The screams echoed around me, a clarion bidding me to action. A desire countermanded by guilt’s firm hand which stilled my lungs and crushed my heart—action was what plunged the ballroom into this state. My bid to deny death and doom at the hands of Marduk had left him no recourse but the invocation of The Lightless World. Whilst still failing to divert the tides of fortune which had never once turned from Marduk. How could they when a Sovereign ripped apart the scales that may have, at one moment if only one moment, been in our favor?
Revelation Questing whispered in my ear, “They may die, but our quest continues Nadia. If you live there can always be another chance to kill him.”
Head hung, I muttered, “This was our best chance.”
“No, Nadia,” Revelation Questing countered, “it was their best chance. You didn’t forge this plan. Your fate may have woven into it—been the cause for this scenario’s detour—but yours is a fate tied to three Sovereigns compared to his one.”
The Sovereign of Revelation was one, but it wasn’t like she’d come to my aid. What few times she’d visited were to deliver admonishments. Functionally the limitation of her Observations. My mother was the obvious second. Her inheritance, Mother’s Last Smile, was a powerful weapon…currently in the corner of my suite doing little but gathering crowds of devoted dust. Functionally useless much like its wielder.
“And the third?” I asked.
In my other ear, Revelation Questing answered, “A Sovereign bargained for you. Maybe—”
“No,” I whispered, rage simmering. “The bitch or bastard or whatever they are…helped Marduk and screwed me!”
“They saved you,” Revelation Questing stated.
I cackled, “And that shows how much they know me. If I wanted to be saved would I be on the beleaguered path as everyone keeps saying?”
“You have an oath to our Sovereign,” Revelation Questing remarked. “If you thought chasing death would be a loophole, you’re mistaken, Nadia. Poor questor that you are—”
“I’m no questor,” I hissed. “I’m nothing but what I’ve done, which has only been…what I wanted to do.”
It was strange to see—for the second time, but a more intimate time—a summation of what you are. My future-self told me plainly, “We do what we want to do.” Lupe stabbed me with it when she denied my claim toward generosity—even when Melissa described that other me, that happier me, she never said I was giving or kind. In her eyes, all their eyes, I was simple.
“And simplicity is no crime, Nadia,” Sphinx whispered, her voice barely legible in my spirit. “It is the cauldron from which complexity is stewed, and when thy pot is empty and cupboards barren, remains when naught else does.”
My breath caught the edge of concern. She’d been so quiet since the Staircase, and the Baron so loud. I’d nearly forgotten—no, I had forgotten—that hers was a voice meant for me. That asked for nothing of me save I attempt, in good conscience, the oath to which I was sworn. Even then she was the only one who asked me what I wanted, free from judgment.
“Do we die or do we move forward?” Sphinx asked.
I was ready to embrace death, but where the Old World had the adage that you “die alone,” for me that could never be true. If I died I took Sphinx with me. She deserved better than that. Better than me. Though few ever get what they deserve—the ties of fate don’t engage in that sort of accounting—leaving it to me to lay claim on a future for Sphinx, my love. Empowered by want, I rose to my feet and rolled back my shoulders, declaring, quite simply…
“Forward. For you, always forward.”
And forward I went. Running toward the outcome I wanted, the people I wanted. The Lightless World had rendered this a simple place, and these were simple wants. Guided by the magenta ties of fate that my Omensight dredged forth for me, I ignored everything not of my want. Screams fell to nothing. The sensation of diamonds kicked by my feet was unnoticeable. Fear was too slow a hunter as it tried to sink worries of, “what if Secretary has already died?” and “what if there is no more hope?” into my mind. There was only fate to follow.
It led me to Secretary moments before their death. A bulging tide of Abyss, nearly imperceptible, in the tapestry of the world, surged toward them, a silhouette Remembrance grey. I pounced on them. Drove us to the floor, and made sure it was my back that Marduk’s finger would reach. Secretary, unaware of how death’s immediacy, struck my ribs with sharp palm strikes. I hissed.
“Little brute?” Secretary gasped.
“Bear with it,” I implored.
Then it arrived, that finger of Abyssal obliteration. Hairs of inches from my back, it loomed. Secretary quivered beneath me. There were ways I liked people to shake if was above them, and that prey-like oscillation—such insistent stillness that it created motion, invited death—was not one of them.
“They’ll just die later,” Marduk said, his voice coming from a thousand directions.
I yelled back, “Then let ‘later’ come when it does. I want them to live.”
