No skin, no nail, no bone, no hair, no brows, no nose, no jaw, no joint, no heat, no lungs, and no breath that wasn’t lost long ago; just nine eyes to flinch across all corners of the world and too many jawless mouths to agree on what to say.
A primordial pool animated by the ghosts swimming within, hauling itself across the landscape like the twisted shadow of an animal orphaned from its maker to sprint frenzied over a blur of red, green, and black, casting the birds, rodents, and scavengers that picked through the wilderness into a flurry of terrorised flight too ponderous to prevent them from being snatched had it the mind to, but the thing that was me barely had a mind to speak of – only fractured impressions and dangerous intuitions to smother its transient coherence in the crib.
But the recognition of a thing doesn’t cure it from itself; it only exacerbates the malady that sketches its borders.
Divine speed pushed the landscape behind at a pace impossible a few months ago and the power that defined every inch of its body made injury almost unthinkable, yet the dangers of the world were not measured in threats to itself but rather the way all – from the moons blinking through the dappled canopy coursing overhead to the myriad creatures of different shapes, sizes and voices turning the earth beneath them – shivered imperfectly on the indelible precipice that separated the countless feet of the present from the footsteps they would leave behind.
Precedent was the name of the game mortality played: if it had died before it would die again; if it killed it would kill once more, once more, once more, until ‘once more’ stretched from horizon to horizon in a graveyard of compromise whose victims clawed at the roofs of their tombs, nails dirtied, forever robbed of the sunlight they had once beheld.
The world was an hourglass fractured at its ceiling and its bottom, forever filling and draining in eternal equilibrium; unchanging, perhaps, unless you were a grain slipping from its base, tumbling head-over-heels into darkness, and despite the hands opened at the bottom there would be overflow and the weight – gods, the weight – would splinter fingerbone and tendon into a crimson mess.
But the thing that was me’s eight eyes had stopped drifting, and saw with absolute focus – a fixation belonging only to gods – and would could not look away.
Terror.
Do you understand terror, god?
That which chokes all words; crushes all breath; leaves its victims insensate on their feet, begging in a frantic bid to make an accord with a universe that cannot listen; whispers without words promising, with every beat of the heart, a world which is bent against you and yours and hollow of all but foul and empty things.
You do know terror, god.
A strange shade of it crushes the edge of perception but it is coloured by an indecipherable sensation as foreign to this thing as the tide is to the beach it eats away, but there is still a chance – a hope – that this mound of sand can strangle the indomitable channel, so it runs from Here to There; days past, days distant, days lost, and the moment that separates them from tomorrow.
The thing that was me ran beneath the empty night sky, unburdened by the weight of Ronnie and a corpse upon its shoulder, along the path it had walked half-a-day before, clawing itself forward, voices scratched and hoarse; a weight like mountains shaking everything that it was.
Eventually, it arrived.
Calls rang out through the still night air of all shades – the hidden diaspora of Seeds from all corners of the continent unearthing themselves to search for the voiceless pawn they needed – but no response would come, for they stretched through the shadowed forest but the twins were not there.
They were not anywhere: not amongst the seekers or the voices ringing to the night sky, nor those forming a perimeter around to alert their peers on any trespassers; what had happened to them what had been done to them were they alright if anything ever…
Focus.
Not with eyes, but the divinity that formed the bedrock of the thing’s being: that which was blind to all but life and life’s fading – a confusing amalgamation foreign to mortal senses but that long experience could decipher and distinguish – and there they were, underground.
They were whole.
They weren’t dying yet.
They weren’t alone.
They could never be alone, because nothing existed in isolation: no action could shake them free of the web of consequence that bound them – whether formed of the tactile press of other’s eyes or the cling of skin no creature could doff or the mere presence of the laws of earth and sky by which all must abide – and so there was nowhere truly contained; nowhere truly safe.
But there was a single truth all of humanity was defined by: if anything approached immortality, it was the blood of a god.
There were those seeking to change that.
