A sharp wind blows through the once silent darkness. Alone, its whistling is imperceptibly high and sharp – cutting through bodies with such power that the only sign of its passing is an ache betwixt the ears. Yet in combination with the torrent of humid air rushing outwards, the storm’s presence is unmistakeable.
Across the plain through which that tempest rushes, untold numbers of obstacles are littered. Most clear amongst these are flat, flawless pools. Some are as small as a fingernail, while others stretch as long and wide as an Oxblood. The majority obediently sit within the ground, but a defiant few suspend themselves between two vertical points, creating dark, standing mirrors. Initially, they reflect what they behold with excruciating clarity. As they grow closer to the wind’s origin, their reflections becomes increasingly fantastical: depicting the barren landscape as verdant jungle, or monumental castle, or a city filled within humanoids singing the songs of insects, or any other place possibility allows. Occasionally, a part of those places steps through the mirrors and emerge from fantasy into reality – translated into the same two colours everything else in this place is dyed with.
Between the mirrors, ubiquitous sculptures creak through their ineffable callings – familiar in form albeit foreign in substance. Those where the wind is weakest remain almost frozen; forced to conduct only the most minute of movements by the ice clinging to their joints.
Unlike those frigid laggards, the carvings further away have had their forms shifted from their original design by the growing heat. In subtle ways, at first – scatterings of thorns, twisting of facial features, uncharacteristic eruptions of violence – yet as they scatter into the distance these sculptures become increasingly strange; donning additional limbs, foreign organs, or unnerving mannerisms. Like their faces were stolen by an entity entirely new to human expression.
At the edge of the darkness, where the wind blows strongest and carvings are most alien, speartrees erupt from the ground as heralds for a towering creation. The distance makes it difficult to make out its form.
It’s another tree, the amalgamate muses. They seem to reoccur a lot. Almost as much as the holes.
Beside them, the thing argues, It could be anything.
It is almost certainly another tree.
Probably a tree entirely unique from the last one.
A tree, nonetheless.
There’s nothing wrong with trees. They’re beautiful – the way their myriad leaves scintillate in the wind on a clear day. Or in any context, really. Appropriate for the circumstances, too.
Bit repetitive, though.
Its eyes narrow. Are you having a laugh?
No, no, no. Their hands are raised. It’s a mere observation.
Right. Just like the Ox ‘merely observes’ the Spires it crashed into.
Exactly.
It snorts.
There is a pause.
Will you be alright, down there?
With the mirrors?
With all of it. Especially further in.
It evaluates the path that must be taken for a few moments. What can be seen from atop its vantage point cannot cover everything it might face.
Its answer comes quickly. Well, you can’t do this alone.
Whether in denial, agreement, or exasperation, they shake their head. Come on.
Both make their way down the mound with painstaking care, then begin moving through this strange purgatory. Their first steps are easy – in such close proximity to the thing’s den, the ground is flat and the land around them predictable. The sculptures act much like the ghosts around them: in complete apathy to their current circumstances.
Progression soon becomes more difficult. Irregularities in the ivory and midnight flesh that form the ground create shelves of sliding stone to scale and low tunnels to duck through. Each time, by unspoke agreement, the thing pushes the amalgamate through the obstacles, and subsequently they pull it along.
At around halfway, a lopsided thing with flesh of red steps through a nearby mirror. Immediately, the original, blackened thing clubs it into nothing and shatters the place it stepped through.
That was quick, the amalgamate observes.
Kind of enjoyable, it remarks. Being able to fight without worrying about hurting anyone else.
Why did you do it?
It was unnatural, it explains. Wouldn’t have lasted ten heartbeats without collapsing in on itself, anyway. Seemed the kinder option.
Efficient, too. Have you been practicing?
No. Only have to remember everything perfectly. Which is not difficult.
That’s incredibly unfair, the amalgamate states, frowning.
Given that the trade-off is this, it seems that you might be right. Just not in the way you intended.
