by Sarah Chorn
He’d lost himself when Mouse released her spirits. The Bone Lord fought for dominance. The earth had swallowed him up to his elbows, and he’d put out the call to all those bones he’d collected on his journey, put it into the soil, and let the earth carry it where it needed to go. It took everything he had out of him, thrusting everything the Bone Lord was into all that earth and pushing it out like a command. It was torture.
Telling all those bones to wait for the souls that were coming to them, and giving them the ability to remake themselves, muscle and sinew, hair and teeth, eyes. This had been his abiding purpose.
He’d lost control of his body, lost his sight, lost his breath and the beat of his heart. Lost everything while he gave back all he had taken. He hadn’t realized how much he carried in his bones, how many lives he commanded until Mouse’s souls demanded their due.
It had been an agony he never knew he was capable of surviving.
And then, suddenly, it was over. The earth released him, and he pushed himself back, across the cavern, until his back was pressed against one of the cold, white walls.
That’s when realization hit him, followed by a very human surge of guilt that felt like a noose around his neck. He thought he was done feeling things, being human, but no. Taub was still just alive enough to matter and for now, the Bone Lord was too exhausted to care.
Mouse had vanished.
He’d slit her throat, bled her into the soil, and all those souls she’d sucked up had disappeared into the ether. Then he’d broken, and his own nature had taken over. sensed humanity grind to a stop, and then slowly start again.
He and Mouse were remaking the world, and the world needed people. The souls Hunger had collected went to his skeletons. Her own soul going straight into the heart of the world, giving it a second life. Mother of the World, indeed. Already he felt the earth waking up, felt all that black soil turn dark brown and fertile, all those loose souls connect with the skeletons he’d created.
Civilization was starting up again over his head. One epoch had ended, and another was beginning. Mouse was the mother of humanity, the mother of them all. This could have gone a thousand other ways, but in becoming Hunger, Mouse had saved those people from dying, as had he as the Bone Lord. She had collected souls while he’d kept their bones above ground. Now, the two were coming together. Whatever happened next, at least the land above would have people. They wouldn’t be alone.
He tried to tell himself that she wasn’t dead, just changed; but he’d slit her throat, and nobody came back from something like that. He’d killed. He’d killed so many people, but Mouse had been the worst death, because he, Taub, had known exactly what he was doing. He’d been driven, but he didn’t have to obey. He had power over his inclinations now. He’d simply felt the truth of the moment, what was needed and acted on it. He’d slit a girl’s throat and watched her bleed out. He’d allowed her to get pulled into the earth.
Mouse was gone, and he was… something else. He wasn’t fully the Bone Lord, and not quite Taub anymore. He didn’t know who he was.
He hated what he’d done. Not as much as the man across the room hugging that dead body hated him, as was evidenced by the cold, terrible weight of his glare. He had been invested in this girl. Taub felt the storm in him, and if it wasn’t for the muting effect of this room, he had no doubt that man would have killed him with his lightning in an instant. He’d known Mouse. He’d watched Taub kill her, sacrifice her. He’d pulled Mouse down here, not giving her any other option. He’d robbed her of her choice. She’d faced this fate because he’d made her do it.
He was a monster. He was a savior.
He was a prisoner locked in a cage crafted of almosts. He was almost alive. Almost sick. Almost forgiving himself. Almost convincing himself. Almost was such a small word, but it split him in half. It had a sour taste to it, was just sweet enough. It hovered on the edge of everything, and didn’t quite fit anywhere.
He was a man.
He was a god.
Almost.
And suddenly the burning woman was there, entering the room with a calmness that froze him to his core. He’d never seen her before, but he’d never mistake her as anything other than some divine creature. Those wings, that fire, the anger that was coiled around her like a venomous snake. She was terrible and beautiful, wrapped in flaming lace like it was iron, and full of vengeance as though she’d been fed a steady diet of it since birth.
