by Scott Hale
Audra laughed, said, “How the fuck did you think that plan was going to work in the hands of a man named Blodworth?”
Edgar didn’t say anything.
“How did you take over the Nameless Forest?”
“That’s a long story,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.
“But the Skeleton still got ahold of the Black Hour’s heart, even though you did.”
“The Skeleton…” Edgar huffed, swallowed his hate. “Was locked up here. He escaped. You can’t fault me for that. The man is immortal. Lotus and I filled his head with stories about the Dread Clock. We were going to appeal to his need to save his family and get him to go in there and take the Clock out, because it was holding God back. Well, he went and did it, anyway. He’s not ours to control, but he’s clearly not in control of himself these days.”
“So, another plan that didn’t work out the way you wanted it to. But you still got what you wanted in the end.”
“God works in mysterious ways,” Edgar said. “As I said, God works.”
A shuffling of feet came from behind them. So lost in their sibling sparring session, Audra had forgotten they were on a balcony in Ghostgrave. She turned and blurted out, “Felix?!” but that wasn’t Felix standing there.
It was a child; a boy, and he was the right age, and even had the same hair color and complexion; and in the right light, meaning almost complete darkness, and if she’d been drunk enough, meaning she made others sloppy just passing by them, she might’ve thought this crude imitation was Felix. But it wasn’t Felix. And it was a crude imitation. Gangly limbs fixed to a doughy body with a swollen belly that looked as if he were simultaneously starving and overindulgent. The boy’s face had the appearance of a craggy rock over which a tanned hide had been stretched. His lips were thin, and the teeth behind them, too big. His ears weren’t the same size, and almost looked chewed up, like a stray cat’s might look. And then there were his eyes—those large and plotting orbs, constantly wet as if in a perpetual state of begging and flecked with chips of vermillion.
It was in this moment that Audra knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God had not created her, her brother, or any other human that had ever existed. This boy was the Anointed One, the Holy Child’s opposite, and yet, this was the best It could do?
“No, I’m sorry,” he said, “not Felix. My name is Valac.”
Valac, in his robes that ran well past his feet, slithered over to them like a serpent and stood at Edgar’s side.
“But it sounds as if you will be reunited with Felix soon.”
“What?” Audra said.
“The Holy Child and the Mother Abbess depart for Eldrus.” Valac smiled, baring his bloodstained teeth. “I so look forward to having them for dinner.”
CHAPTER XIX
Vrana reached for Aeson in her sleep but couldn’t find him. Her hand closed around a pile of sand, and being so tired it hurt, that was good enough for now. Weakly, she called out to him. She didn’t expect him to respond, yet seconds later, he did. She told him to, “Cmbacknbd,” which, in the waking world, translated to, “Come back to bed.” Someone told her he would, and thinking it’d been Elizabeth who’d said it, she let out a contented moan and began to dream.
She dreamt of the Ossuary in the shape of an hourglass on its side. In each “bulb” the desert was divided, the narrow “neck” between them filled not with sand, but a black, twinkling fluid, as if outer space had been liquified. Beyond the Ossuary, there was nothing. It simply drifted in the churning, gray nebula that framed it, like a superimposed, blown-up picture of a cluster of galaxies. Vrana knew this because she was far above the desert, her bird eyes giving her a bird’s eye view of this strange and alien landscape. Her wings, acting independently of her mind, kept her afloat.
She couldn’t move. She didn’t want to. She was happy where she was, perched on the precipice of this ashen cosmos, watching the events play out in the hourglass. Everything that was going to happen had already happened, in some form or fashion. That was the beautiful simplicity of the device. There was no guesswork involved. No Worms of the Earth or Maidens of Pain and Joy; no demented kings; no holy children. There was no raven-headed Night Terror tearing across the sands with aspirations that promised only the messiest of obliterations. There was nothing in this Ossuary but bone, and balance.
Then, the hourglass moved. Upended, sand from the left bulb flowed through the neck. But when it crossed into that starry, abyssal substance, the sand was transmuted into earth and water. It reached the right bulb, displaced the sand there, forcing it to cross into the neck, where it was also changed; not into earth and water, but shadows and veins. They washed through the left-hand path into the Ossuary. Immediately, both sides began to fill and terraform what’d once been perfect and uncomplicated.
