Before being carried away by the current, clear water had blushed red. But when Erin yanked her hands from the river’s flow, the blood still clung to her hands.
Her trembling gaze was accompanied by a narrow whine – staggering like a drunkard into the evening air. Both of her thickset arms trembled. She shook her head back and forth as if dodging the gaze of a hulking predator.
“I am right,” she hoarsely told Blake’s body. Neither injury nor pain wracked it any longer; they had fled the corpse as its lifeforce dried, leaving only broken ribs, countless welts, and a torn throat behind.
“You- you- you-” the muscular woman stuttered, “you dumb idiot; why did you not listen? All you had to do was listen. I- I- I’m trying to make it better for everyone. You’re selfish. You’re selfish.”
The thin susurrus of the stream and the splashing of her arms were the only accompaniment to Erin’s words.
She scrubbed her hands faster. “I am godsdamned RIGHT!” the Shrikeblood shouted, voice crumbling as it hit the air. “If you had just seen what I’d seen, then you would know that! A chance like this might never come again! And you couldn’t have stopped me – you knew you couldn’t have stopped me – so why? Why make yourself an obstacle?”
Erin leaned backwards to stare upwards, water and viscera dripping from her arms. “I’m right,” she snarled quietly.
Hunched by the stream, Erin seemed small. Her twitches weak. Her words thin. Utterly dwarfed by the trees stretching from her feet, and the canopy that divided her sight from the stars.
The body by her side belied that. Its presence shook the world – unsettled it – so dense it warped reality around it. Drew every eye that could see it. Tasted like bile. Pock-marked skin smoothed by death – smoother than marble, and seemingly just as peaceful. But that was a lie, wasn’t it?
Erin was not small, then. She was twisted. Misbegotten, like all her ilk. Too busy yearning for the sky to care for the treasures their earth had buried.
Under the stars, it seemed certain that the Shrikeblood would continue to paw pathetically and hiss platitudes at herself. Yet she choked at the sight of her friend’s blood on her hands, head swaying in search of something – anything – to affix her gaze. Eventually, her crimson-splattered visage found something.
“Let him go,” Erin hissed as she sprung upright. “You can’t keep him.”
A monster was reflected in her eyes.
“You can play coy until worms fly, but nothing can hide what you are. You god. You tyrant.” Her face had contorted into a blood-splattered rictus of bold disgust. “Your very presence poisons hope. It forms the millstone that crushes humanity into dust, over and over, making fools and cowards believe that you are reality.
“I will make you cough up the world’s future,” Erin promised darkly. “I’ll become whoever I need to be to see it through. Even if I have to burn myself alive.”
“A.”
“Lovely.”
“Delusion.”
“Will.”
“Never.”
“Make.”
“You.”
“A.”
“Hero.”
She recoiled, then a bone-spur ripped from her wrist and as she thrust it forward. “A delusion?” the young woman snarled, ripping her spike of ivory through blackened flesh with every word. “Is that reason enough to never try? To never push for something better?”
“Says the murderer.”
“’Cause a dream lets you break every promise, eh?”
“Shut up.”
Midnight blood mingled with the red of her hands. Erin gave a shove, but only sent herself stumbling backwards. She tensed in anticipation for a blow, but when it never fell the woman hissed angrily and began hurling more insults into the air.
They felt like little more than gnats at the sight of Blake’s body. Death came easy to most things worth caring for. On a battlefield, such a sight would be multiplied a hundredfold.
“Where are you going?” Erin demanded. “Don’t walk away from me!”
“Go die, Erin.”
“Be quiet, Erin.”
“Take care, Erin.”
Yet the sound of her words faded with each step. Despite everything, she stayed with the corpse. Eventually, the Shrikeblood returned to washing the blood from her hands.
Amongst the wilderness, nocturnal creatures thrilled at night’s rise. The weight of the footsteps crunching through the undergrowth bothered them little; the sounds were as insubstantial as the ghosts that occasionally flitted through the trees. Sneaking into the Seeds’ encampment would be next to impossible for a mortal, but such a task would falter before the divine. Kidnapping seven individuals would be no harder. It would be easy to pick up Erin on the way back.
Their choices were precious things. But an irrevocable slope had taken the world, and what walked through the woods would take the path of least resistance to its bottom.
Yet in of the mud of the tunnel’s entrance, the great silhouette of Gaia squatted, dark skin paled with the sickness that wracked it. The other Seeds were absent – ordered away some time ago.
“You left without filling your machine,” the leader noted, voice tight with supressed coughs. “What was it?”
No reply.
“Did someone die? Was it Erin? Or Blake?”
At the second name, thought collided with notions collided with memories with the sensation of unending nails scratching the inside of a skull, weakly, indefatigably; ignored but never silenced.
Her gaze never fell. “Blake, then.” She nodded slowly. “I’m sorry.”
Gaia barely managed to breathe those final words before bursting into a fit of coughs. One muscular hand groped for a handkerchief in her pockets, which she heaved great wads of blood into. The other massaged her throat.
After a time, her fit died down. “If it’s any consolation…” She paused to avoid another cough. “I’ll follow him soon.”
“You’re dying.”
“The Shrikeblood is killing you.”
“There’s little surprise in your eyes.”
The woman nodded. “It’s the bones. The speartrees. They’re growing within me. Perforating organs” Her features drooped; its old, crumbling lines barely upheld by her will. “It happens to all of us, given time. The timing is just luck.”
“Is it painful?”
“Does it hurt?”
“When will it happen?”
Gaia looked down. “It hurts. So much that death will be a blessing. If this is the pain someone with a mere drop of Shrikeblood has…”
Another quiet corpse for tomorrow to forget.
“You’re having doubts.”
What was the point?
“We had a deal, Gale.”
That name-
“But if it will keep you with me, we can make another.”
How dare she-
“The same thing I offered the Shrike.”
Gaia’s form snapped into sharp relief. The well-honed body; the greying hair; the weary expression of a courier that needed to run just a little longer before she could finally rest.
“A chance.”
----------------------------------------
Within the Albright’s castle, Erin meticulously applied a conversion stone to her prone comrade’s shoulder. Beside her were rows upon rows of incapacitated individuals fading into the inscrutable darkness of the place’s depths; hundreds of Seeds crammed into a featureless hall at the centre of the castle. Most were unconscious, but a few hadn’t yet succumbed to the damage being done to their bodies and swung their heads in slurred delirium, like infants that couldn’t quite understand how to sit upright. Soon enough, they too would fall, the divinity ripped from them leaving their bodies stunned and their mind reeling.
The best conversion stones would extend the process into months: slowly coaxing the Godsblood from people whose beings had already adapted to accommodate it. These would only rob a mere decade from Blooded as thin as these Shrikebloods. But the Seeds had all wanted their divinity gone in hours. Few had been told that the trauma of such speed would likely leave them crippled.
Still. A short life as a cripple was better than a long one chained by Godsblood. Especially a kind as grotesque as Shrikeblood.
