by Scott Hale
“Where’s this go?” he asked.
“It’s the quickest way to God,” the Maggot said.
“Alright.”
The Skeleton, forgoing any attempt at proper form, yanked backwards. The door didn’t budge. Laughing, shaking out his shoulders, the Skeleton went at it again. This time, with a throaty growl, he pulled backwards so hard that his left arm broke off at the elbow. Left hand still attached to the door, he screamed, pulled again, and it came free, letting out an explosion of built up pressure. With his right arm, he flung the door like a shot-put into the billowing clouds over Dudael. Then he sat down, and he waited.
A few seconds passed. As the dislodged debris cleared from the tunnel behind the door, the Skeleton’s left arm returned to him. Using its fingers, it clicked and clawed its way across the silt. When it reached him, the arm reattached itself at the elbow. More impressive were the bone fragments. They rose off the ground and gravitated to the break, filling in the places where they’d shattered free from. A few more seconds passed, and he was whole again.
“Hey, Atticus,” Vrana said.
The Skeleton got to his feet. He didn’t touch her and yet—
Smoke trails in the sky. The aurora borealis ablaze. A derelict ship.
—the Black Hour took over her mind all the same. She drew away. It covered him like an aura. Whatever he’d had in place to contain it was failing.
“Yeah?” he said, following the Maggot into the tunnel.
“Uh…” She palmed the side of her head with force, as if the Black Hour were venom to be forced from it. “Did… Sorry. Did Elizabeth make it?”
“If she didn’t, she will soon enough.”
Neksha gave her a weak thumbs-up.
“Hey, Atticus,” she called again.
“Yeah?”
“You okay with all that shit all over you?”
The Skeleton laughed, rubbed the top of his skull. That was his answer.
The tunnel went upwards, not downwards. Anywhere else, that should’ve been impossible, but here, in the Deep, it was expected. The farther they walked, the wider it grew. The silt walls gave way to a combination of it and cyclopean architecture fashioned from green-speckled stone. Vrana didn’t even need to ask to know it was likely indigenous to this place, and this place only. There was no light in the tunnel, and yet everywhere was bathed in a shadowy-blue wash. Its kind was intimately familiar to her. She remembered the same color from when she’d been a little girl, waking up in the middle of the night. It had always excited her as much as it terrified her, because it meant the world was asleep, that anything could happen, and no one could stop it but her.
After ten minutes, which could’ve been a decade in Deep-time, the tunnel expanded beyond the size of the gateway. It was here, in this gargantuan space—a labyrinth without walls; vexing in its vastness—they discovered what the viracocha did with the trophies from their victims. Innumerable mounds of fat were scattered with a kind of sloppy precision throughout the area. Fires, dark as dried blood, with flames like sinew, crackled atop the offerings. Smoke didn’t rise from the fire, but instead, light, which clouded and drifted like smoke; never collecting upon the ceiling, for it was likely there wasn’t one.
Seeing the greasy altars, watching them burn but never break down, Vrana couldn’t help but wonder the point of it all, if there was a point to it all. The Vermillion God was supposed to be a god. What need for It of defenses and gruesome displays to ward off Its enemies? Was it simply part of Its adherence to tradition, to order? To play the role of God, had It gone out of Its way to set the stage and get into costume for a play none but the most dedicated and deranged would watch? Maybe. But Vrana knew weakness. The witches had taught her well. And this was it. God’s power was Its reputation, Its legacy, and Its mistake was that It had been collecting fat, when It should’ve been worried about bone.
They wandered in silence, going nowhere in particular. When Vrana glanced back, she found the way they’d come from was gone; shifted, or closed off, like it’d never been. In its place, there were only offerings, and the dark light, which shimmered like a nasty reflection in a surgeon’s blade. At times, the piles of fat would move, and at other times, slightly slither towards those mounds beside them. She stood by her beliefs that this was still some tough-guy act, but okay, yeah, maybe there was a point to this place. There was something elemental in the air, drawing the remnants to one another, like an electrical current. For a god that couldn’t create but imitate, the mad-scientist route seemed the most obvious next step.