Vrana gasped. In the left bulb, she saw herself there, amongst the shadows and vermillion veins. To the right, suspended in the muddied water, was Aeson.
“She’s out,” Aeson said, in Elizabeth’s voice.
“Girl probably hasn’t slept a wink since Holy Child knows when,” the image of Vrana said, in the Skeleton’s drawl.
Vrana steadied herself in the nebula. These words were nothing new. She’d heard them before as she’d been falling asleep.
The dark liquid in the neck of the Ossuary hourglass began to part; not like an ocean, but like a comb through black hair. She could see the follicles of the liquid, and the pale bed to which it was connected, where it seemed the stars were being fed through.
Again, Vrana gasped. She didn’t steady but urge herself forward, giving her wings no opportunity but to carry her closer to the hourglass. The witches had abused Vrana’s abilities when they’d enslaved her; it made her a powerful lucid dreamer. But this right here? This, she couldn’t cope with.
In the narrow neck, centered on that celestial scalp, was the Blue Worm. The dark, bruise-blue tentacles weren’t wrapped around its body, but swirling around it, creating the fleshy whirlwind that’d parted the liquid. The Blue Worm’s body was the color of coal, and vaguely human in that it had two thick arms and legs attached to an equally meaty, sexless frame. Vrana had seen the Blue Worm’s face before: once on Lacuna before sealing it away, and many times after, when Pain had forced her to use the necklace to invade the minds of the Children of Lacuna. But this time, the Worm’s face was different; that is, it was smiling, and in its sockets where there should’ve been eyes, there were stones. The blue, white-shocked sealing stone, split in two and forced roughly into those cavities.
This isn’t real. This isn’t happening.
The Blue Worm held out several tentacles to the left, where Vrana’s image stood swamped by veins and shadows, and now, a blizzard of feathers falling from the bald ravens stitched by the millions across the sky.
You’re asleep. You can’t do this. I have the necklace!
The Blue Worm pointed its other tangle of tentacles to the right, where Aeson drifted in the earthy sea, except there was a shore above him, and on it, a small house with a large, wet, varicosed hand attached to it; the hand was reaching into the water, fishing with its hooked fingers for him.
Wake up, Vrana.
Behind the Blue Worm, there were snow-capped mountains bleeding lava, spewing fire. The hellish paints came together and formed a mural of Adelyn on the desolate range.
Wake. The. Fuck. Up.
The Ossuary was unbalanced. The shadow and veins and feather-choked side of it weighed heavier than Aeson’s. But the more the hourglass tipped, the closer the giant came to him in the water.
Stop it.
Inches away—the hand was inches away from snagging Aeson.
Stop it!
Her thoughts came down from the nebula like a guillotine and severed the Ossuary’s neck in two. The desert split in two. The balance was restored.
But then starry liquid started to pour out of the neck at an alarming rate. It fell into the ashen nebula, and soon the nebula was changing col
ors, growing darker. Soon, there would be nothing but darkness and stars.
The bulbs fell away. Remnants of the neck plummeted into the stygian cosmos. Still, the Blue Worm remained. Its eyes began to spark, like lightning dancing across sheets of ice, and it said, “Wake up, my love.”
Vrana shot up in bed, flinging feathers with her rising. It’d felt as if someone had been tugging on the Blue Worm’s necklace around her neck.
Wake up, my love.
Panting, she twisted her neck as she scanned the room, waiting for eyes to adjust to the desert darkness.
Wake up, my love.
It couldn’t have been any less than ninety-five degrees in here, but her blood was running cold. She turned over to Aeson’s side of the bed, but he wasn’t there. Just sand, or rather, bone.
Wake up, my love.
The Blue Worm had spoken the words, but it hadn’t been the Blue Worm’s voice she heard. She knew the voice, though. She knew it intimately. It aroused her in the worst way possible. It made her stomach burn and her throat tighten. The skin beneath her feathers became clammy. A nauseating injection of adrenaline turned her brain to noise. Like a child that may or may not have done something wrong, her instincts kicked in and prepared her for punishment.
