Ashen Rider — Part 1

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ONE

Tonight, we have lost our god!

I asked my sister where the god went,

And she did not know.

“Poof!” she said, “Gone in a cloud of smoke!”

And I asked, “What of dearest grandmother?

What of her?”

But sister only shrugged.

“We are alone now,” she said,

“No one helms the ferry.”

The river has flooded with silver

And no one helms the ferry.

We are alone now.

And so I left my home

In desperate search for my god.

But still, I did not find her.

I found only gray carrion fields,

Glowing red by brutal light of day.

The angels have left us,

And I am afraid.

I am afraid we will remain,

So wholly and completely alone.

Saladin (b. -22, death unknown).

“We Are Alone,” published Year 12.

I — From the collected journals of a mad wizard

The black doors to Morgana’s court stood at the end of a bridge spanning the length of the Screaming Fields. Inside the keep, looming on the highest peak of the Vale Betwixt, the Goddess Corrupted sat upon her accursed throne, the Scarlet Chair, which has remained in the keep’s throne room long before she laid claim to it. In her infinite glory, the Goddess watched over her people, those damned to eternal suffering—not because of the weight of their sins, but because they were given no other choice.

The Goddess Corrupted no longer adjudicates—not since the day she first sat upon the Chair.

Standing before her threshold, I felt that pulse I had only before known in dreams, an alien pervasion poisoning the land and the soil. It was I, dear reader, who entered those halls as herald of the Dread Angel’s doom. I should tell you I did not make this trek half-heartedly. I should tell you I was anything but fearless. The majesty of the Goddess Corrupted is one of overwhelming splendor. Her visage might rot the eyes of a mortal man; surely it might have meant my own blindness, were I not already afflicted.

I came to her court as a messenger. I sought only to deliver tidings and fair warning. My missive was not one to be taken lightly, but I did not expect the Goddess to pay heed to my words. All for the better, I say—my mission was a gamble, and if my words had carried weight, likely I would be writing a different tale altogether.

Do not be fooled; I did not seek out the Dread Angel out of piety or a sense of duty. I made the dire journey out of self-interest and simple curiosity.

Morgana did not move from her throne as I approached. Nor did it offend her as I pulled a handkerchief to wipe my nose. Weary from travel, I leaned on my staff to catch my breath and to work up the courage to address the custodian of life and death.

Redolent air wafted from the kitchens, distinct notes of turmeric and sage suffusing the room, reminding me of home—such a strange sensation to feel anywhere in Pandemonium, in hell. Beneath the comforting aroma, however, lurked the musty stench of rot and decay. I was in the realm of the damned, after all, and I was wary she might seek to add my soul to her collection.

I cleared my throat, squeezing the last reluctant drops from the bladder at my side to quench my aching thirst. I knew her patience wore thin, so I raised my arms with joyous incantation. There is no pleasure equal to reciting one’s dreams, even under duress.

“Dear Lady of the Chair, queen of my heart and ruler of my soul, I tell you I have seen your ruin. And it fast approaches. He walks towards you step by determined step, and his heart holds nothing but finality.”

A knight moved to draw his sword, denoted by the scrape of steel against wooden scabbard. Morgana must have stayed his blade, for no fatal blow befell me.

“My Chosen has fallen—he has no heart,” Morgana said, her voice the plucking of a harp, a gentle melody with discordant undertones. “You are misguided, oneiromancer.”

“Nay!” Again I heard the vain drawing of blades, and still no fatal blow was struck.

You see, dear reader, only one such as I can hope to speak against the divine and dare to survive. Reputation—and infamy—are a wizard’s steel, temperance against all but the most visceral of intents. “Clouds roil over the horizon east. Your maelstrom rages on, storms plague the sea you have risen, and still he walks on, ascending the Great Stair as we speak! Unrelenting! Monstrous! I’ve seen him in my dreams; his path is lighted by Dawn’s holy rays, rescinding the umbrous black suffocating you all!”

“You’ve seen his face?” Morgana rose from her seat. The ground pulsed. Thump, thump.

“Aye, fair Lady of the Chair, Goddess of my heart… I have. Through swirling desolation, I witnessed his emergence from the black soil of Dysmorphia. I’ve heard the steady beat of a youthful heart. He strides undeterred, joined by a thousand voices calling for your downfall.”

