Isidore had lost sight of the Will-beast, but they could hear it. A deep guttural growl out there in the storm that ebbed and flowed with every haggard breath. The crack and crunch of sinews snapping crisp with frost came from every direction: The Gol were on the move.
“Back! Stay back!” They said as they swung their dirk at any shadow that showed itself. The snow was falling thick and fast and visibility was low, though gaps in the clouds occasionally let a beam of moonlight illuminate the ragged spires. Behind the white the fire still burned, giving it a sickly yellow aura, like the thin yolk of some terrible, gigantic egg.
Isidore gasped as a skeletal body brushed against their thigh in the gloom. A dog, once. Perhaps it had been loved. Now it moved with singular fixation towards the abbey with tongue outstretched, a chitinous protrusion that buzzed and hummed in harmony with some hidden song.
“Get away!” Isidore swung their dirk but the canine Gol ignored them, stepping aside slightly to avoid the blow and giving Isidore a sideways glance, but otherwise paying no attention to the human in its path. The shadows, too, were moving in procession past them. Isidore ran after them, knife at the ready, but even the slowest and most bulbous of beasts gained incredible celerity when threatened, rising and ducking to avoid their blows. The hits that did meet their targets were deflected by bone and carapace with minimal damage, leaving only scrapes and fleeting sparks.
High above them there was a distant smash and the tinkling of multicolour glass hitting cobble. One of the stained-glass windows had burst in the heat, fire licking out from within. The night swelled yellow as a gout of flame tore through the air above, and Isidore caught a clear glimpse of the Wille-beast. It set its sights on them with eyes all too human, blood vessels bursting red and keen, dilated pupils.
Claws sank into stone with the ease of a plough through earth as the Wille-beast leapt, furrowing the walls with deep grooves ready for the sowing flames. Isidore parried the first swipe, and the second, but the third took them off-guard and they landed several meters away with a thud. They hadn’t expected a third arm, runty and weak and yet still able to land such a blow. It only drove home the consequences were they to receive a direct hit from one of the more developed paws.
The Wille-beast approached through air peppered black and white with soot and snow, a black smog billowing from its mouth where the embers still burned. It seemed distracted somewhat, drooping ears pricking and head askance, the tilt sending melted waves of fat and hair across the distorted face. It was an opportunity best not wasted. With two hands on the hilt, Isidore rushed, point gleaming, into the chest. Macilent arms made of nothing more than tendons and nerves embraced them, squeezed them until their eyes bulged and they thought they might never take another breath. The impact sent the Wille-beast backwards, forcing its paws to scrape a rut in the snow, revealing blood beneath.
Blood? No. That’s not blood.
No time for thoughts. Isidore pushed and felt the blade scrape against rib cage, a sickening sound that scratched at their eardrums. The beast wheezed, sending flakes of soot into the air and coating Isidore in a fine film of ashen grey. Its arms relaxed just enough for Isidore to drop down, dragging the knife with all their body weight and cutting a gash from sternum to pelvis. It was shallow, but efficient. The Wille-beast howled, clawing at its chest in pain and surprise. The knife was stuck, there was some bone or ligament blocking the way, or perhaps the blade had bent itself in some awkward manner that left it forever lodged inside the hip. Isidore let it go, and instead pushed their fingers into the bottom of the wound and pulled. The charred epidermis peeled off easily, skinning the beast’s left leg as Isidore hurdled forwards, their mind focused on the unlatched door to the main hall.
They ran for it, strips of skin fluttering from their bunched hands, but the ground had other ideas. For a moment their vision shook, their feet didn’t want to find their footing and they fell sideways onto the white-coated flagstones. The scuffed snow was tinged pink, as the earth turned slowly into pearl iron. Beneath their fingers the molten rock bubbled to the surface, and when they examined their legs they were stained bloody from the knees down. The world shook, sending sheets of snow down from the roof that sizzled and sputtered when it fell through the flames. The path split before them, falling lazily away to one side as bloody muck pushed itself up through the crust of stone and soil.
The Wille-beast, guts wrapping around its abdomen as it padded erratically towards them, was undeterred by the commotion. Driven berserk with the pain, it advanced. Even when the earth shifted and it caught a foreleg in the cracks, it carried on, tearing the scant tendons and leaving the leg behind. It moaned, stumbling and pitching from side to side as it used its good arm and the boney stump of the other to drag itself forward.
Isidore would have been faster. They would have outrun it, easily, or perhaps returned and finished their prey. They would have fished their dirk out from inside the beast and dashed its brains out on the stone. They would have, could have, might have even succeeded had not Clauda chosen this moment to make her appearance.
From the fissures a tendril emerged, white and thin and endless. It was followed by another, and another, until the ground seemed to writhe with iridescent trees, synapses sending signals of growth and danger. The Wille-beast whimpered as the tendrils enveloped it in a fine tissue, thin threads of gossamer fibers that gathered into bunches and made Isidore’s clothes cinder and char where they landed.
