by Amanda Churi
“But if Eero had never left, I would have never been born,” they went on glumly. “And I know that he didn’t leave because he wanted you to suffer… He just wanted his own pain to stop. Is that really so wrong…?”
Their reply toppled Pinion’s lined-up retorts. “Sage, you don’t get it.”
“Nooo, Pinion. YOU don’t.” Their wrist snapped up and yanked on the spool. Pinion’s heart screamed and took off with a strained, worn burst of speed. She winced; the hilt burned in her hand, energy lifting her bicep.
“We all have choices to make, but Eero was always thinking of others before himself! Yooou?” Sage’s fingers flexed around the needle; the thread ignited a beaming, concluding red. Two figures appeared behind Sage, one cloaked with the night and the other dressed by the sea.
Pinion readied her wrist, terror clawing apart her speech. “S-Sage! Please!”
“You are a disgrace to Daddy! You have no right to call yourself his little girl!”
The teeth of bone and beads of water that dragged across their faces—Pinion saw every frame even though her heart continued to race. His eyes of black and hers of blue creased and pinched with anxious wait, knees bending and arms opening, preparing to spring.
Little girl… What did they know? Sage had never even seen Kevin! They had never been crushed in all the hugs and drenched in all the kisses that he poured over her. No! She wouldn’t let this happen—even less let that hand rag get away with saying that! She was immortal! A goddess of Earth! She wasn’t in the wrong! They were all too stupid to see it!
She wasn’t going down!
Enraged, she whipped her arm forward and launched her glowing wing at Sage’s head.
Sage sprung holding her string. The spinning green blade shot below; it caught Sage at the ankle and took their foot clean off, but it did not slow their ascent. Distraught, pained laughter plucked the strings of their mouth, and their arm came down, cutting off Pinion’s life.
Her heart shuddered and gave one last slap against her ears. A parasitic cold speared her ribs and every neuron. Something in her brain clicked, broke, and the sight of Sage holding the flailing hairs of her cut string was sucked away into a growing hole of black.
No…
The sensation of falling rolled over her limbs and through her numbing scalp—a fall that became bottomless and quiet, not even the air pushing under her having a sound.
That was it? That was the end of life?
It wasn’t enough… She hadn’t done nearly enough!
Kevin… She tried to reach through the suction of the abyss, wanting to snag a rope, a way back out, but nothing was there. I’m sorry… I tried. You know I did… They just didn’t understand. Nobody did.
No.
The hollow answer from the voice she relived time and time again crushed her—physically so, mounting pressure and strain tugging at the limbs she no longer had.
I-it felt like she was going to be torn apart! What?! Dad, what—?!
You didn’t understand.
Cold air blasted through her ripping soul. She screamed, separating like dough. DAD!
His face was suddenly in front of hers—one only seen in visions, dreams, and breaches of time for centuries. It was the sad, lost face of his soul, one left to roam since death, useless, unlike his routinely exploited Eyla. No scars… But no smiles. His hanging frown and eyes mirrored that fateful day, the last in-person glance given so long ago.
She couldn’t compose herself, couldn’t fight the whimpers and the feelings of smallness and insignificance. That little body she had so few days in… She was back in it, crying, howling, begging for the pain to stop—for them to stop asking more of her.
Kevin watched as the pain spiked and the darkness around her thickened. They both knew what was happening. D-Daddy… Help… Me…
His atmospheric hand touched her pulling cheek, and he put his arms around her, squeezing tight on the body that was stretching farther. I’m sorry… There’s no saving you anymore, Pinion… There hasn’t been for a long time.
“Pinion”—him saying that sent her off the rails. THAT’S NOT MY NAME! she wailed in his trembling hug that fought to hold her together. THAT’S NOT MY REAL NAME! THAT’S NOT THE NAME YOU LIKE!
The hug was forgotten. He unraveled his arms and stepped back, his frown and pain never deeper. But it’s the name you chose…
NO—! The ferocious yank snatched her words away, and all she could do was scream and stare fearfully through rattling vision. No! He gave that nickname to her! That was why she used it!
