He slumped to the ground, this hero, felled not by sword and strength of arm, but by numbers, unquantifiable numbers, but no sound escaped his lips, no plea for mercy, no cry for help. He simply, stoically, spectacularly fell.
The Growl in the Night bounded on, over the traps, past the throngs of children, through the very heart of the stygian gloom, claws cutting, fangs flashing, eyes casting meager light upon the black-shrouded chambers and tunnels. The children tried in vain to hinder his progress, but he was too powerful, this ancient story, this primordial fear. The children were thrown, spun, and crushed under the weight of his rage until there were no more children standing between him and the mother of spiders.
“Sister!” The Growl in the Night lunged to a stop just beyond the reach of the gigantic spider’s poised claws. “Release our mother!”
“Do you not understand what she intends to do?” The Chittering Underground kept her two front claws trained on her enemy, tracking his smooth, silent movements as he paced in front of her.
“It is the only way.” The tremor in his voice betrayed his anger.
“Being unmade is not an option.”
“She won’t—she wouldn’t unmake us.” The tremor grew more pronounced.
“You are as unsure of that as I am. Remember the times before? When we were all there was, the three of us? When the world was still yet young? Do you remember the cold, empty darkness? The Holy Dark?”
The Growl in the Night panted, releasing the breath he had saved for the battle, and stopped pacing. He did indeed remember the times before: when the Gloaming Woods were mere inklings, when the Aspects were nothing but notions, when the loneliness consumed all.
“What choice do we have?” he asked. “The Aspects have changed all of Creativity.”
“My dear brother, is that a bad thing? Change can be good. I’ll admit I had trouble adjusting—I’m still having trouble—but adjusting to change is better than destroying everything, isn’t it?”
“It’s too late. Mother is here.”
“Erde gave us life—that is true—but what we do with it is up to us. We can change Creativity. We should change Creativity. Complacency equals death.”
“Complacency?” The tremor became a fierce certainty. “Tradition! Conventions! Mores! These are the essence of Creativity!”
“Listen to yourself! These are the same arguments the first elders posed before the new Aspects rose. Do you remember your response?”
“Of course I do, but those were different times. We were—”
“We were right!” The Chittering Underground rose to her full height, claws tapping, clicking on the rock, ripping the silken fibers from the stone. “I am right now! The Aspects are right! The new Aspects are—”
“Abominations!” The Growl in the Night hung his head; moist, dense breath oozed from his muzzle; a low grumble pulsed in his chest. The burrow shuddered, the great spider tensed, and the Growl in the Night leaped forward.
Chapter 104
Descent
The Eternal Gloaming stretched far into the lost cave, and then it stretched farther, spurred by curiosity and desperation. Baba Vedma led the way, accompanied by the halflight. The Sister of Monsters trailed behind, unsure, wary, ridiculously nervous. Something was hidden here, beyond the untold tale, more than the scant clues Baba Vedma had revealed. It was dangerous—this much she knew—but it was also necessary.
“Can’t you tell me?” The Sister of Monsters stumbled over a shadowed stone.
“I don’t truly know enough to tell ye anything. I’ve told ye everything I know.”
“So, you only know there is an untold tale that could help us, but you’re not aware of anything in the tale, not even a hint?”
“Not even a hint.”
“Then, we find out together?”
“Together.”
The path turned sharply downward. Baba Vedma leaned backward, shuffling her feet to maintain purchase, slowing her stride to preserve progression. The Sister of Monsters followed suit. They continued down, down beyond the point where the Eternal Gloaming should reach, but the stubborn glow persevered, refusing to leave the two venturers alone in the dark underground.
Diamond sparkles greeted them as they descended; glittering crystals jutted from otherwise smooth walls; the lost cave became lighter, brighter, more spectacularly mysterious the further they traveled. The Eternal Gloaming, encouraged and strengthened by the jewels, jutted farther into the earth than it had ever gone. It marveled at the beauty, the sheer exaltation of discovery.
Further and further into the bright light of the profundity they went, descending beyond the point where any Aspect had ever gone, beyond the point where the Duality had ventured, and still they went. The light grew brighter as they reached the center of Creativity, the heart of their world, the chamber that held the untold tale.
“There it is.” Baba Vedma pointed to a stone altar, atop which sat an ancient parchment, rolled tightly and bound with a frayed cord. She stepped forward on hesitant feet and reached out tentative hands.
“Wait,” the Sister of Monsters whispered, but the intense silence of the cave made her voice known. “Should we do this?”
“Erde has left us little choice.” Baba Vedma curled her aged fingers around what she assumed would be paper. “It be leathery.”
“Animal skin?” The Sister of Monsters stepped forward, pressing her shoulder to the older woman’s hip.
“Aye,” Baba Vedma uncurled the cord, then unfurled the parchment. She flattened it atop the altar. Odd shapes, strange characters, and smears of ink-like substances adorned nearly every inch of the cracked brown scroll. “Give me your hand,” she instructed, holding her hand out, palm up.
The Sister of Monsters placed her own hand over Baba Vedma’s, and they turned their attention to the untold tale.