Steep towers of impossibly thick neurons distended the gardens, sending them rolling and warping until the walls were a wave. From their zenith spread smaller offshoots that linked to one another, creating a net of flesh beneath the sky that looked all the while as though it were smiling. The network spread across the ground, covering everything it touched in neurostatic constructs. From between the cracks came several of Claudia’s small, insectoid children.
“Get off! Leave me alone!” Isidore brushed fervently at the probing veins as it tried to incorporate them.
“Stop it! No!” Their words turned into sobs as their body was squeezed into submission, their legs strapped tight between a tendril and the emerging brain. The fibulae were the first bones to break, followed immediately by the tibia. The salty taste of pearl iron filled their mouth as they screamed, until consciousness became an unreasonable demand.
---
A silver-solid haze lay over the world, coating it in opulent layers of argent cloud that seemed to glow from within with fresh sunlight. It felt soft against her buttocks as she sat upon the ground, legs crossed and fully nude. She felt oddly scrawny in this cotton-padded corridor, as though her flesh was somehow a hard anomaly. It should be softer, and meld itself gently into the fog until she too was made entirely of gossamer down. Beneath the mist she could see covered candlesticks on tables, faint patterns of rugs over the floorboards. She was somewhere in the main building, leading up to the Orison dormitory.
A shadow crossed her line of sight, a person, also naked, walking down an intersecting corridor with a head of long light curls.
“Claudia!”
She scrambled to her feet, tripping in her haste to chase after this most welcome vision. The spectre stopped and turned her head.
“Wille! Oh Wille, what took you so long?”
She gathered her up in a hug so long and so tight she thought the two of them might meld together. She traced her fingers down her back, her other hand clasping her hair with unabashed passion.
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“I missed you. I missed you so much. Oh Claudia, the things I’ve seen. You know, don’t you?”
Claudia nodded against her neck, eyelashes tickling her bare skin as she blinked back tears.
“I know.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner. I wasn’t there for you, and now...”
“And now we’re here. Together. We’re here and it’s all going to be fine.” Claudia finished the sentence with a smile. She pulled her head out of the embrace and kissed her lightly on the nose. Then the cheek, moving her lips down her face and peppering her jawline with kisses. Dainty and gentle, but Wille was neither of these things. Scooping Claudia off the ground she kissed her back, fully and eagerly, on the mouth again and again until her lips felt bruised and tender. She kissed down to her neck, her breasts, her stomach and her labia. She left small bite marks on both her thighs as Claudia giggled and ran her gentle fingers through her hair. She could smell the cinders and burnt flesh only as some faint and fading memory, every curve and sway taking her further away from that place, that time, leaving her with only contented sighs and stolen glances.
Together as one, they sank into the clouds.
---
“Inquisitor, please! I beg you.” Judith panted. Her chains had rubbed her ankles raw with the effort of keeping up with her mistress. The prim clack-clack of Cesca’s shoes upon the stone was rhythmic and unending. She had ignored the flames and the cries of fear from the few remaining nuns, instead focusing on a singular goal: To climb. They were several flights higher than the rampaging Gol, and when Judith looked out she could see indistinct skeletal shapes far below in the moonlight. Every so often a white tendril would wave past the windows, snaking its way around the monastery. Beneath her feet the stones felt hot. The top of the corridor was a black haze of slowly gathering smoke.
“Inquisitor, please! It’s not safe here.”
Cesca came to a halt, her vestments swirling wildly with the sudden stop. She turned a clear ninety degrees and began to ascend yet another set of spiral stairs, these ones steep and narrow. Judith had no idea how there could be so many staircases. As she followed, the building began to lilt, as though sinking on one side. Their ascent was no longer straight upwards, and the distant sound of mortar cracking could be felt as reverberations within the wall.
“Inquisitor!”
Judith could only watch as the hem of her turquoise robe disappeared up the stairs with a flick and a rustle. When she finally caught up - pulling each manacled leg painfully up every individual step - the sight took what remained of her breath away.
They were at the top of the tallest bell tower, the shining bronze bowl hanging above them reflecting a panorama of flames and destruction. Around it was curled one of several of the thick white stalks that made up the new body of Sister Claudia. The monastery was, indeed, sinking. Pools of crimson tar were congealing around the foundations, spreading outwards in rings of ever-deepening scarlet sludge. The Gol that still walked were dipped in red from head to toe as the pearl iron coated everything in rust. As though reflecting the growing lake, the full Orphan moon hung low and red on the horizon.
“Well, well. I wasn’t expecting to get here so soon. No matter, can’t be helped.” The sing-song voice of Saint Francesca cut through the long night as strong as any bell, leaving her lips like an arrow. It found its mark in Judith.
“What do you mean, Inquisitor? What can’t be helped?” Judith asked while clinging to the wall for safety. The parapet had fallen away, leaving the belfry exposed and her feet mere inches from the edge. The snow buffeted her face and bare skin mercilessly, though Cesca stood seemingly unaffected.