“And you’ll use your body to cover for them,” Marduk stated. “You misunderstand something, my will here is reality’s motion. The only want that matters is my own.”
The finger withdrew, and reality squeezed. Abyssal darkness oozed between my arms, slipping through the gap between my stomach and Secretary’s, making a mockery of my poor defenses. Secretary went still. My mind whited out. I needed options, an opening, time if nothing else.
In hybridae speech, I screamed, “Stop.”
Marduk did. Reality oozed backward, enough to no longer threaten Secretary’s life. I looked up to find Marduk’s eyes—they were taller than me—staring at me.
“So you are one,” he said, our conversation in hybridae now.
I nodded, “I am.”
“Do you think this admission merits anything?” he asked.
“A return to the negotiating table,” I offered weakly.
His eyes narrowed, unamused. “Why negotiate for what I could take?”
“Because you can’t take me,” I stated. “That Sovereign won’t allow it.”
His eyes closed, submerged into the dark. Replaced by the clack of heels and a face ripe with rage. There was nothing to see in The Lightless World, but right now Marduk wanted me to see him—to fear him. His hair was a stormy grey, and waves rose and fell—the oceanic jaws of a beast hungry for mortal ships to try it.
“You think I fear them?” he asked.
“They’re a Sovereign,” I said, shrugging. “Who wouldn’t?”
“I’ve killed a Sovereign—”
“With a group,” I scoffed. “Don’t test me, Marduk, and don’t test the Sovereign who saved your life. That was how they bargained for me, wasn’t it?”
His hands clenched into claws—I could smell his Bloodlust rising to the level of my disrespect. He fumed, “Hybridae girls, truly you lot are wretched and impossible.”
“There’s a hybridae Godtender?” I asked, a constellation formed between the facts.
“There’s at least one who is a godtender,” he corrected. “Us spawn of black wombs hold little love for the Nine. Though what you are, too human in face to be a White Womb and too young to be of Black, makes me curious of your capabilities.”
“You’re the one who told me to run, so let me run,” I proposed, a plan assembling. “Measure me against what you’ve built—the cult, the throne, your Menagerie—and I’ll show you what I am.”
“I see what you’re doing; Hoping that I’ll take you up on this deal,” he said, squatting so our eyes were level to one another.
“That’d be a bad idea,” I admitted. “You do so love to crush Hope. No, I’m leaning on something simpler.”
“That being?”
I gifted him a fanged smile. “That you are as Sinaya and Lupe described, a researcher, and so I’m offering you a chance to research. Besides, if I make it, your bargain with the Sovereign has passed, and will be free to claim me anyways. You don’t lose.”
“And you’d play a game with no hope of winning?” he asked.
“What can I say,” I said, “I’m wretched and impossible.”
He stretched his legs—transparently wanting to be “above” me. The palms of his imposed reality, our cradle-cage, parted way for Secretary and myself. A narrow path of wooden ballroom flooring which shot arrow-straight back into reality. I helped Secretary up but never broke from Marduk’s gaze. He was a predator and that was never smart to do.
“Now give me Sinaya and Lupe,” I ordered.
“You’re insulting me,” he said, “I know the worth of them, fruit of my tree. They’d be dead weight and would skew the results. A mere soldier can’t overcome that.”
“I’m a soldier of two Courts,” I stated—a not-quite lie to be fair. Though it was enough to stoke Marduk’s attention. His brow rose and his hair shifted to sparkling turquoise.
“Two,” he said. “You are special. Oh when I catch you, I’ll never let you go.”
His reality parted again—the path Secretary and I stood on was now a “v” that connected to where Sinaya had sprawled himself across Lupe. That silly butch of mine had employed the same plan I’d attempted. He popped his head up first, looked about in disbelief, before rolling back into a squat.
“Sinaya, I—” I started.
“You’re still speaking in hybridae,” Marduk groaned. “You’ve been taught so little—you need to increase vocal cord frequency, and cease vibrating your spirit. What?”
“That was just a really good explanation,” I said.
“Of course, I’ve taught four hybridae before you how to do it. This is our native register, and swapping takes practice that you’ve never had.”
Employing his advice, I spoke again, this time like a human. “Sinaya, I’m over here.”
He lifted Lupe to her feet, leading the two of them to where Secretary and I stood. His eyes flicked from Marduk to me and back to Marduk. Loudly belying the fear that had been imbued into him from previous failed escapes. Though fear settled into silty confusion when Marduk didn’t turn his head toward him. Marduk, by way of my sacrifice, had found what he’d been looking for all these years. Sinaya didn’t know it yet but he’d become obsolete in his master’s eyes.
