Occupying the shack is a carving far too large for the narrow confines it occupies. It has been forced to one knee.
That bead of radiance sloughs off the wooden giant like rain on stone. It runs down the meticulous scrimshaw forming its twin shoulders, which tremble against the room’s ceiling. Despite the guise of a rundown hovel, each of its creaking walls are sketched from dense bone. Only the weight of the ceiling – unsupported by its feeble walls – and the sculpture’s shivering exertion are genuine.
While its back is occupied holding the shack upright, the giant’s calloused hands tend to three fleshen hatchlings sheltering beneath it. Thick fingers clumsily adjust a bedding of reddened moss that wraps around them, often knocking one of the fragile forms over. They are frantically halted before they hit the ground. When it is satisfied, the great sculpture turns its motionless visage towards other matters.
The roof is leaking; a temporary patch that the giant hasn’t the skill to make permanent must suffice. Chits must be exchanged for sustenance; the birds’ future is determined by the quality of what they consume now, but its sculped hands are too blunt to create anything worth eating. Water must be drawn from a well off to the side; there is always a need for water, whether to drink or bathe. At times the hatchlings toddle off to do something eminently stupid and must be herded back to the safety of the statue’s shadow. Its hands are in constant motion; its shadowed gaze surveying the surroundings with dogged vigilance. All the while the weight of the ceiling bears down, and the giant’s chest heaves from the pressure.
It does not notice the droplet sliding down its side. Nor does it consider the way the scintillating light reveals the twisted whorls in its home’s bone, reminiscent of gaping maws or emptied eyes. Or that there is no leak, nor food, nor water, and that the fragile creatures it protects are squinty-eyed and rigid with latent malice. It does not hear the corpse shifting under the floorboards. That does not matter. There is simply too much to do.
The giant’s head tilts slightly. After a beat, it throws its shoulder to brace against the wall a scarce instant before the edge of a blade erupts through the bark, throwing splinters across the room. With a swift wrench, the armament is withdrawn.
Outside stands an immense soldier: so large it would block out the sky, were it visible. Its features are obscured by the lamellar armour it wears, and its gauntlets are wet with the blackened viscera of the monsters it has slain. Compared to the fumbling ministrations of the statue inside, its sword whirls through the air with mocking ease. Its form is a match to the giant that kneels within.
Much like its counterpart, its surroundings are mist to it. Its gaze is solely focused on the precarious pile of bone that forms the shack.
Beneath its great-helm, the general’s jaw tightens as paces around the edges of the hovel. Once more, its weapon falls with frightening and speed, and once more its attack is rebuffed.
The soldier’s nostrils crackle as they flare. Smother them, it demands.
Another blow to the small home is delivered and the giant’s fatigue flares with the cracks forming on its back. Within the small home, one of the hatchlings – larger and more troublesome than its smaller siblings – turns a questioning gaze upwards. The giant struggles to keep its exhaustion from its face. Nevertheless, its unwieldy fingers stroke the bird’s head soothingly.
How many of our soldiers have we personally executed for the cause? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands died for the Raven to fall; only to have their general keep its dregs alive? Where is our loyalty? Where is our honour?
The tiny bird searches the giant’s face while its guardian attempts to still its trembling shoulders. Its uncoordinated hands grope for wood to pull from the ground and patch the holes in the wall. The twins begin to play a game together, and their elder sibling quickly joins to supervise.
Think about what they will become. Is it not kinder to end them now? Would you withhold that from them? Is our love truly so selfish?
When the next strike descends, its other knee buckles under the weight.
Is it truly possible for us to make them strong? To raise them well?
A swing of the blade forces it onto forearms and knees, shaking the droplet from the giant’s body to land upon the rough floor. Subsequent blows pierce through the walls to hack directly onto its shoulders with titanic screeches of cracking bone and severed flesh. Its children shelter beneath it. The trio look up, and the giant tries to smile.
