by Scott Hale
Vrana squeezed the bone sword he’d given her. Now, she’d have the complete set, because from himself, he’d forged a bone shield as well. “You shouldn’t have,” she said, taking it. “Heh, that’s funny.”
“What?”
“Never used a shield before this.” She gave the sword a swing, crouched down and hid behind the shield. “Kind of nice. Might be in better shape if I’d taken care of myself better.”
The Skeleton went back to picking at himself. “Yeah, can’t argue with that. Way I see it, life’s a membrane in its own right. Certain shapes get through, others get checked at the door. We may not be pretty anymore, Vrana, but damn if we didn’t get through.”
Vrana nodded in agreement. She practiced blocking with the bone shield to get used to its weight and texture. “But it cost us everything.”
“We’re killing God,” the Skeleton said. “Shouldn’t it?”
Shadow laughter rose up in the passages behind them. Their moment was over. They pressed themselves harder, faster, until they were nearly tripping over themselves and one another. Fatty deposits, like piss-soaked glaciers, made narrow their way, causing them to have duck under and crawl. Drapes of pink tissue took all Vrana’s strength, and a fraction of the Skeleton’s, to push aside. They waded through craters of blood, and climbed musculature netted with hardened bacterial growths. Long stretches of tissue, slick as ice, sent the Skeleton spinning comically. Vrana, taking his hands and the Black Hour that came with them, guided him as she flew low, to help clear the rancid rink.
Eventually, God’s insides fell away. Vrana thought they were passing a gaping wound, expecting to find the Deep beyond. It wasn’t a wound but a vista within. Of pumping veins and arteries, and organs, like planets, against striated space. She didn’t know where they were or what she was looking at, but here seemed as good a place as any to leave the Black Hour’s heart. They wouldn’t, though. They’d keep pressing on, because even if God could be killed here rather than the heart, would It actually die? So beholden to tradition and order It was, that Vrana figured It wouldn’t. Belief dictated there was one way to do the dictator in. She wouldn’t be surprised if It didn’t even die when they shoved the Black Hour into Its heart, but committed suicide, instead, to uphold the way of things. In thinking this, feeling the bone sword and shield in her claws, she felt a kind of kinship with God she hadn’t before, and respect. They were both stubborn as hell, but at least they were predictable.
“I killed my mother,” the Skeleton, apparently doing some self-reflection of his own. “She killed my daddy. Like I said, we’re just working our way down the line.”
They went deeper into God. The passage they’d been following since Its backside was especially infected here. The tissue looked like charred, wet wood. Stranger, still, was where it didn’t. Where the tissue and scabby jewels and scarified ley lines they’d become accustomed to transitioned into another material entirely. Cobblestone. It was cobblestone. Behind the black gristle of Death’s lingering, there was cobblestone. A wall of it. And further ahead, unlit torches, their braziers bulging from the throbbing lining.
Vrana didn’t know what this meant. But it had to mean they were getting close.
Not stopping to say anything, because the shadows weren’t far away now, they kept going, until there was more cobblestone than tissue. Until, at last, the way was checked by a stone pillar that’d been screwed deep into this part of God, or swallowed. Around the pillar, a spiral staircase ran upwards.
Vrana took a deep breath, not that there was any actual air to breathe here, and with bone sword and shield in hand, said, “Ready?”
The last of Neksha’s bindings fell from the Skeleton’s face. The black mass raced across that last stretch of virgin bone and defiled it through and through.
“Atticus?”
The Skeleton stared at her, eyes infused with the Black Hour’s sick perceptions.
“Hey, man…”
He shoved past her—
A raven crucified atop a volcano. Humanity climbs the mountain to pick feathers from her flesh, to use as quills. With them, they write history in Corrupted ink.
—and hurried up the staircase.
Vrana followed after him, trying as hard as she could not to think about what she’d seen. The staircase went on much further than she thought. Every time she caught sight of the Skeleton, he rounded the pillar and disappeared.
“Slow down,” she said, her legs cramping.
The Skeleton’s footsteps seemed only to be going faster.
“Atticus, goddamn it.” She caught her breath. What the hell’s wrong with me? “We need to do this together…”
“I can’t!” he cried. “I just can’t!”
