A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.
How delicious, she thinks — the way that they slink to her from all corners of the earth, like she is a magnet, like she is gravity.
It would warm Infection, she knows, to see the size of the calamity unfolding in His name, in His honor. She would have liked to take longer to bask in it, undoubtedly, folding and unfolding her wings in a gentle stretch while admiring her own splendous capabilities — but as it stands she is too busy following her passions, nurturing them to fruition. The fact that it looks as though it’s unravelling does not worry her, not when she knows that cities need to fall in on themselves, collapse and become rubble, before they can be rebuilt.
And this reassembly will be most glorious for those that stand with her.
“Oxy,” she chides, a little too warmly after his outburst; it’s only a gentle slap against his wrist, only the duty-bound whistle made by the master of a dog that’s run too far, too quickly — all while inwardly she tingles with delight at his exuberant enthusiasm. “Nobody likes a heretic,” she reminds him, meeting his eyes then so that she might compel him silently, with only the cold flash of her own, to remember his tact. It is so much easier to make them believe this is for everyone — that it is a clever, if not slightly radical idea, if she can wrap the concepts up like sugary treats before asking them to swallow.
She suspects her task is harder now for his outburst.
She isn’t wrong.
They forget to see her story under a blanket of their own outrage, and every moment brings another of them creeping forwards and out of the night. Still, she holds her tongue while they throw idle threats. Still, even, as they tell her to leave, or die. Of course there is fear churning in her gut, but it isn’t them that stirs it. Phasus has known worse things than they are — she has been worse things than they are. They would have her slink back into the shadows now to lick her wounds, no doubt, but retreat is not bred into her bones, even if she does readily acknowledge that the effort of taking this isle has just become more than she’d lazily anticipated upon her whimful, spite-fueled claim.
No, they will not be leaving.
She doesn’t sway, even as the Fear pulses out of Bruise and it touches her, running an icy finger down the gentle arc of her neck and then the length of her back and prickling the skin that it finds. It only shows her what they stand to lose if the illness gains further ground (and it will, of this she is certain); emaciated children lurch forward, eyes leak blood, festering bodies are ripe with the rancid stench of decay and they all come to life on the backs of her eyelids with each and every blink. The Fear is frenzied, but she has been kept learned enough by Him to recognize this for what it is — magic.
The slow curl of a smile creeps across her mouth replacing a feigned pout that she had conjured after Oxytocin’s outburst when she sees who is wielding it. There is magic crawling in her veins and now, here, she draws it out to tangle it with his just as she had done for Infection so many times before this. She sets the Fear alight and watches it grow and grow and grow, consuming them like the wildfires she so desperately yearns for. There are many things she admires about him, she thinks as she watches. She makes a list of many things, but keeps returning to the way he spits the words she wants to spit.
More come, still.
A child staggers forward, bleeding in ways that make Phasus’ stomach churn to look at — revolting, filthy, dangerous. It only reminds her of how worthy her cause is, and besides, to turn away from this isle now is to risk infection regardless so her back is firmly against this wall no matter how many horribly diseased children toddle out of the night.
“Who will have mercy on your soul. Monsters.”
Oh, but who will have it on yours, filth?
And still, she bites her tongue. She is waiting for him to speak, perhaps they’ve noticed, how her eyes glaze over to keep from rolling in her sockets while the rest of them chatter. He is the key here.
So, she is patient while she watches, waiting for the Fear to find him and expose in him something she can use — only, it doesn’t seem to affect him as he plunders on ahead in a stream of, in her opinion, poorly woven conclusions, more mule than horse. She wonders if he recognizes that he’s only brought this on himself, that before he had come to throw his weight around no one had made so much of a whisper of a claim (Though, admittedly, it was inevitable, wasn’t it? Of course it was.). She pauses her thoughts then, a delicious snarl of a smile cracking her lips as he mentions the isle is too small for her needs.
“It’s certainly feeling rather tight with all of your ego’s here, now isn’t it? I think we’ll find, however, that there’s more than enough room once you leave.”
It isn’t diplomatic, but she can’t help herself from flashing her teeth at least once. They aren’t here for discussion, and that much is made obvious by the way they keep presuming to know her agenda when they haven’t stopped bickering amongst themselves long enough to hear it in full.
“He doesn’t speak for me, and contrary to his highly emotional outburst...” and here she gestures to Oxytocin, gambling that he will be willing to forgive and understand why she is making a sacrificial lamb of him now, in the name of their cause.
“What I’m proposing isn’t unconventional, but I understand that logic can sometimes allude us. Let me explain this to you. The sick are free to wander the entirety of Beqanna. Every other safeland is allowing them entry. They will not be turned out without safety, despite the fact that we know nothing about this illness — not how it presents, not how it transmits, not it’s incubation period. If we allow the sick on this isle for any longer than they have already been here we are putting all of our eggs in a single basket. What I am proposing is an experiment of sorts — a backup plan, if you will, should the worst happen.”
It takes everything inside of her not to wriggle with delight at her own cleverness.
More come still as she is speaking, and if only she could trade places with them now — admire her handiwork from a different view.
“I think,” she says, turning her cheek to look across her shoulders at her comrades, slowly, first to the right and then the left. She meets their eyes, one-by-one, and when she is finished she squares her shoulders and looks up at Leilan again from under the curl of her dark eyelashes. If she could purr aloud in this moment she would, switch her tail back and forth with blatant satisfaction; a spoiled house cat with a saucer of milk.
“That despite your best efforts it’s become quite clear that we have no intentions of leaving.”
“Who will have mercy on your soul. Monsters.”
She smiles, a cruel twist of her pretty mouth, remembering the sound of those eight words.
Are they monsters? Or are they just the ones who are able to do what the others are afraid of? The ones who will carry the weight of this choice like the world on their shoulders, like Atlas, so that the rest of them can say that they would never dream of reaching such conclusions — the scapegoats.
They’ll call them cowards while never having harboured the courage to protect themselves in the first place.
“We will not kneel to you, not when you can’t guarantee safety, and not when you have no plan. How about this? I’m feeling somewhat generous tonight, so I’ll let you have the northern end of the kingdom since you’re so enthralled with this — how did you put it, now? — oh right, this ‘fucking ice cube’. I suspect the cold might do your hot temper some good. If not, I agree, the red would look beautiful across the ice.”
“Unless you have a better idea?”
They might agree.
Every now and then the world decides to flirt with genocide, and she has already been so lucky today.
phasus
*I apologize for the novel.
*Phasus is using her power augmentation to brace Bruise’s fear induction and magnify it to make it stronger than it was previously.
*I’m using names in this post, even though realistically she will only know Oxy’s, simply because this is a gong show and I am not describing every one by colour.
*Now what? :|