4.5 - Nothing Dies Here
Gorudonda spit a mouthful of blood on the rocks at his feet. A warm, bubbling sensation filled his chest and stomach around the wounds that had killed him. His aegis was hard at work repairing the damage, but it took longer each time. When he was young, his aegis could bring him back in seconds. The slow decay of an iriloc’s aegis wasn’t unique, it was a part of life. Gorudonda and the rest of the irilocs in the city of Wolf weren’t experiencing a slow decay, however. War tended to expedite the process.
“General?”
Gorudonda looked up from the dripping pile of blood and mucus he had left on the stones to see his second in command, Darusonda, breathing heavily and wincing but standing at the ready.
“Any losses?” Gorudonda asked as he stood up. He felt his aegis readjust inside of him and for a moment, a tremendous pain returned to the last wound left to be healed. His entire body tightened and he lurched forward. Darusonda caught him and groaned in pain as their broken bodies collided. For a moment Gorudonda thought they would both crumble to the ground, but Darusonda grunted and lifted them both up.
“You need rest. Everything else will wait,” Darusonda said. “We all need to rest.”
Tanith finished packing her bag and strapped it down tight to the saddle on her horse. It was more than enough for the day of traveling ahead of her, half a day down to the city of Wolf and half a day back up, but the mountain trail could be dangerous. She was one of a dozen messengers responsible for running between the Saorin city of Elk and it’s Carshgan sister Wolf at the base of the mountain. Tanith was new to the job, having only run messages once before. It seemed like as good a job as any. The pay was serviceable, the work manageable, and the journey up and down the mountain was quite beautiful. It made it all the more confusing how much the other messengers hated it.
“Good luck rookie,” one of the messengers said as he passed. What was his name? Rosha? No, that was the one with longer hair. Evaris? That was it, right?
“Thanks!” she said, bouncing up on her toes. “Enjoy your day off.”
She decided it was better not to call him by name, lest her memory had failed her.
“Be sure to keep an eye out for monsters,” he called back, with a heavy roll of his eyes.
Elk & Wolf didn’t exactly get along. Elk supplied Wolf in exchange for protection, seeing as how the only path to Elk on the side of the mountain went through Wolf. The contention had always existed between the two, but recently Wolf had sunk deep into a war with what the irilocs called “Vesh’tal Remnants.”
Hundreds of years before Tanith was born, The Barge of Souls was made up of fourteen distinct kingdoms, four of them Carshgan and ten Saorin. Vesh’tal, the centermost kingdom, was the largest of them all and built around the God’s Pearl, a castle-sized pearl half buried in the ground. The rulers of Vesh’tal, whose names have all been lost to time, took pickaxes and hammers to the Pearl with hopes of mining its riches. Only a deep hatred was to be found. As the pearl split, a great blue smoke curled from its marbled inner layers. The smoke spiraled its way inside the workers first, but soon spread to nearly the entire central district. The stories Tanith had read begin to diverge at this point, with a fearful fury. The blue smoke was not a poison, nor a beast of its own, but a catalyst of some sort. Many archivists refer to it in some capacity or another as a carrier of eggs, with the people of Vesh’tal playing host.
Thus began a four-year span known as The Collapse. The fourteen kingdoms completely broke down, merging into one unified Barge of Souls against the Central Kingdom. Saorin and Carshgan were living together for the first time. Many fled when faced with whatever was birthed from the infected, making for the sea, and eventually settling down to form cities like Sumberus. The rest stayed and fought. A year of panic and dissolution of kingdoms, three years of gruesome, restless war. At long last, with one concerted push, the kingdoms managed to seal the God’s Pearl and end the war. The God’s Pearl and most of Vesh’tal were closed off from the rest of the land, in hopes of containing any further spread and preventing another breach.