Whispers snaked through the hall. Surely, her courtiers already plotted amongst themselves, unraveling my words for signposts pointing to their selfish gains. Even in death, dear reader, humanity’s greed never ceases.

“His sentence has been served; his penance satisfied. He has grown tired of inflicting pain, weary of neglecting his own. Your chosen marches to right the countless wrongs he committed in your name—in life and in death.

“I’ve seen his mind, experienced his memories. I know his heart, and he will make the world whole again, as you failed to do all those years ago, my Goddess! He will again part the living from the dead, drain the sea, and reclaim the vale so that our souls may once again find peace!”

Morgana unfurled her ebon feathered wings, unleashing a gale that nearly sent me sprawling on my back. Her audience rippled, knights fell reverently to their knees in a cascade of poleyns snapping to the marble floor. Morgana laughed, her voice displacing the air with a solid wall of sound. A hellish stench of sulfur permeated the narthex, the ground heating to burn my feet through my ragged soles.

“Let him come!” Morgana cried, her words resounding through my very being, echoing in my mind. The words that followed would haunt my nightmares for years to come. “I will thrust upon him the weight of worlds; my Chosen will be broken, sundered from the annals of creation!”

The broiling heat subsided, pleasant herbal scents returning in the wake of sulfur’s flight. No one dared speak, or even breathe.

I felt Morgana’s eyes enrapture my form.

“I will devour him.”

II — On the docks of Monrovia

The Vale Betwixt, first layer of Pandemonium

Working the docks was probably the worst job in the whole bloody town. Hours spent toiling in ceaseless hail and rain, suppurating muck bulging between floor planks; truly, there was no greater hell in the whole of the underworld than dock duty. Somehow, Kateryna’s name turned up in the bowl, time and time again. She stopped arguing the results after a month. A year or more had gone by—she guessed, it was hard to tell—since she bothered to attend the drawings.

Kateryna stood vigil in the downpour, watching for stalking serpents or sharks. Such creatures rarely surfaced to feed, but they appeared often enough to warrant a steady stream of begrudging, and unpaid, employment. You would think so many months on dock duty might mean you would grow accustomed to it. But Kateryna never got used to the nauseating sway of the pilings, holding the town above the encroaching waves by a razor’s edge.

Behind her, Fulcrum gibbered as he tacked on the welds to the new extensions—a task requiring equal parts ingenuity and madness. Parts of the town were beginning to flood when the old coot arrived from thin air; the other welder had not the reserves of potential to keep up spells to match the demand, and then he succumbed to the pestilence. Fulcrum’s sudden appearance, his earnest request to work as the new welder, was something of a miracle.

The old man perplexed Kateryna. He seemed to enjoy his twisted existence beneath Morgana’s eternal watch. Who knows how terrible things are down below… Maybe this is as good as it gets.

“The storms are getting worse…” Kateryna mused, pulling her hood tight to her face as the rain fell harder. “How far has the level risen since last month?”

“Two meters, give or take,” Fulcrum called over his shoulder, hunched over an access hatch. He held a gnarled wand hewn from the branch of a sycamore. The veins in his hand bulged from the immense current of sorcery needed to complete the repair. “Ain’t no matter. I crave a challenge!”

A sodden belfry shifted above them; its rotting frame squealed against the weight of a bronze bell, tolling as if to punctuate Fulcrum’s insanity.

“There she is!” Fulcrum cackled. “And now we lift her up…” The old man rose, and Kateryna helped him pull on a rope connected to a series of pulleys. The thin cords in his arms rippled as they lifted the southwestern corner of the city block half a millimeter or so. “On to the next one, lass! Lest the waters gain on us!”

Kateryna felt a faint tremor as Fulcrum gathered up his tools; she peered off the ledge to see only brown and black waves rolling beneath the town. Once, the sea had been somewhat clean, almost drinkable, if boiled for several hours. That had only lasted a little while—now, they collected and boiled rainwater, which always carried a faint aftertaste of spoiled eggs. She took a deep breath, and shivered at the stench of decay and congealed shit. There was no escape from that malodor—it was the stench of hell, of Pandemonium.

