"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
08-29-2015, 02:21 AM (This post was last modified: 09-02-2015, 03:23 PM by a demon.)
The world has gone dark, fallen from beneath your feet.
It’s over, all over; you can go to sleep now, if you want to, cradled here among the stars; you can sleep and dream and watch world after world end for all eternity, because that’s all you’re good for. You destroy things, you break them, you upset the balance—all of you. The veil lifts, slowly, and somehow you can see them. You can see everything they’ve done, everything they didn’t do, everything they’ve loved and lost and while you see similarities between your stories, you feel no sympathy for them. None at all. Maybe you’re incapable now, maybe it’s the sudden presence you feel inside that’s making you angrier and angrier by the second until you feel nothing but rage and you call for their blood across the emptiness. The presence, the being, whatever it is, laughs at you—laughs at you from the inside.
It’s inside you, it’s in your head. It is all around you.
It is you.
“In due time,” the words come out of your mouth before you can stop them. “I know you want to go home, don’t you? Don’t you? Yes, yes you do. So here’s what you do… see them? Of course you do, I know you do.”
Four other horses appear, all of them in fairly poor condition.
“Pick two of them,” it—you, say. “Pick two of them to come with me and I will let you and the others go.”
Aletheia, Drow and Leiland have been eliminated. Better luck next time.
Have your character reflect on the choices they've made, write about how it impacted them and how it might affect them once they return to BQ.
Write about what they're feeling now, how they feel about floating around in outer space, what it feels like being 'possessed.'
Write about the other characters being revealed and which bits and pieces of their adventures during the quest are revealed to your character.
Write about what your character is feeling/thinking when it realizes it might be one of the two voted to go with the demon into the abyss. Does it feel guilty about sending someone else?
If your character is voted out by the others (each horse must vote against two others, the two horses with the most votes will be eliminated, you cannot vote to send yourself with the demon), it will be sent to the abyss for one BQ year to be tortured by the demon. During that time, your character may only post on the Afterlife board; you may write about your character being tortured, you can detail your character's escape attempts, you can even interact with the dead characters of BQ. After one BQ year is up, you may return to BQ and begin using whatever minor genetic trait I give your character at the end of the quest.
The three horses who are not voted out will receive genetic traits and will be returned to BQ immediately.
You have two days from the time my post hits the board to respond, failure to respond will result in a defect.
Darkness.
Stars.
That's all there is. A comforting blanket of darkness with pinpricks of light as far as the eye can see.
Consciousness returned slowly. This time, consciousness seemed to bring with it the control she was lacking after she threw herself to the mercy of the hoard. She was having trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. The line between what was real and what was a dream had blurred and warped. She couldn't distinguish between the two anymore. Everything was blurred. Everything was distorted. Nothing was real. Everything was real. The idea of returning back to life as it was in Beqanna didn't even seem real. She wanted to go back, but could she? Could she really after all of this, regardless of what was real and what wasn't?
She didn't have the answer. She doubted her ability to find an answer. To say she had been unable to predict anything as of yet would be a gross understatement. So Nadya was done with trying to think of what was next. She was finished with trying to paint a picture of the future only to be stepped on and disappointed. All that Nadya had was the present. Now. This moment. This is where she would live.
Even her death, it seemed, she couldn't execute to her liking. Her sacrifice had backfired in the worst possible of ways. She had wanted to spare her friends and in doing so she had condemned them to meet death at her own hooves. It was twisted. It was wrong. It was picking her apart on the inside.
She realized, slowly, that she was no longer alone. Her first instinct was to recoil, for she didn't trust herself to be in the company of others. Not anymore. Not after what she had done. She still didn't have all the pieces of what had happened to her - did these poor souls suffer the same fate? Had they been pulled from the brink of insanity and despair after being forced to live the worst possible existence? Had they seen their sacrifice for those they loved be relegated to nothing but a speed bump and a path to unfathomable pain?
Nadya was not that strong girl who stood in front of a hoard of undead for her friends anymore. She was so, so tired of of the pain. The damage was clearly visible from the outside. Her eyes were empty. Her coat was dull. She was covered in burns, scratches, and wounds that have long become infected. Her ribs pressed uncomfortably against her skin which was stretched too tightly against her bones. There was nothing about her which screamed health. But the true damage was on the inside - images of what she had done, or things she had done, replay over and over behind those hollow eyes.
