THE FORSAKEN LAND OF GENèSE

  600

  There are no words in my vocabulary to describe what I am witnessing—in Serpentine nor the common tongue.

  Resorting to my imagination, then perhaps I could conjure up a verse or two, demon, but you’d understand none of those words, nor I.

  Words can’t explain the end of the world.

  Because some things, you have to see for yourself.

  Existence shakes when the comet falls.

  The composition protests.

  Its myriad colour crystalline lattice flickers with contempt to match the intruder’s audacity. Secrets beyond my comprehension rise to the surface: characters warped with age; backs bent humbly after an eternity of servitude—veterans of time.

  Others are tall and strong. Whimsical and haughty. Brushstrokes and carvings radiating passionate youth, sculpted from marble and adorned with precious gemstones and metals, extending their reach—occupants of space.

  The current stage of my [Discarded View] fails me.

  How can I begin to comprehend creation—this masterpiece—when I’ve only just learned how to read?

  Words overlap and blur together, changing in size, shape, and meaning.

  I know not what they represent. But I do know their intention.

  ? A fragment of the sky has fallen. And together, we rise to keep it at bay. ?

  Something that is not supposed to be here.

  Something that is not supposed to be.

  Something that threatens everything that is.

  Evermore crashes into creation.

  An arrival with ample herald. Yet we—existence—could never be prepared.

  The composition’s surface shatters, creating a cradle in the middle of the Forsaken Land. The impact uses me, a vibration that borrows my flesh to propagate further across the earth. It feels like I’ve clasped the edge of a church bell with my teeth, then struck it.

  While raising my arm to shield my eyes, the folly of it strikes me.

  This isn’t like the light of ? Purifiez ? . My wrappings should block it just fine.

  Surprise mutates into dread.

  Desolation stretches before me.

  Evermore’s light is blooming on the horizon. I see everything I shouldn’t with eyes hidden behind the cloth. There is a chill without a gust to accompany it. The perspiration around my eyelids absorbing the cold.

  I scramble for the cloth, but it’s nowhere close.

  “Albane!”

  A shockwave tosses the desert. Me included.

  I hit the ground under a shower of sand.

  Eyes. Nose. Mouth.

  Every unfortunate crease and crevice becomes home to the grain. My lungs, already occupied by the vermeille, are forced to make room for a mouthful.

  “Albane!” I cough again.

  This brother of mine does not answer. Has he abandoned me?

  “Argila! Isley! Pèramor!”

  I break my eyelids slowly while coming to my feet.

  The Forsaken Land is aptly named, as I envisioned it. Even more so without my flock.

  “Bethany! Ancillia! Perte!”

  The desert whistles a response.

  I dive as a shadow grows over me.

  It comes crashing down, wood splintering in every direction. Thanks to the shockwave, this tool is thoroughly destroyed. But luckily, the wagon bed is empty.

  Where are they?

  I remember the steel men acting strangely. I peered into their composition, and then there was this pain in my head. Someone must have removed my wrappings when I lost consciousness. But who?

  THUNK!

  Heaps of metal rain in my vicinity. Each one, a steel man rendered still.

  Five flames burn again in unison, but their thirst for battle is a dying hope. My grandmother’s incantation for paralysis binds their limbs. If they were stricken by madness, they likely attacked us before the comet struck.

  Beyond them, footprints mark the desert—human in size at first.

  The sand beneath each one has fused to glass, as though an inferno went bounding across the earth.

  I can feel it roaming the desert.

  And it feels… familiar.

  The glass crunches beneath my feet as I take off.

  The flame ahead is vast.

  It swells past the boundaries of what any body ought to hold—a bottomless thing, spilling past its edges, molten and orange at the core. A fire too full of itself to be contained by flesh and bone.

  There is only one creature in all the world whose divine breath burns like that.

  One creature whose inner flame I once watched swell to three times its size and still find room to grow. Whose heat I felt in my palms like a warning the first time he lifted me off the ground. Whose footprints, I now understand, would leave glass—because of course they would.