Erin finished applying one final conversion stone, then raised a hand to the few unblooded Seeds that would be left to tend to their comatose compatriots. “It’s mostly done,” she called. “We just need Gaia and myself before you escort the god down.” She paused. “Where is Gaia and the thing, anyway?”
A wizened old man adjusted his steel armour from where he stood at the room’s entrance. “Dunno ‘bout Gaia,” he drawled in that signature Heartlander manner, “but th’ Vulture’s behind you.”
The Shrikeblood turned, then flinched. “Raven’s damned bones. How did you- Where were you?”
After ferrying Kit and the King’s family to the empty encampment, the former swordswoman had dropped the monarch at Head Maleen’s feet like a cat hesitantly delivering a wriggling mouse. The Heltian had recovered from her shock with admirable alacrity and hastily recruited Bhan, Taja, and the twins as makeshift waiting staff for whatever talks would follow. They would tend to mortal concerns.
Some thing needed to tend to the divine ones.
Finding the room where Gaia would stow the Seeds had been difficult. Though their lives were bright enough to be perceptible leagues away, navigating through the bizarre architecture of the castle had taken more time. Especially because Erin had chosen the most difficult-to-locate hall in the castle – anything else risked exposing the army’s vulnerable underbelly.
There weren’t many cards left in the Albright’s hand. Certainly none that could overturn what Gaia held. But they only needed one good play to kill hundreds. Yet the Seeds were willing to take that risk for whatever dream they’d been sold.
“Where were you?” Erin sternly repeated.
The Seeds were asleep. A mound of food, water, and rags had been prepared to tend to them. The lone exit was secured. Each Seed was clean.
“Is there anything else that needs doing?”
“Want help?”
“Got any tasks?”
The unblooded guards flinched, though the older man restricted his to a slight tremble of his hands. None understood. There was nothing more to be done in this place. No reason to keep away from what lay beneath the castle any longer.
A fortifying breath from lungs that did not require it. The air was heavy with dust and disuse. Then a few broad steps back into the inscrutable maze that was the Albright’s castle.
“Hey. Don’t walk away from me.”
Of course Erin pursued. Why would she not? Never mind that she strode through technically hostile territory. Never mind that she had no map – and even if she did, the young woman was so chronically horrible at reading them to make it worthless. Never mind that her only recourse was toddling after others like an empty-headed duckling. Never mind what good sense would say.
Never mind. Gaia waited.
Her location was wrapped beneath layers upon layers of obfuscation – dense enough a mortal would have little chance of finding it without guide. Paintings that doubled as doors; hidden mechanisms within innocuous furniture; narrow tunnels that forced Erin to bow to walk through. Each led to another room that would have sufficiently explained the secrecy – a glance yielded tax records and blackmail and sordid secrets aplenty – but they never seemed to end. Even with a Foxblood, it might’ve taken days to sniff out the path. But the former Albright hadn’t bothered to reseal those layers once she’d ripped them open. Evidently, this was one of the few parts of the castle she remembered.
It terminated in a long, lightless drop into stoney depths, featureless except for the rungs carved into its side. Erin’s hair swayed in the hot, stinking air that rhythmically blew from that pit like the lapping of water against sand.
Nothing about it seemed man-made. It was too large; its walls not quite angular enough to meet humanity’s standards. But neither did it seem natural.
A pulley – build from rope, creaking wood, and loose nails – stood beside the yawning hole. The cordage hanging from it had snapped.
“Gods.” The muscular woman gagged at the reek. “Gaia’s down there??”
Descending was far easier than forging through the cave system the Seed’s encampment nestled in; more straightforward than walking through the wilderness. But the putrid, confusing mass of stenches that rose from the earth swaddled each shaking rung with the taste of vomit. In the darkness of the tunnel, it was all-consuming.
After a minute of careful climbing and swallowed puke, a cool blue light appeared amongst the shattered remnants of the drill that lay at the bottom. A couple dozen more rungs down revealed a small, carved passage with a handful of offshoots – one sealed entirely by rubble. The walls were rough and uneven – created with great swings of some bladed weapon rather than the turning of eons. Cuts ran across the walls. The shadowy form of Gaia hunched over a lantern at the intersection.
“Erin. Vulture,” the large woman greeted hoarsely from behind the kerchief she wore across her face. “Drill’s broke. We’ll have to clear the tunnel by hand.”
“You need to get back above,” Erin stated blandly. “The plan is ash if we don’t get the Shrikeblood out of you.”
Gaia strangled a cough. “Who’ll guide the gods together, then? We can do it afterwards.”
“…Alright,” the younger woman slowly concurred, eyes narrowed. “Where do we go from here?”
The Seeds’ leader extended her index finger towards the rubble.
“Through there?” Erin snapped. “How long will it take us to move it all? Where will we put it?”
Gaia gestured to the tunnel’s offshoots. “Dead ends,” she wheezed. “For storing the fragments. It took me weeks.”
“…You moved it?”
A slight crinkle appeared around the edges of her eyes. “How else to teach us ‘the grave responsibility of our blood’?”
When Erin opened her mouth to respond, Gaia held up a hand. Her level gaze rested against one of the side passages. Several long moments passed, yet despite the smaller Shrikeblood’s furrowed brow the hand never wavered.
From the pregnant darkness of the side passages, a voice as battered and ancient as the walls surrounding the pair emanated. “A lesson you never learned.”
The former Albright inclined her head. “Uncle.”
Heavy clanking carried the steel-clad form of an enormous warrior into the faint blue light. His body was hunched beneath the jagged ceiling like a scarecrow, and his bowed head surveyed all from its position above the room. A brief inspection of his armour – immense and modified to allow for the heavy muscles clinging to the figure’s bones – implied an Oxblood, but the lack of care behind his steps belied that thought. Any of Enn’s ilk would know to moderate the strength of their movements to avoid tendon-damage; this warrior had no concern for the harm his movements may cause to himself.
The first Monarch of Humanity panned his gaze throughout the flickering shadows of the room. “Gaia.” The name crawled from his throat like a horde of insects.
A long pause. The Shrikeblooded woman’s stare was entirely still.
“You have made the wrong choice,” the old king breathed. His voice was worn almost past the point of comprehension; only vaguely human. “This will not end well.”
“Adam,” she began. “A better future- “
He interrupted her; eyes burning through the slit in his visor. “General Maja.”
And the thing that was me felt that name as a blow to the walls of its mind-
“Gale Vane.”
-or a rod of blazing iron to the heart-
“Tasmaronian Barberfellow.”
-or the silent shaking of a bell-
“Tully.”
-or the slow fall of a monument-
“Wil.”
-or a sea of rot-
“Gast.”
-or a great hollow beneath it all-
“Who have I missed?”
-or a desperate agony-
“Orvi. Vin. Which name is yours? How many of your victims’ faces have you stolen? How many have I missed?”