Chapter 105
The Unmaking
The battle, which had begun deep in the burrow, quickly spilled onto the aboveground. Claws, fangs, venom, and sinew culminated in a dervish of gore. Blood spewed, bones cracked, flesh tore, and the world shook with the fury of the Elder Beasts; neither showed mercy or temperance.
“Yield, Sister,” the Growl in the Night hissed as he prepared another onslaught.
“Never, Brother.” The Chittering Underground flexed her broken foreclaw, which instantly became whole.
“This battle is pointless.” The Growl in the Night licked a gaping wound in his side that stitched itself and closed. “We are evenly matched. We could battle for eons with no clear winner.”
“You’re right,” the Chittering Underground asserted, rising once more to her full height and preparing to attack. “But you forget something, dear Brother. I am not battling you alone.”
They came from every direction, thousands upon thousands of her children—every one left in Creativity, every tiny skittering thing, every large terrifying spider—and they fought with singular purpose. The Growl in the Night was engulfed by biting, stabbing, rending hordes; then the Chittering Underground struck. Two enormous claws at the ends of two daunting legs, stabbed at the heart of her brother—the beast, the fear of darkness, the unseen danger. He fell.
Still, the children attacked, rending flesh from bone, removing every hint of life from the carcass of the once fearsome brute. The Chittering Underground paused to examine her work. This being, this primordial fear, the sound of death, the roiling threat, wept. She cried for her brother, who would never reconstruct once her children took apart his skeleton; there was not enough Creative energy left for the Elder Beasts to bring him back from that sort of devastation. She wept for her children, the host of dead and dying who had served her unquestioningly until the end. She wept for herself. She had given into savagery, to violence, to the rage she had long ago put aside in favor of life.
The children began to tug at the bones, but they paused, sensing their mother’s hesitation. She did not give them leave. Instead, she crouched, all of her eyes trained on the
dead thing at her feet. The muscle was reforming. If she allowed it, her brother would live again. Life or death—the decision was not an easy one.
The world shook. The Eternal Gloaming flashed bright and then became dusk. The Chittering Underground recognized her error immediately as she looked at her children; every single remaining child in all of Creativity was gathered here to defend their mother. Erde was free.
“What have you done?” Erde stood at the treeline, her lithe body contorting with writhing energy. She stepped forward, her toes digging deeply into the earth. She stood above her son and gazed down.
“You cannot do this?” The Chittering Underground tried to sound as sure as she had with her brother, but she failed miserably.
“You killed your own brother.” Erde bent and caressed the skull at her feet. “Is this what you’ve become?”
“I defended Creativity.” Still, her voice would not ring with certainty. “That is what you taught us.”
“I taught you to maintain Creativity. This is not maintenance.”
“Were we never meant to grow, to change?”
“Change?” Erde’s voice remained constant, a drone, a metronome of justification. “This world was not yours to change. It was never yours. This world is mine to do with as I see fit, and these abominations you have allowed to spawn here will be attended.”
“Please, Mother.” The sound of her voice faded far faster than her body, which turned vague, indistinct, insubstantial, and was gone.
The children were next and the rapidly mending body of her son; they dissipated with the wind and the trees and the earth and the half-light. Soon, there was nothing. Only Erde.
“I will start anew.” The words impaled the silent murkiness of nothing.
Chapter 106
An alarm like a constant screech broke the words. A flurry of activity came from the hallway to the bed. Matt, Mrs. Hensley, and his mother were pushed once more into the hallway.
“His heart stopped,” Mrs. Hensley proclaimed in a tone too calm for comfort.
Matt watched his mother wrap her arms around Mrs. Hensley’s shoulders and lead her to the window at the end of the hall, and he thought, She’s given up. The tone, that monotonous voice, those tearless eyes—all betrayed the truth: She has given up on her son. He stared at her stoic, poised back and knew she was preparing for the worst.
Dark thoughts jabbed him from within and moved toward him from without, and he was besieged with doubt. He tried—he really did—to focus on something, anything, positive. There was nothing. At least, nothing he could see, but there was…a feeling. It was deep, impossibly deep, inside him, but there was a tiny, weak, insubstantial glint. Matt focused on it, this glint, and he felt it pulse, split. There were two points of light now. It was a start.
Chapter 107
Nothing
Absence. Nothingness. Void. The Sister of Monsters blinked and blinked, achieving no focus. Baba Vedma flailed her arms, desperate to touch anything; she found The Sister of Monsters. They held each other in the gulf surrounding them. The only light was their own, which was a small remnant of personal magic. Their meager light held the darkness at bay—barely.
“What happened?” The Sister of Monsters’ voice did not echo; instead, she listened to her voice dissipate in the emptiness.
“The world has been unmade.” Baba Vedma steadied herself, wishing there was something, anything to latch onto.
“How?”
“Erde.” A sudden thought occurring, Baba Vedma spun away from the Sister of Monsters and gazed into the vacuity.
“So, this is what being unmade is like.” The Sister of Monsters stifled a sob. She wished, suddenly and without embarrassment, that she had a doll to hug.
“No, this be not what being unmade be like.”