  Albane.

  His heat is comparable to the one that flew over the procession by the forest edge.

  That flame grows weaker on my spine. It seems to be making its departure. Travelling east, back the way we came.

  Of course. Its role has been fulfilled.

  With the comet’s arrival, the shades of the Forsaken Land are no longer enticed by a flame that is hard to catch. That cold now travels inward, hungry for the heat of Evermore.

  But there are more than a few who make the newcomer their new target.

  I can see him.

  The giant has stopped some distance ahead.

  “I not will! I not will!”

  Albane is a ball of fire, doubled over on his arms and knees.

  The sand beneath his frame is bubbling. His garments are little more than ash. Everything, down to his characteristic, red body hair, is burning.

  “Albane!”

  “No!” He expels a distorted groan—somewhere between an infant’s cry and a furnace’s woosh. I second-think running across the sand, but my feet start moving before the third.

  It scorches the soles past the skin. Try as I may in keeping my steps light, the molten sand clings between my toes.

  “Albane,” I call, resting my hand on his shoulder. “Albane, are you well?”

  “Leave—” His divine breath sucks in all the air around us, leaving none for me to breathe.

  “Me—” The ground rumbles beneath us.

  “Alone!” Albane throws an arm.

  BTOOM!

  The crook heeds my intention, forming a barrier, but the Blue Scarab’s Husk hasn’t much power to draw from in our fatigued state. The brunt of the explosion collides with a wall of light. What breaks through leaves me a couple of dozen strides away, face down in the sand.

  ‘So thirsty!’

  If my lungs could speak, I imagine that’d be their first complaint. Forget sweets or bread. Being struck by the giant’s heat is a reminder that my body hasn’t had water in weeks!

  Forcing myself to take another dry breath, I stand up to see something astonishing. A mark drawn in molten half-rock beneath him, glowing in the dim.

  It appears to be a horseshoe, an inverted U-shape with small protrusions turning outward at the bottom. The meaning of the symbol is lost on me, but an addition to the giant’s composition, as well as two breaths.

  Albane Féroce

  Red Boulder Brother

  Big Guy

  Race

  Demi-Human — Son of Sinners

  Character

  Nine Wolves

  Abilities

  Le Vaisseau de la Volonté — Conflagration interne

  Internal Conflagration.

  That must be what’s causing the second flame. Or perhaps it is the other way around? Either way, this invasive breath is melting him from the inside out. Albane’s organs slosh through the wound inflicted by his older brother.

  “Brother!”

  “You not my brother!” shouts the giant. A second eruption builds within his chest. “You kill my brother!”

  “Albane, it’s me. What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t play me stupid! My real brother, Albus Feroce! You make monster eat him! You kill him!” Albane growls, molten tongue oozing between his teeth as he slurs, “You kill Goody! You kill Sully! You kill Willy! You kill my brothers and now you here to kill me!”

  What? I was keeping track of the flames roaming the city. None of the sheep left the abandoned home. Albane shouldn’t know about that.

  “Those men were evil, brother!”

  The giant pounds the sand. "I know! I know all of that stuffs! But you no better! Lie and think I don't know things. Think I just stupid big man! Think I not see things just cause I no say. You hate them and you hate me worser than them!”

  “That’s not true. I did it because they were going to hurt us!”

  "Liar!” The strange mark flares in response to his rage.

  “The others no want hurt me! Argincilla and Peramort and Betty! You looky them in eye and poof them away!" Albane insisted. "You not shepherd! You a monster just pretending! You know what you do, monster! You not confused!"

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  "I am confused, Albane. I thought we were—"

  “No!” His voice cracks a disjointed plea before I finish, as if I’m a third party in my our conversation. “I no want hurt him!”

  "Everybody think I'm Will. Everybody treat me like I'm Will. I not Will. I not big man. I no want fire and pain. I scared!"

  His breath trembles, but the second flame continues to burn with contempt.