Fucking last minute cliché. She forced herself up the stairs, the stitch in her side turning into a full-on tear. I can’t remember the last time I ate. She glanced at her foot that’d been impaled by the viracocha. The hole was spread wide and gushing blood. Aware of that, she became aware of all the other wounds littered across her body; in nauseating synchronicity, they ached and burned, and of course, they bled. I’ve been through worse, God. She ran up the steps, balancing herself against the pillar. Pain was one thing, but now there were other emotions eating away at her. Or rather, they were being eaten from her. Tears leapt from her eyes, perhaps to ride the coattails of what little happiness she had left inside her. As had happened before near the Warden, an intense longing for companionship overtook her.
“Atticus!” she cried, her voice warbling. She was sweating through her feathers. “Atticus, wait!”
The staircase kept spiraling upwards, while her mind couldn’t have gone anywhere but down. She knew what this was. This was God’s immune system. In the shadow of the Skeleton, she’d been protected, but now, without him, she was vulnerable. God’s body was attacking her, exploiting her. It was trying to break her down, until she was nothing but her weaknesses.
She caught a glimpse of the Skeleton. She sped up, so emotional she would’ve hugged him if she could’ve. Her feet went out from underneath her. She fell forward, but as she fell forward, she didn’t hit steps, but a landing. Glancing up, turning over, having never let go of her weapons, she saw she’d reached the top of the staircase. The Skeleton was there. And so was God’s heart.
It encompassed everything. It was the ceiling and the walls, and except for the top of the pillar, the floor as well. It didn’t look like a heart. It was presumptuous of Vrana to think it would. Standing before it, she was dwarfed by its immensity. The pressure of its beating made her ears pop and pushed her back. It was dark purple, streaked with red; the chambers, opaque and imposing, like cathedral windows. Behind them, amorphous shapes toiled, tugging on stringy objects and tubes; organelles, perhaps, or puppeteers. Lining the outside of the heart were massive aortas, most of which were decayed. Hot blood, like wax, oozed from those bent pipes, continually coating the heart in the substance of its own necessity. Much to Vrana’s surprise, there were no signs of vermillion veins; however, there was something else. Something that set her heart at ease, if such a thing were possible right now. A confirmation of the Maggot’s claims.
The center chamber of God’s heart. A long, hardened gash running through it. This was the place. This was the spot. This was where the trail of Death they’d followed for so long finally ended, and also, where it’d begun. It was here Amelia Ashcroft had driven the Red Death dagger into God’s heart so very long ago. One simple act of defiance. A futile gesture, now become the exogenesis for the World of tomorrow. Vrana could only imagine how long Death had waited to reap God. She wasn’t sure how long it would take until She had Joy again, but until then, perhaps It would do.
The Skeleton, blending into the throbbing darkness by way of the black mass, stared at God’s heart. He put his hands to his chest, sank his fingers into the Black Hour made manifest. It resisted him at first, but not for long. Finger deep. Knuckle deep. In a few seconds, he was up to his forearms, digging in
side his ribcage for the Black Hour’s heart.
Vrana didn’t want to interrupt him, but she didn’t want to be blindsided either. She hadn’t forgotten about the Bad Woman’s threat. She hadn’t shown her busted-ass face since Dudael. If she was going to make an appearance, it would be now. Bone sword out, bone shield close to her chest, she spun around, searching for any sign of a gateway opening from Exuviae.
“You do not know what you are doing,” the Skeleton said.
“What?” She realized he wasn’t talking to her. It wasn’t him talking.
The Black Hour said through him, “You will die. I will make sure of it.”
And to the Black Hour, he said, “I’ll hold you to that.”
“They will all die,” the Black Hour said, words like spit flying off his tongue. “Earth is God’s Dread Clock.”
Vrana cocked her head. “What?”
The Skeleton grunted and wrenched his hands from out of his ribcage. With them came the Black Hour’s heart. Snap, snap, slurp. The black mass that’d covered him from head to toe sucked up into the Black Hour. He held the heart towards God’s. They beat at the exact same rhythm as one another’s.
“Atticus?” Vrana said, circling him still. “Atticus, say something.”