The Slaughter? The Headsman? No. Not them. Not us.
The droplet slides sideways, where holes created by the giant’s hasty repairs wait. It begins to slip inside. The sculpture shivers violently at the exertion. It gasps.
We cannot protect them forever.
It vanishes. The light steals away with it.
So let go.
Though the osseus limbs of the giant quiver, it does not falter. But nor does it rise. As the blows slowly reduce its torso to a cavity of splintered edges, it remains curled around its charges who wail and cling feebly to its body. The general’s face is a shuttered fortress of discipline as it proceeds through its grim work, wielding its onyx blade as an executioner might. Light glitters off the scabbard buckled to its belt: tarnished filagree tracing a giant striking down a raven.
Get up, something says.
The giant raises its head. Despite the darkness courting its eye-sockets, it witnesses the light. Slowly, its gaze follows the illumination to its source. Downwards. Beneath the shack’s ruins.
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When the giant had failed to notice the kaleidoscopic droplet, it had found another: that which dwelled in the foundation of their home. It crawled from the thin gaps the destruction had made – long, spindly limbs contorting to cram the entirety of its body through. Arms and legs bent over backwards in an inverse of the giant’s bowed form; face staring upwards instead of down. Its teeth ground together. Its face is a rictus of indignation.
A spearhead is embedded in its throat.
Leave this place, lieutenant, the general demands.
That’s impossible, the crooked man spits. You made sure of that.
The giant pants. What do you want?
The creature from the substratum raises a twisted arm. Cradled in its hand is a droplet.
You are hated, it tells the pair. You have done horrible things.
The general steps forward, but halts at a raise of the giant’s hand. That is fair, it acknowledges. Yet what is it you need?
It shakes its hand, causing the droplet to shiver slightly. You don’t deserve this. But the kid needs you.
Their visages creak as their brows raise. But…
The pair survey the ground. In the ruins of the shack, there is no hint of the hatchlings. They have been gone for some time. Carefully, the giant attempts to push itself upright. The great rend in its chest sets the rest of its body creaking disconcertingly. Their gaze turns skywards.
Only shadow lurks above.
STAND.
The creature extends the droplet, and the giant receives it on its palm. A groan resounds from its speartree frame and the moment when both the crooked man and the general grabs its arm to stabilise it, all three turn to dust.
***
Maja leans against her kitchen’s counter. Around her, the restaurant lies dormant: its floors mopped; its doors barred; its furniture wiped and stacked; the children abed. The day has passed in a fever of scurrying between their few patrons and her kids. Moonlight peeks through the shutters and teases across the surface of the tub she stands over. Suds float across the water’s surface, almost concealing the dozens of wooden bowls within. In another tub behind her, several copper pots soak; softening the inedible gunk clinging to their sides.
Sash will throw a fit if she wakes and finds her mother absent from the room they sleep in together. The day’s work is almost done. But though she searches, the aging woman cannot find the strength to push herself upright.
Maja is exhausted.
She has fought through wounds that would have left others comatose. She has seen battalions of soldiers she personally trained motionless and empty-eyed in a field of their own viscera. She has battled gods. Of those that have killed one, she is one of the few that breathe.
Maja has been through situations that would break a lesser person. She knows, just as she knows the stars sleep above, that she is forged of steel stout enough to spill oceans of blood. But steel has no place in a nursery.
The huge Oxblood caresses the lifetime of callouses spread across her palms. In her mind’s eye, mastered by years of meticulous drills, she can see her aged body perfectly. A scarred, blunt instrument.
Every person alive today has had a parent. Mothers and fathers are not rare. Good ones are, yet generals are far scarcer.
However, she suspects that there is little overlap between good parents and good warriors. For caring is distinct from killing.
So Maja leans on the counter and tries to scrape together the energy to continue. Her obsidian hand drifts downwards, to where her blood circulates through the conversion stone piercing her thigh, slowly draining her divinity, strength, and temper away.