Growing up close to irilocs instilled a love of storytelling in Tanith. Their regenerative aegis made them uniquely suited to the battlefield, but their passion was storytelling. Some through song, others through tales told by the hearth. Something about the story of The Collapse and the subsequent ending of the war never sat right with Tanith. It was far too opaque to be so neatly cleaned up at the end. Perhaps that was why she didn’t doubt the people of Wolf as much as her neighbors did. Was it really unthinkable for a Vesh’tal army to be hidden somewhere in the vast open land that had been sealed off for so long?
She felt a chill and, coming back to the present, realized it had begun to snow. Best to get moving.
Gorudonda’s aegis slumbered in his chest after hours of work. If only Gorudonda was so lucky. Sleep evaded him as it had for months. The day was nearly half over already, so the messenger from Elk would arrive shortly. At least Elk’s doubts could be put to bed with this visit. Gorudonda had made sure of it. He rolled out of bed and instinctively flinched at the wound in his side before remembering it was fully healed. Despite his position as general, Gorudonda still lived in one of the spartan rooms attached to his collective’s main gathering chamber. Within any iriloc community, there could be found multiple collectives, typically revolving around their preferred method of storytelling. Gorudonda was a member of the woodwind collective. Mere months had passed since they had gathered and played together, but it felt like an eternity. He glanced over at his shawm, a double-reed instrument that sat dormant, collecting dust on his desk. Perhaps when this was all over, they would have the energy to return. If it ever ended.
He pushed through the heavy canvas draped in front of his door and stepped out into the central chamber, constructed of pinewood timbers that had been curved to form a dome structure. Gorudonda’s people enjoyed constructing buildings as much as they did stories, and had pioneered a process of bending wood through steam.
In the center of the chamber there stood a raised wooden platform, large enough for two or three irilocs to stand shoulder to shoulder while performing. Surrounding it were four circles of tiered benches, covered in deer hide. Carushonsa, Gorudonda’s third in command, was sitting cross-legged on the stage alone. She looked up and nodded as Gorudonda approached. As quietly as he could, he sat down on one of the benches across from her.
“Feeling better?” she asked.
“Physically, yes,” Gorudonda said. “Beyond that, well…”
Carushonsa nodded again. It hurt to see her so morose. Not long ago, she was leaping back and forth on the stage with her musical partner, smiling and laughing.
“We have one secured as you asked,” she said. “It’s locked up in one of the spare rooms in the poet’s collective. What is it you plan on doing with it?”
“I’m going to force the messenger to look at what they refuse to believe,” Gorudonda said. Speaking was harsh on his throat as his cracked voice rumbled through the room. “Each day they promise less and deliver on their promises. We will be ground to powder at their feet if they continue to ignore the truth. I won’t let them.”
A pillar of blue-gray light illuminated the stage from the window directly above, full of life and death. Millions of particles, the remains of remains. It was unclear how long the damage would last in the air around Wolf, but the gray clouds did at least smother the intensity of the sun.
“What makes you think it will sway them?” Carushonsa asked. “They don’t wish to see. I fear that one messenger will not carry the weight needed to persuade an entire people.”
“The same fear lives in me,” Gorudonda said. “It is held back by the hope that Elk is not a monolith. Perhaps there is division among them, and this will be enough to turn the tide.”
“And if it isn’t?” Carushonsa asked.
“We keep fighting,” Gorudonda said, as he stood and began to move towards the exit. “And pray for another way.”
Tanith neared the base of the mountain, with Wolf only thirty minutes away. The thin veil of snow continued, but down here it melted as soon as it hit the ground. She had slowed her progress in an effort to keep her horse safe. Or rather, the city of Elk’s horse. She didn’t have the coin to afford one herself but could borrow one from the city for a small cut in pay. If she returned with the horse injured, however, it would more than likely mean the entire day’s pay and potentially more gone. She patted the horse on the neck gently and urged it forward down the last slope and onto even ground. The horse let out a delighted neigh and stamped the flat earth. Tanith took it as an opportunity for a brief respite before the final stretch into Wolf. She hopped off the horse and took feed from her pack for it, as well as a snack for herself. The town was still slightly too far off for her to get a good look. The sound, however, was immediately apparent. At her back, up the slope of the mountain, was the sound of life. Birds, slowly falling snow, rocks, and dirt breaking loose beneath the feet of wild creatures. Ahead of her was a deep well of silence so stark in contrast it was as if she could reach a hand out and penetrate it. Suddenly she seemed to lose her appetite. Once the horse had its fill, she tucked away the rest of her own food and climbed back up onto the saddle. Better to finish the job quickly and be on her way.