Speaking to me, Marduk stated the rules, “You’ll have no headstart. My test begins when I finish speaking, and there shall be no hiding. Per your point, I want you to run—”
“Run!” I ordered everyone, the trap in Marduk’s instruction was obvious.
We took off down the path that’d opened to us. At our flanks was The Lightless World, and it blasted us with Marduk’s voice, cold and curious.
“And so you shall be pursued. By the cult, by the power invested in me through my throne, and by my glorious Menagerie,” he crooned. “Don’t disappoint me now, Sinaya can tell you what happens if I am.”
Marduk was many things. Some of which—such as his claim, however inaccurate, to being a researcher—I’d exploited in the manner that my friends declared a talent of mine. I even predicted the security of his word, that our start and his pursuit would commence once he’d dispensed all instruction. What I hadn’t expected was that he loved wordplay.
“Secretary, down!” Lupe hissed.
Her instruction pre-empted a rod of The Lightless World extruding itself from one half of its reality to the other. Secretary dropped into a roll before it took their head. Sinaya and Lupe slid underneath, the immediate danger now spent. Sinaya spotted the next one, flexed against the wall of void beside us before the tension Marduk imbued in it was released. He grabbed Secretary and Lupe by the collars of their shirts and jumped. Clearing the rod as it snapped out eager to claim an ankle, and nearly missing the two more that shot toward Sinaya. He flexed his field-spell, a pressure wave blooming behind him, and shot forward as if pinged by the flick of a Sovereign’s finger.
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“Alls below,” I growled, “you’re meant to pursue us!”
“I’m pursuing you, as was our agreement,” Marduk said. “They’re the ones behind you.”
Sinaya, probably because he was used to Marduk’s tricks, exerted his field-spell again. The bursts of Conceptual pressure skipped him through the air like a rock across a lake. I slowed enough so the trio would land ahead of me—walls of void snapped together nearly nicking my heel. Don’t go too slow, it all but warned, a thought neither I nor the others had considered. We wanted out of this place, and we were going to get out.
We cleared the ballroom exit, emerging into a library—I don’t know if it came with Atlantis, and thus unsafe for anyone committed to preserving their mind to read, or if in his commitment to a researcher’s air, he’d gathered true books from across the world. Either way, we had no time to check. The Lightless World flooded into the library with all the force you’d imagine an entire reality—imposed or otherwise—would have when trying to squeeze within a door frame, even a doubled one.
An arc of it, about the girth of a tree trunk, shot through three bookshelves. The Abyssal black clung to the books, the shelves, and grew over them—an ooze that now parted wished to be whole again. As we wheeled into a right turn, following Sinaya’s direction as he knew this place the best, I gaped in awe at how the library was digested by the dark. Then screamed as the rest of it circled toward us, an umbral tidal wave that saw us as inhabitants to be reclaimed.
“Sinaya,” I called out, “can you ride your entity?”
He yelled, “He’s big enough.”
“Good, then you take Lupe,” I instructed. “Secretary, you’re riding with me.”
It was rough and I was tired, but I yanked my spirit open bringing Sphinx out into the world. My run became a jump as I mounted her back. Through the power of four legs, I caught up to the trio, wrapped an arm around Secretary’s waist hauling them onto Sphinx and between my legs. Sinaya did the same with Lupe mounted on his entity’s back as well, the thing swimming faster than any of us could run—this was its natural domain after all.
Secretary looked back, screamed, “We’re not fast enough.”
“We will be,” I yelled. “Sinaya, try to keep up.”
I arched my back. The eyes of Sphinx’s pelt and wings burned. Over my pounding heart I felt for the infinite possibilities that wound about us; there weren’t many that were good, but that meant more fuel for my plan. Outcomes wound about Sphinx and I, tighter and tighter still. Two cosmic ropes of Fivefold Atomic Glories on the precipice—we wound those together, also.
“This’ll give us away!” Sinaya yelled.
Secretary screamed back with serrated sarcasm, “I think we’re long past stealth’s purposefulness, don’t you—”
Sphinx and I released, split infinity down our cosmic braid—a dualcast, and spewed Revelatory fire. Secretary’s next words shot into the back of their throat. Sinaya followed suit, his field-spell dualcasted with his entity, and raced after. Down the wing of the library. Bursting through another set of doors. Up a staircase whose glass wall looked out onto the exterior of the throne, a perfect view of Marduk’s history of conquest.