Another tremor. A skittering sense of panic crawled from the boards to her feet, up her legs. Taking her harpoon, she scanned the horizon for any sign of surfacing serpents. She knew the signs; one had to be drawing near.

“It’s the platform settling!” Fulcrum shouted over roaring thunder. “Fifteen months I’ve been at this, and only a handful of critters come lookin’ for snacks!”

Fifteen months? He only just arrived…

She ignored him. He was mad. Obviously, mad.

Then she felt another rumbling—erratic footfalls, something running towards them. She turned and saw a hunched figure lumbering round the belfry. Kateryna dropped the harpoon and ran to the figure.

“Isshiah!”

Isshiah fell into her arms, coughing violently. He was frail, not even fifteen when he first died. Searing boils covered the boy and wept pus onto Kateryna’s leathers. She gripped his tremulous hand, feeling his flesh burst beneath her touch. I just saw him yesterday… How could this happen so quickly?

Kateryna yelled for Fulcrum, but he was gone, already welding the next piling.

Isshiah convulsed in her arms, froth bubbling between his cracked lips. She stroked his dark, matted hair. “Where’s your brother, Isshiah? Where’s Seth?”

He tried to speak, but he could only retch, choking on his spit.

Kateryna’s calves itched as she felt the third tremor. Gods, why all at once! Something stirred below; she knew it.

Someone rang the bell, and a chorus of metallic chants summoned the townsfolk to gather at the quay. A crash of thunder followed by an avian caw—Morgana’s Chosen had just arrived with the week’s rations. Perhaps… just this once, he’ll listen.

Slinging Isshiah over her shoulder, Kateryna made for the quay, pushing through disgruntled, starving onlookers.

Black wings unfurled before gray clouds, and the rains reduced to a mere drizzle as Morgana’s Chosen descended on the back of his griffin. The beast landed weightlessly, and the crowd closed in around it.

The rider’s sabatons crunched in the sand as he dismounted. Morgana’s Chosen stood a head taller than the tallest Monrovian, his hulking shadow casting a dire pall over the pleading villagers. Kateryna bared her teeth, shoving past her neighbors with as much speed and vigor as she could muster.

“Only twenty today,” said Morgana’s Chosen, his voice devoid of sympathy. “Pull your numbers.”

“Cain!” Kateryna howled over their protesting cries, but the rider did not hear—she was surrounded by a screaming, cursing mass only concerned for its next meal.

“Damn you, demon!” yelled the man next to her.

“You’re killing us all!” declared an old woman.

Her every step was marked by a new curse cast upon the gray man wearing the black armor of the Chosen. They cursed the rider to the depths as they begged for his meager gifts. Yet it was Kateryna who stood before him, buckling beneath the weight of a friend, pleading for someone else’s life. It was Kateryna who called the man by name, rather than the titles bestowed upon him.

“Cain, please!”

Finally, the rider turned. Empty black eyes fell on her, then traveled to the unconscious boy on her shoulders. Wordless, the rider approached and offered a hand to help ease Isshiah to the ground. The mob’s protest fell silent as they backed away to give the dying boy air.

“Help him…” Kateryna said, weeping. “For the love of all that’s good, you can’t let his soul fall into the depths.”

“He’s beyond help,” said Morgana’s Chosen. “His blood is tainted.”

“No… he was fine just last night…” I swear I just checked on him.

The rider unsheathed his dagger, the blade glimmering under the lantern light. Without ceremony or even bare warning, he slit Isshiah’s throat, tenderly shutting the boy’s eyes.

The mob exploded with outrage but kept their distance from the dangerous armored man. From a safe distance, they screamed and yelled and cursed—but they were powerless to resist the Dread Angel’s will.

“Scourge!”

“You sick bastard!”

Kateryna fell to her knees, eyes locked on Isshiah’s fouled blood covering her hands. She knew what would follow the contact—had experienced it already. Where might you land, my friend? Could there be somewhere kinder for you to seek succor? Or is this as safe as it gets?

A subtle, barely perceptible quake of gangplanks called her attention back to the sea. Perhaps this is a mercy, after all…

III —From the collected journals of a mad wizard

I was in attendance that morning on the docks, dear reader. I heard the poor boy’s flesh tear open, as Morgana’s Chosen cut his throat with practiced indifference. Such things do not shock one as wizened as I—not anymore.

