done. But Sarmin knew he was hardly a hero. Kaydence was always the one saving the day—saving him, at any rate—even if she complained and hurled abuse at him the entire way through.
His father was probably right: she did not need them to worry about her. Kaydence could handle herself. But the guilt did not go away. Sarmin was the older one. He was supposed to be the responsible one. And even if he could not protect her—she did not need his help, did not want his help, probably would feel insulted if he offered—at least he should avoid making himself a burden.
Please don’t leave… The only thing that terrified Sarmin more than Kaydence herself was the prospect of her being gone.
Groaning, he pushed himself off the cobblestone and resumed his search. His foot hurt, but the guilt hurt more. “KAY?! WHERE ARE YOU?! KA– ack!” A coughing fit stopped his renewed shouting. By now, the inside of his throat felt like dry leather. Reflexively, Sarmin looked for his father. Lenril had their waterskin.
Only then—far too late—did the Half-Elf realise his father had not kept up with him. Of course, the tall elf could not weave through the dense crowd with the same ease as his tiny son. Stupid. Stupid. Sarmin berated himself. Kaydence always scolded him for being oblivious to his surroundings.
He attempted to retrace his steps through the square but could not locate Lenril in the turbulent throng.
Calling out would be useless. Even in total silence, Sarmin’s deaf father never heard him.
He tried to ask around. But the people only shooed him away, unwilling or unable to answer.
With dread clawing at his insides, Sarmin resolved to head back to the One-Eyed Bear. The tavern was closer than his home and less isolated. He also clung to the possibility of finding Kaydence there.
Returning to Main Street, he plunged into the narrow tunnel of houses. The lantern-lit gallery of colourful stalls, strange objects and loud music seemed far more sinister by his lonesome. Shivering, he limped forward and counted the intersections. The tavern—safety—was on the fifth street to the right.
He only made it to the second crossroad.
Suddenly, a vice-like grip clamped over his mouth from behind, stifling his startled cries before they came out. The hand was too small for an adult but too large for a child. It smothered Sarmin as an unpleasant, lukewarm stench of cheap alcohol washed over him and a slurring voice whispered against his pointed ear.
“I told you, tree licker. That demon can’t protect you.”
Heart hammering in his tiny chest, Sarmin bit down as hard as he could. He tasted blood. His aggressor yelped and let go. Sarmin took off running, but his sprained ankle betrayed him, giving out from under him. For the second time tonight, Sarmin’s face ate the pavement. This fall was more unexpected and brutal. His head hit the ground. He saw stars. A foot rammed into his side and evicted the air from his lungs. Wheezing, he tried to curl up but was roughly lifted up and thrown on someone’s shoulder.
“Forces and Elements! The halfbreed is as feral as that demon bitch,” another familiar young voice reached Sarmin’s groggy mind. “He nearly bit your hand off!”
“Shut up! I’m fine. That was on purpose!”
“Right…”
“I said, shut up! Let’s go before she shows up.”
Sarmin tried to cry for help, but a bundle of cloth was shoved inside his mouth, and he found himself carried into a dark alley. As the lantern lights of Main Street faded away, Sarmin sank deeper and deeper into despair. In the end, his screams never reached the ears of anyone who cared.
* * * * *