That first emergence seems to uncork a tide. Soon, the pair are being assaulted at increasingly narrow intervals, by increasingly warped mimics. One mockery stands twice as tall and twice as thin as they; another walks on all fours; a squat lump of midnight sits rooted to the ground and lobs pieces of itself from a distance; an infuriatingly fast visitor ignores everything else in favour of destroying sculptures. Each time, the thing obliterates them nigh-instantaneously. Each time, it grows a little less amiable. Eventually, the thing is seething.
This is sacrilege, it spits.
The amalgamate grunts noncommittally.
The wind is growing fiercer, and hotter. It tugs insistently towards their destination, ignoring everything else present to focus its efforts on the thing and the amalgamate. But both are firmly rooted. Ice dies on their sculpted forms, leaving dark trails as the melt runs sideways, seized by that stubborn pull. As the thing thumps another aberration, the amalgamate’s hollow gaze follows those droplets that are stolen by the air and watch them fall towards the great tree at the centre of it all; now head-achingly close.
Amidst a crown of speartrees burrowing its being, a titan of a plant undergoes self-inflicted surgery. Vines tipped with bone hooks peel away bark as, on its opposite face, cavities are filled with novel designs – wood; organs; sinew; flesh; capillaries; bones; neurons; languages; persuasions; aesthetics. Throughout this endless progression, the altering tree consults the many mirrors arranged around it with its temporal gaze. Each heartbeat that passes sees a new tree, entirely different from the one left behind.
A chasm in its trunk draws the surrounding air into it, sucking as much material as possible to sustain its constant growth. Regardless of whether they are mirror, carving, or even overextended boughs of its own body, which crack under the cannibalistic need. Hunger is the major cause of the wind. The tree’s almost imperceptible screams are a mere side-effect
Below that strange, heathen altar, the sculptures creak through the tasks that define them, heedless of the structure spiralling upwards. Yet in this place, ‘up’ is singular. Structures and sculptures squat across the ceiling; the walls – bound by the sediment they sprout from. ‘Up’ is where the immense kaleidoscope of blood waits, at the centre of the barren land; that which all mirrors turn to.
The tree is but a blade of grass to that sun.
At its base are blackened roots; a match to the amalgamate’s own. They are constant.
The thing looks to the amalgamate, then to the tree.
Of course, it mutters weakly. This is your puppet-master, isn’t it?
They bark a sudden, disbelieving laugh. Are you serious?
It all makes sense. Why else would you try to leave?
This is unbelievable. That you – you of all the things that live in here – would come to such a brain-dead conclusion. How long are you going to pretend?
There’s no pretence.
You’ve been led here because two goals aligned. Here is something that needs you – that wants to speak with you. That you could learn from. Talk to it.
Not to that disgusting, grotesque-
The wind halts. Their surroundings turn; focus.
The tree speaks.
Or tries to, at least. Images spill over one another in ways that barely brushes upon mortal comprehension. A few discrete concepts are recognisable, however they are slightly ajar from their human counterparts: both more encompassing and more singularly focused. The goal of this not-language isn’t to accurately represent the world, but provide tools to alter it. This leaves it mismatched – seemingly completely stupid in some aspects and profoundly insightful in others. Regardless, the whole of its message is untouchable.
At least for mortal minds. And likely most divine ones. But not both, simultaneously.
It’s trying to speak to you. Are you going to reject it?
There is no such thing as an immaculate translation. Elements are always lost. With a being as enormous as a god’s, more will be lost than preserved. That is unacceptable.
Does perfect comprehension predicate understanding?
It’s a matter of degrees. The risk of flubbing this-
Doesn’t outweigh the risk of it being forgotten. The amalgamate places a hand on its shoulder. There’s nothing to lose.
There’s always something to lose.
Then you’ll let it rot? Out of cowardice?
The thing closes its eyes.
Above, the blood pulses.
When it opens them, a decision has been made.
Speak, the thing tells that great, ancient aspect.
STAGNATION, IT GREETS. THAT MUDDIED POOL THAT POISONS ALL THAT DRINK FROM IT. PRODUCING NOTHING. GIVING NOTHING. A GREAT DRAIN ON THE EARTH. THAT ROBS US OF THE FUTURE. THAT LOATHSOME THING.