Know that the boy did not die that day. Not in the way you will die, one day, now that everything’s been settled. No, his soul was simply transposed, ousted from one vessel to search for another.

This is the reality of the underworld, what it means to suffer in Pandemonium.

The rider wiped his dagger clean on the boy’s trousers, sliding it back into the scabbard on the small of his back. His movements were calm and deliberate, emotionless. The rider’s job was to keep the Monrovians alive and obedient—the diseased boy was merely a threat to those ends.

Disposing of a plague carrier did well to keep the Monrovians alive, but did little to ensure their obedience. The mob erupted in a cacophony of fervent protest. Drawn from my work by the ensuing chaos, I was swept up in a tide of bodies, where I was incessantly nudged and bumped, shoved this way and that.

I nearly slipped on a river stone. A man caught me, then picked up the stone, testing its weight in his hands.

I put a hand on his shoulder, whispered: “If he killed the boy without remorse, do you think he would spare a second thought for a stone thrower?” I grinned as I heard the stone plop back into the sewage at our feet.

The rider’s steed let out a strident squawk as the griffin spread its wings, rearing on its hind legs before stamping its taloned feet hard onto the planks. That shut up the whole lot. Bred by Morgana herself, griffins have a natural affinity for scaring the pants off even the most belligerent of people.

With the townspeople back in order, the Chosen unclipped a sack from his saddle—from which came the alluring scent of freshly-baked sourdough.

“Draw your numbers!” he yelled to his matron’s subjects.

Utterly disheartened, they shuffled into a single-file line to draw lottery tickets.

When I came to the front, I simply fumbled about like a mindless old git until the rider dismissed me. I have had much success maintaining such facades; I have had years of practice. For you see, dear reader, the greatest illusions are not spells at all….

I listened on from the shadows of an overhanging porch. Twenty numbers were called, and twenty villagers were given bread while a hundred more starved.

After that, it did not take long for them to return to their hovels.

Understand, dear reader, that I was in Monrovia to perform important reconnaissance. For months leading up to my fell expedition, my dreams were plagued by visions of hell—so I made it my duty to go there in person. I had yet to dream of Morgana’s Chosen, but in meeting him that day, I realized his significance to my mission. Call it intuition, call it coincidence, if you will—both are great assets to a thoughtful wizard.

“Cain,” said a young woman. The speaker was Kateryna, tall and strong of arm, as she was forever tasked with guarding me as I welded extensions on the pilings. I wondered who might she be to the Chosen to address such a figure by his given name. “You could have asked her for help…” she said. “You didn’t even try.”

The rider finished packing his saddle before he ventured a response. “Don’t call me that… I am Syr Arthur. You’d best remember that.”

“Mother never called you that. Not once. Neither shall I.”

Plates of armor rattled as Syr Arthur Cain pointed to the sky, to the gentle drizzle that was soon to grow into a torrent. “The Goddess sees all, Kateryna. I am just as beholden to her will as you, and everyone else.”

“You’ll never change,” Kateryna said, the knuckles in her hand popping into place as she tightened her fist. “I don’t know why I try.”

Morgana’s Chosen saddled his mount and, without a word, kicked off into the skies beyond the clouds.

Whether it was intuition or coincidence that moved me to eavesdrop, intuition alone drove me to run to my hovel like a schoolboy on an errand given by a beloved uncle. Beneath Kelvin’s bridge—made entirely of limestone but enchanted to be weightless, and thus a welcome addition to the rickety shantytown—my haunt lay in a crevice between the foundation of two sagging tenements. Though hardly free of the damp, it offered me a secure place to lay out my bedroll and enact my magic undisturbed.

There, I found an early slumber. I weaved the words to call forth a prophetic dream, cast my oneiromancy. But I was too hasty, and I slipped, falling right into the pits of my mind as if I had been three days starved of sleep.

The nightmare that came to me owed not to fatigue, dear reader. I tell you, what I saw was dire. We oneiromancers oft invite our dreams, yet this vision was no benevolent visitor, knocking gently upon the door to my psyche with tea and cookies. This was a nightmare in truth—a terror of the greatest sort. I will not recount exactly what I saw, for it pains me still to think of it.

