God's Last Breath

by Sam Sykes

  “They aren’t controlled,” Mocca replied. “Not in the way you’re thinking of. It’d be more accurate to say that they’re vessels, waiting to be filled. They are bereft of the common maladies of mankind and filled with …”

  “Stop.”

  Lenk found the words hurled from his mouth, a spear sunk into the earth at Mocca’s feet. His eyes went hard, bright with fever hotness. He snarled to be heard over the sudden rush of blood in his ears.

  “Don’t you fucking try to confuse me,” he spit. “No more of your fucking fancy speeches, your big fucking words, your trying to show off how smart and wise you think you are. You tell me exactly what’s going on with these abominations and you do it right the fuck now.”

  Lenk had seen Mocca’s smiles, those saccharinely sweet curls that looked like what he imagined his grandfather had worn. Lenk had seen Mocca’s anger, bright and burning with a passion that he couldn’t help but contain. But the expression that smoothed the face of the man in white now, that drained the light from his eyes and the emotion from his face and left behind something cold and dark and terribly, terribly old …

  Lenk couldn’t remember the nightmare where he had seen that before.

  “How can you be confused?” he whispered, his voice soft as skin parting beneath a scalpel. “After so long, so much suffering, how is it you still don’t understand?”

  The skin around Mocca’s chin rippled, split. The heads of vipers peered out with red eyes from beneath his skin. But where Lenk had merely found the beard of serpents unnerving before, with their hissing and snarling, he found their silent attentiveness on him terrifying.

  “How is it that you still cry out in the dark?” Mocca whispered. “How is it that you can still scream out for gods who don’t listen? You pray, you plead, you fall to your knees and beg for someone, for anyone to hear you, to listen, to come save you, and the moment I lift so much as a finger to do so, you dare call me an abomination?”

  He held out his hands in a vast gesture. Slowly, the Chosen began to stalk toward him, their eyes glassy stares fixed upon Lenk. He began to back away, glancing back toward his tent, which seemed so impossibly far away now.

  “You don’t understand. You never understood. You think the gift I gave them was their flesh? Their beauty? Mere vanity. I showed them a kindness gods could never bring themselves to.”

  A smile, just as cold and ancient as his anger, crept across Mocca’s face.

  “I took away their pain.”

  “Took away the pain …”

  The Chosen burbled in an off-key chorus, whispering in the dark.

  “Took away …”

  “… the pain … the pain …”

  “They’re monsters,” Lenk whispered, eyes unblinking. “Mindless, vicious demons—”

  “Have they harmed anyone?” Mocca asked. “Have they not obeyed? They are not mindless. They simply know no more pain, no more fear, none of the curses that their creators saw fit to burden them with.”

  “And what do they know?” Lenk spit. “Without that, what’s left? What else did you take from them? Joy? Love?”

  “They don’t lack those, Lenk. They have them in abundance. They know everything they need to know, for they share the greatest, most compassionate mind that creation has ever known.”

  Mocca smiled, raised a finger to his head, and tapped his temple.

  And behind him, a hundred bodies mirrored the gesture perfectly.

  “Mine.”

  Fuck.

  Lenk hadn’t the wit to think of anything greater, hadn’t the breath to voice even that. He barely had the energy to stand in the wake of this revelation.

  This had been it, the plan all along. Mocca claimed he wanted to save the world, heal its people. And this was how he intended to do it: not by curing the diseases or abolishing the war, but by assuming control. Over everything. Over every body, every mind, every …

  A cold fear struck the thought from his head.

  He found his eyes drifting to Shuro’s tent.

  “Lenk,” Mocca said, “don’t.”

  But he did.

  He bolted to her tent, pulled back the tent, searched for her.

  And saw only empty sand.

  He turned back to Mocca. The man in white shot him a sad, almost pitiable smile and held his hands out helplessly.

  “She doesn’t understand, Lenk,” he said. “She’s too afraid, too wounded to understand. You asked me to spare her.” He held out his hand to Lenk. And beneath his smile, a dozen serpents opened their mouths and hissed. “Let me help her.”

