by R. T. Donlon
“No,” Turisic replied. “You’re not.”
Xan responded with nothing—not words, a flinch, nor a shift in posture.
“Remember one thing,” growled Turisic. “You may live out your days here as a god, but one day, you will die as a maggot against the heel of my foot.”
“Your words are only words. There is nothing more you can do.”
“I will return and, when I do, you will wish you had never been born.” Turisic raised his shackled wrists toward his brother. “Release me.”
With a flick of his fingers, the cuffs disappeared and Turisic freed. He rubbed the lines of blood-soaked wounds across his wrists in hopes to comfort himself, but the damage had already been done. He turned, keeping his eyes focused on the doorway below him, unnerved by Xan’s glare burning deep into his back.
“Farewell,” Turisic whispered. “This is not the last time you will see me.”
“Goodby—”
But Turisic needed no prompting. Before his brother could finish, Turisic had broken the barrier and vanished into the Anestra.
When he awoke, he heard nothing but the sound of his own breathing.
He could hear nothing else.
He could see nothing but black.
No wind pushed at his ears. No stars blanketed the empty sky. Only a thin veil of gray permeated the landscape.
He came to in a pit roughly the size of what he had dug on the other side. He scanned the area surrounding him. His brother no longer stood at the ledge. He slapped at the mud underneath his hands and knees to push himself to his feet, but a bit of queasiness had ruptured within him, leaving a lightheadedness at the back of his eyes in the worst kind of way, so instead, he crawled on all fours out from the pit and onto the dried dirt of the Anestran plain, reaching for anything with substance, anything he could identify. He found nothing.
Panic had begun to take him over when a slight whistle broke the silence of the place. Turisic fell to his back, breathing heavily. A strong gust of wind broke another bout of silence, but this one felt unnatural, different. Somehow it felt forced.
Turisic whipped his shoulders in either direction in hopes to pick up a silhouette or sign of movement—a rustling in nearby brush or a snapping of a loose twig. He listened for several lonely minutes, but heard nothing.
“Hello?” he asked. “Who’s there?”
His voice deadened almost as it left his mouth. No echo resonated the air.
For the first time, he realized how cold he was. Every inch of him had been coated with a mixture of dust, mud, and that same sticky plasma mucous that seemed to blanket everything here. It pushed him deeper into a bitter chill that shook his bones. His fingers became more difficult to move, numbing them into nothing more than useless appendages.
You are alone here, a quiet voice spoke from beside him. There is no one here to save you.
The voice possessed something strange, something only his mind could hear, but his ears could not. Vibrations rattled him from the inside out. He propelled himself backward, panicked, against low-hanging tree.
You are scared, the voice continued. I can smell it.
He pushed from the tree to his feet and spun himself into a frenzy. The pit had forced his senses into a dark mess of shadows and deepened colors. Navy blues and deep purples filled the shapes of trees, boulders, and the horizon in the distance.
It is one thing to be lost, the voice spoke. You could say everything here is lost in a way, but fear…fear means something entirely different. Fear is the end of life and the beginning of—
Turisic’s heart raked against the bones of his ribcage. He tried desperately to settle it, but could not find it within himself to do so.
“The beginning of what?” Turisic asked.
Stillness, the voice continued. The beginning of stillness.
“Who are you?” Turisic asked, but the voice continued as if it had not heard him.
There is a place. It is a place of rock and ruin. It is a place where one forgets all. It is there you can forget the atrocities you have committed, the wrongs you have tried to make right, the regrets and guilts you have lived. It is a place where only the scared ones go.
A silence filled the air. Turisic calmed his breathing.
Would you like to go there? To the place of rock and ruin? There will be no pain in that place. There, you can forget it all.
“No,” Turisic said. “I will not go.”
A gurgling hiss filled the air, echoing away from him through miles of barely-visible, broken clay desert.
That is what they all say, the voice growled, but if I had to guess, you will be there sooner rather than later. You reek of fear, New One, more than most.
No matter how the story is told from here, what happened next is difficult to say.
The myth speaks of the voice entering him—entering every molecule of his being—scratching at Turisic from the inside for hours with sharpened claws, tearing and ripping at his skin, inflicting as much pain as any one person—god or not—could endure. Other versions of the myth say that, after the voice’s initial invitation, a formless being revealed himself to Turisic, then sculpted itself into a perfect replica of his brother, who then proceeded to stab him in the chest for three straight days—never allowing Turisic to die, never stopping. A third version of myth tells of Turisic eluding the voice for hours, running full speed through the dark Anestran desert, only to trip into a pit of a thousand sharpened daggers. He was left there for weeks to pry himself from the blades, both dying but not dying the entire time.
In every one of these stories, one thing remained the same—Turisic endured.
Through torrents of pain, he bore every slash, cut, bite, and gash with nothing more than a grimace to show for it. The voice—whatever monster it may be—asked him the same question every few hours: Would you like to go to the place of rock and ruin? All of this will end, but each time, Turisic rejected its invitation.
Hours stretched into days. Days into weeks. Weeks into months.
