I yanked back from the monolith, and this time, it took a major effort. A new migraine abruptly slammed down on me, and I took three steps back, only maintaining my footing on the uneven stone by the assistance of my billhook. The lantern swayed around crazily at the sudden movement, and my whole world switched wildly between darkness and light for a few minutes as I caught my breath. When the light steadied, and the headache receded to a dull throb, I looked back up at the words, only to find that they were once again incomprehensible to me, but for the one word. "Vathraqa," I whispered to myself. "All monsters were once men." I could believe it. I remembered a moment long ago, recalled the sight of familiar blue eyes concealing the vile, scuttling monster within. Oh, I knew men could be monsters- but all monsters were once men.
Shaking off the growing feeling of disquiet, I continued on my way, passing the marked monolith. More of the great shapes loomed up out of the darkness, but I skirted around them, not trusting myself to get close. Most of them were as unmarked and undamaged as the first I had seen, but every so often, another graffiti message would appear, graven into the stone in the script of the Erin-Vulur. Several of them were the same declaration as the first. ALL MONSTERS WERE ONCE MEN. But soon, I found one in which my mind didn't recognize any of the words. This was not surprising, considering the limited nature of my vocabulary. Curious, I stretched out my hand to the stone, wondering if a headache would return and let me read those words again. This time, when I touched the stone, I didn't hear anything. No, that wasn't quite true. This was different than not hearing a new noise against whatever background sounds I could hear. No, when I touched the standing stone, I heard Nothing. There was complete and total silence, in my ears, in my heart, and in my mind. There was an abyss inside that pillar, a great, devouring emptiness, and I could feel the pool of that blessed, all-encompassing silence reaching into me. I could just stay here. I could just be still. I could rest and not worry about anything, and just cease to be. It would be the ultimate peace, the ultimate end.
I was leaning against the pillar now, my face pressed to the stone, and I could feel... not cold, but something like it creeping into my veins. I slid down the monolith to my knees, the spear slipping from my nerveless fingers and falling away in total silence. Rest. Sleep. Nothing. And then, somewhere deep inside my soul, a great cat roared. As suddenly as if I had been electrocuted, I snapped back into myself and tumbled away from the monolith, my eyes wide, my heart racing, and my mind alive with terror. Just as broke contact with the monolith, I might have heard the slightest, the subtlest of chuckles.
"Holy shit," I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs. "What the fuck was that!?" I looked up at the dark pillar of stone, and the scrawled shapes in it resolved themselves before my eyes into Pan-American words. THE DESCENT IS ALWAYS EASY. I swallowed hard. Another hard truth. "The descent is always easy." A postscript scrawled further down the pillar read: IT BEGINS WITH A SINGLE STEP.
Now distinctly unnerved, I blinked until the graffiti turned back into illegibility in my sight, and then I retrieved my billhook and crude lantern. Neither was damaged, thankfully. I reoriented myself on the place where I knew Ravanur’s temple would be waiting. They were like us, you know, a woman’s voice spoke quietly within my mind. And we were not so different from you, before that first step. We made a choice, long ago, and we've been paying for it since your civilization was little more than up-jumped apes.
I looked around, but I knew no one would be there. It was Ravanur speaking, and she was speaking directly into my head. Some part of my brain became curious at this realization. Only Barbas had been able to do something like at with me. How could Ravanur alter my dreams? How could she speak to me in my mind? Did that make her like Barbas? Of course she could speak in my head. She was a god after all. But what did being a god really mean? If sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic, then was all magic simply vastly advanced technology? Had Ravanur once been a woman like me, changed into an immortal dead god by some technology I could not understand?
I continued on my way, my skin crawling with unfocused fear at the sight of each new monolith. They were getting more numerous, spaced closer and closer together, and soon they were so many that it was like I was standing in a stone forest. I had to pass between some of the pillars sideways, squeezing through and trying my best not to touch any of the rock.