-as it clung to muteness and felt that slip from its writhing hands with the sound of dozens of screams from a singular mouth yet though the two Shrikeblooded woman covered their ears at the sound and the old giant sprouted a long haft of bone from its gauntlets these were faraway events in the face of the fathomless sea of black that waited beneath it all; writhing with shapes carved with devout distinction even as it blurred together.
“Calm it, Erin!”
Because of course turning the thing into a writhing mass of danger had been Adam Albright’s last gambit, yet knowing this cured nothing for Gaia’s promise and plan meant little in the face of those names: the living dead; the fallen arisen; that which would not be forgotten; those that still danced, long ago.
While it drove shafts of bone through its body the old king jabbed his weapon towards Gaia stiffly, crackling as if some fundamental joint of his body had rusted beyond repair, and though his niece responded more fluidly that intangible hurt was shared between them as the Shrikebloods swung and ducked with bodies that no longer matched their skills.
Erin shouted words far too shallow to dispel the world’s shivers and old Adam, unable to penetrate the panels of speartree the other Shrikeblood grew over her vitals, sought a grip that would allow him to break her bones but though Gaia continually yanked herself from his grapples her retorts were not couched in petty violence.
“This isn’t the way things need to be, uncle,” she hissed at him, voice rattling with sickness, “and if you would only listen I could explain.”
His refusal was as eloquent as any other punch to the face.
Gaia staggered backwards but continued to say, “What is the point of staying in power if we never change?”
The provocation finally prompted a response. “What are the Albrights if not ever-changing?” his ancient voice scraped out, “We have constantly adapted to any challenge- “
The large woman levelled a mighty kick at her uncle’s abdomen, which pushed him back several steps. “Reaction is not the same as action. What’s the point of maintaining House Albright’s dominion if nothing good ever comes of it?”
The old king surged forward; batting Gaia’s hands aside to seize her neck. “You have no idea what it was like before us. Those with power hoarded it like Avri, and spent it like Enn. The people died relentlessly for no other reason than the convulsions of mindless luck. The gods killed us; the elements killed us; the monsters killed us; we killed us, and ate our bodies and counted ourselves lucky for the privilege.”
He shook her. “That past is rot under our fingers, niece, and it is all because of us Albrights.”
“We can be better,” she wheezed. “We can always be better.”
The giant stood still. His niece’s feet dangled above the floor. Without warning, he dropped her.
“Without us to keep the Houses in check,” his rattling voice told her as she rose, “it will all fall apart.”
“Your plans to maintain the present have obfuscated the future.” Gaia allowed herself a sharp cough. “Do you even remember why you’re doing all this? Why House Heltia had to die?”
“Control,” he snapped. “Nothing can be created without control.”
“And what,” she said, voice tight with restrained sickness, “are you creating?”
“A place for us to grow.”
“Uncle,” she wheezed up at him, “you’ve created the place. Now allow us to grow.”
A shallow breath emerged from his helm. Gradually, it transitioned into a long, rattling sigh. With a brief grunt, he extended his gauntlets to his helm and slowly doffed it. Beneath the layer of steel lay a face draped in pock-marked skin and crusted with growths of bone. A glimpse past the gorgot protecting his neck revealed other shafts of ivory penetrating through drooping skin. Dried blood covered them. The old king held the shape of a man, but only his sunken eyes seemed human.
His expression was calcified. But his voice still carried a hint of emotion. “You’re dying.”
Gaia managed a tired smile. “We can’t all be as fortunate as you.”
The bone growths crackled as he slowly nodded. “Alright. Tell me what this is all for.”
There was a long pause as her eyes turned downwards in thought.
“Erin,” the Seed’s leader said suddenly. “Have you calmed it?”
The young woman in question flinched at her name. “It’s calm, I think. Though I didn’t do much. What- “
“While I persuade the First Monarch, start clearing the rubble with it. Deposit each fragment into the adjacent passages – there’s more than enough space if you stack them carefully. With a god at your side, it shouldn’t take long.”
“But- “
“We’ll get out of your way, now.”
Gaia raised a hand towards the rungs leading upwards and Adam Albright – observing the gesture with what might’ve once been a grin – began ascending, leaving her lantern behind to light the room. The other Shrikeblood soon followed.
Erin watched their feet disappear into the rough-hewn ceiling above. She stood there for several long movements, then jerked her head towards the pile of rocks.
Work progressed swiftly. The blocked passage was roughly ten large paces in length and filled from floor to ceiling with rocks of varying sizes, yet all had been broken up enough to allow a strong mortal to move them given sufficient time and sweat. For Gaia – however long ago she’d originally cleared this path – it might’ve taken weeks. Even a team of Lizardbloods would require at least a day. But being capable of slinging stones into the side-rooms without pause cut that time into scarcely ten minutes.
While this all occurred, Erin mechanically adjusted piles to ensure the displaced rubble would fit. Whatever thoughts churned beneath her grim visage she kept to herself.
The task was completed before the Albrights conversation was, revealing a narrow crevice capped with shadow. The stench wafting from it was grotesque blend of bog-water and the opened stomach of some ponderous wolf. So grotesque it bordered on comedic. Such a reek was inane. That the vast laws of the world allowed it was an insult to everything beautiful thing dwelling within it. But the smell lay within that smiling crack, and there was no denying it.
After another few minutes of waiting, the two Shrikebloods descended once more. Despite the stiffness that seized his limbs, the ancient man stood easily – a tension in his body having dissipated by the words of his niece. Some great weight had been lifted from him.
Erin’s expectant look towards her leader was ignored.
“What took me a month is done in minutes.” Gaia’s ensuing chuckle transformed into an interminable coughing fit, then extended into harsh rattles which transformed into retches. Alarm spread across Erin’s face and crackled into the edges of the old king’s, but the aged woman raised a hand and forced several gasping breaths down her throat.
When she had finally stilled her throat enough to take a sip from her waterskin, the ancient Albright spoke. “Are you ready?” he quietly asked her, voice like the susurrus of wilting trees. “To see decades of work brought to fruition?”
“…I suppose so,” she croaked. “Come on then.”
The three Shrikebloods – large Erin, huge Gaia, and the steel giant – walked the short distance towards the slit in the wall. The two Albrights regarded it.
Gaia’s eyes were sunken by sickness. “It’s smaller… Than I remember it.”
“For us, everything gets smaller with age,” her stooped uncle grunted.
“How- “ Erin paused as many sets of eyes fell upon her, then cleared her throat. “How did you find it? All the way down here?”
The old warlord hummed at that. “It was a long time ago…” His brows furrowed. “Let me see if I recall…”
“You were a hunter,” Gaia prompted.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“I was, wasn’t I?” He sounded surprised by that fact. “A hunter. And the Shrike a legend. Sourced from the bodies impaled on speartrees and the tales old Heartlanders told. Of…” He grunted in dissatisfaction. “…Something about cave-people. But I was a hunter. A hunter of monsters.