It had been nearly two months since her last (and first) run, and Wolf looked far grimmer than she remembered. Although, she was having trouble remembering what it looked like at all. Nature was beginning to take a few of the buildings on the outskirts, growing up along the walls and clawing at the windows. The entire town was blanketed by some sort of dense, blue-gray smoke or cloud, the look of which Tanith had never seen. Every door had been reinforced with heavy wooden cross beams and tangled chains. The central pathways of town were beaten down with large divots and marks of heavy footfalls, but the alleys and sideroads looked to be barely used anymore. There were no signs of life, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary. It was, for Carshgans, the dead of day. They would be tucked away in bed by now. On her first trip, Tanith remembered a few irilocs who looked to be on the tail end of a celebration quietly stumbling home. This time, not even a breeze could be heard. In the center of town, a single iriloc stood waiting, next to a stone fountain depicting two winged humans dancing beneath a waterfall. The fountain seemed to be one of the only memories still intact from the last time. It was her favorite part of the trip. The water wasn’t running this time, and the flowers along the rim were brown and shriveled.
The iriloc she remembered as well. His stout shoulders and arms were covered in brown fur with streaks of gray. His head, like all irilocs, was completely hairless, instead covered in slightly indented patterns. They radiated a dim violet color. What was his name again? Why was she so bad with names?
“Hello there,” she said. She spoke barely louder than a whisper, and yet it still seemed to boom throughout the square. “It was Gorgadonda right?”
“Goru,” he said. “Gorudonda. I’m afraid I don’t remember your name.”
“Tanith. Good to see you again Gorudonda,” she said. She climbed down from her horse and bowed to him. He bowed back quickly and motioned towards a wooden fence outside the square.
“You may tie your horse up there. We are short on time and there is something I must show you,” he said. Without waiting for Tanith, he turned and walked off towards one of the large domed buildings that surrounded the town square and made up the majority of Wolf. Tanith quickly ushered her horse over to the fencepost and secured it. She hurried over to Gorudonda, skipping every other step in an attempt to show her urgency. The state of Wolf had brought a great feeling of guilt upon her. Gorudonda ushered her inside. The central chamber of the building was crowded with benches and tables covered in parchment and spilled ink. A podium stood in the center of the room, shrouded in sickly light from the open peak of the roof. Along the edges of the room were dozens of doorways, presumably leading to sleeping quarters.
“May I ask-” Tanith began speaking but her voice caught in her throat as the words boomed through the chamber. Gorudonda continued to lead her towards one of the closed doors as if nothing had happened. She would ask him later. The door they were headed for looked heavily damaged by something. The door frame around it was scratched and cracked. The door itself sported a heavy split down the center of it, and a large chain was strapped across it. The area around it smelled of ore and stale air. It reminded Tanith of her father. Before he passed, he worked in the Elk mines. Every evening when he would come home from work, he would shake what looked like ten pounds of dust and dirt from his clothes on the front porch. Gorudonda retrieved a heavy iron key from his pocket and unlocked the chain from the door. He carefully lowered it to the ground and turned to Tanith with his hand on the door.
“This is what Elk has left us alone with. This is the burden our sister city has claimed to be nothing but a hoax,” he said. From Tanith’s experience, irilocs tended to show more emotion through their actions and what they created than through their expressions, but Gorudonda was visibly distraught. The violet light coming from the indentations in his head flared and dimmed like a candle in the wind. He pushed the door open and revealed a small chamber, completely emptied out save for one thing.
Bound to the wall with even heavier chains and shackles was a vaguely human creature. It stood on two zigzagging legs. Its pale white skin was tight against bones all pointing in sharp, alternating directions upward. Its feet had seven long toes each, with thick yellow nails sharpened to points. The only piece of clothing it wore was a leather undergarment strapped tightly around its waist.
