TALES OF LOST GODS AND FRAGILE TRANSFORMATIONS: A Vision For The Future

by

Al Bruno III

The SOVEREIGNS OF THE VOID, the ones the sorcerers and seers of old called the ABYSSILITHS, waited in THE SPACES BETWEEN for their hour of liberation as the world was formed from blood and starlight. In those times, their number was three: THE WHELP, THE PSYCHOGOG, and THE CRONE. But as life spread across the land, the three would become seven...  

The Nine Rebel Sermons
Sixth Canto
Translator unknown

***  

Prichard Bailey tried to keep the class busy, but the children were distracted and tense. He stood at the front of the one-room schoolhouse, flanked on one side by a satellite photograph of the revised eastern coastline and on the other by a colorful map of the Allied States of America. He kept the questions easy, rewarding correct answers with pieces of candy.  

The schoolhouse had been a parting gift from the Army Corps of Engineers nearly a decade ago. The people of Knoxbridge did their best to maintain it, tending to it with the same care and reverence they showed their place of worship.  

Usually, the classroom was loud and bustling. Today, however, Prichard's students were all nervous glances and halting replies. The adults had tried to shield them from the chaos erupting near Lancaster, but they knew. They had overheard hushed conversations, smuggled radios to their beds, and listened to news reports in the dead of night. And they had all seen that man stagger into town a week ago, his skin pallid from blood loss, his arms hacked away.  

A warm spring breeze drifted through the propped-open window, carrying with it the sounds of daily life—fathers and older brothers returning from the fields, mothers engaged in quiet conversations, babies crying. Anyone with time to spare gathered on the steps of the church.  

Father Warrick had left two weeks ago, claiming he had business in the Capitol. Prichard suspected the stories of the United Revolutionary Front had been too much for him; most likely, he had retreated to the central diocese in Manhattan. Of all the recent developments, the priest’s absence unsettled the children the most. After all, if even God's messenger had fled, what hope was there?  

In truth, Prichard was glad to see the back of Father Warrick. The man had done nothing but rail about the end times, practically salivating at the thought of the apocalypse. It amazed Prichard that someone supposedly schooled in Christ’s message of love could be so eager for the world to end.  

He posed another math question. As always, Ophelia answered correctly. She was not only intelligent but endlessly creative, crafting books from construction paper, illustrating them with her own drawings and cut-out magazine photos. She sold these stories to her classmates for handfuls of pennies—tales of angels living beneath the sea and love stories as bright as sunshine. They were filled with as many grammatical errors as they were wonders, but that only added to their charm.  

Whenever Prichard read them, he found himself imagining a different story—one where Ophelia left the Allied States for Europe, pursuing her dreams in safety.  

***

“The prayers of the pious begat the HIEROPHANT. The darkness between the stars begat the ASTERIAS. The cries of lunatics begat THE THREADBOUND. In those days, they walked as giants among men. They were cursed and worshipped, they commanded nations and played at oracles…”  

The Nine Rebel Sermons
Sixth Canto 
Translator unknown  

***

From his vantage point in the shadow of the Blue Ridge foothills, Major Titus Ritter watched his troops make ready.  

Ritter was in his fifties, with thick, muscular arms and a swollen belly. A decades-old bullet wound marked his right cheek. His uniform was stained with sweat, dirt, and blood. He stood beside his battered old jeep, binoculars in hand, tracing the path of the broken asphalt road that led to the town. His gaze swept over the overworked, arid fields and the sturdy little houses clustered around the schoolhouse and church. Smoke curled lazily from chimneys. Children darted through the streets. In the town center, a flagpole bore the standard of the Allied States of America, hanging limply below a second flag—an eagle clutching arrows.  

These small, hastily built agricultural communities had become the backbone of the Allied States’ food supply ever since the Revolutionaries had detonated dirty bombs in the farmlands of the Great Plains.  

Ritter wondered how many of the town’s homes contained guns, then dismissed the thought. In over a dozen raids, he had yet to encounter a community willing to defend itself. They all believed the army would protect them. They didn’t realize the battle lines drawn by the United Revolutionary Front were creeping ever forward as the once-great nation's resources dwindled.  
 

We are willing to die for our cause, he thought. They are not. 

His detachment had traveled in a half-dozen battered pickups and three supply trucks, now parked in a secluded clearing. One carried scavenged food, another weapons and ammunition. The third was for the camp wives. The flag of the Federated Territories—stars and stripes encircling a Labarum the color of a sunrise—was draped over every available surface.  

He turned his attention to his troops—a mix of middle-aged men and cold-eyed boys. The older ones were either true believers or true psychopaths, easy to manipulate with promises of power. The boys were more difficult. They had been plucked from quiet, simple lives and taught to put their faith in the wrong government.  