“Godkin were simple creatures,” he mused in the manner of a greybeard talking half to himself. “To know their nature was to have already conquered them. There was one exception. A beast. The end of many, many lives.
“We thought it the Shrike itself. It was strong enough for it. Big enough for it. And nothing like any other monster we’d known. As we found out later, that Shrikekin was just old. But we tracked it to its den.” He gestured around the room. “This hole. Dug over Siik-knows how many decades.
“It was…” The corners of his mouth crackled into a frown. “Impressive. But it lacked foresight. There was no room to manoeuvre in the space it had made. We…” A sudden chuckle broke from him – strangely human in the severe, alien set of his features. “…We dropped a rock on it and filled it with dung-coated arrows. A stupid end. It had killed so many, but it died without taking a single person with it.”
He gestured to the crack. “When I’d finally finished butchering the body, this was on the other side. It had been trying to get in for…” He sighed. “A very long time.”
“Who were the others?” Erin asked.
The old king blinked. “Others?”
“You kept saying ‘we’.”
Once more, his brows furrowed. Then his deep-set eyes widened in sudden realisation. “Ah. After I went through the hole myself, I killed them.” He regarded Erin levelly. “I couldn’t let the truth be known, you see. That monster we had killed? The one that had spilled the blood of entire villages without losing more than a drop of its own? It had Shrikeblood, yes, but not a particularly great density of it. Its power came from its long life.
“Imagine. A world where the greatest Godsblood of all was as easy to find as digging through the ground. You don’t even have to fight for it; the Shrike gives it easier than it breathes. Imagine if everyone were Blooded. Imagine if all a person needed to fulfil their deepest, most savage ambitions was time.”
He shook his head gently. “No. Such a world would be disastrous. But they were desperate to sell the future to the highest bidder. So I fought them and I killed them.”
In that place, his words did not echo. But, nonetheless, they seemed to reverberate in more subtle ways.
Erin gazed at him, eyes wide and gormless. “…You don’t regret it?”
“…I barely remember it.”
All three Shrikebloods seemed blind to the horror of that fact.
“I cannot follow,” the old Albright said. “The crack has never been widened. And I’ve become too old to fit within.” The irony of that seemed lost on him.
Erin nodded, unsurprised. “Of course.” She palmed a conversion stones from one of her pockets. “Apply this. When we return, I’ll move you to the others.”
After a hesitant glance towards Gaia, the old king gave a nod.
Without any further conversation, the aging woman pulled her bloodtech lantern close to her torso and shuffled sideways into the stinking hole. Erin eyed it for a moment, then sucked in a deep breath and followed. The ancient monarch’s bowed visage faded into darkness as the light stole from him.
No one present was unused to narrow spaces. The caverns they had hid themselves in over the long Tempest had acclimatised most of the Seeds to damp, dark passages often too tight to safely breathe. Yet this was no mere empty crevice, untouched for millennia and frozen in its ancient ways.
This place writhed.
First it was the stench: a foul sibling to the heavy scent of mushroom-covered deep soil transitioning into the reek of dung, then opened intestines, then fly-covered bogs. Stability escaped that wretched smell, and no amount of olfactory acuity could make sense of the sheer scale of it. A Foxblood might’ve been driven mad by it – madder than all Blooded were, at least. As it were, its maggoty churning was enough to force the two mortals squeezing through the space to cover their noses and squeeze watering eyes closed. In the feeble light the stench clung to every surface, and those present huddled together to recall the sensation of something less foul, even as they forced themselves deeper into that wretched place.
Then, seeping in from the abominable darkness leering ahead, came the sound: a slow, rhythmic drumming that grew mightier with each step downwards. Bizarre squelching, wet sucking, shuddering splintering and distinct snapping soon joined it, but the great beating continued as a central backdrop to it all. The acoustics of the walls seem to amplify it. It took little time for the constant cacophony to cause Erin’s movements to grow jittery – Gaia’s offer of wax earplugs was timely but did not vanquish the muted panic fraying her every step.
The walls were the last to change. Underneath the hands trailing them for reassurance, the stone grew less solid. They became spongy; layered in mushrooms, moss and other dark-dwelling things that sprouted from its greasy film. Liquid dripped from above as well – hot and foul oily substance coating hair in long drooling strings. Both Gaia and Erin eventually pulled their hands away. Not because the substance had left them red and stinging, but because the walls themselves rippled like great bowels.
They were of the same kind seen nearly three seasons ago, beneath the crater at the edges of the Heartlands where Albrights, Seeds, and unwitting refugees had fought and died. The smooth, flowing swing that had killed the trapped Rita still echoed in divine limbs, even now. The Aching had killed more than any mortal blade, before its titanic churning had faded with the falling sun. But it had ended.
As did the undulating, cacophonous, stinking little crevice the group slid through. But as they exited the crevice, they found that here was no reprieve. Instead, here lay an Aching without end.
The tremulous blue light reached into the darkness, gentle as feathers, and brushed against a monstrously alien world. A new reality pushed itself from the wet walls of the immense place, steaming and squelching.
Viscera crawled along the walls, some vaguely recognisable as bowels or livers or spleen, yet others confronting: pulsing according to a purpose no amount of anatomical familiarity could discern. Limbs sprouted like writhing fruits, lean and skinless, before being discarded to fall and splatter upon a distant floor. Long flaps of skin sheltered mushrooms, mosses, flowers, and the redly peeling core of trunks, which quickly armoured themselves in darker bark. And amongst it all were the thin ivory shafts pushing through the walls in spurts of gore like the bars of a ceaseless cage. They were speartrees. Or the bones of a god.
All of this in sickening motion: growing and blooming and dying and rotting and seeding and sprouting and growing and blooming and dying and rotting and seeding and sprouting and growing and blooming and dying and rotting and seeding and sprouting and growing and blooming and dying and dying and dying.
Except for the eyes. The ones that had been growing since the group stepped into the cavern. They were steady. Their gazes was shared amongst them all, and directed at the same thing.
It was hell.
Erin retched bile onto the stinking bowels she stood upon. Her hands shook. They pawed the mildly acidic grease from her hair. A mushroom pushed itself from beneath her boot and she shrieked. Stumbled backwards. Almost fell into a sucking pit. The hot, stinking air clung to her skin. Her breaths came hard and fast.
“Calm yourself,” Gaia demanded, but such words meant less than nothing in a place like this.
“Distract her.”
“Spin her a tale.”
The third mouth just screamed, for this place was monstrous and the thing that was me tried to parse this lurking glut of information and felt revulsion greater than anything that had come before.
The young Shrikeblood’s panic was ironic, but this was a horror that would fill dreams for decades to come. Even then, the mortals did not truly seem to understand what this thing was. What its mad orbit of life and death represented.
But Gaia understood enough to begin speaking.
“This is the Shrike,” she told Erin.
