Itch: Nine Tales of Fantastic Worlds

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  Skinny in mind and hungry of soul, they sought, single-mindedly, what their seers showed them—what they thought they needed more than anything else in this world. What fate told them they must have, no matter what they truly wanted.

  But it did not matter. They were sisters. And they were Fates. And so they would continue until the moment they died here now, or centuries in the future.

  The beast-dragon snorted again. By the remains of the great tree, his human echoed his sound. “He says the sun rises. The sun sets. Everyone sees death, little Fate.” The human half of the Dracos dusted ash from his knees. “The emptiness of death is the easiest memory to make.”

  ***

  Death was as easy as kneeling under a tree, waiting for a mountain. Easy as taking the hand rage offered and allowing it to guide Ladon into his future.

  A low grumble washed from Dragon.

  Mira’s brow crunched. Her ability sounded through the grove, raining like chimes onto Ladon’s skin as much as his mind. She peered into the space Dragon’s invisible body occupied, but she still did not back down.

  Long ago, Ladon awoke under this tree, his blood boiling for a fight. This Fate’s father awoke not far from where she now stood. At that moment centuries before, when five humans and two dragons blinked into existence, this Fate’s father had branded onto Ladon’s soul a look of pure hatred. That look, flung from eyes narrowed to slits and a face more vicious than Ladon’s own, had shaped his centuries. His command.

  His family’s pain.

  What was he, in all this? The Fates acted—passively, yes, but still acted—and he reacted. They triggered. He and the beast exploded. They blew into the wind and he became the gale sweeping in off the Mediterranean.

  The Empire teemed with the murder of the small and insignificant, the rich and powerful. Dead slaves, dead leaders, dead Emperors littered its streets. Dead fishmongers and traders from the far-flung corners of the Empire piled up in its corners. Whores and gladiators floated face down in its rivers. Soldiers and senators mortared its walls. And the spilled blood of dead children and dead Fates painted all the gates of all its villas with the fresh markings of war.

  Death crawled in Ladon’s muscles and made him dance. It tarnished iron and stole even the strongest will.

  Ladon exhaled. He remembered much death. Much hate.

  The present-seer said nothing, only dropped her gaze to the mud as she shuffled away from the beast. Dragon tossed his head and the remaining hardened ash slid from his back, but it smeared his hide with a shadow. He mimicked the night and became a shade haunting the dying grove.

  Ismene wheezed in Andreas’s grip. “My boys.”

  ***

  The past-seer stared, her eyes glossy and malevolent. Now they spoke of death. Because only death filled their minds. Hers. Ladon’s. Andreas’s own.

  His commander had missed the folly of his decision. Letting her go would serve nothing.

  Andreas held the woman firm.

  This place had once been holy. He’d seen it with his own eyes, the brilliance. He’d walked behind a godling for two centuries. But the true gods—the ones above who looked down on him and Ladon, Human and Dragon, on his legatus’s sister and her dragon, on Andreas’s wildling goddess mother who’d given him a gift too vile to use, on these two Fates and their Hades-bound father, on their sour and twisted future-seeing brother, on all the normals rubbing against each other in the streets of Rome, on the scents of slaughter and the grating shrillness of a land determined to kill and destroy and end it all—those gods in the heavens, they rained death on this place. On this tree. On Andreas.

  Where was the balance here? Ladon had allowed the mountain to mortar him into his place under the corpse of a sacred tree. He’d allowed his beast to become nothing more than a boulder. The beast stirred from his sleep, forcing the cracking of the ash, yet they did not leave. Ladon tempted the gods by refusing to step out of the way of their descending god-foot. He called death. His own, his dragon’s, and that of these two shrill Fates whose only purpose seemed to be to reinforce Ladon’s dour inaction.

  And under the haze of dirty ash clinging to the beast’s hide, Andreas saw the truth—this decision was not the unfolding of what should unfold. This decision sent out ripples.

  Somewhere else out in the world created by the gods, something else responded, because all changes must be balanced.