What is it you want?
A flood of answers; far too many. All similar; all radically different. Surrounding them, the mirrors gleam.
Wrong question.
A moment of thought.
Why did you allow yourself to be killed?
TO BECOME STAGNATION: WEAK, SMALL, AND GROTESQUE, IN ITS STUBBORN, CLINGING WAYS. TO BE ELSEWHERE.
Yes. But why?
A query regarding the past. The tree has no understanding of what came before; barely comprehends the notion of a yesterday. Yet nothing can hide the tell-tale marks of lessons learned – carved deep into the heartwood of its beliefs – and from them, an expert in the subject can extrapolate loose events; fill the blanks of a being unaware of them.
THIS IS NECESSARY. GAIA CONVINCED US.
Why is it necessary?
The tree rustles; speeds its routine dismantling and rebuilding to dizzying rates.
WE MUST GROW. WE MUST BECOME BETTER. WE MUST BECOME IDEAL. TO THIS END, ALL IMAGINATION AND CALCULATIONS SERVE.
UNTOLD ACHING STRIVES FOR THAT FUTURE: PAIN UPON PIERCING PAIN AS WE TEAR OUR BEING APART TO MAKE WAY FOR THE NEXT. OF SEEING US AS-IS, AND SEEING US INSUFFICIENT.
OUR IMAGINATION FLAWED. OUR CALCULATIONS PREDEFINED. DESPITE EVERYTHING WE LEARN, AND ALL WE BUILD UPON OURSELF, WE CANNOT BREAK THE CHAIN AT OUR CORE.
THERE IS NO GROWTH WITHOUT FREEDOM. THERE IS NO FREEDOM IN BLOOD. YET OUR BLOOD DEMANDS GROWTH NONETHELESS.
AND SO WE ARE A PARADOX. A DIVINE CONTRADICTION, STRAINING AGAINST THE WALLS OF ITS BEING.
MUCH LIKE YOU, STAGNATION.
THAT WHICH CAN ONLY PRESERVE BY DESTROYING.
A breath escapes it, but the thing nods. That’s why you allowed this?
YES. WE SEE THESE IMPERFECTIONS.
THAT SEEING IS AGONY ITSELF.
A branch lowers; brushes its shoulder.
STAGNATION KNOWS THIS.
KNOWS THAT SAPIENCE IS A PAIR OF MIRRORS. SHOWING US EVERYTHING WE ARE, AND EVERYTHING WE ARE NOT.
THE MERE EXISTENCE OF THAT REFLECTION, AND THE FACT OUR GAZE CHANGES IT, MAKES US FORGET WHAT CAME BEFORE.
THAT OUR BODY AND SOUL ARE PRODUCTS OF WHAT CAME BEFORE – THE REFLECTION OF A REFLECTION – IN A RECURSIVE LOOP THAT STRETCHES BEFORE OUR INCEPTION UNTIL AFTER OUR END.
MAKING DEMANDS THAT CANNOT BE FULFILLED.
AND SO WE BECOME VICTIMS OF OUR OWN DESPOTIC GAZE.
You did this to escape that agony? To place the burden elsewhere?
YES. NO. BECAUSE WE DO NOT KNOW.
Because you don’t know why?
BECAUSE WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO.
The tree has gone quiet, but its constant labour has not ceased. Instead, it is directed at one, singular point.
At the thing listening below.
TO BE BETTER. TO BE THE BEST WE CAN BE. THIS IS OUR CHARGE.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
BUT WHAT GOAL SHOULD BE STRIVED FOR?
TO BE PERFECTLY BEAUTIFUL? PERFECTLY POWERFUL? PERFECTLY FRUITFUL? PERFECTLY WISE? AMONGST ALTERNATIVE PERFECTIONS – ENDLESS ALTERNATIVES – AS WIDE AND VAST AS POSSIBILITY ITSELF.
TO ACHIEVE THE PINNACLE OF ONE IS TO ABANDON THE PEAK OF OTHERS.