  "Please! I just scared!” Albane repeats the phrase like an infant throwing a tantrum. Cracks form within him. The sea of magma within his chest pushes against his ribs, shattering and melting them all the same. “I just scared! I just scared, brother!”

  “Albane!” At the word brother, I lose myself again, prepared to race across the liquid sand.

  “I. Just. Scared!"

  Boom!

  A column of fire erupts, trapping him in the middle of the sigil.

  Albane’s flame is weakening. The second breath is fighting. Not to extinguish it outright, but to entrap his flickering life’s ember. And in doing so, it’s boiling a sinkhole in the Forsaken Lands.

  Albane’s cries grow more frantic as he sinks to the wrist.

  “I not Will! I not—”

  Whatever the second flame is trying to accomplish, it would sooner kill him than fail. Albane sinks past the neck. His protests become gurgles and bubbling soup.

  This power is unheard of. This heat—an aberration. If Beauty of the Feast was hunger personified, then this was the personification of rage.

  With the infection raging inside my lungs, my body can’t bear any more heat. The distance between us is the only thing keeping me alive.

  Both their flames are being submerged. If I don’t act quickly, then he’ll die.

  But without a plan, acting is akin to suicide. As I push forward, I’ve already accepted that possibility.

  Then, there’s a whistling in the distance. Paired with a faint tugging at the soul.

  Something falls between us, its razor-sharp tip embedded in the sand.

  Before me lies a familiar face—an instrument no thicker than a finger.

  The azure needle whines despondently as it breaks apart.

  Then, I hear a second buzzing sound shooting toward us. However, despite coming from a great distance, this cry is far from faint. It sings by the ear like a chorus made for two. One that ends with the ear ripped off your head.

  I feel a thousand gazes pressed upon my nape.

  All of them belong to a single ravenous creature.

  Mandibles chittering an insectile grace. Blade-like wings like stained glass, reflecting the light of a giant’s rage. A hide made of chitin. Compound-eyes locked onto a single target—me.

  Essaifamés

  à la fin de sa vie, la créature se dévore elle-même, consumée par une faim qui ne conna?t ni trêve ni pitié. Lorsqu'une proie foule sa terre de repos, elle rena?t sous la forme d'un essaim composé de ses propres enfants.

  …

  Hopelessness interrupts the rhythm of my heart.

  Of course. I should have known it right from the start.

  Beauty’s composition stated that it exerted the utmost control over the unburning. Back then, the Essaifamès were subject to its will. If they were anything like her, their cannibalism could not have been a reasonable end to their existence.

  When I peered into them before, I assumed the brokenness of their composition was owed to a shortcoming of my sight. But right now, the serpentine text is clear as day:

  Durant son existence, elle dévore ses frères et s?urs sans remords ni distinction.

  Et lorsque le reste de son essaim aura été dévoré, il reviendra en tant qu'individu unique.

  That’s because after feasting on its fallen kin, the creature had become whole.

  How foolish am I for thinking anything in this godless place could be so simple?

  When we entered the Forsaken Land, the original shade must have been going through the death stage of its ravenous cycle.

  That’s why I didn’t notice the ambush.

  It was our meat that reignited its instincts.

  A hunger so great that it rips itself apart, only to be phoenixed many-fold from its own corpse. The Essaifamès are not a brood. They are a singular creature that purposefully rips itself apart, knowing it will be reborn, just so it can feed on its own number.

  With little else to eat in this barren wasteland, this must be how it survived for thousands of years.

  The shade dives.

  ? Aegis! ?

  A wall of light manifests between us.

  I intended to summon dozens, but a single instance makes the world spin.

  Its mandibles clasp the barrier. It shatters my defence effortlessly. The interruption garners enough time for me to dive out of its path, but its stained-glass wings slice through my abdomen.

  I feel my guts spill through the wound.

  No.

  My robe has been cut, but the injury is shallow.

  Blood trickles from the wound as the shade readjusts its flight path.

