Pink neon flashed on the black surface of the lake. The strange cacophony of insects or birds roiled from the forest, trills and clicks, machine-like buzzing, the occasional deep, harmonious hum. His first time here he’d been compelled to venture and explore, to set eyes on the creatures that scampered and flew amidst this place. But he’d seen so much since then, and most of it had been ugly, and he welcomed a pang of mourning for the boy within him, deader now than ever.

Onus climbed the steps three at a time, Benno hurrying along in tow.

Benno could stop this. He could reason with Onus that their time was better spent elsewhere—though no alternative occurred to him—or simply restrain the Lonely Son. He could make the decision to go no further. But making decisions was not Benno’s strong suit. When he made decisions, people died. He was meant to follow, silently, unmovable, like time itself.

But that didn’t mean he shouldn’t preempt the reckoning that was crashing imminently toward them.

“I need to tell you something,” he said as he followed Onus into the elevator on the far end of the enormous room with its gears churning high overhead.

Onus peered out through the rusted metal gate as it slammed shut and the elevator lurched downward. “The smell of this fucking place…” He steadied himself with a hand on the rutted wall, then wiped his palm on his thigh and scoffed. “She is so arrogant,” he said. “No security. Doors wide open. She thinks she has nothing to fear. She thinks she has no predators. But everything has a predator. Even you.”

Benno traced a finger along the seam under the skin between the pyramid and his skull. “There’s something you need to know,” he tried again.

“Her daughter is the same. My sister Adelay. Arrogant and naive. Horus’ twenty-first daughter. Of no import or influence, and yet traipses around like she owns everything. This family…” His nostrils flared. “There are no consequences. No respect. This is the Nation the Twins built. She would not have behaved so imperiously if my father still reigned, or if I had not been imprisoned… She would not have dared…”

The elevator stuttered and whined along the stone shaft.

“To have the nerve—the impudence—to murder a conjugal daughter of Luridia—over what? Some disagreement? Some debts unpaid?” Onus wrung his hands, glaring at the elevator’s sooty floor. “How dare she. The thug.”

“Onus.” Benno spoke loudly.

Onus turned.

“There’s something I need to tell you.” Benno cleared his throat. “About Edda’s death.”

The elevator thudded to a stop, and the gate rattled open.

“What is it?” Onus asked, his orange eyes muted.

“I know why…” Benno searched for the words. “The Everson Family, they killed Edda and the rest of the crew because… Because…”

“I heard sad rumors…” came a voice like stone scraping glass.

Benno and Onus swung around.

She stood in the middle of the corridor, layered in shadow. Her pale face stood out against the dark lengths of her robes and mitre. One long black fingernail stood raised alongside her head, unfathomably still.

Onus had repositioned himself half-behind Benno, and guided him forward with a soft but insistent hand.

“The Implacable Cock of Horus,” Mother rasped. “Emancipated before his time. And the Deracinated Permanent.” Her dark eyes coruscated from the pit of her sunken sockets. “Come to meddle again with my sad property.”

Onus’ hand wavered briefly at Benno’s back before resuming its position, and he stooped down so his head barely peeked out over Benno’s shoulder as they progressed, slowly.

Mother stood as still as a stone. “I dare say, Permanent. Your sad time could be so much better spent than cavorting with thieves and traitors.”

“You have no right to pass judgement, Beverly,” Onus said, his voice hissing with anger. “Not after what you did.”

Mother’s finger disappeared into the shadows of her robes. “I have every sad right to be proprietary. The Heart of Horus understood that my decision to do business with her was fraught. For me most of all. I have relationships with your other sisters. A relationship with the Twins. Edda was expected to tread lightly—more lightly than others; this is the price she paid for access. She was expected to mind her actions. And the sad actions of her staff, as they always are, were extensions of her own actions.”

Onus’ wide hand relented its forward guidance on Benno’s back. “What did you do?” he whispered in Benno’s ear.

They slowed to a stop beside the enclosure with the giant newt—who appeared to have grown more eyes in the last seven years—its long tail glowing with fungi.

“I see,” Mother said. “Like Edda, you do not know the company you keep.”

Onus’ breath was damp on Benno’s neck.

“The Permanent entered my fortalice unwelcome and destroyed an item in my collection.” Mother’s voice grated at Benno’s ears. “The same item the Heart and her staff had labored to retrieve. So not only was it a sad violation of my holdings, but it was also a terrifying betrayal of Edda’s trust.”

“I made a mistake,” Benno said softly, turning his face in Onus’ direction. “I was desperate. The Baba’ba’ksum promised me death, and I believed it. I know now it was foolish, but at the time… I just wanted to be finished. I just wanted to be done with all of it.”

Onus’ wide hand lingered at the middle of Benno’s back.

“It was my fault,” Benno went on. “Everything is my fault. Edda, the crew—they didn’t do anything wrong, and they’re all dead. All because of me. The town of Middle Forest, the Forrorians, the people on that train… my family… Everyone is dead because of me.” He guided Holes—whose petals emerged curiously from the collar of his shirt—back down against his chest. “Everyone I touch dies. You’ll probably die too.”

