by Scott Hale
All things considered, there was no good reason for Vrana or Elizabeth to be there, when the Skeleton was unaffected, Neksha indifferent, and the Maggot on a whole other level of endurance, but they slammed down sanies until they were tripping balls and suffered through all this heavenly hell all the same. Until they were dead, they were destined.
Two hours out (in Ossuary time) from the viracocha village, gateways began to appear. Sometimes, above them, at other times, almost beneath their feet. Windstorms would constrict into tornados, and they’d see the gateways wrapped around the bulging spirals, flashing images like stained-glass motifs out in incomprehensible blurs. When this started happening, the Skeleton became quieter than usual. He held his cloak closed more tightly; and when the air pressure wasn’t going to town on their eardrums, Vrana swore she could hear him speaking to himself, and something else responding.
“What’re these, yeah?” Elizabeth asked the Maggot. “Portals to Exuviae?”
“Yep,” the Maggot said. “The Membrane is weak here. The heart of the Black Hour is causing a reaction.”
Vrana stared into the gateways, but her mind struggled to latch onto anything. There were only colors and metalwork, and great buzzing waves. She did not see but intuit their empty promises and thieving raptures.
“Feels different,” the Skeleton said, referring to the heart. “Like it’s trying to come off my bones.”
“To go back home?” Vrana asked.
“Can’t tell which way its pulling. Never can tell if it wants to go to the Deep or not. Spent so long making sure I didn’t give it what it wanted that… I… I am not entirely sure if this is the best course of action for us all.”
Elizabeth slipped pieces of meat underneath the bindings over her mouth. Chewing, she said, “A woman came to the Orphanage in the Nameless Forest. I was one of the vampyres there when she did. She was from Exuviae. We called her the Bad Woman.”
The Maggot crept across the scaled earth, thinking on what Elizabeth had shared. Its engorged, sickly yellow body bunched up and stretched out with its movements. The blue chevrons that were its eyes glistened, while the upside-down crucifix above them sucked on the words it was about to spew.
“There is a story about a group of nuns who discovered the heart of the Black Hour and brought it back to their convent,” it said. “Whether this happened on Earth, in Exuviae, or elsewhere, it’s unclear. But these women were the first to wield it. They saw it as a sin-catcher, something that would force the world into a great orgy of depravity and violence, and when it was over, the world would be cleansed. They forced the heart into an object, though I’m not sure it was the Dread Clock at the time. Through ritual, they transformed a priest into the heart’s Keeper, to guard it.”
“We take care ourselves just fine,” the Skeleton said.
Neksha, who’d been holding up the rear, seemed startled.
He’s losing it, Vrana thought. She sped up, trying to keep pace with him, but moving through this wasteland was like trying to run in a dream: No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get to where she needed to go. As he’d been before, the Skeleton was always out of reach.
“The Black Hour’s heart traveled through the ages, inspiring chaos. Orphans of the Black Hour’s insanity often times found themselves left by their families at the same place.”
“Our Ladies of Sorrows Academy,” Elizabeth whispered.
“Yes. For some reason, the heart was sending the young survivors of its ordeals to the same location,” the Maggot said. “It was collecting its victims.”
Using her wings, Vrana pushed herself forward until she was beside the Skeleton. “You okay, man?”
The black mass had grown from the heart, all the way up the front of his skull. Only his eyes were untouched.
“The Trauma happened. The Nameless Forest stretched across the ocean from Europe, or Blackwood Marsh, running under the sea until it reached the portal on the east coast from which God emerged.”
The Skeleton whispered to Vrana, “The things… it’s showing me.”
“I found the Dread Clock and brought it to the Nameless Forest after the Trauma. I left it at Our Ladies of Sorrow, thinking that the orphans there would never let it fall into the wrong hands, because of what’d it done to their families and lives.”
“What?” Vrana asked. “What’s it showing you?”
“Tell me I’m a good man,” the Skeleton pleaded.