The Skeleton, bone-white again, was shaking. Her mind filled in the rattling sound all skeletons seem to make, and it wasn’t as amusing as it might’ve been on another occasion. His eyes, wide and bloodshot, weren’t staring at either of the hearts, let alone this room. She knew the look. She’d had it herself, when the Red Worm rose from its manmade womb. He was elsewhere. The Black Hour, in its final act of desperation, had shown him an apocalypse, a hidden truth, as Deimos had put it so long ago.
“What’s wrong?” Vrana heard the laughter of the shadows somewhere down below. “Do it, man. They’re coming.”
That seemed to snap the Skeleton out of whatever revelation he was in. He marched to God’s heart, damn near ready to smash the Black Hour’s into it. “I’m not sure,” he said. He stared at her. He had no facial features, and yet she found fear in his face. “I saw…” The Black Hour’s heart was inches away from God’s. The massive organ was already reacting, pumping furiously. “I guess I should’ve figured, but…”
A golden light shot out of the Black Hour’s heart. The beam broke across the top of the pillar. The stone liquified under Vrana’s feet. She hopped backwards. A portal formed, the color of harvest. Before either of them could react, the Bad Woman rocketed out of the gateway. With her long greasy arms, she snatched the Black Hour’s heart out of the Skeleton’s hand and brought it to her breast.
“Why take it out? Why not walk it in?” She smiled, her shark-tooth mouth grinning from ear to ear. “Oh, because you thought you’d actually survive this!”
The Bad Woman, midair, swung her greasy body back around and dove for the portal. Vrana, sword and shield first, flew into the air. She smashed into the Bad Woman, knocking her to the ground. The Skeleton hurried over towards them. The Bad Woman jumped to her feet. The hand that held the Black Hour’s heart turned orange. She punched the Skeleton with it, and he went down. He wasn’t moving.
“What the fuck?” Vrana cried, collecting herself. She got up. “What the fuck did you do?”
Vrana took to the air again. She flew at the Bad Woman, slammed the edge of the bone shield into her stupid fucking mouth, splitting it. Now she was smiling from ear to ear, literally. The Bad Woman, unfazed, pointed the heart at Vrana before she could get a swing in with her sword. The heart shook, quivered out Exuvian light.
Teenage school shooters flanked Vrana. They grabbed her legs and yanked her to the vibrating floor. She yelped, swung the bone sword, disemboweling the both of them before they could get a shot off with their cellphones. Their intestines hit the ground, where they sizzled into social media printouts. Vrana tried to get up, but the Bad Woman had the heart trained on her again. Beating in time with God’s, it turned the bone sword into stitched-together leeches. Vrana tried to drop them, but they’d attached themselves to her hand. They sucked in unison, and with every drink they took, feather after feather retracted into her body, revealing her desecrated flesh they’d so long kept hidden.
The Bad Woman watched Vrana intently. “What a waste to carry the heart around for so long and never make use of it.”
Vrana screamed. With every feather that retracted, it felt as if someone were jamming glass into her muscles. She smashed her arm into the ground. The leeches exploded upon impact, but not all of them, so she kept at it, over and over. Her arm cracked and popped, and with the final hit, to kill the final leech, she hit the ground so hard, she broke it.
“Ah!” she cried, grabbing her arm, then letting it go. It hurt too badly to hold.
Flesh started to fall from the Bad Woman’s hand that held the Black Hour’s heart. Noticing this, she spun around to face the Skeleton. He was still out cold, or dead, where she’d left him.
Vrana stumbled to her feet. “What the hell are you?” she yelled over the pumping of God’s heart. “Another fucking witch?!”
The numbers etched into the Bad Woman’s rectangular pupils shone with hellfire light. “No,” she said, once again pointing the heart at Vrana. “I am a keeper. It was my task to retrieve the heart. If it wasn’t for that bitch Elizabeth…” She gave the heart a squeeze. “There was no Exuviae before the Black Hour.”
Golden light crept along the oily inner workings of the heart’s bio-organic gears. Piles of books piled up around Vrana. She backed away from them as their covers flipped open and toddlers crawled out of their pages. Their heads were beehives, and their bodies covered in red marks from where they’d been slapped. You could see the imprints of their parents’ rings.