Up we climbed the spiral staircase, a black riptide, and a chalcedony comet. It wasn’t sustainable. We didn’t need sustainable—we needed fast, but I accept blame for thinking we were past stealth. We weren’t fast enough to surpass the hateful notice of Abyss and the entities that are its spawn. Its legion.
If you’ve heard the roar of water as it braids itself over a river rock or is expelled fast enough, then try to toss that sound aside. Instead, imagine with me, a sound like lights going off in a hallway in rapid succession. Dark is coming, the clicking of light just the herald for its rapid annexation of the space. Slot that in, but remove the click. Instead, focus on how many sounds are around you. Even the sound of your breathing. So many sounds, right? Now take them, and one by one drown them into quiet. This dynamic was how I knew to look to my right—Secretary’s screams were gone—and bearing down upon us was the vomit of entities from within Marduk’s Menagerie.
It was quiet when they struck. Glass crushed to powder as endless tons of Conceptual flesh rammed into it. Black anti-sparkles thrown in the air. Sphinx leaped over a leviathan. Sinaya’s entity corkscrewed through the legs of a giant sea spider. Sphinx slid around a vampire squid mermaid whose hooks scythed the air and would’ve taken my and Secretary’s neck had we not laid ourselves flat. It all went wrong because of a sea angel. The damn thing spun down through Sinaya’s leg breaking the concentration on his field-spell. His speed flagged, and his entity was snatched in the grip of a giant’s fist. Whipped into Sphinx, breaking her concentration which threw us off balance. The force of my own Atomic Glory carrying me into Secretary, off Sphinx’s back, and into the stairs.
All of us tumbled up the steps. Scrambled to our feet to discover we were surrounded. Standing atop, hanging from, leaning against, each and every entity was Lurker. Armored in simple conweave and wielding harpoons, nets, and a few very long swords meant for sushi.
No one moved, but everyone stank of Bloodlust. I covered my nose, not like it’d help, but I could feel the red river in my mind surging upward. My breath was ragged. A smile carved my face open, spilling saliva—I could taste it, imminent violence. A simple thing, but not one I wanted. We don’t always get what we deserve…or what we want.
Lurkers fell upon us, murderous raindrops, and we scattered their lives as such. Sinaya’s field-spell punched a few out of the air. One of them dropped their “sword,” which he took up in their stead to wield for our cause. The dark metal stained red as he swung it—my love was The Angler Knight, a fact I’d loathed, but watching him at work I found a way to embrace it. He was a whirlpool of death that drew in his old “comrades” to be left severed and dismembered at his feet.
Not one to be outdone, even though they’d declared themselves to be, “not a warrior,” Secretary leveraged their impeccable memory. Dualcasting with Blotomisc, they reached beyond the easy recollections of guns I’d seen them use and instead materialized the white-nothing explosion of a Paradox bomb. Entities and their bondmates were consumed before they could scream. The “lucky ones", however you might define that, lost limbs, chunks of their torso—spilling entrails and viscera onto the floor—and a few had bites taken from their head. It was awful even as it was imperfect, the true potency of the bomb having been denied by Marduk. Accounting for this pinhole view of its destructive efficacy, Secretary materialized ten more—five to clear those behind us and five to clear the barrier of entities before us.
“Up we go, Nadia,” Lupe ordered, throwing my arm over her shoulder—I’d fallen to my knees at some point. Don’t ask me when.
“Why?” I asked, choking on Bloodlust. “You don’t trust me.”
Lupe hauled my ass up the stairs after her sister. Sinaya arm wove canvases of steel strokes as he yanked Lurkers forward into range. Secretary deleted the stairs as we ascended them. Ours was a fighting advance, slowed by Sinaya’s bleeding leg, but not halting. Not dying. Forward.
“That’s your hang-up,” Lupe said. “I told you on the roof, you’re not so special and not so evil as to be beyond a hug. And while I’m pissed you detonated the bombs, I’d counted as a, ‘we’re actually so fucked,’ kind of situation.”
“We still are,” I said, blinking to clear a carmine haze that was in places far deeper than my eyes.
Lupe agreed, “So sit tight and shut up. It’s time I do my part.”
They inhaled and for the time, Lupe flexed her field-spell. From every pore came light that doubled and doubled. An exponential flurry of snowflakes made of photons. Flowing from her spirit, on the opposite side as me, was Morning Dying—I’d never learned its true name. Its heart, a shadow in a starving ribcage, shrunk as the radiance under its skin grew. The drops of molten sunlight that dribbled around its lupine maw floated off into the air. It was from the light, her’s and Morning Dying’s, that they sang a duet they’d performed a hundred before.