The Maggot continued: “With the Dread Clock in the Nameless Forest, madness reigned. God would not be able to wake and come through with it there. I believe the Bad Woman you speak of was one of the nuns from the convent. They still exist, in Exuviae, perpetually in that moment in time, when they created the Keeper. She escaped to retrieve it.”
Elizabeth stopped, doubled-over, hands on her knees. Her legs looked swollen.
“You’re a good man,” Vrana said hastily, and ran over to her.
“But…” Elizabeth took Vrana’s hand and righted herself. “But… the Bad Woman didn’t leave. She stayed. She stayed, and she tortured us for years.”
The Maggot rumbled. “Strange,” it said, in that odd, feminine accent of its. “Though it may be hard to imagine, the heart of the black hour being so close to God’s gateway to the Deep may have weakened it. You see, the heart thrives off inflicting the greatest amount of agony on others. Sometimes, it sips, other times, it sups. The Bad Woman may not have been able to remove it. She may have thought she needed to torture the orphans to strengthen the heart to do so. But I believe she wasn’t strong enough to remove it, regardless, and you suffered for it.”
“Fucking-A, we did,” Elizabeth said.
“What happened to the Bad Woman?”
“Caught her.” She pointed to her back. “Spellweaver tattooed her into my skin. Shit.” Elizabeth’s back was bleeding where the tattoo of the Bad Woman was.
“That must have been a powerful spellweaver,” the Maggot said, concerned. “The spell may be weakening given where we are. She may be finally dying.”
“Shame,” Elizabeth said, touching the site. “Guess I have to let the old girl go one day, yeah?”
Vrana laughed, and went back to check on the Skeleton.
But when she reached him, she found the black mass had retreated into the heart.
It thrives off inflicting the greatest amount of agony on others, she thought. It doesn’t seem like it’s trying to get away from Atticus. God, just what exactly is it doing to him to feed?
The Skeleton looked at her, and hung his head low, like he’d read her thoughts.
“So,” Vrana said, “what are you? How do you know all this?”
The Maggot, which had never stopped moving since they first met it, slowed to a stop. The unholy womb carved into its head drooled its disintegrating drink and said, “I’m not this creature you see before you. I am only the voice of the cruel bitch that nurtured it. Ruth Ashcroft.”
This grabbed the Skeleton’s attention.
“Ashcroft?” Elizabeth said. “As in, related to Amon Ashcroft? Eldrus’ old advisor?”
Neksha, finally adding something to the conversation, said, “When King Edgar came through Kres, he spoke of the Ashcroft man.”
“Yes,” the Maggot said. “His niece. It is a long story, but before the Trauma, we went our separate ways. He wanted to wake God, and I decided I wanted to kill It. In our studies of the Deep, I found this Maggot within God’s gut; an aborted Worm. Through many, many sacrifices, I fed this Maggot. But when the time came, the Maggot consumed me, body and mind.
“I do not know if the Maggot intended for me to take over its consciousness, or if this was simply part of the process, given its resemblance to the Worms of the Earth. But since that fateful day at Brooksville Manor, I have been scouring the planes for a way to end God once and for all.”
“Why?” the Skeleton asked.
“Amon and I were as close as one could get to being God’s lovers,” the Maggot said. “We’ve been
inside it, felt Its will, though of course, never understood It fully. I hate God. I hate what It did to me when I was a little girl. I have seen what It is capable of, and I know It will do it again.
“It is a God of order and tradition, not because it has to be, but because It thinks It needs to be. All creatures as powerful as It inflict self-imposed rules to govern themselves, lest they destroy themselves in their limitless power. If we do not kill God, another Trauma will happen. But make no mistake…” The Maggot seethed. “I am not doing this for the people of the world. I am doing this for me. They are just fortunate enough to benefit from my hate. Is that not why you are here?”
Neither Vrana, nor the Skeleton, nor Elizabeth answered.
But Elizabeth, bleeding more on her back, did ask, “Is It our creator?”
“The Vermillion God only creates imitations,” the Maggot said. “If It is humanity’s creator, then humanity is only a poor imitation of a greater species. And let me tell you, ‘greater’ is pushing it.”
