Her laughter was a skipping record, a knife pinging off bone, and even if it lacked those awful qualities I found it infuriating that Nesis Khapoor, Lodgemaster of Brightgate, could be so calm while her city died. Was the ice cream that smooth? Was she anesthetized to true horror due to a diet of sterile reports? Did she just not care? My claws tore into my pants, slicing the fibers with the fineness of a scalpel—I wished they were opening up Nesis’s arteries.
“If you hadn’t noticed,” I all but hissed, “there’s a war going on outside.”
Nesis clapped her cheeks whilst dropping her jaw in mock shock. “Really,” she said, “I hadn’t noticed. #2, have you been holding out on ?”
#2, the one holding the sorc-deck, answered, “No, Lodgemaster Khapoor, I have not. Our current projections of both mortality and municipal rebuilding have the conflict resting firmly in the ‘battle tier.’”
“Damn,” Nesis said, her eyes flicking back to , “if the projects are saying it’s only a battle then it’s only a battle. Sorry, puppy.”
At the risk of proving I deserved her diminutive, I swallowed the growl that’d rumbled up my throat. Opted instead to breathe, in through the nose and out the mouth, like Mom taught. I needed to stay calm through this; try not to think about the ticking clock of Marduk noticing what had happened, the ti it’d take to charge up that blast of his again, or the number of people that’d be returned to early graves each mont I spent arguing to get this waste of a woman off her ass!
“Then your projections are wrong,” I stated. “Marduk’s out there tearing up the city with that massive entity of his, a host of Lurkers and associated allies, and what he calls his ‘nagerie’ which produces an endless number of unbonded entities of Abyss! Right now, every Lodgember fighting in those streets are severely outnumbered and soon to be overpowered, again, by what Marduk’s sending their way.”
#3 asked, “And we should take it on faith from you…”
“Nadia,” I said, “Nadia Temple.”
“Hmm,” they humd.
#3 put down the toenail clipper, and with a flex of their field-spell materialized a file—my file. Their eyes blurred until it looked as if there were six pupils in each respective eye. Two seconds later they shut the file dematerializing it.
“What’s the determination?” Nesis asked. “Are we to believe Nadia?”
#3 pushed back their circle glasses. “Hardly. By all accounts, she’s a chronic manipulator and—”
“A piss poor liar,” I added. “Everyone says, which ans while I might want a situation to go my way sotis—who doesn’t—I’m not a liar.”
“At least not a good one,” #3 said.
Nesis pouted, shaking their head. “Gotta give us more to work with Nadia.”
I bared my fangs, “I’m one of your hounds. An asset.”
“I have many puppies,” Nesis admitted, “but that hardly makes them special. Try again.”
Her eyes half-lidded, Nesis looked pleased watching clutch and fail to garner support for my claims. I knew what I saw, experienced, but no one in the room wanted to hear . If I had #404, if I’d done what they had wanted, I’d at least have an ally but…I didn’t, hadn’t. Though when I t Nesis’s gaze, saw how the ends of her smile curled up—a pleased predator—I shot back with my own white-gash of a grin; I didn’t need to make allies of anyone in this room, only have them believe , and what better way than to make plain my plot.
Freeing the detonator from my pocket, I whipped it at Nesis who caught it—of course. Then, gifting a teasing smirk to #3, I pantomid the opening of a file, reading the past in my palm.
“Let’s check this file again, why don’t we,” I said. “Cause where I sit, I was on the saboteur mission to bomb Marduk’s throne—#404, my handler, ran point—and everything I’m citing now I learned on that mission.”
“I rember approving that mission,” #1 said, connecting points of evidence in their mind. “No one reported for debrief. Why didn’t you? Why now?”
I crossed my legs, rested my chin against my fist—let them have the character of Nadia Temple, chronic manipulator that I was. There was even a two-count of silence I let pass between #1’s question and my own comnt—everyone but Nesis leaned in. Secretaries are so curious.
“I didn’t because I didn’t want to,” I said. “Check my file #3, I never do what I don’t want to do. I’m only here now because my plan didn’t quite shake out the way I wanted it.”
“That being?” #1 asked.
“To—” I almost answered before Nesis cut off.
“She wanted to see Marduk and I tear each other apart,” she said, tapping the side of her nose. “This whole affair has the aroma of your Bloodlust all over it. Sha, you overestimated Marduk’s desire to kill compared to his urge to annex Brightgate for himself, and break the hopes and will of anyone trying to resist.”