Her eyes swept the room, touching him, leaving him shuddering and cold when they flitted off like fireflies to the next person, before settling on the corpse of her twin brother.
So much death.
So much rage and torment.
The part of him that was Taub wanted to crawl across the room and tell the brooding man clutching his dead that he was sorry. He was so incredibly sorry. Sorry couldn’t give Mouse her life back, but that it had to happen. Even Mouse had realized that in the end. He’d made it painless, and now people would survive. The world wouldn’t roll over and leave the few of them living on it with no one else. Now they’d have civilizations to bring up, people to mold, a future to look forward to.
The Bone Lord started stirring, interested, and he felt Taub and his guilt start to give way just enough. The god in him was lifting his head and opening his eyes. He welcomed it, the cold detachment he’d gain.
He pressed his back against the wall, breathing hard. He was so tired. Not just a physical exhaustion, but the kind of exhaustion that smothered his soul.
A conscience was a son of a bitch. It made everything so painful. He was glad the Bone Lord didn’t have one.
Taub wasn’t strong. Taub had never been strong. Taub had always just existed. Just barely held himself together, kept his head down so no one noticed him and kept kicking through one day, and then another.
He wasn’t a horrific person. He wasn’t a man who destroyed and killed. Not him. Not gentle, kind Taub.
The Bone Lord, however, surveyed everything he had done and saw not guilt nor remorse; not sins, but accomplishment. He’d crown himself, become the emperor of his kingdom of regret. He’d walk into tomorrow trailing bones behind him, the soul of a girl under his feet. It had to happen. He had to be the one to make it happen.
He watched with wide, stunned eyes as Seraphina shoved her brother’s heart in his chest. Watched as his ribs closed, his chest healed. Watched as her fire-wings flared out behind her. The world shook.
Fire.
Fire intrigued him. Fire was the wild, temperamental, devouring element that could keep a body warm or ignite it all at once. Fire consumed. This woman was interesting, and Taub wasn’t sure he liked being interested in her. She drew him, called him to her. He didn’t like that kind of draw. He refused to be attracted to her flame.
She was full of anger. She held a rage that went so deep it seemed to slice her in two. It was the kind of rage that made people do stupid things, and she was so powerful that anything she did would be felt the world over.
He could feel her, like part of his soul was attached to hers. He’d never been able to feel that with anyone but Mouse before, but now he could. Just as he could reach out, and feel the Storm Lord over there, leveled by grief, overwhelmed by awe. His soul throbbing like a bruise in the bond they shared. He watched Seraphina burn as Neryan started wailing. Taub felt further, and there was Lyall, Lord of Earth, so very smug and satisfied, full of more excitement than any one person should ever be able to feel.
Then, in the center of the room, was Neryan and Seraphina; one burning, the other drowning, both of them being reborn. They were the pillars at the center of all this. He could feel that. They were the ones who rooted them all. Lose one of them, and they’d all die. He hated that kind of dependence. But the longer Seraphina burned, the louder Neryan became, the more Taub could feel himself changing, his life connecting to theirs.
It was painful, like breaking himself out of a shell made of glass. His new nature filled him, and he understood. Vadd
en was the Storm Lord. Seraphina was the Lady of Fire. Neryan was the Water Lord. Lyall was the Lord of Earth. That woman out there, the one who had recently woken up and was wrapped in mirth, was the Lady of Sight. And Taub was, well, wasn’t it fitting that after spreading all that plague, and bringing back all that life, he become the Lord of Health?
No, he was the Bone Lord. He’d always be the Bone Lord.
None of them were mortal anymore. But what would come next?
Eternity wasn’t just a concept anymore, but a playground for him to roll around in. He felt lost. He felt found. He felt both big and small.
Neryan’s scream was haunting and horrible—full of oceans and waterfalls.
