The tree had finally died.
Little had changed on its exterior. The many branches forming its canopy still littered the stone beneath or hung half-broken from its peak. Its pale form still sat braced between the curved wall of the shaft. Lit only by the occasional flash of lightning from above, the immense gouge that had ripped it from its base still beaded with slowly-leaking sap. The tree had been dying for some time.
But it was gone, now. An ancient edifice of the world, irrevocably torn from its home. The decades of ravenous insects that would chew through it would one day leave nothing but dust, yet that was a mere formality. Whatever gave this tall, pale pillar the strength to endure the centuries had been stolen. It was dead.
The tree had finally died. Few could tell the difference.
“Orvi?”
The central shaft that coalesced the cave systems into one tight intersection was dark. Despite the trees clustered around its top, everburning lanterns were never lit within, for they could signal the place’s location. During the day it was dreary; sunlight only shone down it for an hour each day. At night – illuminated only by flashes of lightning reflected off the wet stone – it could be lethal. Only two Shrikeblooded guards watched the area, bodies perpetually oscillating between laxness as they drifted off and tension as they remembered what they guarded.
And Sash. She should’ve been asleep. She hadn’t been sleeping much, lately.
The pale girl stood beneath falling rain, dark circles beneath her eyes. Behind her, the trunk sliced the sky in two.
“I apologise,” she said, eyes down. “I know I am not meant to call you that.”
She came closer, then sat on a shelf of stone, arms wrapped around herself as rain settled into her pale hair.
There were drier spots where the walls of the shaft curved outwards to form caves. Where the Seeds had dragged large stones to form makeshift barricades – or seats.
“There’s no need to move!” Sash insisted, shivering like a cat dunked in icy water. Yet eventually, she ambled over as well and allowed herself to be wrapped in a tapestry from the sack.
For a time, she watched the rain. Listened to it break against the stone.
“Where did we come from?” she suddenly asked. “You, Dash, and I.”
“The Foot.”
“The Cult.”
“You know?”
She nodded. “…But we were not sacrifices.”
“…No one in the mountain was.”
“If you didn’t want to be there, you were dead.”
“If you were there, you were willing.”
“Who were my parents?” She clarified, “My real parents?”
“You know.”
“Aspirants, like all the other children.”
“Dead, by Cultist hands.”
Thunder rattled the world above, but deep in the earth it sounded far away. Sash huddled deeper in her makeshift blanket.
Her hair was getting long. Initially, she shivered when her loose hair was gathered into a braid. Even so, she allowed it.
“…What happened to the other Cultist children?”
A pause.
“You don’t need to know.”
“They failed to assimilate Avri’s power.”
“They all died.”
For a time, a small nod was the only reply she gave. As the rain continued to fall – neither cacophonous nor gentle, but the same dogged descent that had endured all Tempest – Sash stated, “But we did not.”
The rain fell. The tree stayed. The guards recoiled. The sky raged. The girl stared and swallowed her spittle.
“I killed a monster and got blood on me,” she explained. “Dash does not know.”
A pause.
“Please don’t be mad.”
The world hung. Like a condemned man before the drop. The same way it always hung, yet some moments it was easier to ignore than others. Some days the man pleaded. Some days he was silent; allowing the sunlight to trickle from behind his silhouette. But the worst were when he smiled. Eyes crinkled at the corners.
The world hung, and it took everything to keep it there.
Gradually, the Shrikebloods lowered their spears. Sash’s spine unstiffened. The rain continued to fall from the shaft’s open maw, and with it travelled a bitter chill.
“Are we going to be okay?”
There were no truths or lies that could make the answer reassuring. Silence was all that was offered.
Time passed. Sash drooped, listed to the side, and fell asleep.
In the morning, Blake and Taja were the first to find her.
They were a strange combination. The tanned young man had become a compulsive conversationalist; scarcely a minute of silence could stretch before he filled it with a quip or question. The teenager was the opposite: stolidly clinging to his silence until all the bottled thoughts became too much and he vented a few into the world. At first, neither had sought the other’s company. Yet as Tempest thundered along, they’d settled into the silence between them.
Blake had always been good with kids.