She had never known exhaustion at this level before - physical, mental, emotional. She'd been beaten at every level. She'd been ready to die twice over. Yet here she is. Battered. Beaten. Breathing. Surviving. Barely.
But she was alive.
If you could call it that.
The others appear ragged as well. She didn't have to wait and wonder about there stories. Before she could think, their stories came pouring into her mind. She cried out as the images tore through her already fragile mind. She saw their dreams, their nightmares, their fears, their triumphs. In the end she saw their doom - the circumstances that brought them all to this place. Her eyes squeezed shut and she shook her head as the images fought for dominance - names and sights and sounds and scents. Too much, she thought, it's all too much.
As suddenly as the images begun, they ceased. She looked at the four again - this time knowing the names and stories that go with the ragged faces. She suspected they knew hers as well, and shame crawled up the back of her throat. They must have seen her fail her family. They must have seen her failed sacrifice. They must have seen her become a monster and turn on her friends. They must have seen her murder and destroy...
The emotions are washed away just as quickly as they had come - the empathy she felt, the pain. Instead they are replaced with all-consuming anger that seems like its utterly out of place, yet all too familiar. Again she's at war with herself. She should be used to this feeling - this out of control feeling - by now. Perhaps she's the only of the group who's felt it before. This all-consuming possession is not unlike the demon who took hold of her and forced her to destroy her companions and friends - the undead monster who wanted blood and death and gore. They had seen it, but only she had felt it. She was too tired to fight the return of the demon to its defeated host.
The voice was speaking to her through her own lips, just as it had done before when it demanded that she feed. When it demanded that she slaughter - she butcher. But now she was given a new set of choices - now she was forced to determine the fate of not only her life but the fate of the other four who had been dragged from reality with her. She struggles against the demon to conjure images from their memories and push away the monster.
The loss and pain was so real - so visceral to her. She saw children murdered and children become murderers. She saw starvation and desperation. Blood, so much blood, that stirred something primal inside her - disturbing her that much more. She saw two become victim to those who had turned like she had turned on her own friends - something that sent a stabbing pain of guilt and fury through her heart. The others were victims of hunger, starvation, madness even - another type of torment she could certainly understand - as they picked their own flesh from bone as infection ripped them apart from inside out. But the part of her that was still bound to morality - the living consciousness that clung to life - wanted to save those that fell victim to those who had been turned. Those who fell victim to monsters like her. She had to save those who had been butchered by the undead. They could have been her victims. Her meal. Her kills. Heartworm and Rhonan must live. So she had no choice. Or at least she didn't think she did.
"Jaide and Tyrna." She managed to say, though doing so caused her blood to turn cold and a new emptiness to fill her chest. If she could, she would sacrifice herself again. This demon had already claimed her - had already poisoned her. It had already possessed her mind twice over. None of them deserve this torment.
He remembers this sort of darkness; the kind that is so thick he could wear it like a second skin. And he has. Once upon a lifetime ago, when he shared a womb with Tytos. For a glorious moment, he feels like he’s back there. For a glorious moment, he wonders if all those lives had just been dreams.
But Tytos isn’t next to him, isn’t kicking away in their shared darkness. And there are stars. There were no stars inside the womb. Still, he lets himself think that’s where he is. Not at the end of the world. Just the womb, and he’s just been dreaming.
If this is a dream, Noah isn’t dead. If it’s a dream, Noah never even existed in the first place. Or maybe he does. Maybe somewhere in Beqanna there’s a Noah waiting for Rhonan. Maybe they will find each other one day, and they will remember their shared dream, and it will be enough.
If this is a dream, Beqanna hasn't burned. His brother and mother aren’t dead, though he feels less sorrow over their loss than the loss of Noah. But he knows that quiet gray boy better than his own family. Maybe it all was just a figment of his imagination. Maybe Rhonan will wake up and find that he’s just been sound asleep in the depth of the jungle.