Instead, I offer a verse. It is as much as I’m willing to share.

Blood on the walls.

A dark path,

Carved through the halls.

A woman lay dead

Sundered and appalled.

There’s so much,

Blood on the walls.

Fear not the change in my type’s countenance, it was not my hand that moved my pen. Such things are natural symptoms of oneiromancy. Recalling the dreams of others sometimes invites their disembodied will. I had never dreamt through the eyes of a divine, but I did that night, and I hope I never will again.

This is the cost of oneiromancy. Not only does your mind become host to strange forces of the cosmos, but so too your body and soul. Now you know, dear reader.

Now you know.

IV — On the docks of Monrovia

The Vale Betwixt, first layer of Pandemonium

Kateryna sat legs dangling off the edge of the limestone bridge connecting the quay to the tenements. How the damned thing never sank with the town was beyond her, but she was thankful, at least, for a place she could sit on solid ground.

She watched the horizon as the sun dimmed like a lantern burning out. The sun did not set or rise in Pandemonium. It turned on and off; the sun was an illusion cast for some eldritch reason outside her reasoning.

Holding out a shaking hand, still stained with blood and pus—Isshiah’s blood and pus—Kateryna wished desperately for a smoke. Something, anything, to grant a modicum of comfort. Such comforts were rare, traded for bread by the occasional drifter searching for a way out of Pandemonium. Myth told of a silver river leading to the waking world, but if something like that existed, it was now buried beneath the sea.

I can’t do this… How can this happen again?

The pestilence that had killed the people of Monrovia followed them into the underworld, lurking in the background, so that the anxiety of contracting it again prevented any hope of a restful moment. Kateryna often wondered why she and her neighbors ended up in Monrovia. The only common thread was that they had all died the same way.

Kateryna let out a sharp laugh just to hear it echo off the waves. She let out another, and the guffaw soared with the wind into the distance. She hoped Morgana heard her—saw Kateryna laughing at the Dread Angel’s pathetic hubris. Strike me down, oh glorious benefactor. Spare me the pain of my second death!

She spat thick bile into the waters below, her waste dissolving to join countless others. The roiling muck inched closer every day, faster than they could lift, even with Fulcrum’s obsessive labors. If not pestilence, then festering floods. If not one death, then another. And so on, and so forth, for the rest of eternity. That’s how it goes, isn’t it? That was how the holy books described it, anyhow.

Overcome by a fit of laughter, Kateryna doubled over with uncontrollable despair. She rolled on the ground and pounded her fists on the bricks, hitting hard so her callused skin tore open, so she could feel something other than illness and regret.

“I heard what happened,” a man said behind her. Embarrassed, Kateryna pulled herself to her feet, swinging about to face Isshiah’s elder brother.

“Seth,” she said. “I’m sick.”

Seth shook his head. “Me too.”

“Have you… gone through this before?”

“We all have—that ain’t a mystery.”

“Right, but you—”

“I had it.”

“Okay.”

Seth grunted, his face etched in stone, his demeanor just as cold. Talking with him was always difficult. Kateryna could never understand why. She knew she had known him in life, but the specifics were lost to the fog.

I’ve hurt you. So bad, and yet I don’t think either of us knows how… We just know that I did.

“I begged Cain to help.”

“Little good that could do… but thanks for trying.” Seth looked down at his bare feet, dirty and torn. “Isshiah was as good as dead by the time he found you. He declined fast. So will we.”

Kateryna did not know what to say—she just looked into his eyes, searching for what she had once found there, long ago. There was nothing but iron.

“I’m going after him,” Seth said. It was not up for debate; his mind was made up. Somehow, she could tell that by his tone of voice, the flattening of his lips.

“That’s insane,” she said. “Even if you managed to get a skiff to shore, you’d be eviscerated by whatever beasts hunt in the fields.”

“One step closer, then. He’s just a kid, Kat. I can’t leave him to do this all alone. I am dying anyway, so what does it matter?”

It did matter. It mattered a lot. The thought of him going out all alone made her sick to her stomach. “I guess there’s something to that.”

Seth fumbled in his pockets, pulled out a cigar wrapped with a thick tobacco leaf. “I got this a while back. Last time someone made the trip here. I meant to give it to you.” He handed it to her. “Keep it dry, eh?”