You became the villain of your own story, Kevin said quietly. None of this… None of what you did was what I wanted, Pinion. Every choice you made was yours and yours alone, fueled by your own hatred for the world. He took another step back—began to fade. I don’t like what you’ve done… And I hate who you’ve become… I hate you, Pinion.
The pieces of her heart pulled away with her soul, all her successes and failures, all her happiness and despair, coming undone, consumed forever. And she knew no twist of time could undo what had been done. “NO, DADDY! NO! PLEASE! I’M SORRY! I’M SORRY! HELP ME! I’LL BE BETTER, I’LL CHANGE! I’LL—!”
…But I still love my Daisy, he softly finished. You won’t remember that in a moment… But know that it’s true…
And in a spray of mist, he left her to scream out her existence by herself, alone again, alone forever.
***
Fate charged the moment Sage landed with Pinion’s severed thread in their fist. She lunged when Pinion’s knees went weak, gutting her throat; Death used his sister’s back as a springboard and dunked down on Pinion’s skull with his scythe, snatching up her soul.
The duo landed with the thud of Pinion’s body, righteous gazes over their shoulders as they watched her corpse hit the water. Her pitiful excuse of a soul thrashed in Death’s bony fingers, held by the scruff. It was not white like the Eyla, but one that had strayed so far that it had turned the shade of mildew, spewing spores with every defiant wriggle. Another Eyla was next to her, trying to calm her down.
“Shame,” Death mused. “I remember nearly breaking the rules and snatching her soul for myself the day we first met. Hers was not even opaque like the average, conflicted human, but clear as water. Now…?” He gave her a yo-yo like bounce, listening to her heightening wails. “Not even Satan would take you; a soul this busted is no good for any world.”
“Straight to the void?” Fate clarified, wiping her dagger clean.
“Clearly.”
Sage tried to mimic the warriors of the Encryption—flat-faced, emotionless, cold, but their jaw kept dropping. Stunned, they watched Death and Fate move hand in hand across the lake’s surface, fading into the hazy air with Pinion’s soul while leaving behind the Eyla who tried to comfort her. The strings and stuffing in Sage’s chest battled one another in conflict as they watched their failed prodigal of a sister vanish, screaming so loudly in failure, in pain… Did Sage really make the right decision?
They looked at Eero’s pile—well, that really was the best way to describe him now. Sage didn’t remember Eero’s human face like they remembered Pinion’s—in fact, they didn’t remember Eero’s at all. Sage had always seen the touch of Daddy upon them, an aura that enwrapped all those who had ever encountered Daddy, but never did Sage think that Eero and Pinion were their siblings. As it was, even when Virgil outright told Sage that Pinion was their sister, Sage still had trouble seeing it, but eventually, they matched the young, innocent, practically unrecognizable face of Daisy to the fiend she had turned into.
But even though Sage never saw Eero’s real face, when Pinion killed Eero, a sudden, undeniable link was created, along with strange memories that Sage couldn’t quite place… Memories that appeared when the Eyla that now floated over the lake, watching Pinion’s final moments, brushed over Sage’s shoulder on their way to speak with her.
The string felt like an ore of led in Sage’s stretched fingers, the needle even
heavier. So, Eero was gone… Griffin, Mabel, and Pinion, too. Everyone that carried Daddy’s aura. That meant there was only one thing left to fix.
Well, aside from Sage’s now missing foot. They would need to find another, but that was child’s play.
Which means I don’t need these silly things anymore!
Sage threw their needle into the water with Pinion’s sinking body—unhooked the spools and chucked them in one after the other until their tape-measure belt was empty. Then Sage turned, beginning the long hobble back.
The horde of Eyla whispered their rumors after Sage conquered the switchbacks and tunnel, surfacing at the mountain’s peak. They almost made a bubble of quarantine for the puppet, afraid to get too close, but Sage ignored them, humming while descending the mountain and awkwardly skipping back toward the main palace on one foot. Sage couldn’t quite remember where it was… Which called for what they knew would be a long detour.