The humanity within Turisic ached for death, screamed for it, but the dying spark of godliness inside of him resisted, pulling him further from the constraints of the pain.
Turisic focused.
This will never end. The pain you feel will forever be a part of you, the voice continued.
Months pressed into years, which stretched into decades. Decades into centuries.
Would you like to go to the place of rock and ruin? the monster asked. All of this will end. All of it.
Still, Turisic rejected its invitation.
The pain he felt no longer seemed like pain. Instead, a strange, dull push seemed to be the only thing he felt now, covering every inch of him. At this point, the monster’s blows seemed as minimal as a blade’s first break of skin—nothing more. Over and over, the monster posed the same question and, every time, Turisic dismissed it. He waited. It was the only luxury he could afford—patience.
And then, as if it struck him upside the head, Turisic knew.
“This is the moment,” he mumbled.
He had been waiting for the monster’s complacency, waiting for it to redirect.
Would you like to go…
“Yes,” agreed Turisic. “Take me to the place of rock and ruin.”
The voice’s deafening buzz ceased immediately, leaving only a hollow void in its wake. The surrounding Anestral desert silenced with it for the first time since he had broken through the realm—a stillness that nearly consumed him quicker than the monster ever could. Turisic screamed, clutching at his ears and falling to his knees.
You are braver than I expected, the monster spoke, but everyone breaks. Everyone.
The monster now hovered in front of him, but its formless body held no true shape nor depth. Turisic’s blurry, weary eyes could see nothing more than deep gray pockets of movement swerving in the air adjacent. He was desperately frail now—shaken to the core by unwavering torrents of pain, never letting up, never surrendering.
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“You think pain is the answer,” Turisic spat. For centuries, he had only spoken one word—no. His voice crackled and broke against his sudden onslaught of noise. “The Anestra is a system based on its limitations. When you realize the flaw in its makeup, you will understand my secret—the secret that will end you and the rest of this place.”
A gurgling hiss rose from the monster. The monster laughing—deadpanned, coarse laughter.
The Anestra, the monster whispered. This is what you call this place? This place has no name. It is not worthy of such things.
Sparks of anger flickered through the voice’s response. It hovered close to Turisic’s dim eyes, raising a single jagged claw to the god-human’s swollen chin.
This place will never change. It is a place for the lonely, for the scared.
“So you are trapped here, too. Like me.”
The voice, for the first time, grew eerily hesitant. Turisic continued before it had the chance to counter.
“Take me to the ruin. I am ready for what comes next.”
As you wish.
They walked for miles. The monster hovered above the clay as if weightless while Turisic stumbled mightily against the debility of his useless legs until the expanse of the Anestra broke into low-hanging clouds and a steep cliff shrouded in Darkness, nearly invisible to the naked eye.
Stop here, the voice spoke.
If the thing had not stopped abruptly in front of him, he would have careened obliviously off the ledge. Flickers of red pulsed from below.
“What is it?” Turisic asked. “The red?”
For decades he had only seen shades of the same bland hues of grays and blacks. The red filtered through his sight as a newborn infant takes its first breath. He took a step forward.
You will fall if you go any farther, the voice said. You must be prepared for what comes next. A fall will only make matters more difficult.
He could see it now in the glowing flickers of red. The steep decline at his feet broke from the desert quickly, jutting down hard into a sea of burning trees. Beyond them, a decimated cluster of skyscraper buildings silhouetted the horizon, hanging heavy there like the lifeless fingers of a dead giant. He counted fifty, but he could not trust the extraordinary fatigue plaguing his mind now. Some of the towers, he saw, stood unblemished, but most had been clipped into ragged steel parts, leaving nothing but exposed framework. This was a strange scene for Turisic—a god-human who had never seen such a thing before.
The city, the monster whispered. This city is power. It is our strength.
Flickers of static lightning pulsed from structure to structure, splitting into booms of rolling thunder. Each crack of electric noise sent a surprising jerk through Turisic. The thunder, unlike any other sound in the Anestra, echoed through the land in rolling waves.
“What are they?” he asked. “Those…things?”
Those buildings are the future, the voice answered. They are the lifeblood of my people.
A path opened to his right, down the cliff. He slid his toes into a skinny foothold of an in-rock ladder and traversed it cleanly, taking each movement down step-by-step as not to fall. The voice followed quietly behind him.
The pain you have felt, the being spoke, has prepared you for this.
Turisic turned, staring into the burning forests ahead of him.
“The fire?” Turisic asked.
The Forever-Burning Forest, the monster explained. There is no way around, only through. You must find it within yourself to walk among the burning trees.
The voice triggered something in him. A new type of energy began to take shape. It was not new to him per se, but instead, new to the Anestra, new to power Turisic had accrued over centuries of constant pain and torture. How it came into being meant nothing here. All that mattered was that it was there, that it existed. Turisic focused, sensed it moving inside of him, rattling against his chest.
The god-strength, Turisic thought.