Ritter’s officers made soldiers of them with a simple formula: a little violence, a few amphetamines, and the promise of time alone with one of the camp wives.  

“Seems a lovely little town.” A voice, dry and crackling like old film, broke the silence. “Do you know its name?”  

“That’s not important.” Ritter glanced at the apparition in the passenger seat. A ragged yellow cloak barely concealed dusty black garments. The snout-like mask they wore was the color of bone, its glass eyepieces revealing pale skin and pinprick pupils. It called itself the Hierophant.  

“Will there be Cuttings tonight?”  

“Of course. We must make an example of the loyalists.”  

“You’ve made so many examples already.”  

Ritter made an angry sound but did not reply. He had been seeing the figure for weeks. If any of the other men or women in the camp noticed it, they gave no indication.  

The Hierophant spoke again. “Someday, the war will be over. No more fires, no more Cuttings, no more examples.”  

“There will always be troublesome people who need silencing,” Ritter muttered.  

“Not so long ago, your revolutionaries were the troublesome ones, fighting against being silenced.” The Hierophant shuddered, blurring for a moment.  

“We are patriots. We will be remembered as heroes.”  

The Hierophant nodded thoughtfully. “Memories cheat.”  

Ritter thought of the promises the specter had made, the cryptic allusions and prophecies. One had saved his life. But the questions lingered. He asked, “What do you want?”  

The trucks and troop transports lined up. A few officers fussed over their video cameras and burlap sacks.  

“I am searching…” The Hierophant juddered again. “…for a vision of the future.”  

***

“Know then that on the fifth millennium after the founding of the first city, in the Month of the Black Earth’s Awakening, EZERHODDEN rose up from the Screaming Nowhere at the heart of the world. The SIX recoiled in horror from him and rebelled. They rose up as one, toppling mountains and turning rivers to try and drive this seventh and greatest TITAN back down into the Earth…”  

The Nine Rebel Sermons  
Sixth Canto
Translator unknown  

***  

The United Revolutionary Front moved with the sunset, the child soldiers leading the way. The officers had been feeding them amphetamines all afternoon, leaving the boys jittery-eyed and firing wildly at anything that moved. The regular troops followed, keeping a safe distance behind the trucks and troop transports that brought up the rear. Major Ritter's jeep was positioned firmly in the middle of the formation. Even before the apparition sitting in the passenger seat had arrived, Ritter had always done his own driving. To him, allowing someone else to take the wheel was the first step toward becoming a politician.  

By the time the people of Knoxbridge realized what was happening, they were already trapped. A handful of citizens were already dead, either lying in the street or slumped over in their doorways.  

With practiced efficiency, Ritter’s army herded the townspeople from their homes and forced them into the center of town. Some of the older soldiers moved from house to house, filling their pockets with anything valuable. Others, with video cameras in hand, jokingly interviewed their terrified captives.  

The officers separated the prettiest girls and women from the rest, and the unit’s chaplain performed the ceremony that made them into camp wives. Mothers and fathers began to scream and sob, but only Ophelia resisted.  

When she ran, the boy soldiers made a game of recapturing her, laughing and shouting. It wasn’t long before a tall, older soldier dragged her back to the center of town by her hair. Her face was bruised, and blood stained her skin in a dozen places.  

Major Ritter frowned. In situations like this, hope and courage were best dealt with harshly. “Kill her,” he ordered.  

“No!” Prichard Bailey broke free from the crowd. Instantly, a dozen weapons were pointed at his face.  

“Don’t do this. She’s a child.”  

“Who are you?” Major Ritter asked, striding toward the smaller man.  

Prichard stood his ground, though he knew how little that might matter. “I... I am the schoolteacher.”  

One of the officers was placing a chopping block near the church steps. “A schoolteacher?” Ritter sneered. “I consider myself something of a teacher, too. You see these children here? I’ve taught them more about the truth of things than you ever could.”  

“Don’t do this,” Prichard pleaded again. “Don’t.”  

“I think I’ll teach you a lesson, too.” Ritter raised his voice. “Where’s my Little Queen?”  

A girl approached them, the only one not under guard or restrained. She was short, with a thick body, pockmarked skin, and narrow eyes. Unlike the other child soldiers, she was completely sober. She wore a white t-shirt and carried a worn but sharp-looking hatchet. Though she looked to be almost twelve, she might have been younger.  

The older men began chanting, “Little Queen! Little Queen!” as they dragged the schoolteacher to the ground and held him there.  

Little Queen had not always been known by that name. There had been another name, but she had worked hard to forget it. When Ritter’s men had come to her village, they had mistaken her for a boy. She had always hated when that happened, but when she saw what Ritter’s men had done to the other girls, she was glad. It had given her a chance to prove her worth.  