“The Lightless World,” I whispered.
Nesis grunted, “Huh. Guess Marty finally hit Marquis. If that’s the case, I really do have to go put him down.”
She rolled off of the secretaries’ laps, disappearing before striking the ground, and reappearing fully upright next to a cabinet. Leaning against it, she began to stretch, running through a quick series of yogic poses that would’ve broken the scapula, pelvis, or collarbone of a normal human being. Whilst doing so, she ran through her instructions.
“#3, activate the tir once I leave, it’ll make filing the mission report easier when the higher-ups interrogate as to why I took the field,” Nesis said. “#2, alert all the shelters that—wait, Nadia, you said Marduk flattened parts of the city?”
“He did, but technically didn’t,” I answered.
#2 said, “I’ve seen no change in the city’s simulacrum to corroborate that kind of damage.”
“Of course not,” I said, “a godtender fixed it. So, it happened but technically it never did.”
“Really,” #2 said, rolling their eyes, “and you, a soldier, happen to just be so gifted that you’re able to keep concurrent temporally divergent phenona straight in your mind? While all of us here, in a sorcerous black box with protections against such ta-editing, sohow missed it?”
“No,” I stated, “I’m not special…just special to her. She saved from one of Marduk’s blasts and brought everyone back because I begged. And before you ask, she’s also the reason everyone on the saboteur mission died—she secured my life with theirs.”
Nesis chuckled, “Well, that explains how you slid into this black box of ours. Always told you not to get too confident in your protections, #2, they’re not properly rated for godtenders. Now be a good secretary and alert the shelters that I’ll be taking the field. They should gather up their dicines in advance, I have a feeling this’ll be a heavy fight.”
She walked over to a far wall, tapped a hidden button that activated a formation turning the entire wall facing the bay transparent. The other walls and ceilings frad the window into the ongoing conflict below like a painting—one ant to immortalize tragedy, perhaps humanize us toward higher consciousness. Not aware that for every person who saw horror in the beautifully rendered destruction, there was another for whom they felt a yearning; Nesis, salivating and fingers twitching—eager to shape seals of mass death—was one of those people.
“#1, start up the—” she said.
#1 cut her off, “‘Massacre Playti’ playlist? Already done.”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” Nesis whined, blowing raspberries. “I was feeling ‘Slaughterfield Siesta’ this ti.”
#1’s gaze was flat as the wall-turned-window. “I’m constantly in your mind, Lodgemaster, you were never going to ask for ‘Slaughterfield Siesta.’”
“What do I do?” I asked, earning the attention of the war room.
Nesis shrugged, “Nothing…except wait. I’ll be executing you after this. Anyways, henshin.”
The words weren’t an incantation, probably an in-joke of so sort, but they precluded Nesis’s transformation all the sa. I could feel the pressure in the room increase as she flexed her spirit—a titanic thing ant to unfurl across a city, rather than be shoved into this box. Though soon as Nesis struck a pose—for whom I don’t know—with her middle fingers pulling down her lower eyelid, the pressure receded into her at such speed it knocked over chairs and papers. Congealing into a red mist that further compressed itself to form deep carmine armor depicting muscle groups in a looping ornate fashion. Tendons rendered in white-gold. Her panoply finished with a summoned mask; the claw on her gauntlet having carved a channel around her face’s edge from which blood flowed in one thick weeping sheet.
I shot up from my chair when it ford… a stylized depiction of a wolf’s upper skull with an aventail of red pucks—not too dissimilar to the wax discs Dad made as a hobby—connected to the mask. Imdiately it tried to force my eyes to look away, to not rember or even attempt to see through it. I dropped back into my chair; there was nothing to see. Nesis’s mask wasn’t one of the five.
Nesis didn’t kill my parents. Amber lied. I sacrificed a city on a lie. That’s the kind of stuff which makes a girl go mad…I nearly did, but pressed a claw into my thigh—stay in the mont; watch—to bear witness; I knew Marduk was a true target, and I wanted to savor his demise.
Unaware of my ongoing turmoil, Nesis tossed a mock salute back to the secretaries staying behind and backflipped through the wall—the button she’d hit that made it transparent also enabled one-way access for spells and people to escape. #2 swiped at their sorc-deck, activating controls which transford the wall from a simple window outward into a projection detailing a bird’s eye view of the ongoing battle. A special emphasis being placed on keeping track of Nesis’s whereabouts.