“This is Heaven,” the Maggot said.
“Not much here,” the Skeleton mumbled. “Hope God’s followers kept their receipts.”
Neksha, awe in his voice, asked, “How far does it go?”
“Heaven isn’t infinite, but as with time here, distance is different. Every inch, a kilometer.” The Maggot chuckled. “A mile, rather. Shame that system survived the Trauma.”
“You said that the last you heard, the Holy Child was leaving for Eldrus,” Vrana said.
The Maggot nodded. “When all is said and done, several months will have passed before we’ve reached God, though not at the same speed.”
“I don’t…”
“It is not worth trying to understand. All that matters is that God is dead before the Speaker accepts her role.”
Neksha, hobbling along the tunnel-turned-country, said, “Where are we going, Maggot?”
“God’s heart.”
The Skeleton, picking at the Black Hour, said, “Of course we are.”
“A very long time ago, my mother—”
Vrana cocked her head. She’d forgotten for a moment that Ruth Ashcroft was inside the bug, communicating through it.
“—tried to rescue me and my brother from the Vermillion God. Our uncle, Amon, the real Amon, had given us to It. God was different then; weaker in a way, less organized. It wanted for less. My mother descended into our old estate to save us. She encountered the cocoon that’d spawned the clone of my uncle, and severed the umbilicus that kept it suspended with a Red Death weapon, a dagger.
“While Death cannot reap God, the weapon was the first of its kind. It held an unparalleled amount of Death’s power. The Vermillion God reconstituted itself in the years after my mother escaped, and it absorbed the umbilicus she’d cut into Its body. The Death-touched tissue made its way to God’s heart, and there it’s poisoned It since.
“The Maggot was the first Worm, a failed Worm, created in response to humanity. It was meant to encapsulate humanity, but that proved to be impossible. Seeing humanity as maggots themselves, God attempted to make the Maggot clean the tissue, but even it wasn’t capable of healing God. That’s when it, we, were cast to Its bowels.”
The Skeleton ground his teeth. “So, what you’re saying is that to save the world, all we got to do is have a heart to heart?”
“Yes,” the Maggot said. “As it usually goes.”
Vrana, feeling a second wind (or was this her tenth?) coming on, gave the ax a swing and said, “Where to next?”
“The city of Dis.” The Maggot paused for dramatic effect. “And then the Worm Chambers.”
It’d happened before any of them had realized what was going on. First, they were in the labyrinthine hall, each of them sweating, the Skeleton included, watching as every bead was sucked from their body, into the heated cores of the candles of fat. Then there were walls where once there’d been darkness—emerald-speckled sheets of sedimentary rock that flowed in a way that it called to Vrana’s mind bodies under bedsheets. The burning offerings grew fewer, the walls narrower; and when the Maggot finally urged them on after letting them seemingly wander forever, the walls fell away, the offerings were no more, and before them:
The seamless, stygian chasm in which Dis sprawled, the city, chaotic and cutting, like a colorless coral reef. It was hard for Vrana to believe that, after walking for what felt like, and probably was, an eternity, she could actually appreciate the c
hange of scenery when they came upon the fabled city. She’d heard of it in passing, often in school or from one of Aeson’s ramblings. When they finally made it to the outskirts of the place, the Skeleton brought up how someone had told him Dis had something to do with kings sending slaves to the Nameless Forest, she realized there was more to this city than legend. For one, it was supposed to have existed somewhere in the north during the Trauma, and two, she was pretty sure it was supposed to have been built out of stone, not dried spit.
Set aglow by its own heavenly light, Dis was the crowning jewel of God’s drooling maw. The city was an island in a sea of nothingness, reachable only by three gigantic, arching bridges. Its buildings, if they could be called that, were interconnected haphazardly, sloppily rendered there by heavy tongue-strokes. Densely-packed to the point of near impenetrability, it was hard to say how deep the city went, for details and depth were lost to the sheer, glacial walls of saliva. Stranger still were the wires. Thick, taut cords, black and unanchored, running in mass like telephone wires, cut across the city; occasionally vibrating, but never revealing their cargo.