But he knows this isn’t true. He can feel the demon, creeping its way inside his mind. It hasn’t taken hold, but it will. And Rhonan doesn’t care. Maybe he’ll forget everything when the demon finally claims him. Maybe he’ll forget the crow and the sound of Noah dying. Maybe he’ll forget how Azula turned on them all, how she ripped the flesh right off of Gero’s bones.
If it is a dream, and he wakes up in Beqanna, what would he even do? How does he go back to life as it was? Back to sneaking out at night past his mother and her control of the jungle’s vines. Back to shooting the shit with Tytos. Had that even been his life? Would that ever be his life again? He can’t imagine it, can hardly remember it.
He just wants to stay here, in this place where all his worlds have ended. He wants to stay in a place that he cannot destroy. There is nothing left here to kill. He wants to stay in a place there is no one left to care about. He cannot bring himself to care ever again. What good has caring ever done him? What good did caring do Noah? Or Gero?
But the thing inside of him isn’t going to let him stay. He feels it, no longer creeping, but pushing into his mind with fury. And Rhonan’s own anger rises as it takes over, though not at it. He almost enjoys the anger, enjoys feeling something other than sorrow or nothing.
One by one, he sees the others, and he knows without a shadow of a doubt this is not a dream. He sees their stories. Through the eyes of the demon? Maybe. He doesn’t know how he sees the past, how he knows their names. Perhaps he should feel sorry for them, but he doesn’t even feel sorry for himself. He’s almost angry they are here, breaking into the peace he'd found in the darkness. Rhonan just wants to be alone, just wants to live and die at the end of the world.
But the demon won’t let them have peace.
Instead, he watches as horses scorn Heartworm for her defect. He watches the flesh falling away from her skin every time the sun dips below the horizon. He’s waiting for pitchforks and torches, for the villagers to chase her away. But a gray horse, so unlike Noah and yet so much like Noah, befriends the skeleton mare. The two mares bond with words, where Noah and Rhonan found comfort in silence. But still, he understands that bond. He watches as the gray mare dives into the horde for a daughter already long gone. The screams, the sound of flesh tearing from bone by blunt teeth. Those sounds he knows all too well, and he turns away.
He sees Jaide, can hear her scream. NO, ROUGE!, as it echoes all around him in the darkness. A chestnut dives into the horde, and those screams echo around him as well. Rhonan wants to shut off the screams, wants to shut off the sound. But it wouldn’t matter anyway; he still hears Noah dying in his sleep.
He watches Jaide as she wakes, discovering that her entire herd is dead. His almost envious of her, angry that her friends were spared the horror of the horde. Though he doesn’t know if that anger is the demon or himself. Maybe it's both. Maybe he has always been a demon. Rhonan cannot even muster pity when she finds Noir, head bobbing in the river like a dead fish. He snorts with laughter instead.
Why is that funny? He doesn’t know. It shouldn’t be funny. He knows it shouldn’t be funny. But it is, and he has to turn away before the laughter never stops.
Instead he sees Nadya, realization dawning, blood and guts smeared on her face. Lucky bitch. She had the balls to feed herself at least. Why hadn’t he? Why hadn’t he taken Kav up on that offer? No, instead he wimped out, couldn’t bring himself to do the dirty deed. But he’s starving. Even in space, he’s fucking starving. And in that moment the sight of blood and meat looks more appealing than he cares to admit.
It must be the demon talking. It must. But he cannot tell. He doesn’t know where the demon stops and he begins. He doesn’t know which of his lives were real. He doesn’t know if he's alive.
He watches Nadya lose control, watching her feast on flesh. She tears the windpipe out of a horse, and he finds himself envious and sick all at once. He turns away, and sees Tyrna as she discovers the bodies. Her friends littering the ground around her. He watches as she kicks and screams, throwing a temper tantrum that could almost wake the dead. Almost. But not this time. Blood sprays into the air, coats her silver skin. One by one, she smashes them all to pieces, and now he laughs aloud. Maybe they were all just fucking mad. Smashing dead bodies to pieces just in case the pain wakes them up. Laughing at the sight of it.
He’s not sure the laughter will ever stop. It mixes with his rage, with his hatred for them and for himself, and he cannot stop.