Onus’ hand slid off Benno’s back.

Mother watched from the dark pits of her eyes. “He is a catechumen of Sul, after all.”

The only sounds were the blips and splats of water dripping from the slick ceiling.

“This is…” Onus’ voice was strained and laden with conflict. “This is unfortunate.”

In Benno’s periphery, he could see Onus’ hands moving along the front of his one-piece.

“I suppose I was naive.” Onus’ teeth clicked as he spoke. “I should have known that you would never use violence against a conjugal daughter of the Scattered King for any reason less than absolutely necessary. And as you’ve described it, your retribution was indeed necessary, and your choices sound.” A zipper whhhred. “It was of course Edda’s responsibility to monitor the activities of her staff. She should have been more careful—and most importantly, more respectful to you. After all, you are one of her father’s wives.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The folds of Mother’s robes stirred, her face unmoving.

“And I should be more discerning about the company I keep.” Onus stooped lower behind Benno, his head dipping to the height of Benno’s shoulders. “Both Edda and I should have known better. If our mother raised us as well as you raised Adelay and your other children, we would never have been so reckless.”

Benno felt heat on his back, which dissipated quickly.

Onus’s hand folded over Benno’s shoulder. “So on Edda’s behalf, and on mine, I am sorry for the trouble you’ve been caused. I am sorry for our insolence. You gangly, repugnant hag!”

Benno lowered his chin and folded his arms over the lump where Holes hid beneath his shirt as a black shape whipped from the recesses of Mother’s robes. At the same moment, another shape—a white shape—blurred from behind him and met Mother’s black tendril with a peal of thunder and a flash of crackling light.

The newt scrambled to the back corner of its enclosure as Benno ducked aside and landed against the rusty bars. He hugged Holes as another peal rang out, and another flash of sharp light left floating shapes in his vision, which he blinked against as he peered up.

For a moment he didn’t understand what he was seeing. And even as the moment passed, his mind was unable to compute a clear nature of what Onus had become. The best he could determine was that Onus had widened. But this was not exactly right. He had bloated. His eyes bulged from his sockets, his cheeks domed outward, his nostrils gaping and his tongue protruding through his swollen lips. His normally slender physique dilated with hills and ditches of inflamed muscle. His fingers ballooned. His skin and blue hair had turned paper white, and his leather one-piece whined and ripped away from his body in threads. And surrounding him—like a scaffold around a skyscraper—was an eye-aching circuitry of white lines. They danced—spasmed—from thick to narrow to nearly imperceptible and back to thick—rearranging themselves from one dizzying geometry to the next from one instant to the next like fire gnashing through a log. He lumbered toward Mother, casting heat so immense Benno felt his beard singe as he passed.

Mother back-stepped, her dark eyes betraying an unnatural sentiment: fear. Her robes rustled, and another black tendril flailed forward with the same devastating force that had torn Edda and her crew to shreds. But when it met the maze of white filaments surrounding Onus, it ruptured with a bark of thunder and a tangle of black tendons and dark, ferric blood.

Mother screeched—a painful, rending sound—and slumped forward. Still more black tendrils whipped out from her. Two of them collided again with Onus’ scaffolding and exploded into shards. But a third struck at Benno. Benno lifted his palm to intercept it. The impact on his forearm was immense—as powerful as anything he’d ever felt—and vibrated his body. The tendril retracted, bent sharply where it had struck Benno, thudded onto the damp ground, and retreated back into Mother’s robes.

Onus advanced, his excrescent eyeballs staring. The white lines rearranged, weighting themselves forward and condensing. The water puddled in the ditches of the rutted ground hissed into vapor as he stepped through it.

Mother collapsed onto her knees. She looked up at Onus from her shadowed eyes, her pale face bent in pain. Her long finger appeared, trembling.

“Usurper…” she rasped.

Onus loomed over her. “Be afraid!” he rumbled in a voice like smoke and fire. “I am the Wielder of Vore—the Tefached—King of Luridia! Son to All My Fathers! You have defaced the figure of my family and denigrated our name! You have grown spoiled and irreverent! I will rend you from your body and annihilate your children! I will devour your Realm! Beg for lenience so that your death is more bitter!”

Mother shook, her mitre slipping back to reveal sparse strands of oily black hair.

“Your father would be so disappointed,” she said, barely a dry whisper.

The maze of white lines spasmed and coalesced into a circuitous node at Onus’ chest, and Mother lifted her hand over her face as they shot forward.

At first it appeared they had simply passed through her, like light through a prism. But then the thin lines started to thicken, and as they did, so did Mother’s body. She howled as her black robes tore and the ashen skin beneath shredded apart in volleys of spraying red worms. The lines withdrew, leaving fist-sized holes—scores of them—punched throughout her torso and limbs. Then more lines cut from the node at Onus’ chest and beat down on her in arcing blurs of white, battering her until the dimensions of her body were indistinguishable from the silty ground, and all that remained intact was her head, the face locked in a gawping shock of agony.

