by Sarah Chorn
This city had had a sickness at its rotted core, and he would clean it out. He’d wash the past right off it. It would be as easy as snapping his fingers. No, he didn’t even need to snap his fingers, he just had to think it and the rain would fall harder.
If he’d been a man still, the rain would be falling so hard it would blind him. As the Storm Lord, water parted for him. Lightning illuminated a path for him to travel. It was easier than walking during a sunny afternoon. The storm fed him, aided him, made him stronger.
He got to his feet and started walking, leaving the empty square behind and entering the waterlogged streets of Lord’s Reach. Amiti was dead, but his death had changed Vadden, and for that he was thankful. Amiti was the catalyst, and now Vadden was Becoming, and wasn’t that just poetic? Lightning wrapped around him like a lover, and he moved toward the palace, one deliberate step after another.
He’d always thought that life was meant to be prolonged, but now he understood that it was really just a moment, and he meant to live it. All he had was now; and right now, he would rather be a hurricane than spring rain. He’d prefer to be the sun than just another twinkling light. He’d become a cosmic event. He’d write his name across the heavens with the jagged edges of a shattered infinity.
His heart was raw, an overused muscle. His soul felt like the dark between stars.
His thoughts turned to Eyad.
Fucking Eyad.
There was only so much pain a man could take before he cracked.
All roads led back to his husband. He was like an itch Vadden couldn’t scratch. Eyad doled out pain wrapped up in good intentions, and Vadden had had enough of it. He wasn’t a man now, but a force. He would face his husband, and end this. He would answer pain for pain. The Sunset Lands could not survive with Eyad ruling over them.
He breathed deep, felt the storm whip around him. He was a maniacal god, a destroying creature, a deity bent on devastation. He’d been fed a steady diet of it for years, agony and anguish. It had been carved into his bones, seeped into his blood, tainted his soul. He wasn’t sure what Eyad had expected to happen, but he was pretty sure this wasn’t it.
Another part of him ripped. Shredded. This must have been what happened to Mouse when she’d walked away from them. Was this what she’d felt? This burning ache? This nagging emptiness? The feeling that part of her was dying, making room for something else? Whatever Vadden was, was withering away. Amiti’s death could have killed him, but he had too much anger to die. He had too much rage to just take it.
He was surrounded by shouting. The survivors, those lucky enough to make it this far through his storm, backed away from him, fought the waterlogged streets to move in any direction that put more distance between them. People were forcing their way into buildings, trying to climb up walls, breaking windows, doing anything they could to escape the storm while his lightning liberally struck buildings and singed people where they stood. Bodies floated here and there, traveling down the river that Lord’s Reach had become, toward the ocean, like all things.
He walked steadily toward the palace, fixed it in his sights. In there, somewhere, was his husband. Vadden rubbed the skin over his heart with his fist. That’s why he’d held on to his memories for so long, he realized in a sudden flash of insight. The day he met his husband was the last time he felt anything new. Now, however, he was feeling something new again. Not quite regret. Not quite anger. Not quite anything he could put a name to.
If things were different, he’d gather Eyad’s fractured, broken soul into his hands. He’d pour molten gold like love into the cracks that split him apart, and heal him. He’d turn him into a work of shimmering art; but things weren’t like that, and now he wanted to end this. He was exhausted with this fight of theirs, and ready to move into whatever came next.
He wanted to get to that voice under the palace, somewhere down in the belly of the world.
He drew closer to the palace, saw the lights in the windows, saw the guards dead at the gates, struck down by his lightning, more at the doors. No one was here to watch him, now. No one would stop him. They couldn’t stop him anymore than they could stop a tornado. He was a whirlwind in a raindrop, a cyclone in a body, a storm in a soul.
He was being ripped apart. He was ripping the world apart.
And oh, it felt so fucking good. He had no idea losing control would be this intoxicating.