It was unsurprising that they were the first to wander into the central shaft. Though pre-dawn light had begun to filter into the sky above, it had yet to touch the shadows shrouding the shaft below. Fatigued from the night’s thunder, Tempest’s perpetual rain had faded into a thin dribble. Sash slept, feet curled into the thick tapestry she was swaddled in.
“Huh,” Blake mused, standing at a cave’s entrance, a slight smile across his face. Neither him nor Taja had entered from the barracks; they had been wandering for a while. “You don’t see that every day.”
Taja squinted, then startled.
The young man slowly crept closer. “D’you mind if I check her temperature, Or- “
“Blake,” Taja snapped. “Keep any names out of your mouth. It’s not hard.”
“To you, maybe,” he muttered.
Without further comment, Blake lowered his hand to Sash’s forehead, then her cheek.
“Seems fine,” he stated. “Which’s surprisin’, ‘cause you’re a bloody chilly fella. What was she doin’ out here, anyway?”
He waited.
“You won’t get an answer,” the teenager stated from behind.
Blake waited for a few more heartbeats, then deflated. “Yeah,” he said quietly, rubbing the bridge of his nose. His smile had turned wry. “Guess not.”
After a few finger-snaps, the girl roused. Briefly, she flailed and nearly crashed head-first to the ground, were she not quickly halted.
“Nice catch,” Blake remarked.
Sash continued to struggle, eyes two immense orbs rolling in her skull.
“Hey, hey, hey.” The young man seized her arms, then turned. “Give me a hand here!”
Before Taja or the two guards began moving, the girl stilled. “Blake?”
He gently released her onto the floor. “Yeah.”
She sat upright. “Is Orvi still here?”
For an instant, Blake froze as if confronted by a great beast. Before anyone else noticed, he mastered his face back into a grin.
When Sash turned around, her struggles deflated. “He is.”
Behind them, Taja scoffed quietly.
Blake flinched, but once more recovered quickly. “It’s early. Let’s get you back to your cot, yeah?”
“No!” the adolescent yelped. “I won’t go.”
Taja cocked his head, half-turning it towards a tunnel.
“What’re we gonna do, then?” the pock-marked man asked. “Breakfast isn’t happenin’ for another few hours yet.”
“I am not going.”
“I’m not sayin’ that you have to- “
Taja shushed them.
“…has settled nearby,” emanated Erin’s voice from another tunnel.
Despite the early hour, Gaia’s reply was sharp. “You’re certain?”
“It’s unmistakeable. Do you think it’s here because of the Vulture?”
“…Most gods ignore one another. But…” Her heavy sigh deteriorated into a series of coughs.
As Erin fussed over her leader, Taja raised his eyebrows at Blake, who narrowed his eyes in thought.
“…Another god?” he muttered.
Sash gasped. “It must be the Owl! That is the only one that ‘settles’ places!”
The young man beside her attempted to cover Sash’s mouth, but it was already too late. Instead of being beaten down by the pattering rain, her voice echoed around the shaft and into its attached caves. The trio held their breath while the two Shrikeblooded guards struggled between amusement and concern.
Erin’s voice reverberated outwards in response. “…Sash?”
The girl in question nodded.
Blake shook his head in bemusement, then replied in her place. “Along with Taja, Blake, and our resident god.”
There was a pause, followed by a cuss that was originally quiet yet amplified by the acoustics of the cave. Hearing that, Gaia’s hacking coughs morphed into wheezing laughter. When her coughing died, both women emerged from the azure glow permeating the tunnel. The aging woman motioned for her younger counterpart to speak.
“…Sash is correct.”
The girl smiled widely, then blanched.
Erin nodded at her. “Yoot’s nearby. Nowhere that will affect operations or logistics, but its mere proximity is noteworthy.”
“Does its magic reach here?” one of the guards asked.
She shook her head. “It’s too far away. But I doubt it’s coincidence.”
Taja’s palms fidgeted around the hilt of the sword he wore. “…Will it come closer?”
Erin opened her mouth, then closed it and looked to Gaia.