Kateryna smoked alone well into the night, trying to see the blocked pathways that made her gut churn with worry at the thought of Seth and Isshiah in danger—out of her reach.

When the cigar was spent, and Kateryna could no longer abide the wind and the rain, she returned to her mother’s house. She had torn up her hood so she could wrap her face and hands like a leper.

Her mother stood in the dim candlelight of the kitchen, waiting as she always did, her mouth curling into a mournful smile when their eyes met.

“Stay away… I don’t want you to—”

But her mother had already swept her up, holding her just as she had when Kateryna was a little girl. Kateryna tried to wriggle free from her mother’s grasp, to spare her the fatal contact with the sores already blossoming on her hands and face, but a mother’s love transcends such things, and soon she gave into her mother’s embrace. And she savored it, knowing such comforts were soon to be forever lost.

“Thank you….”

V — From the collected journals of a mad wizard

Leaving my nightmare, my dreams shifted to follow Syr Arthur Cain for the first time. Normally, when I dream, I stand in the subject’s shoes, seeing through their eyes and experiencing their thoughts. But not Morgana’s Chosen—for his heart was buried far away, claimed by the Goddess Corrupted. I followed him from a bird’s-eye view, and I felt only echoes of his pathos.

Cain stood atop a mountain peak, reduced to a mere island in the swath of the congealed sea overflowing the Vale Betwixt. The dimming sun shone through parting clouds, and the surveilling rains dwindled again to a drizzle before ceasing entirely. Such peace is a rarity in Morgana’s demesne, but even the eyes of a divine are not infinite when she has extended her will upon unnatural domains. In the clarity of the moment, Cain felt a weight lift from him as the sun’s illusory glow melted away, painting the sky with a wash of baby blue and pastel pink.

He scratched the chin of his trusted companion, the griffin bestowed upon him by Morgana, created in the aspect of a raven after the Dread Angel’s own visage. Such gifts were reserved only for Her Chosen—and gifts were not given freely in Morgana’s court.

Not one for sentiment, Cain did not name the beast. While the Monrovian fog blocked his understanding of this feeling, I later learned he had lost a number of horses in his life—during the crusades to quell the Kaza’duran invasion. Imagine his surprise when the magnificent griffin-foal told him its chosen name. Montauk, she called herself, the words written directly into Cain’s mind.

Temporarily free of his mental imprisonment, Cain swung his leg over Montauk’s muscular torso and commanded her back into the skies, away from the Dread Angel’s keep. The rare moments of clear weather marked the only times he dared resist his matron’s will. Cain was claimed—that was laid bare—but without eyes to watch his every move, he was free to do as he wished.

He leaned forward in the saddle, gripping the horn. Wordlessly, he bid Montauk be swift, and the griffin beat her great wings, then dove into an updraft carrying them far above the clouds where the air was thin and the burden light. It did not take long to reach the sorry town. The horizon swelled with moldering wood structures hanging by ropes and rusted cables. The people there lived on the razor’s edge—including his family, whom he had neglected time and time again.

Montauk landed in a hidden crevice between intersecting rooftops; a poorly kept secret, for you can hide nothing from a probing oneiromancer, nor from curious children with nothing better to do than to climb the bloated structures. Cain dropped from the wall and walked a familiar path. Up six flights of creaking stairs, down three, a left turn, up two more. He knocked gently on the door at the end of the gauntlet, hanging crooked in its frame. Through the gaps, he saw candlelight flickering, swift movement accompanied by measured footsteps.

Anastasia opened the door.

Cain’s breath caught in his throat as if it were the first time he was looking into her icy blue eyes. Each time he laid eyes on her, followed the path of subtle curves through her nightgown, he was beset by a barrage of ancient memories, long withheld. His wife was the only person capable of competing with the Dread Angel’s hold on him—but such episodes of lucidity were fleeting, for she did not hold his heart.

“Kat has fallen ill,” Anastasia said.

Cain looked at his boots. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Droplets of condensation dripped from the roof’s edge, drumming into rain pots. Monrovia sang a slow, lamenting refrain. Anastasia caressed Cain’s scarred cheek with a callused hand, reclaiming his attention. “You can ask her. Just this once.”