She tumbled through air as the ergency broadcast system swapped from repeating safety instructions to echoing across every block the punch-you-in-the-brain bass beats of her chosen playlist. It was sudden enough, more than obnoxious enough, that it caused a lull in the fighting; combatants frozen by the half-second delay of parsing whether the noise was so new weapon being deployed—unaware that it was rely the weapon’s herald. A truth imdiately understood when Nesis landed on a Lurker’s head with the gentleness of a leaf, balanced on the poor soul with a heron’s grace.
Looking around the battlefield, Nesis tossed her hands up. “Lodgembers, what are we waiting for, let’s party!”
Recognizing the voice of their leader, those battered and bloodied servants of the Lodge hauled up the last reserves of their vigor. Roared it in the faces of the Lurkers before them. Nesis hopped off her human stand’s head, reared back her foot, and shot it into their face. Flesh tore inward as bone beca dust and muscle turned to soup—the head propelled off its neck and over the crowd. Hovering in the air, Nesis cast a rapid sequence of hand-spells causing the newly made corpse to swell, their bone marrow having been induced to over-produce blood, all for the mont when that great sanguine swell raced to the only opening it could find—a neck bereft its cap—and erupted geyser-like over the street.
“What’re you waiting for,” Nesis asked, “I thought you ca to kill ?”
There wasn’t any purpose behind her squeezing a corpse for all the blood it was worth—at least, not a sorcerous one. She just liked making a scene, and with the stage set the Lurkers hurried to their places to play the role of invaders roused to berserk fury. In their eyes were a hundred imagined executions ant for Nesis alone—she clutched her chest, mockingly.
“Oh, so of you have frightful imaginations,” she said, before disappearing—reappearing behind enemy lines after sprouting from inside a Lurker’s skull like a child playing in a box, gore and gray matter splashing out. “Not this one though. He was boring—only wanted to stab .”
It didn’t matter that she couldn’t Realistically fit in his head, she was Nesis and had the sorcerous might to do whatever she wanted. Using the man’s body like a pilotable machine through blood manipulation, Nesis wheeled him around and ran down the street with her embattled Lodgembers following behind—a killer’s parade with Nesis as grand marshal. They swept through street after street, relieving allies held under fire, and breaking the invader’s bulwarks with their bodies. The lot of them lost in such frenzy they hadn’t realized Nesis had left for other fields of battle.
Our viewpoint tracked Nesis to the residential area where unbonded entities cracked apartnts open like crab shells, the spatially expanded guts of the building flowing into the streets below where those stragglers forced to shelter-in-place scrabbled out of the debris, grateful at avoiding a crushing and slow death, only to find giants in armor of cloudy thane with chins coated in dribbled blood and entrails caught in teeth looming above them. When she appeared, it was from the crimson stain on the giant’s chin; blood forming together in Nesis’s image. Standing against the chin like it was ground, she stomped her foot—shooting the giant’s body away from the apartnt and the huddled masses below—twisted in the air, shaping atmospheric Bloodlust into a carmine axe about five tis her size, and threw it through the stumbling giant, bisecting them in a single fluid revolution.
“Is everyone okay?” Nesis asked, helping haul the injured from beneath rubble she moved with ease, like it was a bundle of clothes or pillows—hardly an inconvenience.
A little girl, barely older than six, pressed into her father’s chest sobbed out, “No, they ate Kitty.”
Nesis cocked her head, “They ate your cat?”
“Our dog,” the girl’s father explained. “We had gotten it for Sera last month.”
“Hmm,” Nesis humd, “then I should punish them for that. Sera, how do you want to deal with them?”
“We couldn’t possibly—” the father tried to say before Sera cut him off.
Crying, she scread, “Bite their head off like they did to Kitty!”
Nesis offered a bow to the girl, turned to face the remaining giant—in the face of a greater predator than it, it’d already begun running, it could never have run fast enough. Nesis, using no seal or incantation, reached out with her field-spell once again shaping the area’s Bloodlust into a construct of solid carmine—this ti into the angular head of a wolf, jaw wide and waiting for the giant’s next step when…chomp, it’s upper half disappeared leaving legs still running yet to realize, though they would, that they’d failed to escape death. Nesis turned back to the girl, tousled her hair, and in a demonstration of the sa power, albeit on a smaller scale, ford a carmine dog that yipped excitedly.