It was clear now! The monster had made a critical mistake. It had never noticed Turisic’s silent ulterior motives, even with hundreds of years to do so. Instead, it had treated Turisic as fully human and, that alone, had been enough to start the machine in him—to store the pent-up pain energy and convert it into god-strength. With every bit of agony he endured in the Anestra, the god-strength amplified that much more within him.
“I will reach the city,” Turisic said. “After all you have put me through, this, of all things, will not end me.”
It will only make me stronger, he thought.
From this angle, the trees burned white—a heat so profound the skin of his arms had already begun to swell.
Good luck, New One, the monster spoke. I will see you on the other side.
He approached the forest and reached its outer lip. Here, the heat of hundreds of thousands of flames threatened to sear his flesh, but the sweat purging from his pores kept him withered and, albeit not well, coated from the reaching flame. Blisters riddled his melting skin while tissue dried and flaked from him like ash in a wind. He pushed onward as quickly as possible—putting one foot in front of the other—but the mortality of his body had nothing left to give. Still, despite the emptiness, he closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and endured.
The heat battered him for miles. Each barefoot step met another dead patch of untouched dirt that cooked the bottoms of his feet, yet he persisted, and eventually the trees began to thin and the smoke began to dispel. White flame shriveled into gray, then cooled into embers that lined the path to the edge of a broken gate. Behind it, buildings rose in every direction—broken glass, steel bars jutting from their shaky foundations, lightning pulsing through it all, dancing through metal and air. The sky here was no more, drowned by the monstrosity of buildings overhead. They whispered in static, in shades of white and effervescent blue.
You wish to forget, the voice called to him. This is how.
Turisic approached the gate in a cloud of steam, bathed by the residual effects of his body’s unnatural temperature. He outstretched a shaking hand and ran his fingers across an inscription of mysterious symbols across the metal.
“What does it say?” Turisic asked.
He was met with a violent grunt from the monster and an aggressive advance.
It speaks of things you will never understand. Enter now, the monster spoke. It is here I will take your pain away.
A dozen more hovering black shapes circled him, each perfectly similar to the one that had brought him there. Turisic dropped to his knees and released the weight of his shoulders from the intense strain in his neck. The gate screeched open.
There is no longer any need to worry, the voice whispered. You belong to the city of Shadows now.
The Shadows converged into a cloud of black smoke overhead, hissing loudly into a sea of wild, flailing movements. They converged like a pack of rabid wolves and, for a moment, Turisic contemplated the relief of surrendering to them, ending his consciousness once and of all, but the vengeful bloodlust riddling his heart proved too much for such thoughts. He had come too far to allow that to happen. He had finally reached his pinnacle moment—the moment he would break free from the confines of the Anestra and return to the Great Range. He held up both hands with palms outstretched toward the Shadows and stopped the creatures midair with a newfound energy glow brightening and extending across the surface of Turisic’s skin.
“You have underestimated me,” whispered Turisic. He spoke so softly the Shadows could not hear, but the next line rung so clearly it seemed the entire Anestral plain thundered in its wake. “You have made your greatest mistake.”
The Shadows separated from one another, trying desperately to break the orb that bound them, but found no strength there. Turisic pressed forward, discharging another burst of light that sent the Shadows wilting in its wake.
“I am Turisic,” he spoke, “god of the Great Range and…your reckoning.”
The Shadows fought the flow of god-strength with Dark strength he
had never seen. Dirty claws and yellow teeth swiped and ripped at the flow, but Turisic held his ground, focusing only inward to center his pain, his anger.
“Your world will crumble,” Turisic said. “I will make sure of it.”
In that moment, every instance of pain he had ever endured suddenly rushed back to him, coursing through every bone, every muscle, every drop of blood. It intensified into a single ever-growing ball of energy swelling in the pit of his chest. The god-strength grew. It hardened and brightened until it unraveled and, with one fleeting thrust, exploded through every pore of his skin, every inch of him, pulsing wildly into expanding rings of light.
The Shadows disappeared.
The city crumbled.
And the sky cleared.
Silence filled the Anestra, its snapping electricity ceased, and only the sound of Turisic’s wild breathing could be heard for miles in the empty plains.
He took a few moments to allow himself to readjust. What he had just achieved was something straight out of lore.
A god can only truly be a god if he accepts the path, Turisic thought, but I have not accepted the path! How can this be? I am a god of betrayal, of mortal lust!
And then, as if prompted by his own curiosity, the answer flittered across his mind like a spider across its web.
“Pain is not a weakness,” he mumbled. “It is a weapon.”
I am a god, he said. He stood up straight against his own words. I am a god of the Range.
The towering buildings that had once consumed the sky lay in waste at his feet, replaced by plumes of wicked dust and refuse floating ever closer to the ground in hopes to finally settle.
“The Anestra cannot hold me,” Turisic continued. “Nothing…no one can stop me now.”
He spent hours walking the streets, through the dust and ruin. He marveled at its silence. He laughed at its burning End and, when he felt it was time to leave, he simply held out his palm and focused another pulse of god-strength toward the center of the abandoned city.
He thought back to what his brother had said about godship.
If you were ever a god, Xan had said, you would know it, feel it in every part of you. You are no god, brother. You would have known it by now.