  But it wasn’t somewhere else. No. The scales altered in his chest, pressed on his bones, threatened to rip his insides into bleeding pulp. What happened was not a gain, though a grain needed sacrifice to calm the eddy. A slice had to happen and a sliver pressed into his eye.

  Andreas’s throat tightened. Deep inside, down in his neck, below his voice but above his breastbone. In the place which birthed his calling scents.

  He’d long ago tamed it, cinching tight its wiggles and spasms. He’d gained control and proven to the dragons that he alone had the strength to be trusted. He carried his gift-curse with purpose and reason.

  But Ladon could not die.

  “No,” he said. ‘Refusal’ wafted from his mouth with his words. He would not set the past-seer down. He would not let these Fates go. He’d sacrifice his soul and all he knew as family, to bring his body—and the bodies of his commander, man and dragon—out of the ash.

  ***

  The present-seer looked over her shoulder at Andreas and her head tipped the same way it had when her ability washed over Ladon. “He uses his—” She shook violently and her seer suddenly ceasing its chiming.

  ‘Indignation’ hit Ladon’s nose in full, clawing glory. He squinted and his body wiggled as it mirrored what Andreas’s calling scents told him what to do. He wasn’t going to let these little whining whores lead him to his death under the mountain. He was better than that. He was a godling.

  Human! The beast staggered and a bright flame screamed from his open mouth into the ash-filled air. Bits of the volcano popped and fizzled, fusing together, and dropped into the hot mud now more glass than pumice. Right your mind!

  The ‘indignation’ flipped over to ‘fear’ and just as quickly yanked on Ladon’s muscles. Vesuvius wasn’t done. It rose impossibly high, spit impossible quantities of death and shadow. He’d dropped into a pit and the mountain stood at the lip, silhouetted by a dying sun, and sneered down at him. It pissed on his head.

  He wanted to take Dragon and run, to leave these three behind, and get to the coast before the mountain exploded again.

  Ismene gasped under the scarf around her face. She yelled, her hands gripping Andreas’s arm. “Run… we have to run. I can’t see. What did you do, you vile Mutatae? Your kind is more dangerous than all of mine combined. It’s fated. You shift the world to evil. Evil born of your Progenitor…”

  Andreas tossed the past-seer. She flew up, her arms flailing, and landed hard next to Dragon’s forelimbs. Her arm snapped.

  She screamed.

  The beast pranced back, his talons digging into the ground. The need to hunt, to kill, flashed to Ladon across their connection like the lightning flashing through the clouds around the mountain’s crest. She deserved to die. All her kind deserved to die.

  “Andreas!” Ladon bellowed. Ash clung to his lips, filling his eyes and ears. But it did not filter what he smelled. His tribunus had unleashed his curse.

  The big man looked up and he pointed at Ladon’s chest. “My charge is to protect you and your sister.” His finger whipped toward Dragon. “To protect the beast and his sister!”

  His foot met the past-seer’s side. “Not to protect Fates! Never Fates.”

  She screamed again.

  Mira’s own fear must have broken through the ‘fear’ Andreas pumped to her. She screamed as harsh and shrill as her sister and ran at Andreas. Her fists hit, her teeth gnashed. She tried, in vain, to move a man twice her size away from her fallen family.

  Ismene curled into a ball. Tears mixed into the ash.

  “You murdered the only descendant of the D
racae and you think your petty outrage is justified?” Andreas pulled back his foot to kick again. “You lead one—probably both—of the dragons to want their own death? I will not allow you to kill those I serve and protect!”

  If his foot came down on her body—anywhere on her body—he’d kill her. The past-seer of the Jani Prime would become another corpse left to be encased by Vesuvius.

  “Andreas! You will not hurt them!” No more death. It stopped, now.

  Ladon’s tribunus bellowed, his voice raw as much from his anger as the ash, and another blast of ‘refusal’ filled the grove. Ladon staggered back. What had Andreas become?

  A dragon claw-hand cupped Andreas’s chest. And a dragon claw-hand pushed him toward Ladon.