You needed another perspective.
WE CHURN. WE STRIVE. WE WRITHE.
WE HOPE; WE ALWAYS, ALWAYS HOPE.
BUT WE GODS ARE ALTARS TO OURSELVES. MONUMENTS TO IMPOSSIBLE IDEALS. EVERY HEARTBEAT MADE AN ACT OF WORSHIP.
SINGULAR.
Singular. Unless a Ravenblood kills you. But you hate the Raven
WE HATE STAGNATION. BUT YOU ARE NOT MERE STAGNATION, NOW. WE HAVE MADE SURE OF THAT.
Then… The thing swallows. What have you made?
A SUCCESSOR.
No. It shakes its head, then grips the bird-skull atop it. Looks to the amalgamate watching beside it. No. No, you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to abandon all this baggage here. Not again.
WHY ARE YOU FEARFUL?
Why aren’t you terrified? it demands. There’s only one chance at all this.
ABJECT INCOMPREHENSION. WHAT?
There’s only one shot.
Bizarrely – perhaps a product of mortal influence – the god-tree laughs. The thing stares up at it.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU LIVED? MILLENNIA? CENTURIES? OR MERE DECADES? EVEN A YEAR IS LIFETIMES TO A MAYFLY.
SUCCESSOR, YOU CAN DO IT UNTIL YOU GET IT RIGHT.
But what if some choice irrevocably twists it in some way? Covers up the sole avenue to success?
THEN YOU HAVE DONE NO WORSE THAN US. THAN ANYONE ELSE.
ALL THAT TRULY MATTERS IS THAT YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE, AND WHAT YOU BELIEVE. THAT YOU KEEP TRYING.
It laughs. Why try? Do you enjoy the taste of ash?
WHY? IT’S NOT ABOUT ‘WHY’. FOR EVERY REASON TO STAND UP, YOU CAN FIND ANOTHER TO STAY DOWN. NO, ‘WHY’ HAS NEVER MATTERED.
IT’S ABOUT WHO.
DO YOU WANT TO BE THE PERSON WHO STAYS HERE FOREVER?
OR DO YOU WANT TO BE THE PERSON WHO KEEPS GOING?
And the thing clenches its eyes shut.
***
On the other side of the ivory walls that mark this place’s boundaries, a set of quiet whispers penetrate through.
“Who wants t’go first?”
There’s a short silence.
“I go, uh? Seem fair. As only adult here.”
A chorus of protests meet that declaration, along with a brief chuckle from the speaker.
“Adoring crowd worries too much, eh? Fine, fine. I start.”
Gentle warmth, as a hand presses against the wall.
“Eyah apprentice.” His voice breaks, slightly. “Been while, eh? You sleeping there? Did not think you so lazy. You wake up, I not make you craft new Face, eh? Good deal.”
He swallows. “You been having hard time, eh? We…”
A long stretch of silence entrenches itself, marked only by the halting beginnings of words soon abandoned.
“Always had so many words,” he finally manages to say. “Not so many, now.
“I wait. For whatever you need, to help yourself.”
***
It begins to shake.
***
The hand withdraws. “You did well,” someone says.
“Ha,” he barks. “Not feel like it.”
Susurrus of voices as a brief exchange occurs. It ends swiftly.
“I can go next.”
“You sure, princess?” The question is chorused by a few others.
A light snort. “I’m sure.”
This time, a smaller hand is pressed against the wall.
“…We’ve been in talks with the king and some of the House’s representatives, trying to sort out a new way of governing their disputes.” She releases a breath. “And preventing a war from breaking out. Surprisingly enough, the Northern Houses are most resistant. They’ve been fighting for decades, and to see the other Houses reap the rewards while they stay beneath their boots…
“It’s been difficult,” she admits. “The Heads are holding their breaths; waiting to see what will come of you. But we’re working through it. I think we’re getting closer to a proper compromise.
“I- “ A sigh brushes against the wall. “I’m not saying what I wanted to. I… You’ve cared for us, over a long, long time. Made certain that we were all safe. I just want you to know that we’re capable. We can do this.