Life was a tricky thing. He’d spent his entire life trying to do the right thing, and it still landed him here—controlling a storm, tearing apart a city brick by brick, the sky roaring above him, lightning flashing like the hammers of justice. A palace before him waiting for him to invade it.
Thunder cracked above him. He stopped, stared at the doors of the palace, open like a mouth just waiting to swallow him whole, servants scurrying around inside, trying to move precious bits of furniture and other objects away from the water. That’s what this moment felt like. He was being swallowed.
He realized how small he’d always been, how pathetic his skin was, how shriveled and cold his heart had become. He had been nothing but now he was everything. In a flash, in a thought, in the blink of an eye he could turn this storm into a blizzard. He could bring winter. He could break summer. He could…
He could…
He could…
He could do anything. Why had he been so afraid of this? Why had he been fighting it? He sent out his awareness, feeling these new god-like pathways, understanding everything he couldn’t fathom before, felt all that power in him and the sudden understanding that went along with it. He was a conduit. Magic given shape and form.
He wasn’t alone, he realized. He felt others out there. Others like him. He wasn’t the only one changing. There were other lights burning in this darkness.
Interesting.
He’d think about that later. For now, he had a husband to confront, and a government to destroy. He had a palace to bring down and sins to absolve.
He thought of Amiti wearing a noose, stuck in the square he’d drowned. Did Eyad realize he’d killed Vadden as surely as he’d killed Amiti this night? Did it matter anymore? Vadden was gone. Gone, and gone, and gone. And in his place rose the Storm Lord.
He was a broken man. He was a rising god.
He filled his cup with sky and swallowed all of it. He was drunk on starlight, and full of too much blue. There were rainbows in his belly and clouds in his mouth. The moon perched in one eye and the sun in the other. He wept cosmos. He exhaled, and a universe was born. Inhaled, and another died. He was not a man, but a song in a body. A soul, clenched. Agony in amber.
He was…
Undone.
Hunger
Hunger entered the city the day before the world split itself open. She glared at the walls surrounding Lord’s Reach like they’d personally committed a crime against her. The tiny part of her that was still Mouse hated that city; those narrow streets, all the filth and disease in them, the hopelessness and desperation that stunk up the air so thick she could taste it. The nobility, trapped in the confines of Premier Eyad’s largest prison, were the people who really bothered her. They’d lived lives of luxury and plenty before Eyad took over the government and changed everything. Now they were prisoners, unable to leave the city, living hand-to-mouth in the austere trappings of what they used to be. Most of them were cruel, and their cruelty often left marks. It had marked Mouse.
She could leave, they couldn’t—and they vented their frustrations with their fists.
But she wasn’t Mouse anymore, or at least, not only Mouse. She was Hunger, too, and Hunger wasn’t bound by Mouse’s memories. Hunger didn’t care about Lord’s Reach, or the people in it. All Hunger cared about was that voice calling her from under the city. In the previous days, it had grown louder and more desperate. It almost made her sick. She wanted to go to it, but another part of her, perhaps the part that was still Mouse, wanted to run far, far away.
More than that, she’d done all she could out west. She
’d cleaned out all the villages she could find, and now her belly was protruding and round and she was almost satisfied. Almost. Lord’s Reach would fill her up nicely, but that wasn’t really why she was here. She could feel the Bone Lord out there somewhere, wandering around. She felt all those souls waiting to be her dinner. She heard that voice calling her name. She had to move, had to keep going forward, always forward.
She spent the first day in the city drinking up souls until she was so full she felt sick. Then she found an alleyway and got comfortable, the way Mouse had when she’d been nothing more than a street rat hoping to survive another night. The night was warm, and the air was stale. The city lived on around her, not noticing the souls she’d drank up, all the people missing due to her. Starvation had finally gripped the city, swooping in from the countryside to perch itself there like a chicken coming home to roost. With the overcrowding from refugees, the situation was dire. There wasn’t room for people to worry about one more thing.