Ravanur spoke again, and this time, it was as if she was standing right next to me. The sensation was so strong, in fact, that I turned to look where my senses told me she was standing- behind me and to my left. There was no one there, real or illusory. Her voice was another hallucination, projected into my head like Barbas had always done. We found it, Joanna Angeles. We found the way to cheat death. We found a way to change the world to suit us, to make the universe bow to our will. Do you know how many worlds we saw? Do you know how many different people we came to know? We were the masters of the universe! But that wasn’t enough.
Through the forest of pillars, I saw another monolith rise, this one much taller and much broader than its brethren. It had been liberally defaced with Erin-Vulur graffiti, and in many cases, the scratched phrases overlapped others. The clawed writing was so dense, in fact, that as I drew closer to the great monolith, I could not see any of the circular runes clearly. They had all been defaced, every one of them ruined. "What were you?” I asked aloud. “What were your people?”
Ravanur did not answer. Instead, as I looked up at the great defaced monument, the carved graffiti that scarred it, shifted and changed before my eyes, and I could read it, just like the standing stones I had seen before. The first and largest phrase read: MAN WITHOUT LIMITS IS A GOD. A GOD ANSWERS TO NO ONE BUT A GREATER GOD. And beneath it, chiseled in stone by a different hand in smaller, but no less distinct characters: ALL GODS FOREVER HUNGER. Hunger for what? The next inscription read: ALL GODS FALL TO HUBRIS. And finally, carved from the stone as if by the strokes of some great blade: THE ONLY GOD TO TRUST IS A DEAD GOD. The rest of the graffiti was much the same, variants on the same core ideas repeated many times in dozens of different hands, and written on top of the previous scrawls until the whole thing was an illegible mess. Was this what the Erin-Vulur thought of gods? Or was this an old idea, lost along with all of this and buried beneath miles of ice? What was contained within these great monuments? Gods?
“You want to make me a god? And yet you show me this?” But Ravanur did not answer, and my voice only bounced off of the forest of stone and echoed back to me in a cascade of fading mockery. “Cryptic bullshit.” Without thinking, as I cursed, I kicked the base of the great defaced standing stone. This time, the attack was not subtle. It was not a whisper or a shout. It was not a black pool of nothing in which to drown, and it wasn't a screaming voice shouting into the abyss. This time, when I touched the stone, its effect was immediate and absolute. And I was in another place entirely.
…
Feral girl-child
I pressed my back up against the broken concrete that served as my current hiding place, my whole mind on the sharpened length of rebar in my hand and the people hunting me. They were hunting for me, but what they didn't know, was that I was hunting for them. It was simple. It didn't require thought. A voice came to me, spoken by a face I couldn't remember anymore. The face had once had a name, but it had been lost on the day that the sky had fallen, lost along with mine. "Remember. The best defense is a good offense." The face had not been talking about raiders. It had not been talking about stabbing and running and bleeding. But it still worked. It was the law of the jungle. Kill and eat. Or be killed and eaten. I didn't know much, but I wasn't going to be eaten.
Loud, brazen footsteps scattered gravel in the overgrown cracked lots just beyond my wall. Just one set of footsteps. They were arrogant. Overconfident. They were just chasing one little girl, they couldn't have been more than twelve. Still she had most of her teeth and most of her hair. Wild looking thing, but then that's what the boss man li
ked, right?
The footsteps came a little closer, and now I could make out the owner of those feet singing. I wished he wouldn’t. His voice wasn’t much worth remarking on, except that I wondered if I would die if I stuck the rebar in my ear. Closer came the feet. I did not move. Strike too soon and I would be dead. Your average bandit, even a starving bandit, could pick up my little boot-leather body and fling me into a wall. Done. The best defense was a good offense. A good offense knew how to pick its shot.