Until the words coming spilling out of his mouth. They are not his words. He did not think them, and yet he speaks them. It is his hoarse voice that he hears, his raw throat that burns at the effort. But they are not his words. Or are they? Has he become the demon completely? But no, he can still feel some tiny part of him that doesn’t care. Some part that just wants to give up.
Pick two of them, it says. They are all there, close enough to touch now. They are all as pathetic and ruined as he. But he’s no longer laughing. They could name him. They could send him with the demon. Rhonan doesn’t hate that option. Part of him wants to name himself, part of him wants to go with the demon and quit this shit. There is nowhere to go. Beqanna burned. At least, he thinks it burned. So where would they go when the demon released them? He’s tired of living so many lives. He’ll take just one, with the demon or not.
But he hates the idea of them choosing him anyway. He just doesn’t want that. Doesn’t want to singled out as deserving to live life with a demon. He’s not a demon. He’s not.
Right?
Maybe he is. He pieced animals together at their own expense. He let his crow die. He let Noah die. He watched Azula tear Gero to pieces. What good had Rhonan ever done? Nothing. He was just a pretty pretty princess with no purpose to this world. In any world. Maybe he belonged with the demon.
Still, he does not want them to be the reason he isn’t freed. He wants to choose that life for himself, but he cannot. He cannot say his own name. The word will not form on his lips. He hates them all in that moment, and he wants to name them all instead if he cannot name himself. But he cannot do that either.
He must choose.
He thinks of Noah, the animal sounds of the horde and the screams of his ghost friend. He thinks of Heartworm, who watched her own gray friend die. And he cannot name her, because Cara reminds him of Noah. He thinks of Nadya, thinks of what it must be like to eat your friends. He had not been able to do it. Not even with his ribs showing through his skin. She doesn’t deserve to live with a demon, doesn’t need anything else to fuck her head up more. And he cannot name her either.
He thinks of Tyrna and Jaide. They may have dreamed of the horde, they may think they know. But they do not know. For that, he hates them the most. For that, he thinks they can survive the demon. They are not beaten and broken in the same way. They were never chased by their dead loved ones. They can survive more hell.
“Tyrna and Jaide,” he says. This time, he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt these are his words. He knows that he and he alone is condemning two mares who don’t deserve it. Perhaps the rest of them will say his name. Perhaps in the end, he will never live again. But it doesn’t matter. He hates himself as much as he hates them. He doesn’t care what they think. He doesn’t care what happens. He’s just ready for one life. One in hell, one in the stars, one in Beqanna. He’ll take anything, as long as it’s just one.
'Cause I'm the Big Bad Wolf, now let the games begin
With a grin the wolf swallows her whole, and Tyrna is happy. For awhile all the pain, the hurt, the loneliness are gone, swallowed along with her into the void. In the dark she rests, gathering her strength and replaying the images in her head. Contagion and their son smiling in the moonlight before being torn apart and swept away in the fiery end of their paradise. The motley crew of survivors after Beqanna burned around them. The red pony that gave his life for hers. The corpses of her friends crushed beneath her hooves. The wolf shining like a god with stars painted across his pelt. The voices of those she had loved and lost teased at her ear and broke her already fragile heart. She wasn't sure how she would be able to move on from this one. The wolf had more power over her now and he reveled in it. Reveled in the fact that she was broken. Shattered glass and paper wings. Chestnut, grey, black blurs of friendly faces. The hollowness of the shambling monstrosities. Beqanna burning down around her. Again and again she saw them, and wondered what the point would be when this was all over.
After an eternity, or maybe a few minutes, she wakes up. The images and noises are gone. Even the wolf stays quiet for a minute enough for her to gather her bearings. Enough to notice that this time she is not alone. The wolf has retreated back into her head leaving her with new company. She can feel the beast coiled inside her as it used to, but now it was just using her, toying with her. It held all the cards and she could feel the brush of it's fur against her skin. Inside and out. It's cackles drowned out the other noises, and all she could do was stare at the others and wonder what games the wolf had in store for her now.