“Now, why don’t you follow my friend here, and he’ll get you to a shelter,” Nesis said.
As the family took off, the girl yelled, “Thank you, Dog Lady!”
“Thank you, Sera, I hope you join the Lodge soday,” Nesis called back, as she let the breeze dissipate her body into a carmine cloud.
Riding the wind’s currents over hundreds of tiny battles, turning the tides of them a hundred tis over. Liberating surrounded Lodgembers by converting the burning rage in Lurker’s hearts into literal fire—quasar bursts shooting out chest and back as they died on their own killing intent. Leaping into the maw of a leviathan before it could consu a gaggle of fleeing secretaries, her head the only part of her to escape consumption—that is until she spoke an incantation that converted her body into a bomb whose payload rendered the great serpent into ground mush that coated the street and secretaries. While her body rapidly reford with assistance from the Bloodlust drenching the city, first shaped of gaseous carmine before solidifying and a half-second later assimilating into her body proper—armor and all.
Body reford, she landed atop a cable car with enough force to goad it to motion. Surfing down the streets, up and over hills, Nesis laughed gleefully. Arms wide in embrace of the chaos and slaughter the battlefield served up to her, its most eager glutton. Bullets and spells fell like rain, but she simply danced up and down the cable car’s length; arms a blur catching bullets to fling at spellcasters, deflecting spells with the sheer density of her spirit into huddled marksn. While not on the battlefield, sequestered as I was in that box, my heart beat slow and quiet fearful of attracting that thing’s murderous attention—I thought I could kill her, really?
Reminding the secretaries I was present, I asked, “If she can do this, why wait so long?”
#3 filed their nails, “It’s very expensive to pay for her rampages. #1, congratulate her on the self-restraint this ti.”
“It also doesn’t help that she’s a Duke,” #2 bemoaned. “Her Court’s so persnickety about the timing of things; act too soon and she’s reducing net Bloodlust, which can’t be done, but act too late and we have more death and destruction than we’d otherwise like.”
“So the present situation did what,” I asked, “provide enough of a lull that her hopping in raised Bloodlust across the city?”
#2 and #3 glanced at each other before looking back to , “Correct.”
#1, their eyes focused on the footage, explained, “Think of us and the Lodge how you will, but know that we do not enjoy restraining Lodgemaster Khapoor, such that tragedy is given leeway to font. However, observe her and ask yourself, if a being one step from godhood was only able to be an active participant in the world if she caused or increased Bloodlust and all the slaughter that ca in its wake, would you want her to be running wild?”
Easy answers died before passing my lips. Instead, I looked around, at the see-through fridge filled with ice creams, a large tv surrounded by cases of surviving Old World movies, a different cabinet complete with alcoho,l and boxes of cigars—every inch of the room replete with varying tools of pleasure and distraction. It was the most plush cage I’d ever encountered. When I turned back to the video feed of Nesis’s exploits I couldn’t chase together an argunt.
Nesis, unburdened by philosophical concerns, had just kick-flipped the cable car off its tracks, cut the cable with a swipe of her hand, and soared down into the major square of the district—where I’d encountered the Angler Knight barely thirty minutes prior—crashing into its fountain nose-first. Water sprayed into the air, augnting through destruction the grandeur of her maneuver whilst also framing her as she balanced on the cable car’s back end on a finger. Her playlist crackles to a pause, perched just before a sonic drop, replaced by #1’s voice.
“Lodgemaster Khapoor,” #1 said, their words transmitted by sorc-deck, “I might remind you that the longer you play around and damages wrack up, your budget for filmic archaeology will be drained to fund municipal repairs.”
“I know, #1” Nesis whined, before shouting. “It’s not my fault that Marty’s being a bitch boy!”
“She’s really going to tease him into—” I asked #2 and #3. My question cut off by the appearance of Marduk’s eyes opening in the sprawling black of The Lightless World.
Marduk’s voice echoed from the sky, from the shadows, the cracks of doubt in hearts.
“Shut the fuck up, Nesis,” Marduk roared. “That is not my na you incorrigible miscreant!”
Hopping upside-right, Nesis yelled back, “That’s a new one! You’ve called insane, intransigent, insubordinate, insouciant, but not that one yet!”
The eyes in the sky narrowed with concentrated rue. “You’re everything I despise in this world.”