A leg appeared through a gap in the concrete, just ahead of me. Attached to it was the foot, and the foot was clad in a real, actual, honest-to-God boot. The good shit. Most of the good shit was gone, or owned by folks that didn't live in this ruin anymore, so this ganger must have been tough. After all, he was still wearing that boot, wasn't he? I compared his foot to mine for a moment. Not a perfect fit, but I could probably stuff some rags in the toe. The foot came down, braced, the leg straightened to let the other move- now. Now was my moment.
I darted forward, fast as a rattlesnake, and jabbed the rebar into the leg, where the knee should have been, gripping the crude shiv like an icepick and putting all of my little girl weight into it. I heard the tendons break and watched the joint take the shape it wasn't meant to. The leg bent, this time to the side, and the bandit fell toward me, toppling like a tree. He was probably in shock because he didn't scream. As soon as he hit the dirt, I yanked my bloody shiv out of his knee and slammed it down into the hollow of his throat. The only sound he made was a weak gurgle. One down.
This little stretch of ruin and concrete and rust was mine. I lived here, and though I looked like a little girl, I was not. I was a cat. Like a jungle cat. Maybe a panther, or a jaguar, or… a tiger. A tigress. I was the tigress, and this was my territory. These asshole poachers were hunting me for my beautiful pelt. And a tigress could only really do one thing with poachers.
I froze crouched low over the body, out of sight. No shouts, no shots, no problem. Good. The more I took like this, in shadows and the silence, the less I would have to try to take on face to face. I quickly rummaged through the raider’s gear. No gun, just a crowbar. Classic. A few different bullets, though, all different sizes. I pocketed those, and then quickly stowed the jerky I found in his inside vest pocket. I hoped it was made of some animal, but I didn’t look at it too closely. What I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me, right? Wrong, but who was going to call me on it, this guy? Going through his belt pouch, I found something excellent. A genuine pre-war army grenade. This part was tricky, but it could seriously change the odds against me. But only if I played it right.
Carefully, I trapped the grenade under the dead man's chest, keeping it pinned so that the ‘spoon' (or floppy handle-looking part, as I liked to call it) was stuck firmly into the ground. Then I pulled the pin out, careful not to jostle the little bomb. The grenade would go off if someone touched the body, and take everyone within fifteen meters along for the express ride down to the Big Heat. I had seen it happen a couple of times before, and when I had been eight, I had even watched someone plant a trap just like this one. I knew it would work, so long as I was careful.
I got a few paces away from the dead man and his rapidly expanding pool of blood, put my back to the pillar and counted to five. Then I stuck my head out just enough to let my voice carry out into the open and make where I was a little harder to pinpoint. Then I made my best impression of a horrible scream of pain. Immediately, footsteps responded. The asshole poachers were coming, and they were the ones that would die to the hidden pit of bamboo stakes. No tigers were going to get caught up in this one.
I slunk away, staying low- though I still moved as quickly as I could manage quietly. I didn't want to be less than a hundred feet from a fragmentation grenade. There was now a lot of shouting going on, close by. The footsteps were converging on the place where I had killed that first raider, and angry shouts rose over the ruins, scaring away a couple of nearby flocks of blackbirds. I winced and made myself as small as I could.
Sure enough, I heard the grenade escape its trap, probably set free by some well-meaning raider hoping to help out his buddy. There was a clatter of light metal, and then someone yelled “Grenade!” And then there was a loud bang that turned everything in the world into a dial tone. What was a dial tone again? I didn’t move. Anyone near the blast couldn’t hear right now, but neither could I. Stumbling into someone I didn’t hear coming would get me killed just as sure as one of them getting a good hold on me would.
I waited for several agonizing minutes for the ringing sound to go away, and then I risked a tiny peek around the little clump of shattered concrete I was using as a hiding place. The ground back where I had left my little surprise was a mess. I didn't let my eyes linger on the carnage long. It damaged the illusion. They were just poachers. I was a tigress. I did what big cats would do, and I hunted down my hunters. No big deal. Nothing to worry about.