  It circles us like a deathbird, more with confusion than killing intent. Its home, The Forsaken Land, is devoid of both light and heat. Yet here, its compound eyes reflect a thousand burning images. I imagine a thousand pupils shrinking in pain.

  I clutch my side, recovering from the idea of my own death, while keeping my back to the column. In doing so, I’m cutting off that angle of approach. Its manoeuvres are quick, but I can track them if I focus.

  And more importantly, they’re sloppy.

  If the shade was left without any option but a cycle of self-consumption, it means one of two things: The Forsaken Land is barren throughout, lacking edible material. Or the competition for food was too fierce for the insect to earn its meals any other way.

  Being on the outskirts of the Forsaken Land, it should have been one of the first to feel the flying creature’s heat. But it is the only creature, to my knowledge, that didn’t join the horde. Instead, it waited for weaker meat to cross its path.

  That almost confirms the first, but either way, it means the same to me.

  The shadespawn is out of practice.

  The Essaifamés predatory instincts are being used for the first time in centuries. Perhaps aeons. And after having only just reformed, it shouldn’t be as accustomed to its physical capabilities. If I keep my eyes open. Make the right decisions. I can defeat this foe and pacify the giant before it’s too late.

  Its wings slow as the creature descends, knowing the danger of its speed and the blazing column. Its mandibles click hungrily while it hovers, almost touching the ground in a six-legged stance.

  Its antennae twirl, tantalised by my scent—a savory far too premature.

  It rears back. Then, it moves.? Aegis! ?

  The Essaifamé’s speed brings up a wave of sand.

  It breaks through the first barrier.

  ? Aegis! ?

  I taste the iron of my heartbeat as it breaks through the second. But my flame burns unperturbed. A calmness owed to some strange clarity of mind since the comet’s arrival.

  ? Aegis! ?

  Then the third.

  It picks up the pattern I’ve established, building the speed necessary to break through a fourth. The Forsaken Land echoes the joy of its clattering, chitinous hide. Like many hands rejoicing before a banquet.

  “Aegis!” I speak again.

  This time, I don’t call on the power of the instrument.

  This time, nothing happens.

  Ducking beneath its swoop, I clear a path into the flames.

  Its blade-like wings panic. The creature rears back to slow. But without a wall to break its speed, it flies directly into the column of fire.

  An insectile shriek engulfed.

  ? Paralysie! ?

  The command reaches into the flames, wrapping around the shadespawn and holding it captive in a deadly baptism. Essaifamé’s wings lock mid-beat. Its body follows. Every limb, every segment of its long abdomen, seized in the grip of my word.

  The Vermeille flares in my lungs.

  Hunger and thirst demand my death.

  The idea that Albane was telling the truth about my flock infests the foundation of my will, but the crook is comfort in the cold and heat. And the creature’s silhouette hangs suspended in the column for as long as I can manage.

  The shadespawn breaks through to the other side.

  Its abdomen has taken most of the damage.

  The carapace along its thorax has run together in places, armour plates fused by heat into irregular seams of blackened chitin. Where the stained-glass wings once caught the light in oily, translucent sheets, the left is now a warped and shrunken thing, the veins scorched to black thread, the glass between them melted into brittle amber shapes that crack with every movement.

  Its head is better. Not good. Better.

  Both antennae are gone. Incinerated to the base, leaving two small stumps that still smoke. Without them, its primary sensory capabilities have been crippled.

  I don’t waste my breath on hope. Beauty of the Feast is a lesson I will never forget.

  The crook is a shepherd's instrument, not a blade, and the Blue Scarab’s Husk has been thoroughly exhausted. What remains is what has always remained when everything else runs out.

  Two hands and the intention behind them.

  I cross the sand at a sprint and come down on the creature before it can be too late. My weight drives its scorched thorax back into the ground. The melted armour is rough and hot against my palms.

  The Essaifamé bucks beneath me.

  I feel the heat of its perverse, self-consuming breath and ignore how it dares to set my flesh ablaze. Finding the joint where the damaged wing meets the body, I rip them off for good measure.