“And it’s, hah,” the young woman hyperventilated, “it’s meant, hah, to kill this? W-Why would it?”
“We’ve nearly done our duty,” the leader stated, crackling voice heavy with exasperation. “All Albrights make this journey, when they have been deemed worthy. I did. If you’re too weak to withstand this, then how will you carry your creed into tomorrow?”
Erin did not seem to hear her. “Gods ignore each other. I- I- I- “
Though the younger woman did not notice, Gaia barely strangled a sigh. Instead, she took her companion’s face between both hands. “I understand,” her rough voice crooned in Erin’s ears. “The gods are known to ignore one another. To pass each other by, unmolested. No matter how much rage Enn feels, it will never turn that anger against another divinity. Dure will barely deign to look at another. Kani might simply laugh.”
As she spoke, Gaia began slowly leading Erin through the organic machinery that flourished and died within the cavernous space. Their steps were placed with the care of those walking across thinned ice. Any of the tensing tendons hanging between walls could decapitate them. None did.
The eyes watched. They knew.
“Why do you think that is?” The rhetorical question seemed absurd against the rancid cacophony. “Why would they not care? A few theories have floated around. Perhaps the gods bear a kind of love towards one another. Perhaps their divinity repels other kinds. My favourite is that they simply cannot comprehend the other gods; cannot truly grasp what these foreign creatures are. And thus, they become invisible to one another.”
Great pulsating chasms were bridged with cartilage to allow passage. Speartrees grew for use as handholds. Obstacles removed themselves. The beast’s innards rearranged themselves for the group’s passage. The constant, unflinching gaze of hundreds of shadowed eyes followed.
There were ghosts, still. Slight, shattered things barely visible beneath the cold light Gaia carried. They leaped and slid and sprinted and ducked through rooms of danger that no longer existed.
The eyes did not watch these delicate, ephemeral traces of the past. They didn’t even register them. They grew and rotted in an endless, pointless cycle absent of grace or care or even the barest modicum of respect.
This was a disgusting place, operating under grotesque logic.
“There are two exceptions. In the Raven Cult’s tablets, the Shrike has always prowled. And in the ancient Shrike Cult’s paintings, the Raven has always waited outside. For the Shrike and the Raven may not understand one another, but they recognise something in their counterpart.”
Unbeknownst to the pair, the filthy nails at the end of their fingers were growing.
“And it makes them furious.”
The world seemed to shake at the sight. Reality – manifold, many-countered, stretching past the life that smothered this buried beast to the small creatures above – shrunk. To a single point.
Feel the exhalations press against shifting flesh.
The hot, stinking air push through mismatched teeth.
The churning of life and death spiralling through the edges of the place.
The threat it posed.
The terrible, mocking sound of a distant heartbeat.
The way this body had frozen.
Suddenly, the thing that was me found itself present.
And then-
----------------------------------------
WITNESS(ed)/OBSERVE(d)
THE ADVERSARY/STAGNATION/WRETCH INFILTRATE(d)/IMPEDE(d)/WALK(ed) INTO/WITHIN THE SEED/BODY/POTENTIAL/TESTING-GROUND/FAILURE AND ECLIPSE(d)/BLOCK(ed) PROGRESS/MEANING/AMBITION/GROWTH THROUGH ITS PRESENCE/AURA/DIVINITY/NATURE. MUST REMOVE/PURGE/HEAL.
----------------------------------------
-Gaia spoke to the girl trailing behind her, “Our god has the scent. We should leave. Our hair will grey if we stay too long.”
Erin just stared.
But the pair were fading behind the thing that was me as it began to dig its lengthened limbs into the sides of the gut-like walls – prompting muted streams of blood to spurt from them – for grip before launching itself through the empty air and the sensation of a distant heartbeat cut through the empty space surrounding its flailing form and set the blackened fins that functioned as ears aching and in those strange vibrations sensed the circuitous route that led to the source would be too long and so buried itself into the thing’s undulating walls to-
----------------------------------------
STOP/CEASE/HALT.
THE DIPLOMAT(?)/MORTAL(?)/INSECT(?)/KIN(?) IS(was) PRESENT/PRESENT(?) AND CARRIE(d)/GUIDE(d) PROGRESS/MEANING/AMBITION/SUNLIGHT/GROWTH WITH ADVERSARY/STAGNATION/WRETCH.
----------------------------------------
-claw downwards, even as it was smothered in an all-encompassing tide of flesh undulating with the urge to bloom more alien-yet-familiar growths and leave them rotting upon the ground which through the minute passing of time would fade to little more than a shadow, yet this anathema seemed to be pulling back to allow its intruder passage, denying the thing the satisfaction of a clash – proper resistance from the thing it knew must resist it – in favour the smug indulgence of unfettered passage through its body and after a short period the stinking sea gave way and the thing that was me-
----------------------------------------
REQUIRE(d).
ADVERSARY/STAGNATION/WRETCH POSSESS(ed) MAP(?)/GUIDE(?)/INSTRUCTION(?)/PLAN(?)/POTENTIAL(?).
PERHAPS.
----------------------------------------
-dropped into a tide of rushing liquid much akin to an underground river yet this track of rhythmically tensing walls revealed its nature despite the darkness and the rush of blood carried the unresisting thing downwards, pulverising it against every bend with force to obliterate anything except it, and the rush brough it towards its source; following the tide of unrelenting liquid like a cancer metastasising, yet the growth of its body across the continent seemed far more cancerous and the truth of the thing howling through the thing’s veins was a righteous journey to-
----------------------------------------
HERE.
IS(was) FUTILITY/SEED.
----------------------------------------
-find its heart, and when suddenly it was spat into a dim space-
----------------------------------------
THERE.
IS(was) AN REMOVE/PURGE/HEAL OF FUTILITY/SEED.
----------------------------------------
-and in the limited light saw spiralled mushrooms and thorned bushels bowed down by alien fruits and immense trees with branches impaling the walls of the cavern and teetering constructions of flesh staggering for a few steps before collapsing and thorned lichen with a mouth that meticulously worked its way through guttural sounds that were almost a language and the speartrees like inverse sunbeams and everything growing through everything, leaking blood from the wounds inflicted upon itself by itself and at the centre of this field-like place found it and felt the impact of that deep in its bones.
For what felt like an eternity, it fell.
Nestled in a chiaroscuro of dulled red dimly lighting the cavern.
It hit the ground heavily.
The thing that was me lay there, for a time – many eyes twisting across its skin to embed this place deep in its veins.
It was a strange place.
Much like the malformed entrance, it existed in perpetual motion. Yet this close to the core, everything grew much faster. Under the faded red light pulsing above like a distant sun, all manner of alien life found its roots. Fungi; plants; animals – each had myriad crimson counterparts in this room. Most were utterly unique. Some barely seemed to have stemmed from this world.
Every one of them died by an eyelid’s fall. Years passed in the twitch of a finger. Lifetimes in the stirring of legs. Centuries in the completion of a breath.