“We’re not unmade then?”
“Not hardly and not from lack of trying.” Baba Vedma continued her search through the empty world. She saw only herself and the Sister of Monsters, nothing else.
The Sister of Monsters uttered her next words in a conspiratorial whisper. “She is not all-powerful.”
Baba Vedma turned, floated closer, and held the little girl firmly in front of her. “No. She. Be. Not.”
“Then, we have a chance?”
“Aye. We have a chance.”
The little girl fell into the old woman’s arms and received an earnest hug, but Baba Vedma felt a hardness, a sharp point dig into her stomach. She pulled away and looked at the scroll tightly bound with cord and folded at one corner, which made a leathery spike, rigid and dense. “The Untold Tale?”
The Sister of Monsters looked into her own arms and realized as if for the first time that she was indeed holding the ancient scroll. “I didn’t even realize I still had it.”
“It was not unmade.” Baba Vedma took the scroll from the little girl and unwound the cord.
“Is that important?”
“It might be the most important thing ever.” Baba Vedma smiled and took the free end of the leather. “Let us sit down and read—” She stopped in response to the Sister of Monsters’ extremely raised eyebrows. “I mean, let us float around in empty space and read this. It might give us exactly what we be needing to defeat Erde.”
“Defeat?” The Sister of Monsters drifted closer to the unfurling tale. “Can we defeat her?”
“We be about to find out.” Baba Vedma finished unrolling the parchment, and a new light joined with her own and merged with her sister’s before stretching out into the nothing.
Chapter 108
The doctor arrived and led Mrs. Hensley, with Matt’s mother in tow, to an office somewhere close by to talk once more about options. Matt was alone once more in the hallway, locked away from John. The door opened.
“He’s stable again,” Brandon said as he propped the door open.
Matt darted into the room as the rest of the nurses streamed out. Brandon lingered, straightening the sheet, the pillow, the cords.
“You know what’s coming, right?” Brandon asked, his eyes earnestly compassionate.
Matt stared back, blankly.
“The doctor is talking about John’s final wishes. Long-term care or to…” Brandon seemed to search for a word that would soften the blow. He apparently failed to find one. “…discontinue care. You understand what that means, right?”
Brandon left, and Matt hated him. The hatred was pure, visceral, dominating, and fleeting. He couldn’t maintain it. He wanted to. The hatred took the place of the sadness briefly, but then the pangs returned. The flutter in the stomach, the involuntary convulsions of his facial muscles, the complete sense of loss was suddenly everything to him. There was no room for anything else. Not even a tiny glint of light.
Chapter 109
The World Unmade
Erde was alone again. She was the everything. The only. She would begin anew, and this time, she would be careful to maintain strict control. No more abominations; no more divergent Aspects. Maybe no more Aspects at all. Elements, Symbols, Images—that was enough for Creativity. Like in the old days, before Complexity, before Continuity, before the Duality, and definitely before the Aspects.
She surveyed the nothing until she saw it: a glint, a pinprick, a twinkle. Through the force of her will, she was suddenly next to it: the First Story. It floated alone, even more alone than she was, and it began the process once again. The twirling, swirling, pulsating energy—the Creative forces—grew from the ancient stone. The dusty pigment etched ideas and inklings onto the fabric of nothing.
They were unformed as they had been in the beginning. Soon, the fears would reappear, and she needed to be ready. The Chittering Underground and the Growl in the Night would re-form, possibly in new husks. She would greet them as before and become their mother. It was the way to control.
But first, she needed a firmament on which to stand. She held out a greedy hand, capturing the swirls from the First Story in the web of her fingers and casting them to the void. They congealed
, these unformed thoughts, into earth and muck and mire; fluid concepts filled the divots with liquid; solid ideas became rock and stone. She smiled at her creation, but it was not enough.
She dove into the space between solidity and bathed in the Creative impulses until she rose from the muck and mire once more. She beckoned the trees to life, the forest to culmination, the Woods to existence. Creativity floated in the darkness. All that was left was to give it light.
She turned her face to the heavens…the heavens…the light. There was no light. The Gloaming, the Eternal Gloaming, where was it? Why had it not re-formed?
Erde reached out and plucked more swirling power from the First Story. She held her hands high above her head. “Gloaming, come forth!”
The darkness shuddered but did not dissipate. Steadfastly, the nothing resisted. Erde’s mind reeled; she searched her vast memory; she questioned her every impulse. More power.
She took the stone in her mud-caked hands. She pressed hard on the pigment, smearing the animal image, moving the color to the very edges of the stone’s face. Still, she pushed. Her mind, a seething pond of verdant concepts, focused on a single thought—light.
The darkness settled into the treetops, nestled around the trunks, wound among the roots, permeated the dirt, and floated with the water. The Gloaming did not come forth.
Inward, ever inward, Erde turned. The answer was there; at the very limits of her memory, the answer awaited, but there was no retrieval. There was only darkness, emptiness, the void.
Her eyes found the trees; between the trees, where the shadows were at their strongest, she waited for the eyes to appear. She waited in vain. There was nothing without the Gloaming.
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