“It’s time, my dear Judith.”
“Inquisitor?”
“It’s time to embrace the unholy, so that we may be reborn.” She spun suddenly on her heel to face the terrified nun. “We must stop them, they are ruining it all. If they succeed in freeing the Dreamer then all this will come to nothing, do you understand? Do you?”
Judith was shaking all over, mute and mindless. Cesca put on her best condescending tone.
“We have to become Gol, my dear. We have to defend this place, so that our experiments may continue. We cannot let it find its way home.”
“No!” This was louder than Cesca expected from her normally subservient maid.
“I-I won’t let you!”
Judith was standing tall, her normally hunched shoulders straight, mouth set in a grim line. Cesca’s face melted into a tender mask of compassion as she surveyed the girl. She nodded, coming to some hidden conclusion.
“You’re right. You won’t.” And with one strong push Cesca shoved her aide off the edge of the tower. With a wide-eyed stare she fell, straight down and into the lake with a short scream and distant splash. The crimson mire swallowed her, and she did not surface. No amount of thrashing could stop her chains from dragging her down, down, to a lakebed so deep and ancient she never reached it alive.
Cesca was the perfect painting of a woman in mourning, her button-like mouth downturned and her eyes half closed, thick lashes about to be wet with tears. It took only a moment for a sadistic smile to break through this veneer, and the Inquisitor was back.
“Contamination! Defilement! This world has been connected. Seeped in tarnished glory! Saint Francesca of the Alucinari will do her duty, and slay the beasts that walk the Earth. No matter what it takes! Saint Francesca understands the true cost of sacrifice.”
And with that, she ripped with cruel strokes from long-nailed fingers into the flesh-clad vine that wrapped around the tower. It bled out onto the floor, great globs of pearl iron surging out of the opened artery. She knelt down, opened her mouth wide, and drank. The salty taste of the iron made her gag, the gravelly texture cracked her teeth and fresh blood mixed with the brackish ooze. The iron kept flowing, spurting fountains painting her a bright red. Trapped in a cocoon of darkening scarlet she swallowed as much of the substance as she could, greedily lapping up her sins.
She kept drinking even when she heard the howl, if it could really be called such. It was more of a rumble than a true noise, felt deep within her bones and far out into the stars. A drone that went further than any single buzz or hum. The building was moving. From around the side of the tower came the face of the Wille-beast, reconstructed in neuron and tendon. White and red and chitinous, it glowed in the moonlight and carved a path through the falling snow with nimble grace. What was once burnt had been rebuilt, and where it had been flayed there now lay a coating of brick and mortar. A second face, eyes closed and features at rest, sat upon her forehead.
Cesca had gone still. A droplet of blood had appeared on her back, growing in size until the dry sheath of her body was discarded. The blood bubble hung in the air as the beast eyed it wearily. A nose, and then an eye, formed upon the surface. One by one the features so recently discarded displayed themselves in rotund intensity across the face of the floating boil. A mouth, cut vertically, let out a screeching laugh of triumph.
The victory was short lived, however. The Claudia-Wille hybrid advanced upon the Inquisitor and, with a single deft movement that expanded its maw so far that it blocked out the sky, ate her whole. Trickles of blood mixed with pearl iron ran from between the newly wrought teeth as the beast snapped and swallowed, digesting its prey.
By now, the building was half submerged in the growing lake, and what was not drowned was aflame. Another lurch sent the infirmary - and all its myriad horrors - under the surface, as though the weight of what had been done there was too much for it to bear.
As the hybrid beast howled again, something began to bubble to the surface. Something that loved us very, very much. Something old, and something lonely. As one, each of the Gol turned towards the lake to watch it rise. Sister Caprimulgus, somehow unscathed, danced with passion before the churning mass of ichorous flow, her bare feet tracing red and sticky steps upon the grass.
So too were the eyes of the great beast drawn to the lake, and so it did not notice as the sun began to rise. Dawn in the valley was always a tremendous sight, as the surrounding hills blocked the light until the sun was ready to ascend. It was often unexpected, which meant that the worst was over quite quickly. As the beast thrashed in sudden agony the lake began to simmer and boil, clouds of red steam floating through the air as the snow, too, began to dissipate. Frothing waves of blood rose upwards in a fated attempt to escape, hissing as it made contact with the fire, dousing the flames and sending red sparks flying.
When it was over, the red lake was gone. Returned once again to the caverns where it lay dreaming. The Gol had faded, though a few still lingered just at the edge of sight. As the light flooded the world the night’s events became dim. Out in the forest, a deer who once had six legs learnt to walk on four. A lamb that before could only scream taught itself to bleat.
As the marsh woke up anew the traces of the old world sat light upon the air. A small patch of rust in the dirt, a charred twist of metal on the grass, and in the morning sky the faint, lingering shadow of a giant with two faces.