Which was why the thing that was me slipped through the Seed’s search-line and those accompanying them – Erin, Bhan, Head Maleen, red-eyed Taja – and the process was easy, for who amongst a legion of Shrikebloods could be expected to perceive a dark mass that could condense itself in a pinprick; launch through the sky above their heads; move faster than any mortal animal?
Perhaps they saw a flicker, in the shadows beneath the canopy, but if they thought anything of it they said nothing, and so the group did not know the approach but there were more of the Seed’s closing their grip around the twins like a ring of moths to strangle a flame so it needed to go faster; it needed to move.
It slithered through the gap like a snake seen crushed beneath a boot long ago; skittered across the ceiling like the beetle plucked from its perch by a swooping bird; hurled itself across the open shaft like one of the bodies on that hill months ago when people were rent into husks by detonations beneath their feet, and it found its way into the barracks, where Ronnie was gently placed upon their cot and its eyes settled upon the twins.
For a few moments, the mere sight of them was enough to throw a veil of calm over the scene. Yet that brief tranquillity did not extend to Sash, who rocked back and forth a cot while Dash embraced her, teeth clenched.
“What- what if he is gone again?” she stuttered out. “What if he has run away?”
“We’ll be okay, Sash,” her twin whispered, “I promise.”
Her voice collapsed into a discordant whine. “You do not know that.”
“We’ve done it before,” he insisted. “We can do it again.”
The adolescents’ gangly limbs were splayed across the cot. The thin reed curtains separating each cot from the next provided the barest gesture towards privacy; enough to stifle sight but not their tremulous tones. But except for them, no other person waited in the barracks. Only a girl and the boy frantically trying to calm her were present. Yet no one thought to calm him.
“It was awful, Dash!” the girl exclaimed, craning her neck to stare at him. “We- we almost died!”
“It was just hauling monster corpses,” Dash snapped, an edge creeping into his voice. “An animal could’ve done it.”
“We both collapsed several times, Dash!” Her eyes were wide. “The hunters told us repeatedly to stop, but you did not listen and you’re not listening now!”
“I’m listening,” he insisted, “I always listen.”
Sash angrily fought her way out of Dash’s arms, and despite the boy’s reluctance he simply wasn’t strong enough to disallow it. When she had finished, her entire body rotated to glare at him.
“We did all of that to get to here.” The whining note had fled from her voice. All that remained was earnest communication. “If he leaves, then it all meant nothing.”
“We earned those merits to learn,” Dash argued. “And we have learned. We know how to survive; I bet Jackson would be glad to have us working for him- “
“Back in the Foot?” she hissed. “They hate us there. They held you down and broke your bones.”
He flinched, but tried to conceal it with a wave of his hand. “That was years ago. They calmed down after a while.”
The girl’s teary gaze had morphed into a toothy grimace. She grabbed her hair and yanked on it, causing Dash to immediately grab her wrist.
She slapped him with her other hand. “You are so stupid. We could have died, and you know it!”
Her twin gripped the other hand tight enough to bruise. “So what?” he retorted angrily. “What do you want us to do?”
“Find him!” A guttural yell burst from her. Then she blinked rapidly. “If… If we lose him…”
“We’ve already lost him, Sash!” Dash shouted, eyes trembling. “We lost him four years ago!” His jaw tightened as he tried and failed to slow his breathing. Then he continued hoarsely, “It’s done. It’s over. There’s nothing we can do. We’re in the bloody epilogue now, because we were too late.”
Immediately, Sash burst into tears. In response, Dash simply leaned backwards and cast his tired eyes skyward. Then screamed, and the calm shattered into sharp focus once more.
The thing that was me unfurled from the ceiling to drop down and loom over the pair, and while the girl’s face quickly broke into a relieved smile her twin stared longer, to observe the eyes crawling around one another – flung by their partners like the crazed orbits of celestial bodies without a sun – and the twitching of divine muscle into mismatched sets of limbs to defy the stillness the thing was most often swaddled in, causing Dash turned to his sister in pale terror to tell her:
“We’ve gotta run.”
And when his sister simply frowned uncomprehendingly, he seized her hand and pulled her from the cot, filling the caves with cries for help – heedless of the danger that could arise from their reckless retreat.