The Shrikeblood spat a wad of blood into a rag and shook her head. “Yoot never moves once settled,” she stated hoarsely. “It’ll stay there for a few months at minimum.”
There was a long pause.
“Maybe it wants to watch?” Blake quipped.
“Could be coincidence.”
“The Owl has been noted to move closer to large-scale events, such as earthquakes.”
“Oxdung.”
Though Blake visibly prevented himself from jerking his head towards the sounds, no one else followed his lead.
Erin turned to the guards. “What is it doing out here, anyway?”
“…It stared at the tree,” one answered. “Then the girl came out. She talked to it for a bit and fell asleep.”
“What did she say?”
The man shrugged. “Too quiet.”
The Shrikeblood glanced at Sash. “What did you talk about?”
The Ravenblood’s gaze was directed at the ground.
“Sash.”
She huddled deeper into her makeshift blanket.
The muscular woman’s face tightened. “I’m not going to hurt you- “
“Erin.” Despite the ragged edge to it, Gaia’s voice retained enough authority to quiet her subordinate. “Why don’t you review our logistics one more time?”
The younger woman was savvy enough to know it wasn’t a question. Reluctantly, she nodded and began picking her way across the shaft – ducking beneath the lurching trunk as she did so – yet before she departed, Erin turned. At the end of her gaze was Blake.
He did not look back.
Erin swallowed. Then left.
Gaia watched her go. “I’ve been meaning to show you and your family something for a while,” she said. “But it’s been so busy I…” She cleared her throat of its remnant raggedness. “…Haven’t found time. You deserve to see it, though.”
Her eyes caught on Sash. “Will you go wake your brother and meet us by the lower exit?”
The girl sat like Gaia had caught her with a hand in the sugar pot, but quickly scurried out of her blanket and into the tunnel to the barracks. The tapestry went back in the sack.
Blake eyed it. “…You gave that to her?”
Though no answer was given, he seemed to breathe a short sigh of relief. The small smile across his face spread a little, however its advance was quickly vanquished by the sight of Taja sneaking beneath the rain towards another tunnel.
“Goin’ roamin’, nomad boy?” he called.
The beginnings of a scowl began to twist Taja’s face. “I doubt you need me for this.”
“You gonna sleep?”
“…No.”
“You got anything better t’do?”
The teenager gave a growl of frustration. “I’m on-duty tomorrow, anyway!”
“Sash and I’ll take care of big ‘n beady.” The rap of his knuckles felt sharp. “Just come along. You may as well.”
Taja frowned quietly.
“…We’re going into the deep caverns,” Gaia offered. “It might be of interest to you.”
“…Should I get Ronnie?” he asked.
She shook her head. “It’s a shame, but there are several sections I don’t believe they can safely descend. Though perhaps you could scout it out; judge for yourself whether it’s safe and take them down later.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
After a short moment of thought, he nodded quietly.
Gaia exchanged several brief words with the guards – confirmations and reassurances – before leading Blake and Taja from the darkness of the central shaft. As it always would, the form of the ancient, pale tree remained.
The patter of rain was consumed by layers of slate, shale, and root-ridden dirt. Left behind was the even glow of the everburning lanterns mounted on the wall, coupled with a brighter illumination from one dangling from Gaia’s belt. To the bemusement of the two young men, she stopped by the storeroom to pick up a portable bloodtech oven, an additional lantern, and a satchel of rations: smoked strips of stringy meat coupled with bread that could double as bricks, courtesy of House Baylar. Standard fare for the Seeds, and just a bit more than necessary to sustain their physiques. The Shrike’s divinity had a way of keeping people hungry. Regardless, whatever their destination was, it would take a good part of the day to get there.
Sash waited exactly where she’d been told to: one of the fortified divisions between the encampment proper and the deeper cave system. No one was with her.
Blake released a weary breath. “Your brother didn’t wanna come.”
Sash bobbed her head. “Correct. He woke up, but when I explained our task to him, he said he wanted to stay with Pat.”
“Is your dog…” There was a short pause. “Never mind. Apparently we’re goin’ pretty deep, so we better get movin’, yeah?”
Gaia inclined her head towards the shorter man.