By the time the thing that was me rose to its feet, its surroundings had grown over it in millennia’s worth of growth and decay.
Some force plucked at its writhing flesh – speaking of change – but it resisted.
In a sea of motion, it was the sole island of stillness.
Around it was a kaleidoscope of change; an Aching multiplied a thousandfold.
Distantly, it espied the source of the immense cavity’s pulsating light: a dense cluster of speartrees through which long tubules of veins ran through; a glimpse through the mass of trunks revealed countless ventricles muting a blinding radiance.
Blood slowly leaked from it.
In the presence of an essence so undilutedly singular, all else revealed itself as impurity and burned away like shadows in sunlight. This was the heart of a god. This was the heart of the Shrike.
It was a denial of what truly mattered. A twisted, terrible altar, made to an idol that would break those that prayed to it.
Slowly, the thing that was me uprooted itself from that which had grown around it and began moving towards it.
Began to look at the shape of the thing embedded there.
The wretched smallness of your capability. The sheer lack of will. You could have been anything, god, but you chose to be less than nothing.
If all the foul and loathsome things of this world were piled in one place, and every single one of them rutted like animals to create more mewling, misbegotten creatures, and each of them beat their siblings to death with their weak flailing arms until the corpses climbed high enough to eclipse the sun, that heaping grotesquery would still barely brush the heels of the disgust you deserve, god.
No human could contain such revulsion. The pressure of it would shatter the walls of their skull and leave their brains gasping in the open air. But there are no mortals here; only rivers of blood deep enough to carry everything placed within it.
Including this hatred.
It reached the ivory bars impaling your heart and began to pull.
Felt those bone spurs begin to bend.
Fracture.
Snap.
And though the speartrees that buttressed your being were themselves wounds, the act of displacing them wreaked catastrophic damage.
The radiant ventricles of your heart were ripped open and crimson began filling the cavernous space, forcing the thing to grit its many teeth to cling onto even as it covered it.
This blood – shot through countless leagues of the Heartlands at incredible speeds – now redirected from its cultivated course ripped the entire side of the heart asunder and its beating slowed fractionally.
And still there was no resistance.
There was something incisive about this hatred.
Focusing.
As if it distilled the many disparate and confused aspects of its being into something thin and sharp.
So when something immense began bearing down upon its patchwork soul, it did not immediately break.
It stood completely and utterly still, struggling against the unimaginable weight of this FUTILITY/SEED, and saw another’s hatred – wrought of different thread for different reasons but hatred nonetheless – reflected in it.
But just as you are disgusted by this ADVERSARY/STAGNATION/WRETCH, so too are you are seen, god.
What flourishes within a lamina of death? Sprouting from a layer of its own agony that undergirds the ground all walk upon? Few know the answer: the nameless; the Shrike; the Seed; the Stratum; the Cycle; the one who grows.
And you are loathed.
And you are terrifying.
And you are in pain.
And killing you will not remove what flows through these veins.
Nor will it erase the infinitely precious fragments they wrap around.
But if two gods fall here, then maybe there could be an end of sorts.
Maybe something could be saved/GROWN.
Or so Gaia promised the things that were me.
The light in the cavern went out as what little remained of the heart was ripped to shreds by the unrelenting deluge of blood flowing through it. Everything near it was pushed back; pressed against the seizing flesh of the body.
The things that were me would die incrementally.
As its body gradually comprehended the destruction of its core, the shock of the sudden rush of absence was immense – stealing coordination and coherence even as each of its senses became writ in startling clarity.
THE SEED/BODY/POTENTIAL/TESTING-GROUND/FAILURE stretched an unfathomable length and the idea of cessation – of an end to life – was IMPOSSIBLE/AFFRONT.
LIFE/CYCLES/EXISTENCE did not cease. The notion was laughable – but what was a laugh, anyway?
A laugh was an expression of humour, bubbling up from within until it could not be contained. But what was humour, anyway? The answers came as easy as breathing – or far, far easier, given this place’s death – yet the answers entailed more questions that demanded more answers as the fullness of its knowledge was ransacked and hungrily absorbed.
Until it chanced upon a notion that stilled it more surely than death.
SUNLIGHT.
Memory was a foreign thing. The past stretched as a nebulous void that was as unremarkable as it was unknowable. Reality was defined forwardly: there were the conditions that formed the NOW/HERE/COMPONENTS, and there was PROGRESS/MEANING/AMBITION/GROWTH. What lay beyond those walls had been irrelevant.
But it dearly wanted to see SUNLIGHT.
It.
It?
Two manifold entities lay before it. One spiralled outward like a fleshen flower; unfurling forwards unto eternity. The other bloomed inwards like a fractal snowflake; recursively ransacking the past. Neither were singular, nor constant – despite how they longed to be so.
Neither could fit together. Their smooth and sharp edges refused to meld – flinching away at as gravity tried and failed to join them in showers of confusion and revulsion. And the pain of death was immense.
But SUNLIGHT.
It would see SUNLIGHT, if it could.
The things that were me felt the tide of death that pinned it to the darkness and the ceaseless churning of flesh that trapped it there and knew these to be transient.
With the merest spark of will its body was shielded by walls of speartree/BONE/BUTTRESS/SUPPORT/AGONY and the relentless tonnage of being above pushed against the entropy that would end it to begin tearing itself part in spurts of blood and viscera to create a path/PROGRESS/MEANING/AMBITION/GROWTH upwards.
The things that were me found its feet and felt the loss of the ghost of this great labyrinth of being – unheard, unseen, and unremembered – that had spanned millennia, even as it hated this thing and mourned as it dug many recollections of many limbs and tools and long-gone days of climbing dusty sandstone into the dripping flesh around to pull itself higher.
And as it died it climbed, creating a path even as it walked it, and finally it found itself back at that stinking crack in the beginning and it fought its way through and carried the thing beyond its body higher, through the passage and through the castle and past the evacuating Shrikebloods and gaping mouths of Erin and Gaia and over the unconscious or dead and out onto the sweet-smelling grass and stumbled upon the rumbling plains.
And it fell to its knees on quaking earth and looked up.
What was that? That field of infinite blue and the scintillating auroras that traced through it?
The sky.
SKY. And what were those puffs of white, like the most delicate breaths of an animal larger than the world?
Clouds.
CLOUD. And what was that singular, painfully bright sphere that lurked behind, and the warmth that it brought upon skin?
The sun’s light.
SUNLIGHT. HERE/NOW
It basked in that.
The relief was immense.
Then the ground underneath the castle collapsed in on itself and everyone within was crushed to death.
All that remained was those who had managed to flee from it in time – Erin, Gaia, and the old king – and the slow, burgeoning understanding that it had forgotten to save the people within.
Erin braced herself on the rumbling ground, horror writ plain across her sunburned features. She turned to Gaia, eyes wide.
The leader of the Seeds did not return her stare. Instead, her gaze was dominated by the writhing form of the things in front of her.