The twins blundered through several curtains before managing to disentangle themselves mid-stride and Dash hauled his sister along so vehemently she scarcely had room to protest beyond a few strangled squawks and the pair veered from the barracks with such momentum that they both slammed against the stone walls hard enough to rip their elbows open and they needed to be still because they were heading in exactly the wrong direction: towards the Seeds.
But when Dash pulled his sister into the central shaft to cast his voice towards the open sky above, Blake pushed himself off the trunk of the ancient, deceased tree he had been seated upon, head-in-hands to groggily say, “Woah, woah – where’s the fire, Dash?”
“The Vulture,” Dash panted.
The young man needed no other explanation because he swore and interposed himself and with a stilted half-smile said, “C’mon, Orvs; take a few breaths and calm down, yeah?”
“Move, Blake.”
“Get out of the way.”
“You have no idea what’s happening.”
But if Blake could understand the deluge of words that tumbled from the thing’s maws he did not show it; just maintained his creaky smile as Sash’s disbelief slowly faded into unease.
Blake’s already fragile smile fractured at its edges. “Why don’t you tell me what’s in the sack, huh?”
“The twins need to come back.”
“You know what’s in the bloody sack.”
“The one formed of blackened flesh, bloated to incoherence, or the one empty of anything that breathes?”
The voices screeched over one another frantically and even as they babbled the thing darted around the pock-marked man obstructing it, snapping countless branches fallen from the dead tree leaning above, yet despite his paltry divinity Blake managed to stumble in front of it once more.
His smile teetered precariously. “You know you shouldn’t be with ‘em when you’re like this. Just give it a little bit, alright?”
“Blake,” Dash protested from behind the adult.
“He’s fine!” the young man suddenly snapped, whipping his head around to glare at the boy. He swallowed, then continued. “We’re gonna work this out, and it’ll all be good again, yeah?”
In that moment, every competing notion that sought to fight its way from its mouths aligned – whether by sheer focus or a uncontrollable thirst to make them understand or some other impulse bubbling from the froth of its being – into single, discrete words, because they didn’t know – who could’ve guessed such a thing? – and it needed to get through.
“They.”
“Will.”
“Let.”
“None.”
“Survive.”
“So.”
“Blake.”
“Just.”
“MOVE.”
For the first time since Fort Vane, Blake gazed at the thing and found his smile had slipped.
It tried to step around him, and it didn’t have time to play cat-and-mouse but the twins fled into a small tunnel adjoining the shaft and the young man managed to block it using his entire body.
Blake looked up. “Please,” he begged.
The thing that was me trembled for a moment – shivered with its entire being – before finding the man arcing through the air and slamming against the tree it had felled with a resounding crack, where he slid to the floor.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
And all eyes were fixed on him, and all of its focus was on the limb that had batted him away, and Blake did not move.
Did not smile.
Just stared.
And the thing that was me fled after the twins.
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Eyes bulging with exertion, Dash’s arm strained against the base of the two feet that protruded from the small crevice in a frantic bid to shove his sister deeper into the path that would lead her upwards. The soft blue light of the everburning lantern he’d packed her with crawled wildly over the crushing confines as Sash’s chest rose and fell like a hummingbird’s wings, her fingers fluttering over the walls for any gaps to cram themselves into but failing to find anything in their panic. Each shove squeezed her deeper, as if she were travelling through the bowels of an immutable stone giant, and every inch gained left smears of blood behind.
With one final heave, the boy pushed his twin past the narrowest point of the crack and through the other side, where the path upwards waited. Sash clawed her way out then spun, extending trembling fingers backwards to reach towards her brother.
Despite the air thrumming through her chest, the girl managed to speak. “Hurry up, Dash!”
The boy’s words trailed softly through the gap. “I won’t fit.”
“What?”
“My shoulders are too broad,” he claimed.
Sash gave an incoherent squawk. “Now is not the time to pretend you are bigger than you are!” She extended her pale arm further through. “Get in here!”
“Go get help.”
“You said you’d come!”
“I can’t,” he stated, feigning a stifled groan. “I hurt my leg.”