I crept out a little ways, scanning the ruins for signs of any survivors. There. A big guy stood staring off in the wrong direction, swarthy-skinned and bald, dressed in the tatters of old biker leathers. There was blood liberally spattered across one side of his face, and one of his arms looked like a tigress had gotten her teeth into it and tried to rip it clean off. Of course, that was what had happened? Right? A tigress didn't use grenades or trick people with the corpses of their friends and kin. She just killed her hunters by cleverness and the strength of her magnificent body. And that was what I had done, right? Right.
I moved quietly, carefully, circling through the scattered slabs of concrete and rotting wood, avoiding the tetanus traps of bent and rusting nails that seemed to stick out from everywhere around here. This ruin- I was not exaggerating to call it my territory. I knew this place, and this wasn't the first time I had danced this particular club. I avoided the traps and dangers almost without thinking- making use of my small, starved frame to stay out of sight. I slipped behind a mostly intact section of old strip mall wall, and when I emerged on the other side, staying safely hidden in the shadows, I could see that the big man with the bad arm hadn't moved. Good. I stalked towards him slowly, not darting around in quick movements that would draw the eye, but rather imitating a cat's smooth, sensual prowl, with my rebar shiv gripped icepick style in one hand.
I closed the distance. He was just five steps away. I didn’t dare breathe. If he turned, he would have me off of the ground by my throat before I could even try to run. Those big guys could be deceptively fast. Four steps. I noticed that he had a tattoo on his left biceps, probably from before the war. It was the classic heart encircled by a ribbon- and there were names tattooed there. I looked away. I didn’t want to know those names. I didn’t need to know more about this poacher to kill him. I was the tigress. This was what I did. Three steps. My eyes flicked involuntarily back over to his tattoo, and now I could read the names on the ribbon. I read them before I could stop myself. Jeannie. Sam. Brett. Aaron. His family? Did it matter? Two steps away. No return. I gripped the shiv and prepared my body for the pounce. One step. I tensed… and moved!
"Hey!" A voice from the other side of the ruined courtyard. "Look out!" I was in midair, I was scrambling onto the big guy's back, I was reaching for his chin- but he had turned at the warning, and had gotten an arm between us. I wasn't clinging to his back; I was closer to his shoulder. This might not have been my first rodeo, but it wasn't his, either. Howling with rage, the angry raider seized me by the front of my shirt and charged, pushing me ahead of him like a bull. I was so surprised that it took me a precious second to figure out what he was trying to do. By the time I realized it and tried to escape, it was too late. He pile-drove me into a still-standing wall back first, and I blacked out for a moment.
I opened my eyes and found myself sailing through the air. I had just enough time to realize I had been thrown before I hit the cracked pavement and bounced, leaving some of the skin on my arms and legs behind as I skidded to a painful halt. Oh, this was bad. This was very
bad. "Hey!" It was the voice that had warned the big guy, the voice of the one I hadn't seen. "Hey! We got the little bitch! Guys, come on over if you want a piece of this! I got dibs on first run!"
I tried to get to my feet, but a big, broad leathery hand slammed down over my throat like a vice, then closed down hard. I struggled as I was lifted into the air, trying to gasp but unable to breathe past the iron grip suspending me aloft. “Not so fast Burke,” the big man said, tightening his grip on my throat more and more by the second. “This little bitch killed Carter, Kenny, and Rawhide. I’ll be damned, but she was about to stick me, too. I’m going to soften her up first.”
Burke made a noncommittal sound and then sighed. "Go ahead, but remember, Alpha Dog, I don't like my apples bruised."
Alpha Dog’s only response to this was a snicker. “You pussy.” It was unclear if it had been a friendly comment for Burke or a challenge. I was pretty sure I didn’t care either way. What I did care about was the red haze closing in, and the blackness following close on its heels. I couldn't blackout. If I did, I would never wake up- or worse, I would, and death would be a long, agonizing way off. I didn't know firsthand what Burke and those like him meant when they called "Dibs" on me, but I had a pretty good guess. I was young, not stupid.
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