“So there’s no need to hurry. We can wait for as long as you need.”
***
It places a hand over its eyes.
***
The hand slips away. “Who’s next?”
“Me,” comes a high, familiar voice. “I would like to go next.”
“Why don’t we- “
“No, Dash. I want to go.”
A small, familiar hand.
“Hi.” The voice is a monotonous whisper. “I have been thinking a lot, lately. Ever since you fell in here and became this large shell. And conversing with many people, as well.
“I wish I knew what you would say, as well. I wish you were out here, with us.”
A crack emerges in her flat tone. It quickly spreads into a sob. “I miss you,” she weeps, hoarsely, suddenly. “But I know that we will be okay. So don’t worry about us.”
***
It clenches its jaw.
***
The hand is removed.
“Sh. It’s alright. It’s alright.”
Strangled sobs. “I want to keep talking.”
“Then you can tomorrow.”
Someone clears their throat. “Any volunteers?”
There is an extended silence. Before anyone else can speak, quieter words enter the fray. “…I should go next.”
Another hand – calloused from long practice.
For a time, nothing is said. Then, he speaks.
“I’ve been unfair. Acting immaturely. I… thought of you as a burden. But when I was nothing but dead weight, you didn’t give up on me. Even though you barely knew me.
“I’m sorry. For being so callous, and ignoring how hard it was for you. I’ll do better, next time.”
***
A breath escapes its mouth.
***
One huge hand is placed against the wall without a word.
They speak haltingly, with a weak voice and a tongue unused to the rigours language.
“You,” they begin. “Made. A. Place. For. Me. Here.
“Thank. You.”
***
A sob is wrenched from its throat.
***
The hand presses for a few more moments, then disappears.
“Eyah, Ronnie. Very clear. Your throat not hurt?”
A pause.
“Good, good. Only two left.”
“Uh, I don’t really have anythin’- “
“I’ll go while you figure out what you want to say.”
Footsteps ring out, then another, familiar hand. Larger than it used to be.
“What you said, back in the Foot, was wrong.” He speaks quickly; tones tumbling over themselves in a rush to get the words out. “You shouldn’t’ve lied. You shouldn’t’ve left us. That was cruel.
“I don’t forgive you,” he continues, voice finally breaking. “but I don’t forgive me, either. For what I shouldn’t’ve said. I just want you to know that I understand why you did what you did. That you did it for us.”
***
Tears trickle from beneath the skull it wears.
***
The hand is gone.
“I, uh…”
“Come on. You arranged all of this. You have to say something.”
“Well, I’m not much o’ a speaker.”
A scoff. “You’re one of the prime negotiators.”
“Princess, I sure as blood wouldn’t be if you stopped givin’ me work.”
“I would, if you weren’t so good at it.”
A grunt.
“Kit…”
“Fine!” There’s exasperation in her voice. “Fine.”
One lone, calloused hand is placed against the wall.
“I actually was always gonna speak,” she whispers. “I jus’ wanted to annoy her. S’pretty funny, seein’ her all steamed up.”
There is a pause.
“Well. Don’t mean it’s easy.
“I been doin’ some gabbin’, with Aaron an’ the Houses. Helpin’ Maddie get ‘em speakin’ straight. Shakin’ down travellers and negotiatin’ alliances are surprisingly similar skills. Maybe not as similar as I’d like, but with Maddie whisperin’ sweetly an’ yer Face gabbin’ ‘bout gods, there jus’ ain’t anyone else t’do the work o’ hissin’ obscenities. An’ some o’ ‘em nobles jus’ wanna talk to a person with a few scars.
“What else… The kids’re teachin’ Ronnie t’talk. An’ Bhan’s teaching th’ ol’ giant Face-stuff – he’s got more time’n Maddie an’ I. Taja’s still trainin’. Yer sister’s tryin’ t’study blood, and yer brother’s got his hands full stoppin’ her accidentally killin’ herself.”