Vrana scratched her skin through her feathers. It was as if she was having an allergic reaction to the flesh fiend genes inside her.
The Maggot started up again and went past them. It said, “Come and see. The Deep is just over this hill.”
And it was.
At the top of the hill, where there should’ve been sky, another plane had been stitched onto the space. The Deep. An empty expanse of rugged silt covered in millions of inky puddles, as if there’d been an ocean here once, and it had yet to return from low tide. All across the squelching waste were statues and monuments, sunken churches, and upended cathedrals, and they continued this way, in every shape and size and architectural Old World design Vrana could name, until they were checked by the great, junkyard sprawl that ran like a wall around the center.
“That is Dudael,” the Maggot said, “the home of the viracocha. Beyond, there is a chasm. That will take us into Heaven, and there, we will find God.”
Struggling to breathe, Vrana said, “So, God never left the Deep? Even though It’s on Earth?”
“There is no Heaven without God,” the Maggot said. “It is the supports upon which the foundation is built. There must always be God in Heaven.”
“Then what sits on Earth?” Neksha asked.
“Its will. When It finds Its voice, the Will becomes the Way.” The Maggot lowered its head. “It is trapped in Heaven by design.”
“What happens if It finally gets through to the Speaker?” the Skeleton asked.
“It may abandon Heaven, believing It is secure enough on Earth to do so. I do not know what will happen if It does, but we will lose our chance at killing It for good.”
Neksha, sounding like Vrana and Elizabeth, asked, “Why hasn’t It stopped us yet?”
“The Vermillion God is not all-knowing. The closer we draw to Heaven, the more It will feel the Black Hour’s presence. God has many, many minions with which to kill us. If they fail, It would have to recall Its will.”
“Off Kistvaen,” the Skeleton said. “And if It didn’t stop the eruption, it just halted it.”
“Volcano would go back off,” Elizabeth said.
“If God abandons them like that…” Vrana trailed off. “That’s it. There’s not enough people in the world to rebuild the faith again.”
Maggot pressed on. “Look to the Dudael. Do you see them?”
Vrana strained her eyes, but she did. There were small pockets of viracocha racing towards where they stood.
“Kill,” the Maggot said, “and ladies—”
Vrana and Elizabeth glanced at the Maggot.
“—don’t worry about breathing. Once you’re in the Deep, you’re as good as dead already.”
Vrana stopped breathing; found it didn’t matter.
“If you die here, you don’t go to the Abyss with Death. You become a shadow, in Hell.”
Elizabeth took out her Red Death sword, said, “You’re going show us Hell on the way, yeah?”
“Take a look around,” the Maggot said, charging down the hill. “You’re in it.”
It was all happening so fast, but Vrana was fine with that. She’d give it her all, even if her all wasn’t all that much to give. Raising the ax, screaming until her voice went out, Vrana ran after the Maggot. Elizabeth fell in beside her, and the Skeleton quickly overtook her, the so-called “purity” of bone giving him an infinite pool of energy. Even Neksha was there, though weaponless. And he looked like he needed a weapon. So, swallowing the sad sickness in her throat, Vrana tossed him what would’ve been Aeson’s Red Death dagger. He caught it, admired it, and readied himself to kill with it.
The viracocha bounded across the silt, spears in hand. Their forms ballooned out behind their loosening bindings. Throbbing knots of hair and swollen limbs pushed through the wraps, as if their elephantiasis were flaring up in anticipation of the battle to come. Others lost their bindings completely. Vrana half-expected them to fade away, like the mumiya would, but they did not. Instead, they barreled on; grotesque and inflamed, resembling bipedal scorpions afflicted with lycanthropy. They would give all they had, because that was all they had.
The Maggot rushed the first group that was coming around a sunken church. It swung its body wide, smashing two viracocha against the domed ceiling. Their torsos, teased apart by the Maggot’s mere touch, splashed the angels painted on the marblework. That which wasn’t liquified was reeled into the Maggot and stashed away in its girth.