The Maggot moved to the edge of the cliff on which they stood. “Dis is the closest the Deep comes to what you think of as Heaven. God formed it for that very reason, and then Its followers told themselves Dis was earthbound. They claimed it was a mythical place only the most devout could discover through total subjugation. No one ever discovered Dis, and Dis has never been occupied. The origin of the story was lost, and historians began to convince themselves Dis was real; hence, the connection with the Nameless Forest.”
“Faith is a mother fucker,” the Skeleton said. “The shadows are the ‘heretics’ who turned God down. The believers don’t go here?”
“Heaven is a carrot on the longest stick,” the Maggot said. “Believers do not go to Dis when they die. They just die, and Death takes them. God gets the bodies, if It can. But if It takes over the world, like It had before, then It just might have a chance at the souls, too. Not only on Earth. Earth is just the perfect staging point.”
Neksha, finding his way down the cliff to the nearest bridge, said, “What does It do with the bodies? Does It really need to eat?”
“No, but It needs to grow, and It needs soil to keep Its Worms fed.”
Vrana gave her ax a swing. She fished some human meat out of a pouch and gulped it down. “You’d think a god wouldn’t have to go through all this to get what it wanted.”
“Your give gods too much credit,” the Maggot said. “They are the children. We, the parents. And what are our children if not imperfectly perfect?”
“Fancy words, Maggie,” the Skeleton said, going past Neksha. “Vrana’s right, though. You’d think God would’ve gotten the job done a few eons back.”
“Why do you think It hasn’t?” There was that accent again, full of sarcasm. “An eon is nothing but a blink of Its eyes. And God is very large. It has been eating here, and elsewhere, for a very long time.”
“You’d think It would’ve chosen somewhere else,” Vrana said, “like, a place where the Black Hour wasn’t.”
“There is no place where the Black Hour is not,” the Maggot said. “God’s mistake was thinking that, in all Its infinite years, nothing would discover a way to harness the heart.”
Vrana stared at the Skeleton. He was changed. It was more than that his bones were blackened. The takeover seemed to have taken almost everything. It was subtle, relying on the insanity of the situation to hide its infectious nature. Though he still sounded like himself, he also sounded so distant. He was twitchy, and at the same time, sluggish: his movements measured, like he was trying to run underwater. She’d noticed he’d kept driving himself forward, and she couldn’t help but wonder if that was because something was trying to hold him back. Then, there were his eyes. They had a glint to them, not unlike tears; and in them, a light. It didn’t sit still, but turned over, like a cog.
He was in pain, she was sure of it, and eventually, that cog would grind to a halt, and they’d be out of time for good.
The Skeleton caught her looking at him. Did his bones just stretch around his mouth to smile? He snapped his fingers at the Maggot. The two of them made it to the bridge.
I’m alone, Vrana thought. Aeson was dead. Elizabeth was dead. The mumiya, but especially Sehket and Sopdu, were dead. That was just those who’d been involved, though, and said nothing of her mom, R’lyeh, Bjørn, and everyone else she’d ever known. It was funny she had to get to Heaven to realize how alone was she, but here it was, strangely sobering.
“Neksha?”
Adjusting his wraps, so he wasn’t collapsing upon himself, like a clam closing shut, he said, “Yes, Vrana?”
“You still hear Mr. Haemo’s voice?”
The mumiya nodded.
“You’ve been hearing him the entire way here, not just in the Ossuary, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You know what’s he saying.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Home will be here soon.” Neksha paused. “It is constant, like an alarm. It is only quiet if I am following the Skeleton. Even now, I can hardly hear anything.”
Vrana laughed, said, “I guess we didn’t have the luxury of time to get to know each other, all of us.”
“You know enough to get what you need to done, do you not?” Neksha walked with her towards the bridge. “Is there anything else?”
Vrana picked some meat off the side of her beak and didn’t say another word.