“A thousand children who knew only Night/Who played forever bound in Abyssal depths/Remember true that all things die/Though praise the Morning which lives again/Golden blades in both hands/Time shall be cut anew/From black bolts Tomorrow is sewn/And Freedom known as we once knew.”
No one could know the state of my mind. How I’d bent back my sanity to keep my face just above the carmine curse. I can’t claim to know how exhausted Secretary and Blotomisc were, remembering what was ultimately nothing, sketching its impact onto the Underside. It didn’t take a doctor, however, to notice our pace had slowed and the thin trickle of blood from Sinaya’s thigh had painted a scarlet streak up the stairs. Though I bypassed knowledge and felt the warm touch of Morning on spirit as it drained the river going through my head. I heard the explosions conjured behind us increase in frequency. The scarlet streak had ended.
We walked with the Morning. Streaks of indigo, slashes of bright magenta, and violet accents swam through the air around us. Secretary once described a field-spell as painting with your Court, and Lupe did that and more. What she cloaked around us were the strings of not only a guitar, but the pulsing beat of drums, crooning horns, and voices multiplied. There was hers, and in deeper accompaniment what I presumed to be Morning Dying. Though as she rolled through verses, glided up its glissandos, and skipped through every syncopation others joined in—phantom participants whose faces I’d recognized from the Palace of Ghosts. They’d arrived for one last time in the sun.
“Alls below,” I said, breath stolen by awe.
Sinaya, his pace restored, rising, answered, “I saw it once when Marduk fought one of the families—the only time he looked scared. They called it, ‘the Great Sun Parade.’”
Song and field-spell combining, Lupe entered the second verse, “Hands together we make our Ascension/A new Origin for all/Love incinerating darkness/With Luck, we won’t fall/So dance in ode to Morning/Though not, do I mean Grief/Over horizon we chart Rebellion/As the sun assumes rightful—”
A breeze blew over my head. Tousling my hair with something wet. I ran my hand over my scalp, careful not to scratch myself, and at first, I thought I’d failed. My hands were red as if I’d killed someone. In my disbelief, I fell with Lupe when she stumbled—I wasn’t able to properly support her. My knees slammed into the stairs, and worried I glanced over to Lupe. Blood was pooling beneath her. She had clasped under her throat. Around us the phantoms faded, the parade brought to a close.
“Lupe,” Sinaya yelled, turning back toward his sister.
She held out a hand, stay. Pointed with her finger, go. Sinaya disobeyed, abandoning our frontline to arrive at her side. Secretary ran past us, Lupe and I, and took Sinaya’s spot. She and Blotomisc worked fast to conjure bombs at both ends of the staircase. I helped prop Lupe up—she’d bowled over when we fell. It was this way, on her knees with her shaggy haircut plastered to her skullcap—it was sweaty work putting on parade—that we saw what she’d tried to hide. Below her hand, through the fingers really, were hints of gore.
Sinaya dropped his sword. Slid down the last few steps to be at her side. Cradled her against his chest. I found my feet, but not my reason. It bled from me with the color in my face, down the sanguine river that soaked Lupe’s shirt and left me afloat in a carmine flood. My head swung around like a dog’s trying to catch the scent. I did, faint as it was, and led me in a slow pan across the Abyss beyond the shattered staircase window. There, nestled in black nothingness, astride something like a jellyfish was Apogee.
In her hands was what I’d best describe as an organic sniper rifle—Conceptual, in nature. Its legs twitched gleefully when she racked the bolt. Expelled the casing of a quill or needle. I’d hazard some part of its design was inspired by a pufferfish…maybe. It doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter. She was beyond me, distance-wise, and buffered by more entities birthed and expelled by the Menagerie. I wanted to fly out there and rip her head off—Secretary was why I didn’t.
They locked their arm with mine and dragged me up the steps. We were continuing on—I didn’t want to continue on. Not without them. I flung my arm from their grasp and looked out to see we’d climbed enough stairs to ruin Apogee’s next shot if it was me. It probably would’ve been.
“Little brute, stay with me,” Secretary said.
I wanted to pulp my brain. Drove my palms into the sides of my head. I snarled at them.
“I’m here,” I said, “and we need to be there. They need us.”