Tyrna sees four other horses in front of her. Each as scarred and broken as the last, wearing blood and despair like a jacket. One by one she looks at them and sees their trials written in their eyes. The wolf howls and laughs, delighted to see so much misery and more than happy to comment on those present. "Pick two", it whispers in her ear and through her lips. Her voice but the wolf's voice. "Pick two of them to come with me, and I will let you and the others go." The wolf is delighted with it's games. All too happy to play Judge, Jury, and Executioner. So she sees the paths of the others in glimpses of joy and agony.
Rhonan, with the animal kingdom at his beck and call brought low with the death of a bird. Rhonan who ran as his friends were torn apart, watched as they turned on one another. Nothing but a boy who would play at King.
Nadya, whose idea of Utopia was simply rebuilding the Chamber, making it as powerful as it once was and basking in the glow oh so briefly before watching it be consumed by the army she was so proud of. The blue, forgotten girl who became the thing they all feared and ate the flesh of those that trusted her.
Jaide, who played at God in the Jungle. Changing the animals and denying nature it's due. The mare that took a little boy into her care, only to watch as he stumbled into hungry jaws and empty eyes.
Heartworm, the skeleton girl who was a God and dreamt herself a happy,little family. Left only to watch her family die slowly and take the coward's way out to escape the pain. A coward tormented by the herd she finds, a coward who runs as her friend is torn to pieces.
Tyrna sees them all, what they've been through, the pain, the friendships, the love, and she knows they see the same of her. She wonders who will be the ones to cast their stones her way. Which of the four will condemn her to further torment, and which deserves to feel the pain in her place. The wolf smiles through her and is happy to make the choice in her stead. Tyrna would not condemn someone to visit hell, but the wolf would. And oh how he would enjoy it.
"Nadya and Rhonan", the wolf smirks, taking control of her mouth and releasing the names to the wind. She stands, shaking, as the wolf takes control of her bones, muscles, skin. He exuded arrogance and made sure to let the steel girl just who she belonged to. Tyrna didn't want to believe this was really happening, that she is casting her vote against these two that really didn't deserve it. None of them did.
In one moment, the vultures (or at least she thinks it’s the carrion-eaters) are asking for a number. She obliges - “six,” her voice urgent but also graveled with disuse - and they give her only the blackness of space in return.
It’s not totally dark, of course. Stars twinkle all around her (glinting more like, she thinks, like the dead eyes of the damned). Galaxies swirl and shine, looking so close that she could touch them if she wanted. The old her, that blue girl who used to exist in a too-bright world compared to this one would have made the effort. The Jungle’s daughter would have laughed in delight at the sensation of floating, would have marveled at the universe and all the impossible sights. Because it is impossible - should be impossible. She shouldn’t be up here among the constellations - hovering over a vast, star-dense plane - but she is. Why should little-old-her be privy to such a spectacle? Who was she to gain such privilege in such an unfair world?
Now, she doesn’t even flex a muscle. She’s so desperately tired (and starved and thirsty and bone and heart-weary) that it doesn’t even occur to her. If it had, if she’d been the Jaide she aspired always to be, she would have met with resistance, anyway. A low snort she attempts proves as much. Nothing comes out. No tickle at the back of her throat, no sound is emitted into the still, dark air. Before this entire ordeal (the dream, the fires, Noir) she might have panicked. But now, she is the calm of a stone beneath a pounding, churning river.
Someone’s got me, she thinks. Then immediately after, I don’t want to die.
Maybe she should want to, after everything she’s gone through. Maybe she should want to feel the cold press of Death’s fingers against her forehead, a gentle touch before driving with numbing finality into her skull. Only ash and the charred remains of the life she once knew remain back in Beqanna, after all. She’ll never share the company of the macaws again. She’ll never see the bobbing pink faces of the river dolphins, never become a Sister like she’s dreamed of. Noir will not be there to greet her; the colt will never again snuggle for warmth and companionship against her side at night. Where will she go, the lone survivor of the world? Who will she turn to when it all becomes too much?
Maybe the vultures will have me, she consoles herself with the thought but she cannot reconcile it with the strange image it conjures. A mad flock, but not alone, she thinks, and chortles in her mind. But it’s not entirely her own thought. Something is in there, too, sharing space with her brain. A void that pulls at all the warmth she has remaining within her (it’s not much). She tries to shake it out, but then…
There are others alongside her, floating in space.