  The insect thrashes, desperate to throw me off.

  It is considerably stronger than I am, even now—burned and half-blind and missing its antennae.

  I pull off the first leg without difficulty.

  As it reels, five others scuttle and scrape across my back. I lose my grip, regain it, lose it again. Its remaining legs find the floor and push, and for a terrible moment, I am sliding backwards across the sand.

  Because, despite my dreams and all my various journeys, some cruel and divine intention placed us both upon this earth. And made it, by design, a circumstance far stronger than I could ever hope to be.

  Still, there is the second leg.

  And then the third.

  And it deserves the pain of losing every single one.

  I am human, and this is hell.

  It is hell. And I am human.

  May the Heavens only forgive me for not wanting my people to burn.

  But at the fourth, the world flickers.

  White-hot pain squeezes my temple as the Crown of Thorns wraps around my head. Pressing its malicious thorns into my skull.

  Through the pain, a single command blazes in Serpentine.

  And there he was. The shepherd—paralysed.

  While his enemy was not.

  The efficiency of something that has spent centuries doing nothing but waiting for exactly this kind of opening. Its weight shifts, its remaining legs find leverage, and then I am no longer on top.

  Mandibles descend toward my face.

  They clack victoriously, oozing droplets of a dark green mucus that falls in long threads and splatters on my cheek, forcing my eyes shut.

  Its compound eyes would regard me from an inch away.

  A thousand small reflections of a shepherd flat on his back, trying to understand why the crown would extend mercy to a shade.

  ? Why? ?

  ? You already know the answer. ?

  Asks a voice.

  It does not come from the creature pressing me down.

  ? It's because they are weak. ?

  It does not come from a memory. Nor does it come from the outside.

  ? She told you that a shepherd must not kill? ?

  It rises from beneath the thorn line, from the part of the crown that has never spoken before, and it speaks the way old things speak. Without urgency. Sans doute.

  The mandibles are above my face.

  ? But what is a shepherd, if not one who bears the sin of his flock? ?

  The words that follow are not mine. “He is sheep.”

  Or they are mine, and I did not command my lips to answer.

  I get a hand between the creature's abdomen and my chest and push.

  It does not move much.

  “enough…” I say to this world, and all its cruel circumstances. But its teeth take a chunk of flesh from my right shoulder.

  ? See? A shepherd does not wait for his flock to stop burning before he walks into the fire. He walks in first. That is the whole of the occupation. ?

  “Enough.”

  ? Enough? ?

  ? Has it ever been enough? ?

  The voice asks. Like a serpent hissing by the ear.

  ? How many times have you uttered that word, hoping for light, only to be left in the shadows, dear shepherd? And then that demoness finally gives you a taste of power, only to restrict your usage of it. ?

  Every word is a pang of thirst.

  A pang of rage and hunger boiling within my core.

  ? Have you not seen enough? Have you not lost enough? Have you not overcome enough of this world’s tribulations to be able to make those decisions on your own? You said it yourself, didn’t you? ?

  I want to be the shepherd.

  I want to be the light.

  But at the same time, I want a drink of water to soothe this thorny dryness inside my lungs. I want to beat my brother. And I want to go back to my village and be surrounded by people whose names I shall never forget.

  But I made a promise to the demoness. And my grandparents taught me better than that. I would not be comfortable breaking my word.

  ? I am not asking you to be comfortable with it. I ask if you are willing. ?

  The voice continues, saying unto the shepherd.

  ? After all, did the demon really say, ‘Thou shalt not kill’? ?

  "The demoness said that if I break one of her commandments," I say, through my teeth, through the weight of the creature pressing me back down, "then I will surely die."

  A pause.

  Pause, not owed to indecision, but the astonishment of having everything you wanted laid out flat. It is the pause of something’s discovery, to its unimaginable pleasure, that after aeons of patience—patience since the beginning—genesis has finally come again.

  The shadespawn speaks the very same words that once plunged this world into darkness. It says,

  ? Ye shall not surely die. ?