Broken arm dangling at her side, she tried for the air again. The heart glowed. A gorilla blinked into existence and grabbed her by the hips. It had no face, only a fathomless chasm. Vrana drove her forearm against the animal’s forehead, keeping it away as it kept trying to headbutt her crotch. She beat her wings as hard as she could to keep flying, but the gorilla was too heavy.
“Do you even know what Exuviae is?” The Bad Woman shook her head and headed for the gateway. “Of course, you don’t. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Except, in this case, there’s only one man who treasures it, and he’s not a man.”
Vrana drove her talons into the gorilla’s neck. Instead of blood, sprockets and gears exploded out of the creature’s wound. It let go, and turned to fire when it hit the ground. “That the best you got?” she goaded.
The Bad Woman stopped on the edge of the gateway. She had switched the heart to her other hand, because the one the heart had been in was completely gone. It’d eaten through it. “I have what it gives. I don’t want to kill you. I would not cheat God.”
Vrana dive-bombed the Bad Woman. She lifted the heart to Vrana. Chains exploded out of the muscles threaded along the floor. She went sideways, narrowly missing them. Again, the Bad Woman channeled the heart. But nothing happened. Vrana smiled, said, “Dumbass,” and barreled into the Bad Woman.
Lying on the ground with her, Vrana got on top of her, grabbed the arm that held the heart, which was deteriorating rapidly. Then she felt it. Whatever the Black Hour had conjured, it’d conjured inside her. Vrana reared backwards, fell off the Bad Woman. Her stomach lurched. Her throat swelled. Vomit burst out of her beak. Except it wasn’t food. It was blood, and body parts. Fingers. Hands. Eyeballs and earlobes. A toe. A nipple. Intestines. Vrana scooted backwards, a trail of vile regurgitations before her. She squeezed her beak shut, but it kept coming. She vomited louder and louder, until her throat was raw, and things were getting caught in it.
She wheezed, gasped. Her vision went in and out.
She heard the Bad Woman say, “The Black Hour is a filter. It takes the worst of experience. Where do you think it’s all going to go when God’s gone?
“You could be vomiting up anyone right now, but didn’t you have a boyfrie
nd who died in a similar manner? You’ve tasted him before. Tell me, does he still taste the same?”
Vrana blacked out. Then she came to. A body’s worth of body parts lay before her. She dared not look at them. The Bad Woman was cradling the heart with her forearms, as both her hands had been lost to the consuming presence of the organ. She was headed back towards the gateway.
Shadow laughter ran up the spiral staircase. They were seconds away at best.
Vrana, barely able to stand, stood, and ran beak first at the Bad Woman’s back. Nearly there, she felt something grab her by the wrist. She tried to shake it off, but the grip was too strong. It jerked her backwards, and as she fell backwards, she saw that it was the Skeleton who’d grabbed her.
In one stride and jump, he cleared the gap between him and the Bad Woman and pinned her. Her chest, already a cavity from holding the heart, sank inwards. The Black Hour’s heart slipped away from her and rolled across the ground, nearer to God.
“Tell her what you saw,” the Bad Woman said beneath him.
Vrana scurried with one arm to the Skeleton and her. “I got her,” she said, throwing her body over the Bad Woman’s. She could feel the shadows below the pillar, running up the stairs; earthquakes of anger in their every righteous step.
The Skeleton grabbed the Black Hour’s heart. “If we do this…”
The Bad Woman’s bleeding mouth clamped down over the top of Vrana’s head, like a snake. “Mother fucker!” Vrana cried, as the woman chewed through the top of her head. “What’d you see?” she said, trying to make the Bad Woman choke on her skull.
The Skeleton started for her.
“No, don’t. Do it, Atticus!”
“We kill God, we kill everything. Everyone.”
A wall of shadows swelled over the top of the staircase. They grabbed the Bad Woman first, because she was closest. Hundreds of hands yanked her away, dislodging Vrana’s bleeding, now bald head from her throat.
Vrana tried to get to the Skeleton, but the shadows were on her, too. She sank her talons into God’s muscles for purchase, but they were too strong, too loyal. With one tug, they jerked her towards the mass, to be consumed, to be judged; to be damned to eternal hell.