Despite all of these realizations, it was Seraphina that still concerned him. She was a wildcard, and he had never liked wildcards. Taub dealt with certainty, predictability. He liked knowing what step one and step two were. Fire, however, flew in the face of all of that. She was wound tight, coiled like poisonous vines, and when she finally started blooming, he was afraid the world would pay for her creation. Anger and violence wrapped in fire was never a good idea.
He let out a mental sigh, and thought about all those souls Mouse had released into the world, all those bodies that they’d find, all that humanity that would just be waking up and blinking their eyes at a new world, the old one erased.
He exhaled, and realized that he still felt the plague deep in his bones, hiding, but still there, knitting him together, tucked away in all his secret places. He could still call on it, if he wanted to. Apparently, he had a darker nature, as well. He could bestow health, and he could take it away.
The air was full of anticipation, pulled tight like the string of a lute about to snap. He was still changing, still just a body of swirling potential. Seraphina and Neryan grew quiet, collapsed on each other on that stone that was still red with Neryan’s blood. They looked to be sleeping, their bodies covered by the expanse of her large, burning wings. He couldn’t see much—just two rising and falling chests, steady breathing, faces at rest, and wings on fire.
And then, there it was, a burst of energy rising up from some place deep inside of him. He was being torn apart, in such acute agony he feared he wouldn’t survive it. Did he come all this way just to implode? He heard the Storm Lord crying out across the room from him, locked in his own pain. Heard lightning firing and thunder booming.
His back bowed until he figured his spine would break. He felt life and death warring inside him, his soul was being consumed by the onslaught. He was on fire. He was dying. No, he was living. He was health. He was pestilence. How could two opposing forces be content in one body? He felt all those bodies out there, joining with all those souls, felt himself become part of everything.
He was nothing. He was the earth and everything on it. He felt Mousumi under his feet, her heart beating in time with his own. She was still alive, he felt her waking up, knew she was down there, curled around the heart of the world, protecting it with all she had. She was the earth’s soul, and she was a beautiful one. He felt the land rumble.
He felt stretched out, pulled tight. He felt the health of every living thing, and the death waiting to devour it.
He was too big. He was too small.
He was too much.
He was lost. Lost in this change. Lost in himself, torn apart, shredded. He was unmaking and being made. He didn’t know a body could experience this much pain and not die from it. When would his heart give out? Did he even have a heart anymore?
He screamed as he was ripped apart, and cried as he was reborn, as his awareness spread like melted butter over a world that was his toast. This was not a passive act. This was not something one underwent sitting down. He was thrashing around, seizing, his heart stopping and starting in his chest, his mouth foaming, his skin tearing and then knitting over and over again. Plague swept out from him, just to be stopped and contained by the health he could now control. Lines connected him to life, and more lines to death. He was the spider at the center of a web, and he was so damn hungry.
“Come back to yourself,” Lyall said, crouching before him, his hand resting on Taub’s knee. “You’re going out too far. Come back, little brother.”
He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even breathe. All he could do was lay there and look at that hand on his knee, because that hand was the only thing keeping him in place, keeping him from breaking apart and becoming everything. That’s what was hurting, the loss of himself; the sudden connection to every living and dying thing. It was too much for even the Bone Lord’s mind to handle.
He couldn’t live like this. Why him? Why hadn’t he just left when his family had left, and gone on to find food and hope somewhere else? Then this would have fallen on someone else. Instead, he was here being made and unmade, and staring at a timeless existence of… what exactly?
What was he?
Lyall got up, walked over to the Storm Lord, Vadden, and whispered to him until he calmed down. Then the two men, exhausted, beaten down and lifted up, stared at each other across a room full of nothing but their sawing breaths and the stench of everything they’d lost, and gained.
For a moment, the only sound in the room was breathing. Then, the earth rumbled again, far away, down low, getting louder like a creature emerging from the deeps. Lyall crouched down—even he seemed uncertain, and that more than anything else, terrified Taub. If this ancient creature was afraid then what did that mean for the rest of them?