“What can I say, not all of us ‘post-human entities’ that you jerk off about can be the demure partners to your crushing ego,” Nesis replied, smiling. “Now get down here, we haven’t had a real dust-up in ages.”
“While my ego may be crushing, it’s yet to be pressed into hubris,” Marduk countered. “I’ve never beaten you in a duel of brute force—as that’s your specialty down to your essence—so it’s in due recognition to that truth I’ve opted for strategy. It’s that thing you’d always slept through during our classes and briefs, if you rember?”
Nesis shooed off the comnt. “Yeah, yeah, they made for weird dreams. Though last I checked, strategy usually ant more than flooding the streets with losers and entities…or relying on a godtender to bail you out of trouble.”
“Miss Redacted bailed you out too!” Marduk scread, his voice briefly rising an octave before he shuffled his indignation back down. “You know how she ddles, and while you might disregard my forces you’re bold to let them surround you.”
Nesis looked down to find the square, the streets connecting to it going out a block in every direction, choked with Lurkers and their allies. She snorted in disbelief before dropping down to sit on the perfectly vertical cable car. Her laissez-faire posture, an insult greater than any flipped finger or biting invective.
“I don’t know what’s aner,” Nesis said, “you thinking that this crowd can take …or you not explaining to them what they’re trying to kill.”
A blustery Lurker yelled, “He’s told us about what you are, monster, but more to the point he’s told us about who you are, Slaughteress.”
Cackling, Nesis’s head rotated a hundred-and-eighty degrees to face them, “Little girl, you can’t just go accusing a woman of being one of the Ten Cruelties, it’s misogynistic—not a surprise considering Marty taught you—”
Suddenly, Marty—Marduk—called out, “Don’t listen to her. Fire, everyone fire right now—”
“Or the fact that Waycarver recorded it down in that book of his incorrectly. My na—well-earned I might add—is the Rapacious Slaughteress…though not like you’ll live long enough to rember.”
Nesis, for all that she giddily trampled on propriety and spat on moral patterns, had a confoundingly attractive quality—like a blood-drizzled cinnamon roll. Instantly you’re disgusted, but you have to investigate, draw closer, figure out why or who would spoil such attentively made pastries with the crimson water of a human being. Before you knew it, you were fascinated and entranced…unaware that the person who’d done this was creeping up behind you, maw salivating at the flavors hidden in your body. When you’d finally co to the conclusion that if blood was to replace frosting then more would be needed, she was there ready to whisper in your ear, “Tsk, you’re right,” before ripping your throat apart like a child does a bad report card.
Marduk had tried to command his forces to motion before that last step—he only made them aware of their throat being ripped in half. The ground, of which no one had paid attention, was no longer made of cobbled stone. Replaced by blood that’d bubbled up from between the cracks, slowly rose past ankles, calves, knees to their waist which was when Marduk’s call to attention gave them notice—such was Nesis’s deploynt of her territory, insidious. It’d extended not just in the square, but had made veins and arteries of the District’s alleys and thoroughfares. Lodgembers, those who’d lived long enough to witness her territory before, had shaken loose their combative hand-spells to instead make for higher ground and escape the bloody bayou that Nesis made of the district.
“Thanks for the al,” Nesis said, clapping her hands in gratitude while Marduk looked on in petulant fury rather than any horror or sorrow—he’d seen this before.
The bayou’s redwaters bubbled, a gurgling taken up in a citywide harmony as it engaged in digestion. Despite many of the Lurker’s being clad in conweave and other armors, I gawked as flesh sloughed, a thinner liquid than Mom’s cornstarch slurries used to thicken soup. Their armors were likely well-made, but few could find let alone afford an artisan capable of making equipnt that could hold up to the power of a Duke—it pissed off to give her credit at the ti, but I understood then why Amber held the stance she did…why spend money on sothing this useless. Especially when I realized that the horror of Nesis’s territory wasn’t just manifested blood-water that ate you, but a sorcerous conversion of all blood to be an extension of her digestive process. I figured that out by watching a woman’s face lt and leak through the grate of her mask’s faceplate.