“We placed the undergarment on this one,” Gorudonda said. “Not for modesty's sake. The Remnants do not have reproductive organs. In their place is something akin to a weapon. We aren’t entirely sure how it works, but it cannot be removed from the skin around it, so covering it was the only option.”
Tanith nodded and turned her attention back to the Remnant. Its arms were far too long for its proportions. They were spread wide and shackled to the wall nearly reaching from one side to the other. The creature itself looked to be roughly Tanith’s height, but the span of its arms could easily be twice that. Its head was the most horrifying part of it. It was entirely human, with two blue eyes, a sharp nose, and a thin mouth with cracked lips. Black hair hung down along the sides of its face. The creature stared back at Tanith, unmoving. She opened her mouth to ask if it was human, but before she could utter the words, something began to happen. The eyes of the creature rolled once, twice, then spun backward. Its mouth opened with a loud crack. One of its eyes sunk into its head and disappeared, leaving an empty socket, then reappeared on its tongue with a stem attaching it. Its nose rolled into itself and flattened completely. The creature slowly stuck its tongue out, the eyestalk rising upward with the eye frantically spinning atop it. The eye still remaining in its socket bulged like it was on the verge of popping, only to split clean in two, half of it disappearing and reappearing in the empty socket. Barely perceptible wisps of smoke could be seen trailing upward from pores in its skin. Every feature seemed malleable, detached.
Tanith felt a swirling sensation in her head, and for a moment, thought she heard a voice. She looked at Gorudonda. If he heard something, he didn’t react. His gaze was locked on the creature, a hand resting on the dagger at his side. The creature likewise, seemed to barely register the two of them much less be capable of speech.
“Every night they come, dozens upon dozens,” Gorudonda said. “We are not a warring people. We are doing what we can but we need help. We need the soldiers and resources of Elk, or they will come for you next.”
“I...I am just a messenger,” Tanith said. “Why haven’t you shown this to the ones who came before me? Surely they wouldn’t have doubted you.”
“This is the first one we’ve managed to capture alive,” he said. “Are you squeamish?”
“Go ahead,” She said, unsure of what she was agreeing to. “My job is to observe and report.”
Gorudonda unsheathed his dagger and stepped towards the Remnant. It began to thrash violently in its chains and its face shifted with even more irregularity. Gorudonda, in quick succession, grabbed the creature’s jaw and pushed up, then dragged his dagger across its throat. Tanith expected blood and a cry of pain. Instead, the room went silent. The Remnant’s head slumped forward and quickly disintegrated, followed by the rest of its body. As quickly as it took Gorudonda to kill it, it was gone, a cloud of blue-gray air billowing upward toward the ceiling.
“It is not the weather that hangs heavy over Wolf,” Gorudonda said, sheathing his dagger. “It is the very thing which oppresses us, taking one last form of death. Choking the life from us with their third incarnation. The other messengers had nothing but clouds to look upon, and they saw it for only what they believed it to be. I pleaded with them, each and every one of them, to no avail.”
Another dizzying sensation in Tanith’s head. This time a voice was clear.
“The hordes of King Arisosh are crawling free from the crypt.”
Tanith instinctively clapped her hands over her ears, but the voice was just as clear.
“Can you hear that?” she asked. Gorudonda looked concerned and shook his head.
“Hear what?” he asked.
“I am sorry child,” the voice said again. “You have been my hiding place for many years. Were I to be contaminated, untold terror would have been wrought. I had no choice but to wait here, in the gaps of your memory I’ve created for myself until my companions arrive. I can feel them now, barreling through time. One is already here, as bombastic as ever, soaring through the sky far to the southeast. A second should be arriving shortly, beneath a canopy of buzzing. I can feel a third, pulling himself through. Stubborn as always. Thank you, my dear, for serving as my safeguard. You may return to Elk if you wish, but they will bring no succor here. The rulers are not who they would wish you to believe they are. I shall warm my aching bones and shake the dust from my mantle in the best way I know how. Take this iriloc outside.”