  And the voice at the back of Lenk’s head spoke a single, clear word.

  Run.

  And he obeyed.

  Heart in his throat, blood in his ears, stumbling over the sand beneath his boots, he tore across the field. The glassy eyes of the Chosen shone in the dark, each of them a mirror reflecting his flight as he scrambled for his tent, burst through the flap, and emerged inside to see it.

  The Chosen, a tall and lanky woman, almost looked surprised to see him as she stood in the center of the tent, his sword clutched in her hands. But the shock slowly slid into a smile that tried to be as warm and reassuring as Mocca’s. But it lacked something—some essential lie, some crucial facsimile of compassion—and her wide grin more resembled a scar full of teeth across her face.

  “Drop it,” Lenk hissed.

  “Try to understand,” the Chosen said, her voice lilting with a mannerism that wasn’t her own. “We are making a world free of pain, of fear. A world where none need gaze upon his neighbor and wonder what plots lurk within. A world where no one needs to worry about disease or filth.”

  The Chosen’s grin almost split her face in half.

  “I can create a world for you, Lenk,” she said, “a world where you and she can be together. Just you and Kat—”

  He couldn’t hear the rest of what the Chosen said.

  Not over the sound of him screaming.

  He couldn’t say what it was—maybe all the terror and doubt he had buried in his head to get this far was finally breaking out in one glorious scream, or maybe he just couldn’t stand to hear her name spoken from the lips of this monster—but he charged forward, leapt, and tackled the Chosen at the waist.

  She toppled to the earth, thrown off balance, and landed with a grunt. He seized the sword, tried to prize it from her grasp. Her long fingers tightened around the scabbard and pulled it back. She was bigger than he was, and stronger, too; she all but hauled him off his feet as she clambered back to hers.

  He grabbed the hilt of the blade and pulled it free of its scabbard: sharp and upward. It cracked against the Chosen’s jaw with a snapping sound. Her head jerked backward. Her mouth gaped open, a high-pitched shriek tearing itself free from between her teeth.

  A shriek echoed outside the tent. A hundred agonies in a hundred voices.

  Lenk reeled from the scream, trying to clap his hands over his ears even as he struggled to hold on to the sword. But her pain shot through his skin, shook his bones against his body.

  “It hurts!” she screamed in a voice that was her own, almost childlike so shrill it was. “It HURTS!” Horror scarred itself across her perfect features as she stared down at her perfect hands, glistening with her own, perfect red life. “You said it wouldn’t hurt! You promised …”

  She shut her eyes tight. She took in a long, shuddering breath.

  When she opened them again, they were the size of fists and brimming with raw, red veins.

  “You promised!”

  All the instinct fled him—the urge to run drained out of his legs and pooled at his feet, the sword fell from his grasp, there was nothing left in him but the paralyzing terror at what was occurring before him.

  Though he hadn’t words or prayers or gods to say what that was.

  The grin was gone, the crude compassion was gone. The Chosen covered her face with her hand, drawing in wheezing, sobbing breaths that sent her body shaking with each one.
And with each shudder of her body, she grew.

  She changed.

  Her skin quivered, rippled like water, split like paper. The sinew beneath glistened bright red for a moment before it hardened over into thick, coarse scales in a single breath. The tips of her fingers split apart, ebon claws curling over her face. Her hair fell out in thick clumps to fall upon the sand and curl into ash.

  From between her fingers, he caught the barest glimpse of the ruin that had been her face: the bulging bloodshot eyes, the lipless mouth gaping open, the brimming rows of fangs from which a guttural, inhuman howl escaped.

  “YOU PROMISED!”

  She lunged for him, arms stretching longer than could ever be possible. He avoided it more by falling than rolling, the blood leaving his legs and sending him collapsing to the earth.

  He found his footing along with his sword as he seized the hilt in both hands. She descended upon him, her mouth stretching open impossibly wide, his fear reflected back at him in the polish of her jagged teeth. He found enough instinct to lash out with the blade, to catch her in the mouth.

  A gout of black blood spattered the canvas walls of the tent.