One without weapons. Or a foot. But sightseeing was always fun! And Sage’s destination… If it was what they thought, then every step would be more than worth it.
Sage chose to check the sinking shacks in the backfields of the palace first—buildings so neglected that Sage had a hard time believing they were a part of royal grounds.
The first several Sage passed through were meatpacking plants. Human heads were piled in large rolling tubs of steel; brains were in jars, thighs as big as sticks dangling on construction-worthy hooks and drying in the brittle air. Each factory had the same design: the same grinders for meat, mincers for bone that poured the chalk-like mush into large tubs filled with the leftover excrements lying in the humans’ intestines at the time of slaughter—definitely fertilizer for Gannon’s playground. The meaty parts were ground and squeezed into sausages; others were carved like roasts, but most were bundles of red threads, already salted and packaged in rusty metal crates, ready for distribution. Stacked cages were piled as skyscrapers in the backrooms; many of them still had livestock, none of which were alive—all had been killed, rotting in their skin.
Sage snatched a foot from one of them. They sewed it on using their sharp nails and a loose thread from their belly button before continuing.
The largest building halfway to the fallen walls, a formidable steel tower, was mostly abandoned, but not entirely. Behind lingered sparse handfuls of malfunctioning Bots, trembling on rusty skyrises and huddling in lowly corners. They were kids, switching their speech back and forth between human and machine, trying to get a grip on their real form and fend off the other. They didn’t try to approach Sage, and Sage didn’t approach them.
Still not what Sage was looking for.
The crushed door to the final warehouse came into view. Sage continued to hum, bouncing with the rhythm, but one step inside, and all music ceased.
Their bubbly tunes whistled away in horror. Frigid metal slabs that served as beds with safety bars started at the ground and extended for stories, wrapping around the interior of the building in hypnotic, blood oozing rings. Hoses with masks were stapled to the mouths of the women lying on the beds, the feeding tubes so neglected that Sage recognized mold in most. Some of the machines had been left on when the Proxez ditched the building, leaving them to pump slosh into the women’s hacked open, naked bodies.
Sage traveled the platforms in an overwhelmed stupor. The higher one climbed, the earlier the women were into their pregnancy, those at ground level at the near stages of birth. All legs were kept pried open by cuffs, most likely to satisfy the Haxors’ irresistible urges whenever they struck. The bellies and necks of all mothers were slashed; the stomachs of the well-termed often had the corpses of their murdered children busting through. The gases within other decaying bodies forced the dead children through the birth canal and had them hanging from the platforms by their still attached umbilical cords.
“…Nooopeee!” Sage chugged back down to the main floor and darted out the doors.
If it wasn’t here, then it was closer to the palace rather than the walls.
Sage hastily headed back to the castle, pushing out fast, spurting notes that hardly resembled a song. They passed through the caved outer towers and rooms, hiking piles of glass, silver, and mortar. It looked like most all opposers to the Encryption had been dealt with; those remaining had surrendered, most definitely by force, but Sage knew they would be gone soon enough. The puppet was ignored by the few left that could take notice of Sage’s survival, and without saying a word to them, Sage passed into a caved-in stairwell that led below ground. The coordinates of Sage’s cognitive map had finally started to ring.
The darkness pulled them farther beneath the bloodied soil in heavy silence. There were few bodies this low, yet Sage continuously tripped; the familiarity built their excitement and pushed them to take each step faster than the last. They were eventually racing down the stairs, wiping out at the entrance to a perfectly preserved underground library, but they got back up and kept at it. Nope, not that room either… But Sage knew they were close!
After a long, winding travel, Sage stopped, turning to an archway illuminated by back-up bulbs that continued to breathe light in a power-voided kingdom. Columns of raw stone supported the extensive, hollowed room, one stretching so far back that there was no end in sight.
With soft, cautious steps, Sage stepped inside.
This was as far as they had gotten last time. If Sage kept going down the stairs, the steps would eventually flatten and climb back to the surface to an escape hatch. But now, not trying to follow Pinion’s enraged presence, having nothing to search for nor keep up with… Sage had time.