The swirling in her head immediately ceased, and the voice was gone. Gorudonda had stepped over to Tanith and placed a hand on her shoulder without her realizing it. He was looking her in the eyes and speaking.
“-hear me?” he said. The voice seemed to have drowned out all other sound, which came rushing back.
“A voice,” Tanith said. “A voice in my head. It asked for us to step outside. I…” she could see Gorudonda doubting her. “I know how this seems. I cannot explain it, but I’ve never experienced anything like it.”
Something caught his eye, and he stared past her into the central chamber. His eyes grew wide, and he rushed out. She turned to follow him and saw the podium in the center of the room, lit up in blinding, clear sunlight. The two of them hurried through the front doors of the building and out into a brilliant, clear day.
As a Carshgan, Gorudonda was clearly made uncomfortable by the direct sun, but he laughed and raised his hands nonetheless. Splashes of clean white clouds dotted an otherwise perfectly blue sky. The fountain in the center of town surged to life as if the sky itself was being poured into it, clear water running out in sheets. The brown and shriveled plants along its edge shook rapidly and all signs of death dissipated into the wind. Pale purples, bright yellows, and vibrant greens were left in its place.
Tanith heard a tremendous sucking sound, then a pop. A figure appeared above the fountain, drapes of orange clothing flowing off of them like strips of sunset. They had a humanoid body, but where a head would be-just above shoulders covered in heavy fur-were hundreds of long petals in a cone shape. They swirled and danced around each other as if it were an entirely contained whirlwind of flowers. An aura radiated outward from the figure in slow and heavy waves that passed over Tanith. She felt them pass through her skin in mourning shifts like the wailing tones of a dirge and yet there was hope in the space between waves, curling and heaving with energy. She heard the voice again, but it was no longer in her head.
Cristina Morales
“The detritus of man’s blood baked history is clattering across the Barge of Souls as if it were a flock of blinded birds. It is long past time for us to return, or arrive, from the breaking of our mother’s gift, to soak up the spilled spite that is seeping through the fabric of even the most insignificant essences. Death is beyond its boundaries, flailing in horrid fits across the land. I am ashamed of the time we will never reclaim, but beyond us is an open field where death knows its place and cannot claim the rule it holds now.”
The figure extended an arm in the direction of Gorudonda.
“That begins with you, my dear son. No longer will you need to trade your shawm for a blade. The irilocs of Wolf will soon know the joy of music and storytelling once more. As long as I remain in this realm, no unnatural harm will come to your kin for the sacrifice you have made these long months, keeping the Remnants at bay. Live beneath my love, now.”
The figure raised their arms and clasped their hands together above their head. Gorudonda looked away for a moment, the sunlight becoming too much. Tanith watched as the sky above them became flat glass. For a moment, she feared that the being was sealing them inside, but as soon as the glass appeared, it shattered in a cascade of glittering starfall. On their journey to the surface, the pieces warped and collided with each other, forming larger and larger pieces, until finally, dozens of massive crystalline chunks slammed into the ground around Wolf. Most were out of Tanith’s view, but one had landed to the left of the fountain. Immediately, the crystal took on the color of the flowers that reflected off of its surface, and the lush green grass it had plunged into. Instead of cracking or shattering again, the crystal looked to be melting. The sharp corners and harsh lines gave way to sloped edges and rounded limbs. Slowly, a giant took form, no longer made of crystal, but of moss and vines and deep rich soil. As a head formed, although Tanith couldn’t make out any distinctly humanoid features, she heard a rumble from the creature. As it did, the ground beneath her feet responded in kind with a great rumbling cry of joy. One by one, she heard this call and response from the other giants around Wolf, two dozen times over. The Barge of Souls was crying out in elation as its long-lost children returned from the labyrinth of the sky. The being above the fountain lowered their arms, the ceremony finished.
“Wolf is safe,” they said. “So begins the struggle for the rest of the world.”