  Her roar, in all its monstrous fury, was broken by a sudden sob of agony.

  Thick. Wet. And unnervingly human.

  She recoiled, clutching the wound that had cloven her face and shrinking back against the wall, weeping through the black blood seeping through her fingers.

  Lenk didn’t wait to see what she’d do next.

  He tore out of the tent. All around him, he could see the faces of the Chosen. The eerie grins and glassy eyes had been replaced with wails of shared agony, with eyes wild with confusion. Those few who could find him through the pain turned toward him, began loping toward him with limbs growing suddenly longer.

  Run.

  The voice, the instinct, drawing his stare toward the distant desert, the wide-open sands before him. He turned to run, to keep running until he died. Only one thing kept him from doing so.

  Soft, meek, barely audible through the animal howls in the night sky.

  A scream.

  Her voice.

  It would have been smarter to flee, he knew. A hundred fights, a hundred scars, a hundred corpses had taught him to listen to that voice that told him to run, to save himself so he could kill again.

  The man who wanted to lead a good life wouldn’t have turned and run toward the scream, back through the fray of inhuman howls and wide, furious eyes.

  But then, those same fights had taught him that doing good meant, more often than not, doing something dumb as fuck.

  They bled past him, their screaming, gaping mouths and their red-rimmed stares, as he shot through the crowd of the Chosen. Those claws that reached for him with impossibly long arms, he lashed out at. His blade caught flesh, cut fingers, sent palms back bleeding. And each wound sent a new chorus of pain echoing through the masses.

  “—hurts! Why does it hurt? Why—”

  “—said it wouldn’t, said he could help—”

  “—lies, lies, lies, everyone lies, everyone lies—”

  He shut his ears to their screams. As much as he could, anyway. Through their wild cries, he focused on that soft mortal scream. He focused on the direction of it, forced himself to run faster as he tore off toward the edge of the sands and to the oasis.

  On the shores, by the light of the stars reflected against the water, he could make out their shapes. The two Disciples, their withered old-man bodies on serpentine coils, their great, jutting column heads swaying precarious as they bent over a flat rock formation.

  And the slender, silver-haired shape chained to it.

  With every step he could see her more clearly: her face twisted in agony, her body writhing in the chains securing her to the stone slab, the silver shimmer of her hair, the clench of her teeth as Shuro tried to bite back a scream.

  And failed.

  Their claws were in her body, sank into her throat and abdomen. She twitched beneath their touch, pulled against her chains, roared in fury as much as in pain. Whatever they were trying to do, she was resisting. But he could see the tremble in her flesh, the twitch in her muscle. She would give out, sooner or later.

  But only if he missed.

  A sharp breath. A burst of speed. Two hands wrapped around a thick hilt. The earth left his feet as he leapt.

  He landed on the Disciple’s back. It let out a groan as it buckled beneath his weight, but only for a moment. In another, he had rammed his sword through its neck, the blade bursting out its throat. Its claws left Shuro’s flesh as he bore it to the earth and jerked his sword from its throat.

  It stared up at him through its eyes, scribbled black and unreadable. And though whatever humanity it once bore had withered off its ancient face, there was still just enough to show surprise.

  “But …” it hissed, “we were going to …”

  Lenk didn’t bother waiting to hear what it had to say. He whirled to face the other demon, his sword held high and smeared with black ichor.

  The remaining Disciple regarded him carefully through its scribble-black eyes, its ancient and withered face set in a hard frown. Slowly, it slid its claws from Shuro’s neck. She went limp on the stone.

  “Inevitable.” When its dust-choked voice escaped its lips, it did so on a long, purple tongue. “After all we have done, you are still so ungrateful.”

  The creature moved and Lenk tensed, ready to attack. But it simply slid about and slithered away, disappearing into the waters of the oasis and vanishing beneath the water with nary a ripple left behind.

  Lenk kept one eye on those waters as he rushed to Shuro’s side. She lay still, her breath shallow, unharmed but for the black wounds marking her flesh where the Disciples’ claws had punctured her. As to what harm they actually did, he couldn’t bear to speculate.