And then, there they were, the voice and words: “Wake up, my love.”
Vrana got out of bed. Her talons clicked against the bone-forged tile. She couldn’t find Elizabeth, or the Skeleton. She knew he’d gone out to dig deeper on the mumiya. It only made sense Elizabeth was with him. But she wished they were here. Vrana was terrified.
“Come to the balcony, my love.”
Her blood finally froze, and she froze, too. Every scar on her body felt as if they were being pulled apart. She clenched her claws. The taste of blood and afterbirth filled her mouth. She could feel the nagging sensation of pubic hairs between her teeth. Her tongue prickled; phantom orifices ground into her taste buds. She retched; hugged herself. That was Joy’s voice. Joy was here.
Using every ounce of her quickly fading strength, Vrana went to the balcony that looked out onto Kres. Below the building, the restorative lake, Sanies, was changed. The waters were thick with moss and algae, and gray, and didn’t swirl but swell inwards, reaching a five-foot peak before breaking over themselves, like a fountain in reverse. Around the lake, where Vrana and the others had sat earlier in the day, were six piles of mumiya wraps, the bodies to which they belonged indistinguishable from the sand.
Vrana doubled back, grabbed the Red Death ax off the table, and hopped over the balcony. She glided down to the ground. Other than the waterfall of bone that showered around the village, there were no sounds out here. It was Vrana and her breathing, and the pathetic whimpers she was making, like the wild animal she resembled might when trapped.
The Sanies’ waters came together, fell apart; came together, fell apart; but this time, when they split, just like in her dream, something was left behind. But it wasn’t the Blue Worm that stood upon the lake.
It was Joy.
The Maiden. With her pale, wet skin and her disgusting satin dress. The Witch. With her cheerful eyes and corpse-colored lips. Crestfallen. With hair down to the small of her back, silver as a sickle. Death’s daughter. With her heaving breasts and swaying hips, and dainty, gore-caked fingers.
Joy stepped off the lake, a harrowing seductress, and onto the sand. Her bare feet sank into the pulverized bone. She wiggled her toes in, pleased.
Vrana couldn’t find anything to say, and then, staring at Joy long enough, had nothing to say. There was something different about the witch. From her time in the Void, she came to know every inch and imperfection of the sisters’ bodies, and something was definitely different about Joy’s.
It was her stomach, or rather, her pelvis. It seemed swollen, as if she’d managed to break all its bones.
Vrana squeezed the ax haft, took a step forward.
Joy grabbed the sides of her satin dress, began slowly raising it.
She showed off her bare feet and ankles.
Then, the dress went higher, to her calves and knees.
At her thighs, she stopped. Joy made a noise. A line of bright red blood slithered down both sides of her legs, dribbled off into the sand.
She kept going. As she raised the dress higher and higher, the stream of blood grew heavier, darker.
Stopping below that barren, cesspit of a hole between her legs, she kept the dress there, like a magician teasing her audience. Now, her legs were drenched in blood, and chunks of skin and muscle were coming down with the leakage and sticking to her.
“Where’s Aeson?” Joy asked, softly.
Vrana’s beak quivered.
“Oh, that’s right.”
Joy pulled back the curtain. She lifted the white satin dress to her belly button. Her pelvis was engorged. Stretch marks wormed across her skin. Her bones jutted out awkwardly. Her vagina was swollen and drooling the fetid mixture of blood and gore that now coated her legs. Long, stringy pieces of dark hair hung from it, like cobwebs.
Vrana managed a half-hearted, “No…”
Joy took the lips of her sex and pulled them apart. They peeled away like the sticky insides of fruit. Letting out a groan, she arched her back, pushed her ass out.
“Here he is.”
A red deluge dropped from her vagina and crashed into the ground. The stinking torrent spread across and seeped into the sand. Chunks of flesh and meaty bits of muscle fell out of her. Then came severed fingers and ripped-off toes. Then more hair. Teeth trickled down, and Joy quivered when they clipped against her clit. She pulled her lips farther apart, until they began to tear at the sides. There was a sucking sound that came from inside her, and an arm fell out of her, smacked against the sand. And then a foot. And another. The vaginal diarrhea worsened; bones rode on a tide of shit and piss and pink, battered organs. There was a lung. There was a liver. There was a heart. With one hand, Joy shoved a fist inside herself, gripped something, and pulled out a pair of testicles, which she hurled over her shoulder into the Sanies.