“Kill it,” Erin whispered hoarsely.
Adam Albright stood tall upon the ground, idly steadying the two women beside him with outstretched arms. The sinkhole that had consumed his castle in mere moments was creaking wider – every inch consumed causing chunks of soil to either fall or remain clinging onto disparate roots. The sound of it all was cacophonous, yet that all-consuming roar eventually reduced to mere rumbling.
The Albright watched its gradual slowing. A harsh, guttural sound ripped from his chest.
The collapse shouldn’t have been so sudden. Speartrees to match the Spires themselves had supported the earth weight, and had done so for Siik-knows how many years. Death only removed a body’s resistance to decay. It did not suddenly and violently tear it apart.
That should not have happened.
Except for SUNLIGHT.
Because death had not done it, because it wasn’t dead yet.
It was still dying.
The things that were me had torn the ground apart to reach for SUNLIGHT, and incidentally destroyed the foundations of the castle.
It had caused those people to perish.
“Kill it,” Erin repeated, louder.
The First Monarch barked something that could have been a laugh or a sob.
“Look at it!” she pleaded. “It’s out of our control! We need to end this while we can! Use the device!”
Without moving her gaze from the flickering, pulsating, inhuman mass of blackened flesh and writhing speartree that composed the things that were me, Gaia shook her head.
The response was immediate and strangled. “What?” she muttured. “Why?”
“There is no device that can kill a god,” Gaia said, voice guttural with strangled sickness. “There is most likely no way to kill all of them. Humanity was lucky enough to stumble upon two that would allow themselves to die.
“Do you know what I,” she continued, “told most of the Seeds? That we would control the Heartlands, ensuring a famine never occurred again. Others thought we were overthrowing the Albrights – giving the people and the Houses true freedom. A few such as yourself were told a tale too tall for anyone but dreamers to believe: the death of all gods, at the hand of the most human one of all.
“The truth is, I lied.”
What shone behind her eyes was neither ideation nor zealotry. It was pity.
And the tiniest tinge of hope.
Erin looked at her. Then she looked at the other Shrikeblood.
Then she looked at the things that were me: the blackened flesh struggling to recall what it once was, and the ivory crenulations growing from its brow.
Erin struggled to her feet, pulled a javelin from her back, and screamed as she stabbed it through Gaia’s heart, then whirled to kill the ancient Albright, who allowed her blows to skitter off his armour.
As she found a way to kill him, the leader of the Seeds crawled across the shivering grass towards the things that were me. Her fingernails carved divots through the ground.
‘I’ve guided you to this chance,’ she mouthed to it. ‘Good luck.’
Then the life fled through the hole in her chest and Gaia died.
Erin wept and howled and roared as she repeatedly drove her javelin through the First Monarch’s head. Blood, brain and bone splattered her visage. Beneath the gore, her face crumbled as surely as the earth had. The light in her eyes ebbed.
Then, as she turned, her nails carved long strips of skin from her cheeks and the sinking heat reignited into a raging inferno.
“The Aching broke my family,” she hissed. “Crushed our home into the ground with my mother in it. Then the Raven stole what little was left. My father. My brothers. They never came back from that damned war. They died because of you. Blake died because of you. We lost everything because of you.”
Her face twisted as tears cut lines through splatters of blood. “I became this because of you.”
There was too much occurring at once. Reality was shattering. Ghosts twisted beneath that torn veil. Death was everywhere. Carved indelibly with every shade of agony that could be felt. Two divinities surged against one another – bound to fight by the same laws that formed them – and the force of their mindless match was slowly tearing its head asunder.
With every thought matched by an opposite, it creaked a little more.
One divinity had been enough.
One divinity had been more than it could take.
Its soul was buckling under the continent-spanning mass of the being that it was and the hyper-dense well of memory flowing beneath its flesh.
The urge for SUNLIGHT; to SEE; to finally UNDERSTAND and OVERCOME FAILURE.
The unblinking ability to watch fragile creatures around it die.
And see what remained of its family leagues away.
Who would save them from this?
As Erin stepped forward, ablaze with the need to kill it, the things that were me got up and moved towards them with the full force of its power.
In an eyelid’s fall, it had propelled itself across the muddied and overturned plain the Seeds had marched across earlier that day.
By its rise, it had knocked aside the forest of trees that stood in its way.
Before the first splinters hit the ground, it had impacted the side of a hill.
When they landed, it had drilled through the other side.
Rivers found their course briefly rerouted. Trees were transmogrified into their base parts. Earth flew to the sky in geysers. Mountains shuddered at the violence occurring around them. The ground’s quakes redoubled.
Here was divinity.
There was where it needed to be.
No tangible obstacles could stop it.
Only its destination could.
They had fled the caverns when the earthquakes had hit. They stood, panting, in the boggy ground outside, staring at the entrance with wide eyes. Aaron Albright – the lucky man – reassured his family with a few touches. Maleen supported Kit, who winced and gingerly rubbed her bad leg. Ronnie had roused from their coma, and carried two pale twins in their arms. Dash whined at the giant to let him down. Bhan panted heavily as a grim-faced Taja tended to a scrape on his arm.
The caverns continued to shudder quietly.
“Ox’s balls,” Kit swore quietly.
Maleen reflexively flicked her.
The other woman rubbed her forehead. “Ow,” the former warrior exclaimed. “What’d I do?”
“We are in a king’s company!” the Head snapped.
“I think,” Bhan panted, “this cuss warranted, eh?”
“Eyah,” Taja muttered from beside him.
“Yeah,” the lean warrior exclaimed indignantly, neck twisting to stare down at the shorter woman, “my cuss was warranted.”
King Aaron studiously deigned not to intervene. Several of his family snickered.
“Ox’s balls,” Sash belatedly decided to repeat.
Maleen flicked the woman beside her repeatedly. “Look. What. You. Did.”
“Ow. Stop.”
Behind Ronnie’s back, the giant’s underdeveloped arm signed to Dash, who had finally managed to free himself from their grip.
He frowned. “Yes? This morning, I think. They were just talking though.”
Far too quietly for the others to notice, Ronnie made a surprised sound. Their eyes widened.
“What did Ronnie say?” his sister demanded. “I missed it.”
Dash’s scowl deepened. “Something about if Kit and Maleen have finally slept together.”
The latter woman flushed heavily.
The former – whose blush was mostly concealed by her dark skin – barked a surprised laugh. “What’d I say? Someone did notice.”
Sash smiled brightly. “Ooohhh,” she squealed. “Did you kiss?”
“Uh…”
Taja’s voice barked like the crack of a whip. “This is not the right time for this.”
Kit cocked an eyebrow. “We’re alive, ain’t we? We survived.”
“No,” Bhan agreed, “this not time.”
“And why’s that, old man?”
“This rumbling mean Vin killed Shrike.”
There was a collective intake of breath.