Vrana caught up with the bug. A viracocha came around the church, hurled a spear at her. She flew into the air, caught it with her feet. Gravity grounded her, but not before she chucked the spear right back at it, goring the creature through its howling face.
Neksha and Elizabeth double-teamed the last viracocha. Swinging its spear to keep them at bay, Elizabeth got ballsy (breasty) and slid beneath it. She kicked its legs out from under it, and Neksha came in, planting his dagger with a meaty thump into the viracocha’s quivering throat.
Four down, only hundreds to go.
The Skeleton had broken away from the group. He was on the edge of Dudael, where a monastery protruded from the silt—a capsized ship on what should’ve been all too familiar shores. Out of the territory, viracocha were bounding for him. Fierce adherents to strict individualism, they poured out of Dudael by twos and threes, in loose waves of twenty and thirty. Torn pieces of bindings filled the air, as they snapped and swiped at one another, drawing blood and digging out fur as they drew closer to him. God’s imitations were nothing more than a pack of runts that’d convinced themselves they were alphas. As on Earth, so in the Deep.
Vrana and the others took their time getting to the Skeleton. It wasn’t as if he needed their help, anyway.
The viracocha converged on the Skeleton like a swarm of rats, but he was in his element. They stabbed him. They slashed him. They threw down their spears and gnawed on him. But his bones wouldn’t give. Instead, they rebuked their attacks. Chomping teeth were shattered. Desperate pincers were cracked. The creatures piled onto him, to crush him beneath their combined weight. But just as soon as they were on him, they were off him, reeling and wheeling and whining like punished pups, their mandibles mashing out incomprehensible prayers.
The Black Mass had taken over; taken over the Skeleton completely. It covered his bones in a throbbing sludge, not unlike musculature. Empowered, or simply bored, the Skeleton struck back. He grabbed viracocha by their arms, and tore them from their sockets. He bludgeoned his way through the ever-burgeoning onslaught, using limbs as if they were clubs. When the arms or legs were too limp, and all the bones inside them broken, he tossed them to the side and tore a fresh weapon from one of the tens of corpses at his blood-soaked feet. Not a body part was unused. Inside and out, the viracocha were truly their own undoing.
The creatures didn’t stand a chance, but at the gates of Heaven, there was no going back. The more that fell, the greater the swell. Floods of the lycanthropic insects came from Dudael, called by the challenge
and the appeal of this pale and imperious trophy. The Skeleton met them head-on, with heads in hand. He threw skulls like balls, hard enough to send into seizures anyone he hit. When they fell, spasming, he stomped on their stomachs so hard, their entrails exploded out of their asses.
The Skeleton gave up on mutilation, and stalked, instead. Survivors tried to flee, but they were yanked again into the fray. He wrenched spinal cords from backs, wrapped intestines around necks. With handfuls of bindings, he shoved them down the viracocha’s throats, choking them on their counterfeit clothes.
After eighty dead or dying, the Skeleton was rewarded with a lull. The next wave was building in Dudael, seconds away from breaking over this graveyard of manmade gods.
“Atticus!” Elizabeth cried, her and Vrana and the others catching up to him.
Vrana hacked away at the corpses around him, like weeds, to make sure no threats were playing opossum amongst the dead.
“We are in good hands,” Neksha said.
The Maggot grunted in agreement.
Vrana, finally reaching him, said, “Hey, Atticus?” and though she wanted to shake him, she dared not touch him. Looking into his blackened eyes, she found nothing there but two empty orbs, cold and distant, completely indifferent. He wasn’t listening to them, or seeing them; he wasn’t even with them. He was elsewhere, in place, in time. A captor and captive audience, to the rancid soliloquies of the Black Hour.
The break was over. The battle resumed. Ten viracocha ran screeching out of Dudael, hurling their spears through the air. The Maggot, intensely protective, shielded the Skeleton with itself. The spears were reduced before piercing its side, and their components absorbed into its greasy folds.