Sash’s lungs beat at her chest like a caged animal. “Just, just wait… Uh, no, uh, hide. I’ll be back.”
The jangling of her lantern and the patter of feet faded as his sister frantically sprinted upwards. Eventually, the blue light disappeared from the crevice entirely. It left Dash alone as the bloodtech lighting studding the tunnel ate through its Shrikeblooded fuel and slowly crawled closer to darkness.
His leg was entirely uninjured.
Sash had never been good at seeing through deception, but Dash hadn’t always been a good liar.
When had he learned?
He took his twin’s advice to hide. He crept down the tunnel towards the storeroom. Where the piles of rations, weaponry, ammunition and armour offered shadow enough to consume even the largest of children. His blue eyes flinched back and forth. He twisted around stalagmites. He turned. Saw nothing. The only sound filling the caverns were the thin peel of his bare feet away from the stone, which hung in the tunnel like a thunderclap. Silence lurked everywhere else.
He did not know Sash’s words were hastily-spoken. That if she had thought for a moment, she would have known that nothing could hide from this shade of god. But Dash couldn’t have known himself. His Ravenblood slept; inert, for the touch of death had never sullied it.
He crept into the storeroom, each step measured by the sound it created against the tremulous energy seizing his legs while the thing that was me followed behind him entirely unnoticed despite his darting eyes, for he did not distinguish it from the crawling shadows that possessed the caverns.
His gaze fell on a set of crates arranged against the wall so they formed a slight alcove and jogged over to it, weaving around containers, piles of military equipment and abandoned tally-sheets as the slap of his feet rang over the silence, yet when he knelt to begin shuffling into it he finally noticed a silhouette wrought from the absence of feeble blue lighting stalking towards him.
Dash had enough time to let loose a single shout before the thing barged through the meticulously assorted piles to send showers of steel spinning through the air madly, and the boy barely managed to squeeze behind a crate when a dagger clattered through the space he’d occupied moments earlier.
His hand slithered out of cover to seize the knife’s hilt, but then it was outside – blackened flesh eclipsing the thin azure light leaking around the crates and slipping tendrils within – and Dash fought his way backwards on hands and knees to lurch from the other side and slowly break into a sprint towards the exit.
But the thing had already darted backwards to lurk between him and his destination.
In response, Dash picked up the discarded lid of a crate and hurled the square of wood towards it.
After it smacked against the thing’s chest, the makeshift projectile toppled to the cold stone.
“Go!” he shouted, “Get out of here!”
It didn’t move; it didn’t speak.
Dash drew back, jaw as tight as his eyes were wide, then drew his face into a weak sneer and scooped a spear from the ground.
Despite the smoothness and certainty of the throw, the boy seemed shocked when it embedded deep in the thing’s chest – yet even when a shot of sudden agony coursed through its divine confines, it nonetheless seemed insignificant.
“What do you want from me?” He blinked rapidly. “Why are you still here? To torment me?”
The maws broke open like an overstressed dam.
“You’re in danger.”
“No.”
“Aren’t you?”
“You and your sister are under threat.”
“You must come.”
“Just listen.”
“Was that true?”
“Stay away.”
“There’s nothing for you here but dead ends, Dash.”
Even if the thoughts pecking their way through its malformed skull were untrue, their end-result wouldn’t be: Dash would always be under threat, for that was what it meant to breathe, so it just needed to get closer, yet when it stepped forward, a familiar voice arrested its movement.
“Hold it fer a moment, oaf.”
Its nine eyes – previously fixated entirely on the boy ahead – crawled over the surface of its body to stare at Kit, who stood bent-over at the entrance of the cavern, body heaving with gasps as sweat trickled down her skin.
“Little birdie told me,” she panted, “that you needed some help down…” A wet cough broke from her throat, and she spat a wad of clear phlegm onto the stone. “Blood, I’m out o’ shape.”
Dash managed to reign in his shock. “Is she alright?”