Tomorrow will be the same. As will the next day. And the one after it. Endlessly. Eventually, the turning of the heavens and the cycle of blood will mill her to a fine dust. She could allow nothing else.
Maja would protect her children. Even if doing so tore her apart.
She pushes herself upright and staggers, light-headed. The old warrior holds herself still until the dizziness fades.
A voice finds her before balance does. “Ma?”
Maja keeps her back to him. “Y- “ Her throat is hoarse – an artifact of some sickness she can ill-afford. She clears it. “Yes, Orvi?”
“Is it alright if I help?”
The giant turns to refuse. She finds her eldest child waiting, hair tangled and eyes damp; his stance hesitant, as if a few short steps from running. The boy has had another nightmare. He lived through one years ago, and it haunts him still.
Orvi looks at her and wipes his nascent tears away. “Can I help?” he says, firmer.
Her little Ravenblood.
A sudden shock of emotion surges behind her eyes and in her throat. Involuntarily, her huge palm covers her mouth. She can scarcely believe it exists. The old soldier has not wept in decades. It is not meant to be possible.
Yet there is a sudden fear that this moment – with her eldest child staring at her – will be when that dam breaks. Turning away does little to blunt his gaze. Even through that, she savours the feeling: something like grief; something like love.
Slowly, the scarred giant tries to master herself. When she succeeds, he is still there; waiting for her answer.
Maja finds her balance. “I would appreciate that,” she says.
***
Derelict is this place. Deserted is the shack. No rodents crawl across its collapsed walls. No condensation scratches into its foundations. Nothing grows. Therefore, nothing dies.
The giant and the general are gone. In their place waits a scabbarded blade and the pile of dust beneath it.
There is no wind to carry it away; to set leaves slyly whispering in trees. There are no animals to tread through it while attending to their animal business. Nor will the passing of days disperse it. Time holds no sway in this place. It can stay for as long as it needs. It can stay forever.
Only one god would dare say otherwise. It would say REACH HIGHER. It would say STRIVE.
It would say STAND.
And gods are not the only creatures with something to say.
The dust stirs.
From its depths, a hand rises to grasp the sword. Wrought with bones of ivory and blackened flesh, plated with bark as tough as steel. Shaped with blunt fingers, and a thickened arm to follow. Behind it, the motes assemble into broad shoulders and powerful musculature. Then the rest of the body: trunk-like legs, an arm without a wrist. And the last trickle of dust is merged into a calcified visage lined with decades of concern and care. Alien in substance, yet familiar in form.
A song that echoes long after it ceases.
They push themself upright; etched eyes staring at their fingers. Systematically, they flex both hands. They heft the onyx blade: its argent tableau running down its scabbard. The wood of its limbs creak. Every movement is a fight for animation; the effort expended a marathon. But they are better at these than most.
Their gaze creaks sideways. To where a grasping thing rants of SUNLIGHT/GROWTH/ADVERSARY/MAP/PURPOSE/BETTERMENT. Whatever language it speaks is beyond them. To communicate with it is necessary; to communicate with it is an impossibility, as limited as they are in this moment. They simply do not possess its language.
Nonetheless, the amalgamate asks, Where is the child?
Just as they know the composition of their body, the exact number of fleshy vines keeping the yawning skull from collapsing, and the weight of the orb of blood hanging above, so too do they know the answer to their question: behind the others stumbling through this tenebrous tedium. There are seven other locations that must be visited first.
Their feet sprout from the layer of wood and flesh beneath them. A single step means commanding the foundation they stand upon to support them. It is stubborn and recalcitrant. It is sceptical. It is also them; they are it. Eventually, it has little choice but to yield. They begin their slow, halting march onwards: into the familiar, lightless depths of this hole in the world.
Far above, at the centre of it all, waits a churning mass of black and red. Blood. Suspended mid-fall.