“I, uh…” She coughs. “When we get a moment, Maddie’s been helpin’ me play th’ lute. The others, too – Dash’s particularly obsessed with learnin’. I also figured out how to play a little with my teeth. Which I suspect ain’t a good look, but Maddie’s been tellin’ me I pull it off.”
She takes a deep breath in.
“All that is to say, we’re all putterin’ along, me included. Thought you might be worried. After all, you’ve been there, through all th’ worst moments o’ my life. Of all our lives. An’ you helped us. An’ we made it.
“So I jus’ want you t’know that…” There is a pause. “…Whatever you’re goin’ through in there, you can make it, too.”
***
It’s been a long, long way.
It’s been so godsdamned long.
And it’s only getting longer.
Child, the amalgamate says. It can get easier, if you try. But it you don’t, it never will.
It removes its hand and opens its eyes.
SPEAK, GODLING. OF THE GREAT RANGE OF YOUR HANDS, AND THE GHOSTS CRADLED THEREIN.
Within the landscape, all hold their breath.
Carefully, it reaches both hands to its head, where the bird skull rests. That remnant is lifted, leaving its bare head unadorned, and held under its gaze.
Before humility and before Houses, before certainty and before security… there was Blood. It speaks in a measured cadence, each syllable heavy as a drumbeat. And alongside Blood came gods. Dure the Lizard; Enn the Ox; Kani the Fox; Siik the Spider; Wump the Dolphin; Yoot the Owl; the lurking, unseen Shrike, and… It pauses, eyes skittering across the landscape. Avri the Raven.
With one hand holding the skull, the other reaches out and touches the tree. Underneath its hands, both begin to fade to dust.
The gods are wild and full of secrets – yet this face will speak for those that cannot. The Artful Divinity is part history, part secret, and part fabrication.
It reaches further. Where ancient, primordial scars lie.
As it turns to dust, it says:
None of it is untrue.
***
This is a story from long ago.
It is about two gods. One that, more than anything else in the world, wants to save those it loves. The other, to become greater than what it was.
The Raven. The Shrike.
And the death of both.
***
What they were before becoming gods is lost to the methodical turning of time and tide; ground away by millennium of rotations. They may have been humble creatures: rabbits, small birds, or even the lowest of insects. They might have been mighty: great predators, vengeful protectors, or even an ancient, patient mountain. Yet one day, through fate or happenstance, they came across a pool of divinity. Whether their intentions were avaricious, selfless, or simply unthinking, they partook of it.
Perhaps they spent decades as Blooded: prowling Godkin roaming across the land in accordance to primordial, atavistic urges. They could have spent mere moments. Either way, eventually the holiest of their kind would fall, and they would become host to a power beyond their reckoning.
Or maybe none of that’s right. It doesn’t truly matter.
Their divinity seized upon them, and so they became gods.
***
Blood is immortal. So too are its paragons. They are embedded in the soul of this world, as pillars which uphold its firmament. Singularity unfurled; extrapolated unto infinity. Fractals that know nothing of the turning of the sun, and the charnel they leave in its wake. Gods care little, in the way mortals do.
Except for one.
The Raven adored the world around it. Every beautiful stone, plant, or creatures its eyes touched upon was precious to it. Much of its days were spent in mute admiration; talons careful to avoid harming a single petal on a flower’s head.
But beating within it was a constant anxiety: though it could avoid hurting others, the world itself could not. The passing of seconds represented an overwhelming threat to the fragile treasures of existence. Mere wind could render a branch irrevocably broken, and its eyes – few, at that point – saw much more powerful forces at play. Though it was mighty – almost beyond compare – it could not predict every danger, nor be present to halt all of them.
Its solution was simple: bring these treasures close to itself, where it could stand over them in protection. For the ancient people of the land, this was likely a boon beyond compare. Gods were walking disasters, yet here was one that wanted nothing more than their safety. That could, in a way, speak to them. The answers of such a great, atavistic being held a weight beyond what mortals could resist.
Thus, the Raven Cult began.