Kit straightened. “She’s fine. Headin’ up t’get more help.” Her eyes flickered rapidly, entirely at odds with the cocky grin she wore across her face. “Reckon we can jus’ calm down a moment; take a little break, maybe – jus’ you an’ I.”
“Is Blake alright?”
“Are you doing okay?”
“If you keep doing this, you’ll die.”
Kit caught the end of one statement, and her eyes went wide. “Well I guess I’ll, uh…” she said quietly, then with excessive caution, she slowly drew the blade she used as a makeshift crutch with her off-hand.
Merely holding it set her muscles trembling, and Kit’s fierce scowl faded into a grim line almost as soon as it appeared, and she waved a hand significantly to Dash, who stared at the gesture blankly before settling into a scowl of his own.
“I’m not leaving you here,” he snapped.
“Yer head filled with nothin’ but bone?” she retorted, “He don’t give a damn about me, so scurry on away ‘fore he bites yer head off.”
The boy’s mouth worked as he attempted to formulate some kind of response, but with Kit present a new obstacle had formed, so the thing that was me stepped towards him only to have the former swordswoman interposing herself between the two – this kind of thing occurred with unsettling frequency, that day; a symptom borne of a deep misapprehension of the thing that they faced.
Yet Kit was nothing if not arrogantly brave and though everyone present knew a single line of steel posed no obstacle she extended it nonetheless, to press its tip against the writhing, alien skin that wore the thing and Dash took the opportunity to flee past both and though it would’ve been simple to stop him, he was allowed to pass.
“You…”
“What foolish ideas flit through that head of yours?”
“You should leave, kid.”
The lean woman scoffed, saying, “What else am I gonna do?”
The thing that was me took the blade between its articulated fingers and even with Kit pushing the sword through its chest a slow flex of the fabricated musculature saw it bend from her grip, to be tossed across the room and removed as an obstacle to gripping the woman’s neck and lifting her above the ground, where she flailed and beat at its grip ineffectually and rammed her fist and stump against it over and over through clenched teeth as furious tears beaded the corners of her eyes until her useless struggles faded along with her breath and the thing stared at her as its heart pounded like a war-drum then dropped her to the ground.
Where she gasped and snarled and dug her fingers into her stump and screamed.
The thing buried her in crates and departed.
In the meantime, Dash had created a good distance.
He scurried through the caverns like a rat through a maze, skittering from tunnel to tunnel with no regard for stealth, each step followed by cries for help that could only be heeded by the only thing that heard them yet he lowered his head and strained his body to outpace that which he called – he just needed to wait; why wouldn’t he wait?; of course he wouldn’t wait – and when it drew closer he dived into a narrow gap that threatened to crush his chest and steal his breath but though he screamed he avoided the tendrils seeking to save him and escaped from the encampment into the deep, lightless confines of the ancient caverns.
And the thing’s voices followed him.
“You need to stop.”
“You need to understand.”
“You need to see.”
They dogged Dash’s steps, nipping at his heels as he fought blindly through the darkness.
“A child forced to bloody his spear.”
Each of its stomps shook the caverns and set its eyes rolling as the words swooped from the indefatigable veins that wove through the earth.
“A mountain of corpses, carved by a single glaive.”
Dash’s bare feet caught on a stalagmite, slashing open the bottom of his feet but when it lunged for him he dove sideways under some fell instinct.
“A world empty of all but one.”
Where he descended into a gaping pit as fathomless as any eye and rolled downwards, unable to reach out to arrest his fall without sight to guide him and leaving his only recourse to shield his body.
“A room with no exits.”
Stone grated the side of his face; drove its lifeless fists into his sides; nipped the edges of his skin: all as it pulled him inexorably downwards, towards a destination he could not understand through anything but screams.
“The work of a lifetime, reduced to rubble.”
But behind him came the far harsher sound of a great weight following afterwards, so he leaned further into the fall’s mindless grasp even as it sought to break him until the slope subsided and his roll slowed, then halted entirely, leaving him motionless in the cold.
“A father’s hands around a mother’s throat.”
He stood, shivering as wet blood burned its way from the cuts and scrapes tearing his clothes and body but there was no rest for the voices drew closer, following him still; each and every one of them seeming to call for some an answer to the question he had solved long, long ago, and far, far too late to matter.