Onus took yet another step forward, so that he nearly straddled Mother’s obliterated body. He extended one tumescent white hand toward her, as if to help her up, and a spasming vertex of white lines—thousands or more—raced down his arm, off his fingers, and besieged Mother’s head. Her eyes flexed in a final expression of agony as the lines darted and pecked at her, and again Benno’s eyes failed at first to discern what was happening until he noticed that her head was diminishing. First the skin, then the writhing flesh, then the black skull beneath and the thuck of red worms and brain couched within, all eaten away in imperceptible bits—perhaps a molecule at a time—by the frenzied white lines. Until, within seconds, there was nothing left but the smear of robes and red worms that had once been her body.

Onus looked down from his bulging eyeballs, which seemed they might pop free from his sockets at any moment—breathing in deep, smoldering breaths. Then he reached his thick fingers into his swollen mouth, forcing aside the huge white tongue. He gagged as his hand worked its way deeper, past the knuckles, nearly to the wrist, and lurched forward. The white scaffold’s spasming tightened around him, working its way back through his pores, and his monstrous musculature receded back to something more human, and his eyes deflated, and soon he appeared more-or-less himself, save for his torn clothes, and he gagged again and withdrew his hand, in which the Tefached spasmed, once again concentrated into its ever-changing series of shapes, and he stuffed it into the front pocket of his ripped one-piece.

For a long time he stood, his back to Benno, staring down at what was left of Mother.

“I do not blame you,” he said finally, his voice hoarse. “Edda understood the risks of dealing with the Everson Family. Beverly was temperamental and cruel. If it hadn’t been your… mistake, it would have been something else.”

Benno used the rusty bars to pull himself to his feet. He tugged his collar open and peered down at Holes, who looked back at him with something like anticipation.

“I should have told you earlier,” Benno said. “I was ashamed and… I’m sorry.”

Onus tented his eyes with a hand.

Benno ran his fingers down the length of his beard. “So that’s how Luridian kings colonized the Realms, huh?”

Onus shrugged, his palm pressed flat over his face.

“Pretty intense.” Benno glanced in at the Newt. “I mean, the colonizing is bad enough, but adding all that into the mix…”

Onus massaged his temples.

“Are you really going to annihilate her children?”

“Hm?” Onus looked up from his palm. “No. I just… It’s just part of the whole speech.”

Benno nodded.

Onus cleared his throat, straightened up, and turned around. “We’re alright,” he said. “You and me. There is no one to blame but Beverly Everson. And she’s dead.”

Benno nodded again.

“So.” Onus forced a grin. “We came here for another reason.” He stooped down and felt through Mother’s pulpy remains until his hands located something, which he scooped up before continuing down the corridor toward its shadowy end where, barely visible in the dark, a pale shape stood.

A white wooden door.

Benno followed. In the enclosure where, seven years ago, the Baba’ba’ksum was held, there was now what appeared to be a pile of broken glass, about waist-high, right in the middle of the floor. There were additional enclosures past it, but Benno stopped paying attention. He watched Onus pass into the dark of the hallway’s extremity.

In there… the Baba’ba’ksum had promised. Death…

Benno slowed to a stop beneath the final torch. Onus, no more than a dark shape, took hold of the white door’s brass knob.

Death…

But not Benno’s death. There was no such thing as that. So whose?

Onus worked the long brass key he’d taken from Mother’s robes into the door’s keyhole. He turned it until it clicked, then took hold of the knob, which whined and gave.

Not Benno’s death…

Onus pushed the door open. It moaned on its hinges, revealing beyond a perfect, quavering darkness.

“Hello…” Onus spoke at a normal volume, standing back from the door. “It is Onus Bram Loticus Bellacord. The Lonely Son of Horus Bellacord. Brother of Edda Contrejas Loticus Bellacord. I am here to release you, and to seek your guidance.”

Death… But not Benno’s.

For several seconds, nothing happened. Holes had emerged from Benno’s collar, and peered out through narrow petals into the darkness beyond the door.

Something stirred and came forward.

So whose?

A face. A man. Benno’s height. Roughly Benno’s age. He wore trendy glasses and a Polo shirt. His blue slacks were rolled up so that his ankles were visible above his loafers. He stepped into the doorway, expressionless, and blinked out into the corridor.

Not Benno’s death…

“It is good to meet you,” Onus was saying, though his voice was drowned from Benno’s ears by the roar of pulsing blood.

So whose?

The man took another step into the corridor. He was a finance guy. Big into crypto. He grew up in Fairfield and owned property in Oakland and Manhattan. He was upstate for a conference at a resort in the Catskills. His license was suspended at the time.

Not Benno’s death.

“This is Benno Haim.” Onus gestured. “He has been integral in arranging your freedom. Benno, meet—”

“This man…” Benno’s voice was barely a whisper. He could hardly remember the sentence hearing. He’d given a victim impact statement. He could not remember what he’d said. But he remembered the face. He remembered the man.

The man’s eyes were concealed behind the dim light refracted in the panes of his glasses.

Onus frowned. “Do you know each other?”

Not Benno’s death…

“This man…” Benno’s breath hardened in his throat. “This man killed my family.”