They did. Entities edged around them. Morning Dying, fading as she was, swung her claws in bright arcs scoring the faces of entities who got too close. Sinaya only had eyes for Lupe. His entity took up the other portion of defense. Pressure wave blasts and ice spikes to ward off the Lurkers, but it only takes five soldiers to equal a Baron. They layered their intentions together in a field-ritual that broke the undirected attacks into scattered bits of Abyss. Beyond the Lurkers, peeking just around the bend of the staircase, was The Lightless World—we’d lost our advantage. I didn’t care.
“I need you,” Secretary said. “If we die no one knows what Marduk has here. We have to go.”
They wrapped their hands around my head, guided my vision so all I saw was their eyes. Secretary had beautiful eyes, a beautiful face, but what they needed from me…
“No,” I said, shoving them backward. “They’re your friends—”
Secretary laughed. “No, little brute, they’re yours! All of this was for you. I let you rescue him. I let you talk me out of using the bombs for her. Please, do me the courtesy of doing this one thing for me.”
They reached for me, my shirt, my neck, the back of my head. Their hands crawled over me as they pulled me into their embrace. Prevented me from looking back. They didn’t keep me from hearing.
“Orchard,” Sinaya wailed, “please, come here. You can do something, you need to do something!”
“I’m coming,” I screamed.
I broke from Secretary and the Inviolate Star was already above my fingers. I’d made it two steps before I’d stopped—Secretary held my wrist. They fell backward, leveraging all of their weight, to keep me from leaving their side.
“Don’t go,” Secretary yelled. “They’re dead. If you go, you’re dead. I’m dead. Nadia, you said I was yours, so aren’t you mine? Why won’t you stay?”
Tears blurred those grey eyes of theirs. They blurred my own. I’d arrived at a choice
I’d begged off with tears and wan smiles. Though fate had dragged me back to this moment, and made it no longer hypothetical. Down the stairs, back toward doom, was Lupe and Sinaya. Up the stairs, toward possible life, was Secretary. Forward or die.
“Because I’m also theirs,” I snarled, turning back so Secretary collapsed. Unable to exert force on me, I ripped my arm free. “And, I’d sooner die than abandon those I love.”
I took the stairs two at a time. One hand flung Atomic Glories down at the crowd. The other carried what I prayed to my Sovereign mother was Lupe’s salvation. I’d left Secretary at my back. Out of my sight. How easy it is to lose sight of a predator when you think you’ve tamed them.
“If that’s how it is,” Secretary whispered. “Spider-lillies love whiskey.”
They’d said the words softly, but there was nothing soft about the tug I felt in my body. Every limb of mine froze mid-motion. Muscles hot and contracted with no ability to release themselves. There wasn’t anything I could do beyond…feel; Secretary’s fingers tracing my spine. Their body chest, just a bit soft, grazing my arm as they stood before me. Why’d they look sad? They had all the power; #404 had my leash.
“You told me earlier today that you wouldn’t let someone destroy what’s yours,” they said. “I feel similarly, even when that someone is you, little brute. If it helps, I blame myself. I’d given you such a lead that I’d forgotten that assets can sometimes go astray. Make the wrong choices. So I’m here to help you—it’s my job—now turn around and carry me.”
And so I did. Limbs shifting with an elegance I’d never experienced before. Bodies are complex things, but tools are so simple. I couldn’t even cry—the curse’s leash didn’t allow me any acts of agency. Secretary climbed onto my waiting back. Laid their head atop mine.
In the distance, I could hear Sinaya. “Orchard, come back. You promised you’d help me! You made me Hope.”
The way his voice broke, all that muscle failing to uphold the firmament of his feelings, that’s what made me feel the worst. He was too far away to hear what Secretary had said, had done to me. I don’t know if it’d make him feel better. All I know is I stopped hearing his sorrow once The Lightless World reclaimed its prodigal butch.
“Good girl, we don’t go backwards. That way lies death,” Secretary whispered. “Now, Forward, little brute, only forward. Carve us a way out.”
I had fallen to something simpler than want; my most natural state that slit the illusions I’d held. I, Nadia Temple, was less and more than a thing of want. I was a cutting line made of metal. A bright blur whose claws shredded flesh with abandon. Boosted by Revelatory fire, I was a sharp-edged comet that cleaved through scores of men and women. Unladen with tears, unable to fall out of perfect edge alignment, it was by my handler’s grace that I achieved my purpose. To be a knife for the one who held my leash, and knives don’t worry about the carmine stains in their spirit. They only drink deep and keep cutting.