“I cannot,” he croaked, shaking his head. “I cannot.”

She dropped her hand, faded back into the house, the door hanging ajar. “I know.”

Thunder rolled in the distance. The storms would soon begin again. Cain almost turned around.

“Will you stay awhile?” Anastasia asked. “It’s been so long since your last visit.”

“Until the storm sets in”

She nodded.

Cain stepped gingerly into the entryway. His weight and dirty armored boots made the planks squeal regardless of his intention. One of the bedroom doors was sealed—he heard his daughter’s muffled sobs through the walls and knew her pain was his doing.

Anastasia led him back to her bedroom—a place they never shared, not really—and helped him to doff his armor. Naked, he sat on the floor while she bathed him with a damp rag, wiping away dirt and blood with every stroke. He loved her—how could he keep forgetting he loved her? His wife. His world. She regarded him as if he had done no wrong. Always forgiving, always waiting with open arms. Always receiving nothing in return.

Cain stared at the wall, wishing he could remember what her intimate touch felt like. Just being there with her was a risk; each time his memory returned, he vowed never to risk lying with her again, for the consequences were too dire. His matron’s wrath knew no bounds, and her envy was all the more encompassing.

His wife circled in front of him, sat across him, simply to absorb his eyes in hers. She saw him for what he was, knew the blood on his hands; she had washed it away time and time again. She held him anyway, savored the fleeting moments in between storms. Her love must have spanned the horizon, so too her compassion.

Together they stood. Anastasia removed her nightgown, and Cain stared at her thin form, engraving every detail into memory. She had always been thin, malnourished, even in life, and so he had always worried for her health. But it was chronic illness, back then, fending off the padding of the hard-fought luxury he had won for his family, not the malady, that killed her.

No…. That was all on Cain’s shoulders.

She invited him to her bed, where they lay skin-to-skin, warming one another until sticky sweat clung to them. And still she held him, and he her.

That night, marked by the rarest comfort known to him, Cain made the mistake of falling asleep, lulled to dreams by those percussive pots. He failed to notice the refrain swelling into chorus.

You already know the horror to which he awoke.

VI — A conversation, somewhere far away.

You were only a boy. You were not to blame. Not then, not yet. So young, so impressionable, when Dusk first came to you and offered her love. How were you to know the price you’d pay? You never thought love would find you, and so you jumped at the first opportunity to find it yourself.

Do you remember that feeling you had when you heard your father’s boots pad up the deck? That skip and subsequent sinking. The excitement for his return after being absent for weeks at a time. Do you remember the acrid aroma of dirt and soot that followed him wherever he went?

On the nights he was given leave to return home, you begged him for stories. But he’d only scratch his overgrown beard thoughtfully, and say he had not much to tell. Your father was no storyteller. Not that father, at least.

I am. So, listen closely.

Sometimes your mother swept into the room, on those rare occasions they were dismissed on the same night. She seemed to float to him, as if pulled by gravity towards him. You used to think nothing could keep them apart. Grasping his face, covered in coal dust, she pressed her lips to his.

Such moments were the only time you remember seeing him smile.

Often, that gentle exchange was all the tenderness they could afford. Other times, when your father had more energy and less pain, he’d wrap her in his arms and spin about the room as if they had suddenly been transplanted to a ball at the Governor’s manor.

When he dipped her low, pressed the tip of his nose to her, he whispered so no one else could hear. But you heard—you always heard: “I love you, darling. Like the sun loves the moon.”

On a winter evening, just before the solstice, your mother didn’t make it home. Such things weren’t alarming, but she had sent a letter telling you to expect her back; the governor had fired all his staff. Your father stopped at the threshold, raising his eyebrows as he found you shaking on the porch.

“What is it, boy?”

You shook your head, closing your stinging, puffy eyes. You didn’t know why, but you were worried. Beyond worried. Mother should be home by now.

The sky was red, and white ash fell like snow. You watched helplessly as your father turned around and, without another word, disappeared into the gloom. You nearly called out, nearly ran behind him to help with whatever fell errand he’d set his mind to. But you didn’t. You couldn’t. You were just a boy.

Though he never promised his return, his absence over the next few days felt like a cruel introduction to the art of lying through one’s teeth.