“Days without end, suspended by absence.”
Sobs broke from his throat as he stumbled away – feet slapping against a floor he could no longer see as hands searched for something to define his surroundings, but failed to find a thing – and hot tears trickled down his face but his paltry gait was no match for that which buried the voices he knew with more voices than he could understand.
“A home made of ashes.”
They grew twofold for every stagger he managed; burgeoned into a titanic cacophony to drown the darkness beneath relentless static; beneath words and sentences he could comprehend but not decipher, and though he himself howled and jammed his fingers into his ears its portentous words spoke louder than any of his efforts, and when a wall buffeted his shoulder with all the force of his blind flight he toppled.
“A broken tree burning blacker than night.”
Though he fell, he fell against the stone beside him where his blind groping finally revealed a passage barely larger than him, and he ignored its promise that it would grow tighter to reach forward and pull himself through with nothing more than the leverage of his fingernails, greased by blood and tears to slide further down, stone pressing down until his sobs were strangled to nothing and he reached the crevice’s terminus, cradled by darkness and unyielding stone.
“This is your reality, Dash.”
And the thing clawed its way after him, relentlessly striving to force its far greater mass into following failing
“It will grind you into dust, then resurrect you to be destroyed once more.”
but the stone gave way before its divine flesh did
“It will burn you and bury your ashes beyond the gaze of stars.”
splintering like a falling tree as cracks wound its way up the tunnel to falter against his hands
“It will choke you with your own being.”
and it wrenched its body through as the earth above began to groan under the stress it was forced to bear against its suddenly tractable will
“It will break you from yourself.”
and it began to crumble as the thing broke space for itself in the tiny space the world afforded it, even as its efforts brought the cave crumbling downwards onto its back.
It carried that familiar weight upon its back with trembling muscles – desperately calling every memory of permanence and will to strengthen its spine – to shield the boy.
And Dash found it had brought a lantern with his own blood smeared against it, lighting the space as he stared upwards, eyes holding the weight of the many gazes bearing down upon him.
Despite the wound marring his body, the tactility of his skin revealed that Dash was whole; revealed the moisture streaming from his eyes; the way his entire body shivered.
And he was crying, repeating:
“I’m sorry; it’s my fault. I’m sorry; it’s my fault.” Over and over again.
Suddenly, the theoretical agony that awaited Dash in the future was outweighed by the anguish buried deep within his words.
And ending him had never seemed more unjust.
What did it mean, to be mistaken? Was it merely a fault in reason or perception; all thought entirely occluded by emotion? And when coupled with the sheer physical power to embed that mistake into reality; what did it mean? To not understand, even after seeing the abject terror carved plainly across Dash’s face, whether the thoughtless, fearful attempt to hasten his end was even a mistake in the first place?
Perhaps it wasn’t logic that had failed, but the resolution – the same resolution that had faltered over and over, since it had fled from the Owl – to carry it through.
After all, if the Raven had taught anything, it was that madness was inherited through the veins.
But the thing that was me felt its determination grow silent.
Finally, it was quiet once more.
----------------------------------------
For a time, there were no words. Nothing accompanied the tiny crevice beyond a crackling from above as flesh suspended a mountain above it, and the glow of the lantern fed by a steady stream of black blood, lighting Dash’s tear-stricken face in an otherworldly glow. There was nowhere else to look.
Eventually, after a few aborted attempts, the boy managed to speak.
“I’m sorry, Orv,” he sobbed. “I thought- I didn’t want- If I had just believed in you…”
This moment of clarity was seized just long enough to pace the voices a beat apart – leverage them into comprehensibility.
“Then what?”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything.”
“The entirety of the Foot knew. It was no longer home.”
The adolescent shook his head furiously. “We could’ve come with you!”
“To starve?”
“To suffer?”
“To be placed in constant danger? No.”
“But we could’ve helped!” he protested. “We could’ve stopped this from ever happening!”
“This was always going to happen.”
“The same laws that governed divinity determined the shape of this present. Nothing could have prevented them.”