She wrapped her arms around herself and watched the night pass. She felt morose and she wasn’t sure why. Out there, out in the world, loping from one village to another, she’d been almost drunk on her new life, on the power she held, on the way the souls filled her up and her satisfaction when she emptied out one village after another. But now that she was in Lord’s Reach, she couldn’t help but feel caged. Wolves were meant to roam free, and she was stuck. She couldn’t leave the city even if she wanted too. Something outside of her power was keeping her there. She was trapped, and she was almost willing to gnaw off her own leg to get free. She felt Mouse again, waking up, stronger now; and Hunger didn’t like that. Mouse felt things Hunger wasn’t comfortable feeling.
She had thought Mouse was gone.
She hated feeling like this, like she’d just sacrificed herself. She wasn’t the type to put herself on a platter and serve her soul up for the benefit of others. Hunger, and Mouse, fought and survived; but she wasn’t surviving now, she was waiting and she loathed it. She felt like she’d just participated in something beyond her understanding, and she was just hanging around until the repercussions fell on her.
The night drifted past, and when she woke she wasn’t quite Hunger anymore, but she wasn’t quite Mouse, either. She could still feel the souls around her, but she was full, and had no inclination of taking more into herself. With a shock and a stab of pain, she realized that that part of her life was over. Whatever had happened during the night, while she’d been asleep, had changed her. She was no longer hungry. She was too full, in fact. Overwhelmed by fullness, all those souls stretching out her belly, pulling at her skin. She had no room for herself anymore. How could she exist when she wasn’t just one person? When she held the souls of a nation inside of her?
Why hadn’t she thought about what she was doing? She’d acted on instinct, just satisfied that desire inside of herself. She’d left behind her father, Neryan, and Vadden, her family, right when they were struggling with Seraphina. They’d needed her, and she’d run off to Become… what? A haven for souls? A body so full of others she lost herself in them?
She was grieving, she belatedly realized as she wandered the city streets. She was grieving for herself and the life she’d lost, because that’s what had happened. She’d taken on other lives, and they had replaced her own. Mouse was awake again, and full of remorse over what she’d done. She’d entered Lord’s Reach, and felt the gates close behind her, locking her in. Somewhere in the belly of the world was the period at the end of her sentence. Her time had completed, her job was done. After this, there would be nothing left of her.
She would end, as all things did.
She wanted to feel Neryan’s arms around her. She wanted to hear the beat of his heart, and know what it was to be home again. Home wasn’t a place. Home was the person who held her heart, and that was her father—the only man who had ever made her understand what loving someone until it hurt actually meant.
Mouse missed him. She missed him with a force that nearly brought her to her knees. He’d saved her, and given her security, purpose, and love. To him, she wasn’t just some stray kid, but a person in her own right. She wanted to cry, but she was afraid that if she did, she’d break apart. She’d cry so many tears she felt she’d fill the world with them. There was still something left for her to do. Maybe after this mess was over, she’d find Neryan again and they could run off into the Red Desert with Seraphina trailing after them and be a family again.
She spent the day wandering the city, studying it, seeing it as though it were the last time she’d ever lay eyes on it. She hated this place, but at the same time it had made her. It had carved itself on her heart, and so she held some twisted affection for it, for its hard edges, and the polished stones that hid such ugliness.
Around sunset, she saw guards patrolling the streets. Practiced at avoiding them, she shimmied up a pipe to the roof of a squatting building and leaned over the edge to hear what they were saying.
“Premier Eyad has called all denizens of Lord’s Reach to the square at seven bells! All those who refuse will be sentenced to forced labor!” They moved down the street, shouting the news as they went, anxious whispers trailing in their wake.
She’d made her way to the square, but it was hard to get close. It was well guarded. She heard shouting, lots of shouting, so much shouting her head was ringing with it. It sounded like the entire population was there, packed in like sausages. Guards swept the streets, making good on their threats with all loiterers; beating them, battering them, shoving them in carts and sending them off to labor camps. The ones that argued had their throats slit, or heads bashed in against a wall. They left a trail of corpses and blood behind them.