“Well, uh…” Blake signalled towards the black tunnel ahead. “Lead the way, boss-lady!”
Besides messengers travelling to other Seed encampments, there was rarely any reason to delve deeper into the earth. While each cavern was unique – minutely distinct in the crenulation of the stone, the presence of specific formation or the sounds of moisture coalescing on the ceiling above – it was beyond mortal minds to memorise each distinction. Neither could the Seeds afford to mark passages; on the off chance an Albright contingent decided to investigate the tunnels, stumbling upon such signs would lead directly to a nearby encampment. A safe trip into the cave system was one that didn’t go far.
Gaia seemed uninterested in safety. While the woman consulted a scrawled map, the group travelled down: damp, slippery slopes; sheer drops with crumbling handholds; tiny crevices almost too small to fit their leader through. For the mortals present, sight of their surroundings was dependant on the waxing and waning of the two bloodtech lanterns, which could be refuelled but only at the cost of an opened wound in surroundings that veered between the sensory ablution of clean water and a nose-clogging level of mustiness.
Dangers were static, but they advanced at the same rate the party did. Sash was barely tall enough to mount some of the stone shelfs she climbed up, yet asked no one for help until she slipped backwards and had to be caught. Blake was prevented from wandering into a sheer drop. Gaia had to stop multiple times to control the coughing fits that broke out every time she twisted her neck. Only Taja caused no trouble; he was familiar with the caves, and determined to stay close to the group.
Sash was not, though.
“Sash?” Gaia called from across the cavern.
The girl’s light had trailed away from the other three, then promptly disappeared – cut off by the cavern splitting in two. It wasn’t the first time she’d done this. Her tendency to roam further from the group to investigate some sparkle of reflected lamplight from a shiny stone or pool of water was constantly frustrating
“Yes?” came her echoing reply.
“Come back!” Gaia called.
“Give me a moment,” was her rambling reply. “There’s a truly interesting skeleton here wrapped in clothes I cannot identify – some leathery material – that I believe seems similar to what some of the Heartlanders I’ve seen wear, however the style is marginally different and they seem to be in an advanced state of decay, and there’s some metal but I do not believe it’s sturdy?” A resounding snap echoed immediately afterwards. “Yes, I’ve just broken it.”
“Sash,” Blake shouted, “we’ve got no bloody clue where you are!”
A quavering thread wrapped around her face. “Where are you?”
While Blake continued yelling and the Shrikeblood and Taja frantically scanned the cavern, Sash was bodily picked up and carried back over. When she was deposited back with the others, she glanced up somewhat sheepishly.
“Stop it.”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
“Keep close next time.”
The girl’s flinch turned into a rapid series of nods. For the remainder of the journey, she stayed close.
They stopped to break their fast after what must have been an hour of wandering. Judging from their blank expressions, the fare tasted poor. That was until Blake waggled his eyebrows and produced a hunk of cheese from one of his pockets, chuckling at Gaia’s clear confusion as he broke it apart and handed pieces to each present.
“You want one, bud?” he asked.
The piece was refused, and subsequently split between Sash and Taja, who were still growing. Though Gaia might have grown slightly over the past months as well.
When they were done eating and applying cloth to some of their worst scrapes, she brushed crumbs from her tunic. “I believe…” The Shrikeblood lifted her lantern to squint at her map. “…we’re getting close.” She looked up. “I hope you don’t mind getting wet.”
The final section of the journey was through an underground river. Its flow was gentle enough to allow Blake, Sash, and Gaia to swim through, but Taja had never learned how to so much as tread water. After a few minutes of hesitation by the slope that fed into it, he reluctantly allowed himself to be carried – alongside everyone’s packs – for most of the way. Yet the final stretch was entirely underwater.
Taja’s hair sloshed as he shook his head. “No way.”
“It will be fine!” Sash smiled, treading water beside him. “He has you!”
“Until he decides to stop and ponder some godly concern underwater, and I drown!”
“It’s a short stretch,” Gaia stated. “You won’t be submerged for more than thirty seconds.”
Taja tried to lean away from the others, but the grip was too tight. “I don’t know if I can hold my breath for that long.”