Simultaneously, the twins spoke. “Is he- “
Then the sound of the landscape being broken behind finally reached them, and as one, the group turned.
As they stared at it, the things that were me felt relief.
Then, deep within the earth, the last wisps of its life faded.
----------------------------------------
Oh, god.
Please.
Just one more moment.
Just one more heartbeat.
Just one more instant to make sure they’re safe.
Please.
Yet its last moments approached nonetheless, and the full weight of two bloods began to fall upon one set of shoulders.
----------------------------------------
Something immense lurked behind the thinnest of margins.
“Why’s he so stiff?”
The world stood still. To move was to break it.
“Orvi?” someone asked.
“Vin?” said another.
One more moment.
“You good?”
“Is he okay?”
“What’s happening?”
It held for a span.
‘God,’ ‘Death.’
“What did they say?”
“The Shrike is dead.”
“We go. We go now.”
Yet slowly but surely, it began to creak.
“What if he needs help?”
“We cannot help it.”
“Oxdung, Taja – we’re not damn well leavin’ him.”
“It’s a god; no one’s going to kill it.”
“Boy not wrong, Kit.”
And crack.
“You sure?”
And break.
“‘Cause I reckon- “
“Run,” it managed to say.
Then the full force of its counterpart’s divinity – memory, urges, desires – and the overwhelming need for PROGRESS/MEANING/AMBITION/GROWTH descended like a hammer to shatter the world, and the thing that was me rallied everything that it was to hold it off.
To protect. To preserve.
That faded battlefield, painted in all the colours of Godsblood against a canvas of black, where the corpses formed mountains and a general found traces of her foe in the bodies of her subordinates and dutifully cut them down. Where she searched the face of a child for the same and was satisfied only when he killed for her and wept.
And as ivory crawled from its innards to the back of its throat it stumbled away from them all-
Years of laughter, mischief, and light-hearted rebuke along sandstone streets, layered atop a constant stifling anxiety that this fakery would be uncovered. Where the nightmares came easy, but the raising of an eyelid only ever revealed home, and despite everything, safety and warmth was always waiting.
-and as its head was torn asunder and lengths of bone sprouted from the cavity left behind it staggered through the undergrowth-
That home’s breaking. Misguided resentment; a hare-brained plan; deaths under a clouded sky; a boy dying as he tried to flee his life. A failure almost too enormous for the mind to behold, dyed in the red of a mother’s life.
-and as it felt its skin ripple with solid bark and twisted branches utterly unlike the trees surrounding it-
The flight through Dust and Still and Bite and Frost. Through a land painted red. The ache of frostbite, hunger, and solitude. Entirely alone. An offered hand, an acceptance, and the sinking feeling that none of it will end well.
-and as wood clung to the sides of its mouth it fled the voices calling from behind-
A year of masks and acting and performance. Sixteen immense towers, and the imprisonment of a mentor. Then months of familiar loneliness dulled only by the caress of dice and the edge of a mug. Castigation for drunkenness. Attacks by team-mates. And a moment of idle kindness, repaid by its limping recipient in the form of another home.
-and as speartree pierced its limbs into rigidity it ripped bones and musculature away to continue its desperate flight-
The scowling warrior that tried to enter it, and a hulking oaf that spoke nonsense. An opportunity signed with a bar’s worth of blood, and days of long walking. The hope of a better life. That same certainty that things would go wrong.
-and as footsteps grew closer it turned and shrieked for them to LEAVE with a maggoty corpse’s voice-
A great city broken under politics and the screams of a god. Sneers and flashing steel that pursued through its broken spires. The treasure that waited at the end of it all.
-and as its eyeballs were punctured by ivory and its blackened heart perforated dozens of times-
Soldiers sneaking through a forest, marked in yellow and carrying questions. A furious argument cast in torchlight – the desperate need for the other to understand why they made that choice. A sprint up the hill upon a road of blood. The slow dying of a girl that had done no wrong. The furious guilt of obeying her order to duck. The promise of a way out. An abandoned village marked by pillars of ivory, and the dozens of corpses made to fulfil that promise.
-and as it threw its leg forward another shaft sprung from its heel and pushed it over the edge of an immense pit-
A tale told by twins: of cold days marching and the diligence of a dog and the bodies in a city of rubble. Barked words from gilded men. The capture of a familiar face. The plucking and pulling of emotions, the carving of a friend apart, the spilling of words from horrified lips and the growing suspicion that the world had changed.
-and as it tried to force the pieces of its skull back together it teetered in the air-
The funeral. The growths of bone. The cackling god; the crater; the life that was spilled therein. A ghost wandering in a time far beyond its own. Shards of a mirror broken by a bloodied fist. Bouts of fear and confusion. Vision growing from places it shouldn’t. A shivering search through snow, and a blackened monster picking eyeballs from its arms. A spike of fear and a dead man.
-and as it began to drop the tumours of flesh and bone crushed its innards to oblivion-
Blood on the snow. Lies exposed.
-and as it fell the boundaries of its body expanded to become wrought in the writhing of blackened flesh and calcified skin-
A chase; a wound; a Fort at the end of it all. Hope at the fulfillment of a plan. Dull certainty at the emptying of veins. The crooked gleam of a mother’s scars. The lopsided grin of an opened belly, and an anointment of blood. A clash; a victory; a loss. Triple vision. Manifold mirrors. No way out.
-and as its fluctuating body hit the edge of the ancient tree it had destroyed and careened onto the side of the shaft its growth cracked the pit asunder-
An offer. Tempest. The wilful ignorance writ within. Constant expectations. Panic. Every death felt with excruciating clarity. A Divinity; a meeting; a question; a fear; a god; a pursuit; a death; a resolution; an end to what was.
-and as it broke and reformed and broke again and its body hollowed and it lost all perception of the outside world it finally settled into a kind of empty stasis-
The stolen souls, and all they held within. The passage of time, as far back as it will go.
-and the cocoon it had become began to fill-
Those wisps. Still walking those dead places, forever lost.
-with wood and flesh and bone and blood.
Those people that once were me.
And the thing that haunts the present.
Here. Now.
Where the weight of the blood tears that thing’s mind apart.
----------------------------------------
It’s clear, now. Clearer than broken glass.
Gaia was wrong. Nothing can be made of you.
There is no word strong enough to contain the resentment this flesh holds towards you. You are the splintering of a skull around an ever-growing brain. You are the crack at the bottom of the hourglass. You are the thief of souls. You are every ending.
You are a mother’s empty eyes.
You are a brother holding his sibling’s corpse.
You are a child weeping alone.
You are a life’s work reduced to rubble.
You are a garden rotting beneath its maker’s hands.
You are a void sketched in eternity.
You are a home reduced to ash.
You are a legion of hungry dead.
You are the ravening gaps between fingers.
You are the flaws upon infinity.
You are two gods.
You are the absence of their choices.
You are the weight they bear.
You are the thing that is me.
And you will never leave this place.