  Andreas hit the trunk of the grand olive tree with a bone-rattling thump. His head bounced, his breath forced from his body. The ‘calling scents’ vanished.

  Ladon unsheathed his gladius and pushed its point into his tribunus’s shoulder.

  Neither spoke.

  In the ash, at Dragon’s forelimbs, Ismene whimpered. Mira hovered over her, her body an insignificant wall between her sister and the beast.

  Dragon sniffed her hair, then twisted his head back toward Ladon. I do not desire more death, Human. His great tail whipped, and he moved back. Neither do you.

  No, he did not.

  This cycle of revenge—this inciting to violence he’d allowed—would never happen again. He’d never again be driven to murder by the manipulation of Fates.

  Or the enthralling of a Shifter.

  “Get up.” He lowered his gladius.

  Andreas blinked. He slumped against the tree, stunned.

  Dragon blew out a flame and stepped between the woman and Ladon’s tribunus.

  Mira’s ability chimed through the grove. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for allowing us to live.”

  “I should not.” Ladon pointed his gladius at the Fate. “He is right. You should die.” But he no longer had the will to take the life of another child, even this adult child of his fellow Progenitor.

  Ladon walked toward the women, sheathing his gladius. The satchel he carried over his shoulder shifted. He stopped within arm’s reach. Mira stood and a new wave of indignation rolled from her, but this time he saw it in her posture, not smelled it in the air. Her sister whimpered, but did not move.

  What had these two women lost? One, her children. The other, Ladon suspected, what little joy her family offered. “What were their names?” He’d never learned the children’s names. Not when they walked the halls of the Emperor’s estates and not when he caused their deaths.

  Mira’s eyes, the color the sky should be, looked at him through the folds of the cloth wrapping her face. “Junonius. Jupiter.” She glanced at her sister, then back to him. “Minerva.” A pause. “Her name was Minerva. She was nothing like her father.” Mira looked down at her hands.

  No. Ladon saw that now. Only one Fate would push such pain into the world and it wasn’t the woman in front of him. Or the girl she so obviously cared for.

  The girl named Minerva.

  “Why did he allow this?” Ladon asked.

  Mira’s chest rose and fell, a silent sigh under the scarf wrapped so tight around her face. “Ismene asked the same question. On the mountain.” She pointed at Vesuvius. “We’d gone to help Father. Why he called us, I could not see. We did nothing when we were there. Only climbed. We followed and did not interfere.” Her eyes narrowed. “Followed the chafing fate tied tight around our necks.”

  The girls—his niece, the one named Minerva, and the two boys, Junonius and Jupiter—were nothing more than knots in Janus’s coiled hate. Knots he’d thrown around all their necks.

  Mira’s entire body shook as her seer’s chiming filled the grove. “This stops with you. It has to stop with you, Dracos, man and beast.”

  She is correct. Dragon twisted and shook, an attempt to dislodge more ash. I do not like Fates, but she speaks the truth, Human.

  Mira blinked, looking between Ladon and the beast. “The Great Sir understands, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes.” Of course Dragon understood. Of all of them, he saw the world with the greatest clarity.

  Ladon bowed his head once, quickly, toward the Fate. “As do I, present-seer.”

  Mira returned the gesture. “This new path you choose will be difficult.”

  All paths but death were difficult.

  They must leave. The mountain makes more ash. Dragon pointed his snout inland, toward Vesuvius.

  “He’s telling me it is time for you to take your sister and go.” Ladon reached into the satchel. “Take this.” He offered an olive. “Go north along the coast. You will find a captain. The Carthaginian. Give him the fruit and tell him his son Andreas wishes him to tend your sister’s arm.” He nodded to the present-seer. “He will take you as far as you need to go.”

  She stared at his palm. Her hand snaked out. She snatched the olive, nodding once. “Thank you.”

  The ground rocked, a wave from the distant mountain, and she grasped his arm, her hand cupping his elbow—an unconscious gesture to keep herself from dropping to the mud. He steadied her as best he could.

  “What of him?” She let go, her fingers releasing slowly, as she nodded toward Andreas.