In addition to several minutes practicing holding his breath, it took Gaia, Blake, and Sash swimming through the passage and back to persuade him that the journey was safe. Even that was likely because the lack of activity in freezing water was starting to make him shiver.
The underwater passage was interesting. Perfectly smooth for most of its length; enough to persuade a casual observer that Enn had bored through it untold centuries ago. But it was the mere passage of water that had done so. After one final squeeze, Taja and the rest of the supplies were placed atop reasonably dry stone on the other side.
The bloodtech oven was promptly activated with its door open, allowing those present to huddle around its heat. Gaia seemed unbothered by the cold.
“Get warmed up, you three,” she told the others quietly. As if she spoke in a tomb. “We’ll go ahead. You’ll be able to see our light just around the bend.”
Blake, Taja, and Sash gave shivering nods.
Gaia turned.
The cavern she had led the group to was relatively small compared to some of the ones they had strode through, yet there were clear signs it had once been much larger. Its ceiling – studded with tiny stalactites – transitioned from unbroken slate at points subtly transitioned to wisened portions of what had once been rubble before untold ages of moss had firmed it into a ceiling proper. One wall was, upon closer inspection, entirely comprised of broken pieces of stone – the remnants of an earthquake or cave collapse. And though mortal eyes could not divine them, tiny etchings were embedded in the walls.
“I remember a few years back, you asked me why I believed the Raven would return; how I reached the same conclusion as you,” Gaia began. “Your theory of Godsblood migration was the result of long experience with bloodtech, a handful of experiments, and extensive extrapolation. You described it as… What was it?” She paused, eyes narrowing. “‘Stupidity or the first clear-headed examination of godly metaphysics.’”
It had been ‘Either drooling idiocy or the first clear-headed examination of divine metaphysics perhaps ever.’ But Gaia’s words were close enough.
“But how did I come to believe that fallen gods would revive?” The Shrikeblood smiled thinly. “That was your question. I said I would show you, when we had time.”
The large woman arrived in front of a wall and after a few moments of calculation, placed her everburning lantern in the best possible spot to illuminate it.
“It’s because I think there’s precedent.”
The wall’s painting was faded; the small sculptures at its base made cracked and fragile by the passage of time. Neither script nor brush had held a place in their creation – the ochre pigments had been inexpertly daubed on by hand. An ancient artwork cradled by the earth.
The stone carvings depicted a familiar icon – the many eyes of the Raven and its dark feathers – alongside an unfamiliar one: a creature cast in lines of bone and overgrown flesh. It took little effort to recognise what god it represented. The painting depicted something else. Despite being wrought in imprecise smears, what it depicted was unmistakeable.
A series of images were writ around a ring of black, forming an ocean on which the demarcated segments of the artwork were daubed around. The first saw an immense deity of countless mouths impaled on a pillar of bone. Its unending eyes were empty, its many limbs motionless, and its onyx blood fell in a deluge onto the earth below, forming the bedrock of black.
The next found crimson flowers blooming from a midnight lake; reddened vines wrapping around a gargantuan skeleton. Tiny red birds barely recognisable as such ate the flora; nebulous yet mighty animals drunk from the lake. Amongst them were several bipeds.
The third depicted something rising from the lake. Dripping with black smears of ochre was an unformed monster; a cloud of smoke given solidity by the press of an ancient human’s finger. Birthed from the black like a foetus cut from its mother’s womb. Its clawed hands hung possessively over the creatures clustered around the edges of its birthplace.
In the fourth, the beast’s body was curled in grief over the people and animals it had once protected. Its wards were daubed in harrowing detail: their sunken flesh and empty eye-sockets seemed decay personified. Yet even as its many eyes were focused on the bodies, its agonised flailing butchered the creatures that sat behind it in spurts of bloody red. That mound of the dead and dying was greater than what it grieved.
Finally, amidst a field of bodies, the Raven threw itself on the faded grey spike. Then the cycle began again.
Yet beneath the midnight lake that formed the bedrock of each stage, the earth concealed the core of the piece: an entity formed of tendon, bone, and blood. At its side were figures wielding grey weapons that were once white – bone weapons – that sliced through the necks of kneeling figures. With one immense, many-fingered hand the god beneath cupped the dripping blood of the sacrifices. With the other, it offered a bounty of meat and fruits.