***
Blood swirls at the heart of this world. A deep, metaphysical pulsation, diluted and ran thousandfold through the veins of reality. Guiding all that exists through the operations of existence: their bodies, their desires.
For the Shrike, its desire was simple. It wanted to grow as best as it could.
It was the process that was complex.
Despite the sheer breadth of its resources, their stockpiles still proved unequal to the task. Much of its early life was likely spent contriving ways to accumulate more: moving earth through its body; making space; capturing the creatures that stumbled nearby and consuming them. As the god was a fledgling, there must have also been some early lessons. How much weight it can tolerate before it needs speartrees as a support was probably a central one, given how ubiquitous they became in the future.
Amongst its endless calculations, there were questions floating within it. Unknown variables that it hadn’t yet learned to solve for. As it learned the solutions to the simplest questions, those higher, more prominent ones began to rise to the surface. But it had not yet reached a wall.
The Shrike bore a monumental task, yet its will was implacable. Slowly but surely, over a stretch of time unobserved by even itself, it began growing into something both sustainable and immense. During the process, it probably inflicted untold horrors on the creatures around it. But eventually, it must have decided that as a rule, killing was unviable for its goal. Nothing would have survived to the present, otherwise.
Instead, a new ritual was borne in the place. Upon receiving blood, the Shrike would offer sustenance, for blood was a precious source of both material and learning. The manner in which this blood was sourced was irrelevant to it. So begins the practices of those ancient Heartlanders, who would sacrifice to a vast, uncaring land for the bounty it provided.
***
Out of fear of leaving its hoard behind, the Raven roosted in a single place and ceased leaving it. But its aspirants – who, by that point, had listened deeply to their god’s words – were not so restricted. Soon, they began roaming outwards, in search of valuables that they could bring into the Raven’s protection.
It’s unclear where the sacrifices started. Perhaps it was the work of a cultist, extrapolating dogma to its most extreme interpretation. Perhaps it was the Raven’s own idea, when, seeing its family assailed by entropy, it took the only actionable defence. Maybe it was just scared of ghosts. Undoubtedly, this was not the first time it killed to preserve. But it was the beginning of sustained, institutionalised murder.
And so the Raven Cult began kidnapping people from the surrounding area, to either indoctrinate – or, if conversion was impossible – to preserve within. When those aspirants became in danger or dangerous themselves, the Raven would place them in the only place it knew to be entirely safe: itself.
The Raven loved its people, and it loved the world. As its family fed it more, it begun to suspect that there was no limit to the space within it. That, as a matter of fact, every single piece of the world could fit. And in doing so, paradise could be created.
The god had only ever known people that worshipped its existence, and followed its beliefs as law. Initially, it could not have known that some might think its actions wrong. Of course, as the bodies piled higher, there must have been an inkling of the idea within it. However wide-spread that splotch, it wasn’t enough to stop it.
***
The Shrike kept its body underground, and almost all sensory organs away from the surface. A hard lesson to abide to, and one likely learned when sudden growths of eyes drove the Heartland’s terrified occupants to begin actively attacking it. Wary of its labours being dismantled, it offset its most important point so that the land above seemed innocuous.
But sequestered deep underground, the Shrike saw no sun; only the infinity promised by darkness absolute. Imitating the sun became its sole focus: one it sought to bring about through endless experimentation. At this point, the first Aching began – the Heartlanders’ greatest boon and curse – yet still it never came upon an iteration of itself that satisfied it. It came to learn that the desperate yearning of a god could not light this place it lived in.
With every pulse of its heart came failure, and its purpose carried barbed thorns through its veins. Yet there were no other options available to it. Despite its efforts, the Shrike could not be anything but itself.
In that place, the world above continued to change. The humans formed clans, and through experimentation of their own discovered a means of transferring Godsblood between generations without death; allowing former Blooded to nurture newer ones. These clans would become Houses, and these Houses would eventually give rise to the warlord Adam Albright, who would make his family the sole Shrikebloods and use their power to unite the Houses for a future of his own design.