They are just as ragged and threadbare as she, wisps of the stout and sturdy beings they might have been before this all began. She doesn’t recognize them from Before Beqanna Burned; she doesn’t know them from any random meadow bum. But immediately, somehow, she learns everything about them. Images clamor to be seen in her mind, a whirlwind of pictures and voices and memories all foreign. They are similar to her own, but at the same time, wholly different. Jaide sees the fires ravage their homeland from four different sets of eyes. She sees a flash of red as a fox disappears into the undergrowth; watches as the famous falls dry up to nothing at all. The survivors (others she doesn’t know, not like Survivor Mountain's band and Alpha and Rouge) gather on different mountains. They look for food and water, like Jaide and her own group had, with varying degrees of success. They form search parties and gathering groups, alliances and even enemies. She sees the rise of the undead, how they start to gather and hunt in the wastelands below the mountains. It chills her once again. The growth of Judea’s devout group shows in Heartworm’s memories. Jaide counts as a habit (unable to stop herself, though she pauses after the sixth horse for a long spell) as nine survivors come to stand behind the overzealous woman. She wants the skeleton mare given over to the horde, her bones and magic a sacrifice she’s ready and willing to make (it won’t work, Jaide giggles, the stupid cow – nothing will satiate their all-consuming hunger).
Other stories emerge out of the void that has become her mind. Rhonan follows Kav and Gero blindly, rising in the middle of the night at the promise of food. It’s rash and foolhardy, you’ll run out of food soon enough, she thinks. The images move on quickly from there. She watches with little horror as Nadya becomes a monster. The horde welcomes her into the fold as a satellite member, and she pays her dues in the form of flesh. She tears apart a mother, tears apart a Carter. She can hear the soft whistle of the air escaping his trachea, can smell the blood as it pools around his broken head, but she doesn’t care much. Tyrna descends into the darkness, the madness like she had (has). Her herd-mates take the eternal slumber, and here, Jaide wants to sympathize a little. She reads each line of the wolf-girl’s ribs, understands the need for each scab that the grey mare picks at until it becomes fresh once more. She knows how flesh can be such a comfort between teeth that haven’t been used in days, weeks. Tyrna’s struggles make sense to her in a way that the memories of the others don’t.
Still, though, she feels nothing for any of them.
Her heart, once open to all, now feels constricted and leashed by some force she doesn’t understand. She feels like she’s given control of her very soul to someone else, though she doesn’t remember signing it over. There’s a sweetness she tries to ignore in the release, a feeling like freedom she vehemently denies. The presence wants her to so badly, though. It would be all too easy, a match to dry kindling – her soul for an eternal, final rest.
Laughter rattles from her aching chest, bubbling from a well that should have run dry long ago. Words soon follow, slipping and silky on a tongue wetted by her own blood and disease. “Home,” she/it croons into the starlit sky. Home for a price, of course. It’s there, far below her: a splatter of green and blue paint on an overlarge canvas, insignificant in the entire scheme of the universe. She/it talks about a choice, of sending two of their number with the darkness that now nestles into her ventricles. Jaide can feel the poison pumping with each beat of her heart, sickening her mind even further. It’s not a choice she wants to make (she’d sooner send herself). They’ve all suffered enough already – why is he/she/it doing this? Heartworm, Rhonan, Nadya, Tyrna, Jaide. One, two three, four, five -
Six? This demon is six, she decides. He/she/it is there amongst them, the silent sixth. It poisons all of them, pollutes their veins and throats in equal fashion. What will happen to the two it takes? Where will they go that is worse than their scorched lands? The monikers of the other four arrange themselves in her mind as she weighs their suffering. She tries to keep her mouth shut, tries to clamp her black lips down so that the names can’t escape. Unwittingly, they spill out. The demon makes her release them into the blank air. Nonono, she thinks as her tongue forms their names: “Nadya and Tyrna.”I’m sorry, she thinks to them, but cannot say out loud. A deafening silence fills her ears and lungs then. She thinks of Nadya’s eyes as a monster – how easily it could have been Noir she’d eaten (how close the monsters had been to him, anyway). She thinks of Tyrna’s wolf – how if any of them could survive anything else, it would surely be the girl and her canine other half. She has the strength and grit for it, more than the blue girl, anyway. Jaide sobs for all of them, internally, quietly, not even able to mourn out loud.
this one goes out to you;
my little h e a r t w o r m
Space, nothingness, and the voice.