The bridge, already enormous, seemed even larger when they were on it, headed towards Dis. It, like the city, had been built out of spit, and spit alone, and yet it seemed as sturdy as stone. Reassuring as that might’ve been, the sounds were not. When they walked, it sounded as if they were walking on eggshells.
What was with this sudden urge to get to know everyone? Vrana felt the feeling welling up inside her to the point she could smell its desperation, like wafting rot from a cavity. It was this place, the Deep. It was nothing but loneliness and despair. No wonder the shadows hated the living. In place of the necessary elements to sustain life, there were only emotions; a polluted atmosphere of negativity coughed out over millennia by the brooding beast that slumbered here. It was draining, and she wondered if it was meant to be. Her mom used to say when Vrana shivered, it was because someone had walked over her grave. That’s what this felt like, except she was the one doing it. She was the ghost, haunting herself.
They’d all be, wouldn’t they? If God got Its way.
Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m getting cold feet. Because I might die soon. With strangers.
Halfway across the bridge, Vrana heard skittering, and flapping, much like a ship slicing through still waters. She drifted to the edge and looked over. Something long and muscular, like a rat, slipped underneath the bridge, out of sight. She pulled back, took the ax in both hands. Spinning around to the others, she spotted a shadow—the same Felix and Audra had used to penetrate the Void last year. It stared at her, silver fangs dripping, and stepped backwards, off the bridge. Instead of falling, it faded into and became part of the chasm’s blackness.
“We’re not alone,” Vrana said, rejoining the others.
Neksha rearranged his torso’s bindings so that he could speak. “What did you see?”
“I heard it,” the Maggot said. “This place is supposed to be empty.” It swung its phlegm-colored girth around. “We should go faster.”
The Skeleton didn’t need to be told twice. Squirrely as his movements had become, he was still pressing on.
Vrana sprinted up to him, said, “Atticus, you—”
Tortured angels tethered, toiling in sputum.
She hit the brakes, took a few steps away. She’d forgotten about the Black Hour aura around him. Blinking her eyes, shaking her head, Vrana couldn’t figure why she was still seeing the grotesque hallucinations of Black Hour angels scattered across Dis. Looking at the others, who were staring i
ntensely at the city, she realized the hallucinations weren’t in her head.
The abominations were real.
To call them angels seemed wrong, but they were in the Deep after all, and what better heavenly hosts than things that looked as if they’d been heaved from the sea? The creatures’ heads had been lopped off above their mouths, and rising out of their gullets was a fleshy lure attached to which was a gold, glowing bulb. Out of their bent backs grew long, decayed strands of kelp that’d been braided together into a set of wings. Their bodies were puffy, scarred-over; the sides of their torsos, arms, and legs rigid, and patterned after a nautilus shell. Around their waists, they wore belts. Attached to them were computer parts—motherboards, possessors; GPUs and CPUs; and coils of wiring—that’d been painted over in the strange symbols of some future cult’s cryptic language.
Vrana looked at the angels, to the Skeleton. “Did you do this?” she cried.
The Skeleton didn’t stop, except for when his body tried to jerk him backwards.
“It is the heart,” Neksha said. “It is trying to stop him.”
The Maggot threw its girth into its movements. “The Black Hour’s leaking.”
“Are you saying it’s making these creatures spawn?” Vrana asked, hurrying down the bridge.
“I don’t know, but if too much insanity is let loose, God’s going to know we are here. We can’t do this without the Skeleton.”
The angels watched from on high, the beams from their bulbs shining like spotlights on the bridge. Vrana and the others ran as fast as they could. More angels filed in from the depths of Dis, until every peak and perch were occupied. It wasn’t long until Vrana couldn’t look at the city, because the lights coming off the creatures formed a singular, blinding beam.
More strained sounds swept up from underneath the bridge. The shadows called to them with laughter and whispers. Suddenly, the temperature was soaring, climbing as curious monstrosities scaled the walls. The chasm was alive.
“Do you see it? Where the bridge meets the city?” the Maggot asked.