It was backwards. It was all backwards.
“What is this?” Sash asked. She had drawn closer. “Not the Godslayers.”
In the warbling blue light of the cavern, Gaia’s brows formed pits of shadow where her eyes should be. “I was lost in these caves, once. After I fled my House. I survived on lichen, mostly. Nearly starved anyway. But I found these.
“That was fifty years ago.”
Blake and Taja drew closer, eyes wide.
It was immense.
“Though it’s uncertain, as far as I can tell the Raven is the only god that has ever died.” A hoarse edge lined Gaia’s abused voice. “But it didn’t die just once.”
The images fed into each other.
“…How many times?” asked Taja softly.
“I don’t know.”
Death to birth to revival. To murder. To death.
The Raven on the outside. Death on the inside. Hell sheltered against heaven.
“It’s in reverse.”
“It’s the opposite of what it should be.”
“Why?”
No one understood. But Blake caught on.
“These people at the centre…” He raised a finger to tap the wall, then thought better of it. “They’re Shrikebloods. Like you. Like the Seeds.
“…Like a Cult.”
Gaia slowly nodded.
“Hell.”
“Hell.”
“Hell.”
“Hell.”
“Hell.”
“Hell.”
“Hell.”
“Hell.”
They flinched as eight different voices spoke the same word. Then Gaia nodded.
“That’s right. The inverse of Raven Cult art, from what pieces I’ve seen.”
Sash’s jaw was tight. “Why does- “ She swallowed. Rubbed her eyes. “Why does this happen to Ravenbloods?”
“Why?” Gaia repeated. “Why?” she said, louder.
Her voice hummed off the stone walls, producing a reverberation that spread throughout the cave system. A chorus asking the same question, over and over.
“You’re not the first to ask,” she said, eyes hooded. “A hundred million humans have walked the same ground we do now: whether naked, clothed in furs or wearing armour of bronze, their footsteps still exist. Given sufficient labour, we can dig down and unearth their bones.”
She gestured to the wall. “And when we crack their yellowed skeleton open, we will find the same marrow within. The same questions. What is good? What is the right thing to do? What is valuable? How do we find truth? A thousand questions; a hundred million echoes.
“Some of them found their answers.” Her gaze fell on the lantern pushing the shadows of the cavern away. “But intellectual edification holds no warmth. Neither questions nor answers can break the bars of reality.” She stared at the god that lurked beneath the dying Ravens. “We are blood before anything else. We live in the dirt, and we will die in it.”
Her final words were a whisper. “Unless something changes.”
Gaia was a huge woman. Far beneath the surface, encapsulated by enough earth to cage or crush a powerful man to their death, she loomed far taller than Taja, Blake, or Sash.
Amidst the fading echoes of her hoarse voice, they did not speak. They barely moved. Yet where the young men’s gazes were fixed on Gaia’s, Sash’s eyes kept flickering back to the wall.
“The Shrike is your god.” Above damp eyes, Sash’s eyebrows were furrowed. “Why would you want to kill it?”
The Shrikeblood took a moment to order her words. “The same reason you look after yours.” Her gaze was tight.
A fathomless space took root in the cavern.
“Ha!” Blake suddenly barked, a huge smile bisecting his face. His harsh laugh failed to fill the silence, but his feeble grin endured nonetheless. “Why so serious, everyone? Don’t we have- “ He swallowed heavily. “Don’t we have work to do? Things to attend to?”
“…Do you think this is how the Raven Cult began?” Taja whispered quietly. “People gathering around someone they once knew?”
As if it had been waiting for that question, Blake’s face immediately contorted in a rictus of fury. He half-raised his fist in preparation to bludgeon the teenager across the face. Yet it trembled in the air. Eventually, he lowered it.
His words were a whisper magnified by the quiet. “Why’d you show us this?”
“I didn’t think you would…” Gaia’s throat audibly tightened – the beginning of a coughing fit. She kept her voice long enough to squeeze a few more words from it. “You all deserved to know.”