“You were better off in the Foot. Far away from… this.”
His face wrenched: deep lines burying themselves in a face that had no right to hold them. “The Foot was awful. We worked for House Esfaria for years, just to get the training so we’d have the thinnest shot at getting to you. They all thought we were Ravenbloods, too. For years. Only Jackson stopped them from killing us.”
“…”
“…”
“…”
The silence stretched.
Dash swallowed heavily, then covered his eyes with his hands. “…All three of us are Ravenbloods, aren’t we?”
“…Yeah.”
“…Yes.”
“…That’s correct.”
“I thought,” he began, “I thought that the Cult had ruined you. That they’d buried something horrible inside of you.”
“They did- “
“Their teachings were- “
“Perhaps the Cult- “
“Not the Ravenblood,” he interrupted, shaking as head as well as he could manage in the strangling confines. “I thought you…”
His mouth opened and closed as he reordered his thoughts.
“When you and Blake tied that Dolphinblood up in the basement, and you refused to kill him, I thought you were being weird. You would get Dolphinblood. The diluted power of a god.” The boy’s mouth hovered halfway between a smile, a scowl, and a deep sneer. “I didn’t get it. People die all the time. And he had nearly killed you. If anyone deserved it, it was him.
“But you said no.” A bitter undercurrent travelled beneath his voice. “You said no, and you said it was because you hated Ma. Because she killed your parents. And I thought… I just had this feeling that there was something in you that none of us had ever seen. This… This thing that I sometimes caught glimpses of. And that it had been put there by the same people that ruined the Foot and sacrificed thousands of people.
“And I guess- “ The words caught in his throat, but he struggled onward. “I guess I thought that whatever that thing was, it was truer than the brother who I’d been with every single day for eight years.”
“And I was wrong,” he choked out, “and I’m so sorry I let you down.”
Then Dash’s voice was drowned by the jagged sounds wrenching their way from his throat as his small body wept; trapped in that tiny space bereft of the room to look away.
----------------------------------------
While he waited, the adolescent spoke of the four years he’d spent away. Of long hours labouring as part of the Esfarian machine; built expressly to eradicate Ravenkin and separate the divinity that waited within. Of heatstroke and arguments between him and his sister. Of being held down and beaten by a horde of the Foot’s denizens, rabid with hatred for the Ravenblood that had destroyed their home. Of convincing Jackson to send them with the hunting party; of his initial refusal, his conferral with Stitch, and the mournful cast of his face when he accepted. Of the fact Dash suspected the Esfarian had sent them out to die.
Of long hours trekking and tracking on the tail of Blake and Erin. Of the morning they finally caught them, and the devastation that wreaked the Spires of Heltia. Of his sister, disappearing that night, and the things she tried to tell him afterwards that he did not listen to. Of a Frost stained with a kaleidoscope of Godsblood, and the one that had opened veins. Of the Fort, and that he did not know what he’d hoped to find within. Of finding. Of being found.
“I missed you, Orvi,” he said to that tiny space.
But where was that person, now?
----------------------------------------
Kit managed to track the boy’s location down, and with the assistance of several Seeds, a rope tied around Dash’s waist and the ceiling held up with divine hands, they managed to extract him without injury. With the most fragile cargo removed from the location, departing it with a body as malleable as the mind itself was a simple task. But though the space was lost under a hail of collapsed stone, it endured within memory.
As did the tiny smears of blood along the halls Dash had been pursued down, and the agony etched into his soul that had remained unnoticed until but a few moments ago.
The selfish cruelty of that pursuit. The sheer stupidity of it all.
So despite Kit and Dash’s protests, the Shrikebloods were allowed to shackle cold chains of steel around a motionless body. To drag that weight upwards, and to stab fiery needles deep into bloated veins. To slot in place the piece that would break the Albright’s watchtower. To set the runes created while sheltering from their gaze beneath Tempest’s fury alight in radiant glory, and uproot them from their throne before their insidious rot could spread further. To make their way to the god beneath it all.
There was pain, of course. There were screams. There was nothing that was undeserved.