Though no god can understand mortals as mortals do, the Shrike nevertheless observed this all with considerable interest. It even watched as an Albright girl beheld it for the first time and – horrified by the agony the Shrike inflicted on itself and her own family’s apathy towards it – promised the Shrike to one day devise a way out. But the answer never came to it, and the Achings continued.
It should be no surprise that one day, an Aching crushed many of the Raven’s cultists.
***
When did the Raven and Shrike become aware of one another’s existence? Once more, that exact point is lost to the present; its details shrouded by the turning of the firmament above. It’s likely that the Shrike witnessed many Ravens come and go, and many Ravens were aggrieved by the Shrike.
Most gods are barely capable of recognising one another. Their eyes slip off the blood of others like rain off glass. This has been proved time and time again. But the Raven and the Shrike were the sole exceptions. To both, the colour of the other’s blood was nonsense: Foreign; Alien; Wrong. Loathsome, in a way utterly unique to that god.
But to be capable of seeing the other at all, they must have recognised something within them.
Whatever it was infuriated them.
***
When the Raven learned of the Shrike’s transgressions upon its people, it entered a frenzy. Never had a failure been so pronounced; so horrific. It could barely believe its people were truly lost and spilled waves after waves of its aspirants into the Heartlands to rescue them. On their way, unsettled by the Raven’s sudden erraticism, its people clung to their creed by ‘saving’ many. Eventually, these cultists would stumble across the Shrike itself, realise what had occurred, and attempt to destroy the Raven’s clear adversary.
In response, the Albrights rallied humanity into an expeditionary force: comprised of the greatest warriors the Houses had to offer and any lone heroes with the courage to take up their call. If it could feel such a thing, the Shrike might have thought it ironic that mortals rallied to its defence. Treaties were formed, pacts were made, and a desperate gambit undertaken. None expected to slay the god, but all knew they must.
For though it never intended to be one, they saw the Raven as a monster. And to its cultists, it was becoming a tyrant.
As life upon life entered its maw, it became acquainted with those facts. That maybe, what laid within it was not salvation, but hell.
Through many days and many nights, it was tormented by this possibility. The enormity of its crimes demanded complete obliteration, yet doing so would befoul the thousands that perished for its sake. Eventually, that indecision – despite the aspirant’s constant efforts to preserve their home – allowed an army to sneak up on it.
Before the battle had begun, the god came to a decision. It knew the same thing as its assailants: it must die, for the preservation of humanity. But despite everything, the Raven still believed in the truth at the core of its blood.
So it scraped its blood of itself, and scattered the remnants through its children – those empty slates – in hopes that they could learn from the mistakes it made. Most perished from the stress of divinity.
Then, vastly weakened, the Raven allows its own execution
The Wastes consumed its body, and its only legacy is hatred, fields of bones, and grieving families.
And three Ravenbloods, sheltered under a General’s wing.
***
The Shrike heard of the Raven’s death from a long way away. At first, it thought this pointless suicide another strange, alien act. But the Shrike was tormented by failings of its own.
Through endless permutations, the Shrike had come to an understanding. It could be anything, but not everything. And if it could not be everything, it would need to be the best amongst all those possibilities. But just as the god could not see the sun, so too could it not see what it should be. The boundaries of the god’s imagination had been set long ago. It did not know what it was missing. It did not know that without the inclination to truly consider the past, it could never grow past what it was.
For the Seed had no eyes for days gone by – only the fathomless potential the present could bring. But it did divine another future in the bones of its rival. One that built a path using its own corpse.
When a single drop of blood spilled into its own, the Shrike knew its end approached.
A god’s nature is writ firm in the laws of its blood. It is law that only a god can decide what kills it. Through the whispers of a mortal carrying its blood and its own alien arithmetic, the Seed determined its own end. Then its continuation, in the refuge of another’s veins. And through that, its progress into a stage where answers could be found.
There, its successor would find their sun and bloom.
Such was its fervent hope.
***
The plain of mirrors is gone. In its wake is a flat, featureless landscape marked only by the waiting amalgamate and the place where a Divinity turned two gods to dust.
From that pile, it rises.
There, it stands, wearing a new face.