“Hold on a second.”
Vrana was dead on the inside.
Joy drove her fist back into her vagina, biting her lip as she did so. She grunted, groaned, and oozed mucus all over herself. Having finally found what she was searching for her, she nodded, yanked. Out came her hand, and in it, a hunk of hair attached to a head.
Aeson’s head.
Joy stood upright, Aeson’s severed head wedged between her legs, gripped by her sex. His lifeless eyes stared into Vrana’s.
“You took my Joy away when you killed Pain,” she said. “Now, I’ll take yours, and give you pain in return.”
Joy pushed Aeson’s head back inside her, closed her legs, and dropped her dress around her feet. Instantly, its hungry fibers began to soak up his remains.
“Now the scales are balanced, Night Terror.” Joy did a curtsey. “Enjoy the rest of your night.”
A door slammed back. “What the fuck is going on, yeah?” Elizabeth screamed from the nearby building.
Vrana saw her, Neksha, and the Skeleton in her peripheral. She whimpered, “She… She…”
And then Vrana charged forward.
Joy took one large stride backwards, onto the top of the lake.
Vrana kicked off the ground, flew upwards into the air. Directly over Joy, she reared the ax back and threw her body weight into the descent.
Joy blew her a kiss. She held out her arm. A woman materialized out of the lake. Joy forced her into her embrace.
“Say goodbye, Isla,” Joy said.
This woman named Isla stared at Vrana in such a way that, on any other day, might’ve made Vrana regret killing her, too,
But not tonight.
Tonight, she’d kill everything that stood in her way.
Vrana drove the ax downwards. About to hit her, Joy and Isla were overtaken by the water. The ax cut through it, Death’s touch murdering the very molecules it was made of. But when the water rec
eded, Joy and Isla weren’t there.
Vrana crashed into the shallows of the lake. The ax slipped from her grip and went tumbling into the deep. On her knees, her hands holding nothing but water, she stared at the place where Joy had been standing. Then she looked at Elizabeth, Neksha, and the Skeleton, every piece of her about to burst into tears.
And then she looked backwards, to the beach, where the love of her life was smeared across it. Unrecognizable. Unreachable. Unsavable.
Gone.
CHAPTER XXX
Isla hurried out of the Void as fast as she could. Still hot with the desert’s heat, she floated like a runaway ember through the portal, destroying everything she touched. The gateway gave, and it heaved her out onto the top of Onibi’s lake. She fell onto her hands and knees and skated that way across the ice. Her body temperature plummeted as the cold crept back into her bones. Burgeoning clusters of Rime Rot exploded across her skin—her immunity, even after having been here for months, already compromised by leaving temporarily. She pulled them out. Blood dribbled down her arms and face. There was pain, but Joy was worse, and she had to get away from the woman as quickly as she could.
Making it to the snow-swept shore, she collapsed. The ice she’d struggled along sank into the waters behind her. Not looking back, she heard the portal to the Void beginning to close. It sounded like a muffled scream of someone held under water. Gritting her teeth, she came to her feet and trudged onto the tundra. She knew Joy would see her in the stark nothingness of Gelid, but she had to try. She wouldn’t live with herself if she didn’t, not that she expected to live at all; not after what she’d seen the witch do to that Night Terror.
Was it early evening or early morning? Isla couldn’t tell. The sky was overcast, and this frozen wasteland, a dismal gray. The snow was muted, more silent than usual. Overthinking, she wondered if the world was in mourning. She considered if, because of her actions, something had been put into motion that everything in this universe had given everything it’d had to bring to a stop. It was overdramatic, she knew, but this feeling of hers wasn’t wrong. Joy and her sister Pain had shared a portion of their power with Lux in the Old World, and in doing so, had created a social justice warrior who’d almost managed to bring Lillian down. Lux might’ve even been the one that’d caused enough outrage to force the Vermillion God to turn on the world.