Deserved to know? Deserved? How did those creatures deserve to die at the flailing of the Raven’s talons?
Someone said something.
But that atavistic god – writ across the wall by the ancient fingers; in reverence or fear or the raw need to record the world around – what did it think it deserved? The spike? The speartree? Another god to hold aloft the means to its end? But it didn’t end. It just spiralled.
The Raven’s divinity had killed every child in its Cult. Barring three. Barring three.
Someone said something, but the thing that was me no longer listened, for it was striding into the water and feeling the subterranean current’s chill grip writhing flesh and rotating eyeballs, as mouths hummed and growled and choked with the wordless sensations gripping them – trying to find sounds to catch them but utterly inefficacious in their attempts – and it dug its shifting limbs beneath the water and yanked its body along without destination.
Vision writhed, for in the absence of light the darkness knitted itself into patterns of its own – mercifully indecipherable until they were not – and the stone bounding the edges of the river weighed heavily but not as much as its own flesh, which sensed every inch of water pushing past and boundaries made flawless by the flowing movements of a tireless mason and the bubbles escaping to cling to either ceiling or a foul imitation of skin that could not decide which memory it would ape.
From the river it surfaced into a cavern smeared with bat droppings and the creatures themselves screamed in fright and dropped from the ceiling to thicken the air with their bodies, so accustomed to the lightless depths that they seemed a part of the place, and the thing moved through the place alongside the ghosts of small things that hid under the earth while its limbs occasionally jerked to strike at what lay nearby and walked and walked.
Until the cold of the place pressed down and stillness prevailed once more.
The caverns were neither alive nor dead. They breathed in the same way a statue might; sung in the manner of a distant star. No minds had carved this space from the earth, nor hands hung it in a sea of black, but the caverns seemed kin to those things nonetheless.
Few ghosts roamed the veins of the earth. Whatever lives that had once lit the dark paled to those that had dwelled on the surface. For despite the presence of gods, monsters and mortals willing to tear each other apart, at least up there it was bright and warm. People were willing to die for that.
Gradually, a trail of gently glowing lives led to an impression of light breaking the dark – what seemed to be a hallucination, at first. But it was an azure light hanging from a wall. Not the encampment Gaia, Blake, Taja and Sash had departed from hours ago, but a sister settlement replete with its own hive of Shrikebloods attending to the coming conflict. Yet they held little allure. Above their camp, the slate fell away into open air.
Outside of a tiny exit hole – the only path out that avoided the eyes of Seeds – the clouds had cracked open to reveal a blue sky. Beneath it was a small glade. Tall grass tangled with wildflowers – the kind that doubled as an invasive weed – in a form of vegetative warfare while tiny insects gathered pollen, dew, and nectar from the warriors slowly pushing through a decades-long battle. A layer of mud beneath was beginning to dry under the patient gaze of the afternoon sun, but still retained enough moisture to squelch between toes. There was a warm stone at the centre of the clearing.
Time passed, as it was wont to do. It was a good place for it.
Then there was a squelch and a quiet gasp as a tiny child froze, mid-way out from the hole. Dirt smeared every gap of skin – it was almost impossible to tell there was a boy underneath.
The kid watched for several minutes, legs poised to bolt. When nothing changed, he opened his mouth and asked, “Is ye a monster?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be parlaying with monsters, child.”
“D’you think so?”
The boy startled at the sounds so vigorously he nearly rolled backwards into the cave beneath – a sheer drop that would undoubtedly break his skull. Instead, he was steadied and released.
“Me knows,” he exclaimed. “Ye the god.”
“A god?”
“Which god?”
“What god?”
The kid flapped his arms. “Bird.”
“Which one?”
“There’s three bird gods.”
“Owl, Shrike, or Raven?”
“Uh…” The boy had no clue. “Why ye speak like that?”
“This?”
“This?”
“This?”
“No,” he laughed. “That silly! Not how ye speak!”
“Not how you’re meant to speak, you mean.”
“It is how I speak.”
“Weird, ain’t it?”
Once more, the kid cackled. As if he’d just heard the funniest joke in the world. His tiny shoes squelched as he paced along the edge of the glade.