  His sword came down in two heavy chops. The chains shattered from her wrists. Her body slid off the stone into his arms and lay there, heavy and still.

  “Shuro,” he whispered. “Shuro, wake up.” He shook her lightly, patted her cheek. But she did not open her eyes, she did not stir. “Shuro, please.” He felt his eyes grow hot. He forced words between clenched teeth. “You were right. You were right about everything.”

  “She was not.”

  Across the sand and water, through the writhing wails of the Chosen, directly into a mind that felt aflame with fever. Lenk heard the voice keenly, viciously close and rife with hate. He felt his eyes drawn across the sands, back toward the camp. And there, amid all that screaming agony, he could feel a pair of eyes set upon him.

  “She is not.”

  At the center of the mass of writhing flesh, a shadow began to grow. Like a long breath drawn in, it rose out of the tangle of wailing bodies. It rose until a crown of serpents scraped the stars, until the earth groaned beneath its weight, until eyes big and white and cold as the moon stared down at Lenk from on high.

  “And neither are you.”

  He raised one colossal foot. It came down with the sound of thunder. Lenk would have felt the shudder of the earth in his very bones if the feeling had not left his body to make room for the fear. He stared up, helpless, as the great form of Khoth-Kapira came striding forward on legs the size of trees.

  For a moment, at least.

  Then the fear turned to vigor. He took his sword in one hand, Shuro in the other, held them both close as he turned and ran. He hauled her across the sands, through the waters of the oasis, out toward the sprawling desert.

  He didn’t care that there was nothing out there. He didn’t care that they would both die out there. His animal fear wouldn’t let him care; it simply told him to run, as fast and far as he could. He didn’t care where.

  And in another moment, it didn’t matter.

  Ten great strides. That was all it took. Ten steps of impossibly huge legs, each one making the earth quake and the waters shudder. Ten steps that brought a shadow darker than any night down upon Lenk. And o
n the eleventh, the earth shook so fiercely that it knocked him from his feet and onto his face.

  He scrambled to his rear, gathered Shuro up in his arms, and held her close to him. He raised his sword, holding it out like the barest sliver of a silver star against the endless night looming over him.

  “I will not ask you why.” Khoth-Kapira’s voice, endless and deep as a gorge with no bottom, reached into his flesh. “I will not ask you to explain your fear, your ignorance.” He knelt down on one tremendous knee. “Your creators, in their infinite cruelty, sought to ingrain those in your very bones. I will not ask you to apologize for them.” He stared at Lenk through those immense eyes. “Nor will I forgive them.”

  A great hand rose. The air went still.

  “I am too close. I have come too far. I cannot let you stop me.” Above the writhing serpents that were his hair, his immense hand held. “May you be the last I fail. I am sorry, Lenk.”

  A rush of wind. The stars groaned. Perhaps Lenk cried out. Perhaps he didn’t. He couldn’t tell over the sound of the great hand that came crashing down, ready to smear him across the earth.

  He shut his eyes. He held his sword out. He clenched his teeth and waited for death.

  And it did not come.

  He did not dare open his eyes, lest he find that the blow had come so swift and so completely that he was already dead and would awake to find himself in hell. But soon, the agony of waiting became too much. He opened his eyes, looked up.

  The great hand of Khoth-Kapira hovered over him, shaking slightly. It ached to kill him, to crush him like the insect he was. But it hung there; for a long time, it hung there.

  And Lenk could feel Khoth-Kapira’s immense eyes on them and he could feel what radiated out of them.

  He couldn’t do it.

  Or he wouldn’t do it.

  Khoth-Kapira hesitated.

  “Lenk …”

  A soft whisper. He looked down. A pair of blue eyes, bright and alive, met his. He felt a hand on his own. He felt fingers wrap around his. In his arms, Shuro took a breath and spoke.

  “Get down.”

  She tore from his arms effortlessly as she tore the sword from his hand. She leapt to her feet, then from the earth, lunging at that massive hand hovering over them both. The sword flashed in her hand, cleaved across the dark.