  Ladon looked over his shoulder at his Second. He didn’t know what the future held. He never dared to believe he understood—or could comprehend what-will-be. “Legio business does not concern you, present-seer.”

  She blinked and backed away, her gaze low, and carefully pulled her sister to standing.

  Ismene babbled and refused her sister’s help, much like a small child.

  She will not learn. Dragon rubbed against the olive’s trunk to dislodge the mud-ash on his back, but it only smeared across his hide. I do not like her.

  Andreas stared at the beast, still silent.

  The two Fates argued, their heads together, doing their best to hide their words from him. But Ladon heard Mira as clearly as if she spoke into his ear: “I am the present, and I want to live, sister.” Mira glanced at him one last time as she vanished into the ash, her sister in tow.

  They’d survive. How they would face their future, though, Ladon did not know.

  Dragon knocked against his side and he patted the beast’s neck. Then he hauled his tribunus to his feet. “Come,” he said. “We go to the coast.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The Fates tell their children a story:

  You are descended from our Progenitor, a god more powerful than his namesake Janus, than Manu the Great or Shai or any of the other figments of the normals’ imaginations. You are descended from one of the true gods who walks this earth—a real man, a real god—and that is what makes you exceptional.

  When the Progenitor of Shifters tricked the first Burner to his end, your Progenitor knew her plans. When she would leave the Burner to the mountain, your Progenitor sacrificed his talisman to ensure the ghoul’s fate. And to this day, if you walk the haunted streets of Pompeii, you may tread upon the shards of his sword—and upon cost and purpose.

  So remember, my children, you are exceptional. But you must follow our Progenitor’s example: See what must be seen. Do what must be done.

  Because no one is as bound by fate as the Fates themselves….

  ~ ~ ~

  Cinder to Dust

  Now…

  A new talking head popped onto the television’s screen. “—and rescue teams scour the rubble for survivors.”

  Mira’s stomach clenched. A warehouse in Indiana had detonated yesterday afternoon, then this happened yesterday evening. She set the remote next to her breakfast.

  The scene cut to a German shepherd in a special Kevlar dog-vest and a firefighter in full gear crawling over smoldering concrete. The animal barked frantically as he dug between two bent steel girders.

  “As the Chicago area reels from last night’s tragic explosion in Schaumburg, the nation wonders. Could this be another attack on our—�
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  Pressure cinched tight around Mira’s left eye. She leaned forward, her palms flat on the kitchen counter. Something moved in what-was-is-will-be and spread over the threads of the universe like burning grease. She couldn’t read it directly, but it had ignited the present.

  Her seer had been screaming for a full twenty-four hours. Screaming to run, to hide, to do something, but she didn’t know what. Answers weren’t coming through because a wall of chaos blocked off all understanding.

  She glanced at the television again.

  Burners. Flames and acid and randomness so thick no Fate could see through it rampaged across the Midwest. They’d eat every normal and Shifter they caught.

  Her finger tapped the remote. Two thousand years she’d been living each day, dancing with her seer, doing her best. But it still got away from her sometimes. Especially now, with the pain in her joints.

  She flicked the television to a different feed from Chicago. Another explosion ripped through the crumpled shopping mall. Screams burst from the television’s speakers and the picture fractured. A black screen followed, then the anchor’s slack-jawed horror.

  Thumps from the bedroom above boomed through the kitchen. Shadows moved—the light fixture swayed.

  Mira looked toward the stairs. In thirty seconds, her daughter Rysa would burst down the steps, her pack dangling from her hand, and rush into the kitchen. She’d mutter and purse her lips and turn in a circle. Then she’d ask Mira why the news flashed across their television.

  Twenty seconds, now.

  One of Mira’s hands poured orange juice without her willing it to move. The liquid sloshed as it hit the glass. The other hand braced her neck.

  Ten seconds and flustered energy would bounce through the room, worries about grades and graduate school dropping from her daughter’s lips. Rysa would look into Mira’s eyes and ask how she felt this morning. Then she’d promise to be home early enough to make dinner, so Mira wouldn’t have to cook.