The voice is odd, it reminds of her Iris and Corsair, of good times. It reminds her of her mother, of Judea, of bad times. All this, and at once it is like nothing she’s ever known or imagined.
Once she might have marveled at this, all this, the stars around her, the impossibility of being. But now, she is just so tired, her body hurts (she thinks a rib is broken, taking breath hurts, aches).
The voice is inside of her, writing itself across her bones, and though she might have once fought, she lets it. She lets it wash over her, into her.
She does not assume she will return to Beqanna. She is not entirely sure she wants to. There is nothing for her there – Iris was a dream, the castle was a dream.
She wants to go back there, where she was a god, where she built animals from nothingness and the lions lay with lambs, where Iris had wings and together they touched the sun.
The veil lifts, and she realizes she is not alone.
There are their faces, and that is hard enough to face. Worse is the memories, their experiences seeping into her like sewage and she lives more lives, ones she does not want to live.
She is Rhonan, and there is a bird. It is different than the birds she built, black and rough and small, but she feels the attachment there. It is not a family, not like she built, but she cries for the crow, too. And then she – Rhonan – is running and then there are friends, are enemies, and mostly there is a boy named Noah who is there and then he is screaming. There is a woman and she is feasting, tearing into flesh, and Heartworm realizes it’s a parallel to her life – crows for children, friends who die beneath each other’s hooves.
She is Tyrna, with a family and at this her heart twists because she knows the love there, she had it herself, children dreamed into being. Tyrna’s son meets a fate much like Iris, brought through by wolves rather than starvation, but the end result is the same. She realizes there is something else inside Tyrna, a wolf of another’s making, a dark heart, and she feels the wickedness inside, nestled right next to the love, and she wonders at the dichotomy, at what it must be like. Tyrna makes her own friends, the same path at Heartworm, the same as Rhonan – but not the same, as Sunny meets his end bravely, willingly, as Heartworm had tried and failed to do. She is Tyrna, waking to a valley of the dead, trying to break them into being, and she doesn’t know if it’s from despair or from that dark wolf-heart. She tastes the madness on her tongue, coppery and bright, and wonders what’s left, for her.
She is Nadya, remaking a kingdom into its glory, fulfilling a bloodline’s promise. She makes a utopia for herself, full of magic and power, but the kingdom crumbles. And then her die is cast, friendships forged (her heart aches at the child’s presence, at the surety of her fate). A warm bath, a healing bark, a family forged in the ash. And she does what Heartworm could not – she meets her fate, head-on, gives herself to the horde. But it was a mistake, it turned her into one of Them, a monster, a slaughterer, and Heartworm feels the bloodlust, the hunger, and it terrifies her. The taste of meat on her tongue, wet and terribly wrong.
She is Jaide, and she too remakes a kingdom. It is full of strange animals, and she wonders if Jaide knew them or dreamt them into being. One she recognizes – a jaguar – and it tears the throat out and Heartworm’s stomach twists as she thinks of Corsair, running mad, of the panther who took him down. Once more, the dream fades and she is on that infernal mountain, making doomed friends, and there is a stallion who tries to take what is not given. Jaide’s final act is much like hers – an intention of self-sacrifice, of nobility, but one bypassed by another, a foolish friend, and she watches in mute horror as the chestnut dives before the herd. She takes to counting. She begins to sup upon her own flesh, and Heartworm is reminded of how her own heart tasted.
Pick two.
She does not want to. She would name herself, go, fulfill the sacrifice she was too cowardly to give the first time. She is past caring, she is already broken. She has no kingdom, no lovers, no children.
(No children, except in dreams, she reminds herself, bitter.)
She is not supposed to play this role: the executioner, the judge, sending them to their fate. Pick two.
A command, a desire in her to obey. ”Tyrna and Jaide,” she says, thinking of wolves and the taste of flesh, I’m sorry, she tries to say, tries to explains she would if she could, but the demon has muted her, and she is quiet now, amongst the stars.