He pointed at the bag. “What in there?”
By this point, there were many things in the bag. Several good rocks and sticks, the obvious quality of which the boy noted. A scarce collection of jewellery, which the boy – lacking the age to acquire mature taste – was uninterested in. Two books – one of folk-tales and the other a treatise by a historian – which had been begrudgingly yielded by Erin from Baylar’s gifts. The boy was allowed to look at but not touch the weapons stored within – a sword bound in layers of cloth and a huge crossbow with an elaborate sets of runes growing more intricate every day. A woven tapestry – damp with rain – and a crocheted piece of art depicting interlocking lines. A drawing on a strip of bark, discarded by an unsatisfied Seed. A few small carvings, which the boy played with for a bit. Untouched at the bottom of the sack was the jagged pieces of a conversion stone – crushed in an iron grip after Fort Vane. They wouldn’t live long if it was used. They had too much divinity.
The boy particularly liked the carved figure of a giant with a halberd, who in his hand fought invisible beasts, climbed the great heights of a sapling, and had to be prevented from slaying a beetle who had been mistaken for a monster. The beetle was undeserving of such treatment.
“Me keep him?”
“It’s not a ‘him’.”
“No.”
“Give it back.”
His face scrunched. His tiny hand curled around it. He scowled. He did not give her back.
“You should return it.”
“Please give it back.”
“Stop.”
He trembled, just a bit.
The demands halted.
After ample negotiation – mostly involving the clarification of terms – a larger, more robust figure was promised in exchange for the sculpture’s return. The base body took scarcely a few minutes, but adding several articulated joints was fiendishly difficult work. Far easier than it had once been, however.
The boy played with a few bugs while this occurred. The same beetle that had been declared a monster moments ago had become the ruler of a dirt castle, from which ‘he’ ordered other insects to perform inane tasks. But eventually, a small echo emerged from the caverns beneath.
“Buddy!” they called. “Buddy! Where are ye?!”
The child did not hear.
“Do you hear that?”
“Go back home.”
“Someone searches for you.”
The boy frowned, then scurried towards the small hole and stuck his head into it.
“Uncle?” the boy called.
There was a pause in the searcher’s yell, before it began anew. “Are ye up in th’ bloody glade again?!” they bellowed, voice growing louder as they drew closer. “I told ye, ye cannot go there without an adult.”
“But…”
From directly beneath the exit hole, the masculine voice replied, “No buts, ye rascal.”
The child – ‘Buddy’, or perhaps that was a nickname – cast his gaze beneath his feet. “Sorry.”
A dusty middle-aged head poked from the hole. “By all that’s good ‘n green, kiddo,” the worn Shrikeblood swore, shrugging his arm up through the tight confines to massage both temples. “Yer father’d slap me from th’ grave if he knew I’d let ye wander off.”
“Me not alone!” the kid said, producing an excuse from nowhere. “Bird here!”
“I told ye bloody thick-tongued garbler, s’not ‘Me’, it’s…” The man followed his ward’s finger, then blanched. “Come here, Buddy.”
The boy eyed his guardian’s extended arms sceptically. “Me getting toy.”
“Come here right now!” the Shrikeblood snapped, eyes shuddering around a single point.
Though it was not yet finished, the figure was tossed closer to the child. He began to amble towards it.
Then his guardian screamed, “Don’t touch that!”
Buddy turned and looked. What did he see, in that moment?
A harmless bird, twisted into something larger by a process unworthy of further investigation? Or had his wits finally caught up to his mouth? Did he peer further back and see the god beneath the mountain, eyes and mouths and body twisting to pour blood down the throats of children – to knowingly curse them, even as it prepared to die – and the field of corpses that remained afterwards; missing only three small bodies to become complete?
Either way, pealing wails erupted from the child as he was dragged back down the hole.
The toy was left in the grass.
----------------------------------------
They sent Sash into the glade. She shuffled over wildflowers and grasses, over the bugs living their little lives and the teetering remains of splintered trees surrounding the edge of the clearing. She paused near the rock.
“Are we going to be okay?”
The same question. The same answer.
As always.