The roar grew louder and louder, and that web that attached them all grew thicker until he could feel Lyall and Vadden almost as clearly as he could feel himself.
“It’s going to happen,” Lyall whispered. He looked excited. He looked sick. “Hold on.”
“For what?” Vadden shouted.
“Just hold on!” Lyall ordered over the roaring world.
Taub dug his fingers into the earth, braced his back against the wall, and watched.
It happened in a rush. He sat pressed against the wall, listening as the earth raged and shook under his feet, and in the next instant twin geysers of lava and water shot out of the ground, raising Seraphina and Neryan up, and up.
They had Become. It was over.
Heaven help them all.
Heaven help the world.
EPILOGUE
Dreshti
It was the kind of night when the world was silent and only the moon howled.
She’d woken up in her barrow weeks ago, feeling the twisting and turnings, the ways in which the earth was rumbling, prodding her to open her eyes. Dreshti hated waking up. It wasn’t the actual act that bothered her, it was the relentless beating of her heart that she despised. That throbbing muscle that seemed determined to remind her that she was still alive.
She knew Lyall was awake, but what about the other two? She’d always been bad at sensing them.
She’d fallen asleep an age ago, and in that age, the world had changed. Last time she’d left her barrow, the land around her had been jungles and mountains. She could look up and see their jagged peaks scraping their fingers against the stars, and watch her people up there—winging around, flying and whirling. Now it was desert, all red sand and dunes that stretched in every direction like an ocean, the sun glaring down at her like an angry eye out of a naked sky. No one was up there anymore. No one was soaring on currents of air.
She traveled for weeks. Months, maybe. It felt like years. The heat was too much during the day, so she took to traveling at night. The desert was beautiful and otherworldly, unlike anything she’d ever seen before and she trod a winding path between the dunes like a snake.
She kept walking, dragging the naked, charred bones of her wings behind her. Gradually the land shifted, desert giving way to scrubland, giving way to forest. By the time everything broke, she was standing at the edge of Lyall’s barrow, listening to the world break.
Long, long ago, everything had been different. Now, she wondered what she was walking toward.
She’
d spoken to Lyall since she woke up, felt him manipulating events from his barrow. She felt his energy, heard his call in the earth. That bastard was loving this, probably curled up in his little hole laughing. He was probably thrilled that he was the first one to wake up, and therefore the one who got to direct events.
She’d have to face him again. She’d have to look in his eyes. She’d have to see.
Each step she took brought her back to herself a bit more.
She’d been born beautiful, with shining silver skin adorned with deep blue whirls in her arms, legs, and back. It was her wings, however, that were the reason she’d been famous among her kind. They were as tall as she was, huge and heavy, covered in feathers that gleamed like mirrors. They dazzled and blazed, reflecting the world back at itself. Fables spread about her, fictions about how one glance at her wings could cure disease or bring luck. People started to seek her out, believing she could show them everything they ever wanted to see. Strangers would stand before her just to catch a glimpse of themselves in her feathers.
She grew used to this, but she never liked it. She didn’t like being sought out or having followers. They saw the beauty she was born with, but they never saw the pain. They didn’t see the way her feathers, sharp as knives, dug into the tender flesh of her arms, back, and legs. They didn’t spend hours trying to quench the blood that was always seeping from her like a ceaseless river of crimson tears. She’d grown canny at hiding her innumerable scars and wounds. She was used to disguising the way her incredibly heavy wings made her back feel like it was being torn apart, causing her spine to twist under their weight. She never mentioned that she couldn’t fly, and no one ever asked. She held her agony close and hid it well. It was her truth, the truth she saw every time she looked at the feathers on the wings she hated so much. Beauty to some, curse to others, it didn’t matter, really. Either way, she bled.
No one saw her. Not really. They only saw her beauty. They followed her around, enamored with their reflections. They fell in love with themselves and never actually saw the woman who suffered; carrying all that weight around, wounded by the relentless stabbing of her knife-like feathers.