I’d wondered, earlier, why Nesis warned the shelters she was taking action and in the distance of the video feed I saw why…her territory was indiscriminate. Cable cars lted into sludge into tiny particulate into nothing. Lodgembers too slow or uninitiated in the appropriate procedures were consud with the sa rapidity as enemies. I didn’t pay close attention to the group of survivors that Nesis herself had rescued only to be caught in the bayou. Neither I nor the secretaries focused on how Sera, that little girl, was saved only by a father whose dying spell was to place her in a magenta bubble of solidified force, levitating her to the roof of a building—stone being one of the few things that Nesis’s territory didn’t consu.The only untouched place, the tiny area surrounding the cable car Nesis sat on, leaning back with the satisfaction of soone who’d known hunger for far too long and finally got to eat.
“I’m telling you, Marty,” Nesis said, burping, “we really should’ve been more careful how we climbed. The pangs I’ve gotten this last decade have been the worst!”
Marduk yelled, “Unsheathe your aspect, beastwoman!”
“I don’t know,” Nesis said, taunting him, “I kind of want to enjoy the al. If you want, we can take five and you can eat with —it must’ve been so hard abstaining…if you abstained.”
“I. Abstained.” Marduk said, his tone cold as the Abyss’s waters.
“You’re missing out then,” she said. “I an, last ti you had a good al was what, Tokyo?”
Marduk growled, “Nothing about Tokyo was good.”
“I have photos that say otherwise,” Nesis said, waggling her sorc-deck. “But you should co down, nothing we can’t potentially hash out at the dinner table…unless you want your disciples to be consud over days rather than monts—you know how excruciating that can be.”
His eyes closed, the perfection of void re-assud as he erged from the darkness in front of Nesis, heels clacking against solidified portions of The Lightless World—he even made a chair from it. Nesis removed her helt, shook out her hair, and offered the sort of smile I’d only seen at parties when five-color kush got passed around. She was indiscriminately consuming nearly every living thing in the city and was getting high off of it.
“Reprobate,” Marduk spat.
Nesis blinked slowly, “I know you are but what am I? Heh, so let's get to business—”
“My disciples first,” he insisted.
“Can we ask more nicely?” Nesis inquired. “It’s not like I said I’d eat them faster than—”
Marduk’s lips rose from a scowl to a gentle smile—it even touched his eyes. “Please, Nemmy, can you give them a clean out for ?”
“Ooooh,” Nesis squealed, hands smooshing her face in glee, “you haven’t called that in way too long. I totally can!”
She opened her mouth as if to take a great bite, and all across the city hands of those devoured in tis long past breached the bayou’s surface to latch onto the clothes and lting bone—then she swallowed. Those hands snatching the half-consud down below the surface. Nesis nearly burped, but at a raise of Marduk’s brow she covered her mouth, swallowing it.
“There we go,” Nesis said. “Can you tell now why you’re attacking Brightgate? Especially after I let you play cult leader for so long.”
Marduk looked at his nails—the last ti I’d observed him my attention had fixed on the remnants of my father that dangled from his ear, this ti I realized his nails were red…carmine. “No reason in particular,” he admitted. “I found the valley to be woefully lacking as experints go, and decided I might as well claim this place from you—it helps when you have so many foes willing to ride under a stranger’s banner if it ans taking your head.”
Nesis nodded. “That makes sense—the enemies part, though it’s cruel to give them hope like that, not your experints. Those have always been pretty dumb.”
“Thank you for the clarification,” Marduk replied, teeth gritted. “Though I know you’ve been doing experints of your own. My granddaughter encountered one of these ‘White Wombs’ on that wild hunt of yours.”
“Interesting, you should point them my way next ti,” Nesis said, “I’d love to examine their entrails, see if you two have any familial resemblance. However, sad to say that those aren’t mine. Try asking Eeny, she’d love to help you.”
Marduk scowled, “I’m not lowering myself for her assistance, and even if finding research here won’t be fruitful I’ve already discovered another of our cohort. A greater lead than anything you lot have uncovered since Miss Redacted’s miracle a decade prior.”
“If you’re so confident,” Nesis said, “how about you take this lead and leave Brightgate alone? I’ll even send you off with a cake from this place I love.”
Nesis pointed at the cake shop, and Marduk, following her finger, nodded thoughtfully in consideration of the deal. He held up a hand, closed it, and his flying fortress of an entity unleashed a pressure blast—not one fully charged in this case—that crushed the cake shop like a fly beneath your thumb. Nesis turned from the new absence in the city to Marduk, her high smothered just like every cake that’d been left behind in the evacuation.
“That’s petty,” Nesis said.
Marduk grinned, “That’s war.”