There were seven thick columns, thick walls of concrete endlessly traveling into the dark and carving up the room into strips. Sage felt a clothball coming up and gagged it back down, cautiously shuffling to the first row.
One foot slipped in front of the other. Sage’s head swayed with the ominous draft, their bionic pupil intaking every ounce of light as they passed the wall-embedded tombs. Sage had not a slice of a clue who the plots belonged to while they worked their way around. A million Reveres, that was for sure, but there were many others among them, all names that had never passed through Sage’s stuffy ears. They walked back and forth, snaking the aisles. At the end of the fourth row, there was a large, empty courtyard that exalted a grand casket of marble and gold in the center.
Sage squeaked. They hopped onto the foot of the tomb, panting with excitement until their eye found the inscribed plate.
“Desmond Revere… Awww…!” Sage kicked the coffin with their new foot—heard a few cracks—but was too frustrated to care. They puffed out their cheeks and stormed away to the next row.
How were these bodies even arranged? Not by name and not chronologically, so how were they supposed to…?
Sage’s eye stopped with their feet and thoughts. A little more than halfway down the row, and one plaque at the top, the letters, they stood out…
“Daddy…?”
Longing took over. The slots of the tombs had no protruding handles but those requiring one to reach under and up. Sage plunged their hand into the first bracket within reach and yanked so fast their skin split. The container flew forward on rusty wheels, and Sage immediately leaped into it, bone tiles and body dust spraying up as they reached for the next vault, opening, hopping, repeating as they climbed their way to the top. Six levels high, Sage stood, staring in awe. The seventh, the uppermost row… And the vault was right in front of Sage’s sniffer. Their shaking hand overran the inscription: “Kevin de Vaux.”
Overwhelming joy choked Sage as they spoke to the man they had been searching centuries for. “I-I’m heeere, Daddy! Me! Sage! I’m here!” In a tornado of flapping appendages, Sage snatched the handle. Their grip was nonexistent—they had to ready themself with encouraging huffs.
Sage’s surviving threads nearly ripped with the first immovable pull. What? Why didn’t it just roll out like the others? Was Daddy so mighty that the enemy had to cement it shut to sea
l his powers?! Oh no!
“I won’t let that be true…!” Sage stomped their feet through the ribs of the corpse they stood on, wrapping their toes around the bony bars for a more secure footing. Sage panted, rubbing their biceps to warm them up. They shot a glare at the seal between the casket and unseen tracks. Nope, nothing there but a bunch of time. “Come on! You’ve got this! What’s a silly little drawer for you?!”
Taking a heavy breath of nipping air, Sage gripped the handle again with slashed fingers. They yowled and yanked—headbanged in fury with the seams of their elbows popping. “Come onnn!” Their yowls turned into screams the longer they pulled. The room trembled with Sage’s cries and snapping fabrics, pebbles clicking down from the ceiling. The slot moved just a tad after what felt like forever, but once the first move had been made, the bin shot forward like it was on greased rails.
Sage didn’t even try for air, kicking their feet free and hopping onto the open casket, perching on the rim and looking down.
Sage smiled wide—with happy pain in their gut that had never felt warmer. Daddy’s touch… It was burning the brightest they had ever seen. “D-Daddy…?”
At such bottomless temperatures, the body was almost perfectly preserved, final battle wounds and all. Sage could not stop themself from gawking—half-crying. The ice caught on their father’s skin made him look like a sleeping porcelain doll—Sage even pawed the black strands of their father’s hair, surprised to find them fixed in place. The enemy had not undressed or redressed him as Sage heard humans usually did. The tears and blood stains were frozen in, unaltered by the long wait he had spent in such a cramped box. From the waist down there were broken bones and squished flaps of skin, but the open wounds were frozen shut—so were the eyes, lightly decorated with fractals of frost.
Sage smiled so hard their face physically ripped. They put a hand to Kevin’s dead heart, imagining the beats it would have hit had he been alive. Sage wondered if Daddy could see them, though…? And if he could see the most recent blood Sage had put on their hands.