Soon, you were out of food. The day after, the governor’s men came knocking, armed and armored, and something told you to slip out the back door and never look back. You had no one else to guide you, so you trusted your gut.

The ash kept falling—it wouldn’t stop for a year or more. You later found out why. By some force of greater sorcery, a desert spread across the province of Kaldea, toppling the seat of the Empire in an instant. The Great City of Baltaire was no more. The world was off-kilter, and would remain so for the rest of known history.

Though you lived in a nameless colony across the South Sea, your village wasn’t spared from the conflict that followed the desert’s arrival. The sands brought Idraan, a sandstone fortress replacing the fallen capital, inhabited by otherworldly serpentine creatures that called themselves Kaza’dur.

The streets became a warzone. As more soldiers dressed in the Imperial colors fell, the more your fellow orphaned street urchins disappeared in the night. You didn’t know they were being sold at pop-up markets in the neighboring settlements, taken by the Kaza’dur.

That was why you ran to the chapel on a hilltop outside of town. The chapel’s thick walls had yet to crumble, and it seemed the grounds were untouched by scaled fingers.

You bent the knee to the Lady of Dusk, shepherd of souls, sister to Dawn. You prayed she would see your parents to safety, and you devoted everything from that moment hence to her name. They took you in, made you their own, and for the next several years, they provided sanctuary against the tide of invasion.

A priest called Ibrahim took you under his wing. He adopted you as his child, and you lived with him. When you asked for his family name, he told you he had none. “The only name worth remembering is the name Dusk bestows upon you.”

Ibrahim was a slender, meek man; his skin dark, and his nose and ears decorated with silver jewelry. He was Skanu, native to this land your people had conquered and colonized—now, besieged by crueler conquerors, besides. The true people of Skan’basan were a rare sight in the colonies; you had only met a few in your short life. Most had been shipped across the South Sea, or they isolated in the wilderness to escape the sprawling grip of the Empire.

What you’d remember most about Ibrahim was his eyes.

Sharp as a quill, vibrant as a clematis in full bloom, his eyes commanded attention, demanded respect—more so than words could hope to achieve, yet he was made of words. He had taught you the tenants of Zulma, the Great Mother Death, known to you as Dusk. So too, he taught you to read and write and speak with eloquence. “All people should know these things,” Ibrahim would say when you grew frustrated by your studies. “Dusk leaves little for the eye, so we must read by what light remains.”

After you took communion for the first time—taking a sip of spirits from the skullcap of a long-dead prophet—Ibrahim brought you to a cave in the mountains. You were waylaid by a unit of Kaza’duran foot soldiers, and laid eyes on their cold, scaly faces for the first time.

They had the skin and heads of snakes, each one boasting a different pattern of vibrant or earthy colors. You felt the indifference in their hearts—the same a man might feel, stumbling upon a dog in the street. Ibrahim convinced them you were his slave, that he was a loyal adopter, and had already bent the knee. They believed him, and you never forgot that even he, this paragon, could lie through his teeth.

When you reached the mouth of the cave, he refused to enter. “You must descend alone, my son.” He took your clothes, and you ventured into the black naked, free of burden and devoid of armor. “Listen to the waves, the drops!” he called at your back, just as the last of the sun’s light was swallowed by encroaching walls.

You listened… and you heard more in that moment, than in every other moment of your short life combined.

Following the echoing drops of condensation, you came upon a spring, and you bathed in the warm water. A gentle drop splashed on your forehead. A woman sang, her voice resounding through the water and you felt her embrace. She whispered her request; her breath on your ear and neck sent shivers down your spine.

“I will never stop loving…” You promised her.

A light in the water shimmered, and the pool became perfectly temperate to grant you unique comfort, matching your body’s needs that even you were not aware of.

“I devote myself to you. Body and soul.”

In that moment of tender bliss, you never could have imagined the lifetime of blood that awaited you. Nor could you imagine the furnace of eternal torment sweltering in anticipation of your soul’s arrival.

Once, you were alive. Truly alive. Once you were that naive little boy, floating naked in the water, consumed with peace and love, driven to cherish your Goddess’s children. Once, you were a person who sought to facilitate life, to nurture it and watch it blossom.

And yet, even you strayed so far, so quickly.