Something was happening. She felt it in the air, in the tension that coiled around her, in the way the stars, so cold, seemed to grow even more distant; like they wanted to put space between them and the world. The souls roiling inside of her were stirring now, moving and shifting, squirming like eels in a net, eager for release. For release. For whatever was going to happen next, after the world broke like a dropped vase.
The southern sky was being choked by a storm with clouds so black they seemed blacker than the darkest night, rolling steadily toward them. She felt the air get thicker, and smelled rain. How long had it been since she’d smelled rain? She’d give anything for a storm after a year of nothing but sunlight and heat, but that storm wasn’t normal. She’d bet everything she was on that. Clouds weren’t that black. Storms didn’t just appear out of nowhere. She heard thunder, distant and real, mirroring the shouting from the square below her.
It was well after seven bells when she felt the Bone Lord finally enter the city. She felt it like a wave washing over her skin, like the world shuddered with his touch. It was strange, being this close to him. Feeling both so empty, and so full, and feeling the sheer magnitude of his power when she was so used up.
She felt like egg white, thin and nearly transparent. She wasn’t a woman, but a haven; a thin shell keeping all those things inside of her safe.
The Bone Lord was wandering the streets of Lord’s Reach now, and the city began to die under him. With him walking the world, and the storm choking the sky, she felt like she was on the cusp of something momentous. A sick anticipation threaded through her. She felt The Bone Lord’s attention wander, knew he was looking for her, but he seemed content to let her keep her distance, for now. She stayed as close to the square as she could, listened to the shouting and the echoing, not-so-distant thunder until it grew quiet, until she heard some guards below the rooftop perch she’d found herself on speaking. “He’s really putting this poor bastard to the screws,” one of them said.
“It’s a bad way to die,” the other replied. “Premier really wants to send a message with him.”
“Yeah, and I wonder who will be next,” the first guy said.
They wandered off after that, but that gave her all the information she needed to know. Someone in there was dying, and all that
shouting was everyone else trying to prove their loyalty to the Premier so they wouldn’t be next.
Tension filled the air along with that smothering storm. People were just starting to notice the clouds. She heard shouts of surprise, saw one of the guards below her point at the sky. Silence fell in the square, and then some disgusted moaning. She inhaled, and smelled the iron tang of blood, and the promise of rain. The souls in her belly roiled. She was perched on a knife’s edge, waiting to fall. Darkness on one side, and mystery on the other, and all those souls inside of her waiting to be let out.
Whatever would happen, it would happen tonight, and there was no use hiding from it anymore. Fate wouldn’t wait. Fate wasn’t a creature that could be put off. And here she was, hiding like a coward, feeling sorry for herself, moping around and missing her dad. She wasn’t a kid anymore, she was a woman. She’d made choices. She’d done things. She’d led herself down this path, and now the future would come at her whether she wanted it or not.
She’d rather walk into the unknown with her eyes open.
The Bone Lord was here, and he needed her. They needed each other. Perhaps whatever she felt was just anticipation, a gruesome dread. Change was never easy. Maybe that’s all this was—her worry, her fear, her trepidation all rising to the surface. The vestiges of Mouse eating away at the strength of Hunger.
The Bone Lord was pulling at her. He was the ocean, and she was caught in his undertow. There was no denying him. He’d been content to leave her be for a while, but now he was calling her. He didn’t have to use his voice, he just had to think it and she felt the pull. It tugged at her. She was iron filings to his lodestone. She wondered if he even knew he had this kind of power over her. Maybe this is why she’d been so reluctant to come to Lord’s Reach and meet him. Maybe some part of her had always known that in this relationship between the two of them, he held the power. He needed her, and that need trapped her. She was a servant to it, had no will against it, no power to turn him away or deny him.