“Since you want to unsheathe my aspect so badly,” Nesis said, voice becoming edged as a sawblade and sticky as a charnel house floor, “From Bloodlust Erges the Infinite Slaughterhouse!”
Her words fell into her territory, a brick dropped into a pool, and the sanguine bayou rippled before exploding into gorey showers of blood that lashed themselves to the district’s buildings. Flowing upward in a fashion and fury no fluid could ever do. Only to spread across each surface whether stone or steel, wood or glass like frost on a window; fractalizing in violent beauty until the skyline—the earth itself—was replaced by a legion of carmine spears with fangs for edges and whose tips threatened to perforate The Lightless World. And why wouldn’t they, The Infinite Slaughterhouse was a reality which impressed the inescapability of violence for all things, even the endless dark heavens that Marduk had smoothed across the city.
“Shall we fight according to our station?” Marduk asked, head tilting back in smug pride for having riled the unflappable Nesis.
She said, “If you plan on killing , it’s the only way.”
“Then best you commune with your servants,” he said, “for I won’t leave them much to bury.”
Nesis rolled her eyes and threw herself backward off the cable car into the carmine water from which her murder city had erged. While Marduk allowed his chair to pull him back into the infinite dark. The two of them rged into their aspects—Marduk’s entity breaching the skyward Abyss to join him—to begin their proper war.
And how to even describe it, this battle between heaven and earth, where the frontlines were drawn with Brightgate’s bruised skyline? I’ll start at the opening salvo that I, as a soldier, could comprehend—it went to Marduk. The secretaries and myself stared through the video feed as it whirled about, a child looking for its violent mother, only to find nauseating red and hopeless black, black, black…my mind fell into the black. Though it was better said that the Abyss fell—poured—into , finding my rueful inquisitiveness to be a funnel with which it could offer completion.
There’s an Abyss in Every Heart, Nemmy, you just have to show them where.
I whirled around, Marduk’s voice was everywhere and nowhere. It was still only myself and the secretaries—panicked as much as I was—in the war room. Yet, there it was, echoing over again and again that insight, Abyss in Every Heart, and how true it was. The words glided along the rim of the pit in my soul, pulling forth a tone of sorrow and defeat; I was alone. You are alone. My love is gone. Your love is gone. There’s nowhere for anymore. There’s nowhere for you anymore. I’d be better off dead. You’d be better off—
Blah blah blah. Marty, not everyone is a moody fuck like you. Rember, Bloodlust is Enlivening!
The dark echo of my worst thoughts was interrupted by the rugged wail of a chainsaw. It shredded through the icy muck that’d taken root in , not stopping until it found pain—glorious infuriating pain; my first broken nose and the hot tears that filled my eyes when I pounced on the boy three years my senior, the sight of the adults back ho turning their back on after stating they’d do nothing to avenge Mom and Dad, my urge to find Secretary and cut off her head after she left to be tortured by the Angler Knight, the sight of Marduk’s earring—my Dad—dangling like jewelry, and even Ina’s stupid fucking face! There was no ti to listen to sorrow. Defeat, who fucking cares. Long as I lived, long as my blood could boil, I could stand and plunge my fangs into their throat. There we go kids, let's give Marty a good hacking!
My thoughts filled with knives, my body understood it differently, making a cauldron of my guts with the fla on high. I was on fire, nothing inside could settle, and as I burned like kin to a wicker woman I knew it had to co out. All that I was squeezed down, even my legs twisted and arms wrapped tight, pushing out everything that had infiltrated . It felt like my jaw cracked as bile was piped from my intestine out my mouth. Vision returned in pieces, brief glimpses of color, the room ca in and out like tar was poured over my head—when it stopped I realized it’d poured from my eyes. In a few blinks I saw it on the floor of the war room, puddles of concentrated Abyss, and t the faces of #2 and #3 whose lips were stained in the Court’s color with frail capillaries of it branching from their eyes like tributaries. It dripped from their chin.
#1 scread, “Hold onto sothing!”
None of us but them had the strength to do a rush job on their call out. From my place on the floor, I made do grabbing a chair leg. Risked a glance toward the video feed—from every angle perceivable, pressure blasts at full strength assaulted the city, chipping away at the carmine coating that composed the reality—Nesis’s aspect—she’d used to armor the city. When one of the pressure blasts flew past view, ebon ripples the only sign of passage, I was briefly puzzled—its target was a building covered in a murmur of petals—only for it to dawn on : we were the target.
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