The boys in her village—and the boys of Knoxbridge—had been given a choice: conscription or the hatchet.  

To prove their loyalty to the United Revolutionary Front, the boys were ordered to chop off their fathers’ hands. Most of the boys wept at the thought, but Little Queen had found it easy. She’d asked to do it again.  

By the time someone had finally realized her gender, Little Queen had a pile of eight severed hands beside her. Ritter had laughed long and hard, but she understood that he was not mocking her. Then, with a single embrace, he made her his Little Queen.  

Little Queen traveled with the officers in relative comfort. While the other women in her village suffered humiliation in silence—lest they be silenced by a bayonet—Little Queen learned about guns and tactics. Ritter’s men kept her hatchet sharpened and brought her gifts scavenged from the homes of others. Jewelry and dolls meant little to her, but she liked the attention.  

At her feet, the schoolteacher was screaming and struggling. It took five men to hold him down. She stood over him, listening to his pleas. Little Queen’s voice was gentle when she asked, “Are you right-handed or left-handed?”  

“Please…”  

She twirled the hatchet, watching him squirm. “Right-handed or left-handed?”  

“… Right-handed,” he said, his posture defeated.  

With a single, well-practiced swing, Little Queen severed his right hand. Then she took his left. She moved quickly, but not without savoring the moment. Then, in a flash of inspiration, she moved to his feet. They took longer, the bones were thicker, and he kept thrashing.  

Little Queen could feel Major Ritter beaming with approval. But the fun was just beginning. They brought a pregnant woman before her next. After a thoughtful pause, she asked for a bayonet.  

In the commotion, no one noticed that Ophelia had escaped.  

***

“And when EZZERHODDEN, screaming and angry, burst from the broken ground, he plucked the slivers of indigo stone embedded in his flesh. As the CANDLEBARONS danced, he etched the RUNES OF NINAZU upon them. In doing so, he cast the TITANS OF OLD out into realms beyond dreaming…”

The Nine Rebel Sermons  
Sixth Canto 
Translator unknown

***

One by one, the men and boys of Knoxbridge were led, or dragged, to the chopping block. Those who screamed too much or cursed the rebels had their faces mutilated or their ears cut off. A few of the boys were given the chance to join the rebels, should they muster the brutality to win an officer’s approval. Any resident of Knoxville who struggled or tried to fight back faced further mutilations at the hands of Little Queen.

When it was done, the steps of the church were thick with a soup of blood and shards of bone, and three burlap sacks of hands were stacked beside Major Ritter’s jeep. Those men who could still stand were told to run to the next town and show them what would happen if they chose the Articles of Liberty over the Constitution.

But most of them collapsed in the town square, broken and bleeding out. Their last sight was of their daughters or wives being passed from rebel to rebel by the light of their burning homes.

The more experienced camp wives had learned to keep themselves busy at moments like this. The younger ones took up the picks and shovels the officers had set aside for them and began to dig a single grave. The older women dragged the bodies there and tossed them inside; the schoolteacher, the town elder, and a half-dozen others were piled atop one another without ceremony. Major Ritter always nodded approvingly at such initiative. He liked to burn the dead before his troops moved on.

A number of his soldiers were standing guard on the outskirts of the town, mostly a few men and boys who had displeased the Major in some way. They kept watch for enemy soldiers or UN forces. There had been a few close calls recently: escapes marked by gunfire and human shields. Sometimes Major Ritter wished he could see the horror and outrage on the faces of the Alliance troops when they found the remains of the citizens they had vowed to protect. He liked to imagine a line of anguished faces, one after the other, leading all the way back to President Futterman.

Drinking from a bottle of wine, Major Titus Ritter watched the fire spread like a living thing, dancing and licking at the air. Something was screaming in one of those houses, high-pitched and keening—it was either a baby or a pet that had been forgotten in the chaos. He offered it a toast.

After all, didn’t we all burn in the end?

Ritter glanced over at the schoolhouse. Both it and the fields would have to be razed to the ground before they moved on. Nothing salvageable would be left behind. But there was a familiar shape moving in the schoolhouse, flitting like a shadow. Ritter told one of his officers to keep watch over things and headed toward the building.

Ritter didn’t see the Hierophant until he closed the door behind him. The cloaked, masked figure held a piece of chalk in their unsteady, half-translucent hand, drawing symbols on the chalkboard. They were small and intricate, like jagged snowflakes.

Ritter drew closer. “I wondered where you had gone.”

The Hierophant glanced over their shoulder. “Do you and your men think this is original? Do you think that transgressions like this haven’t been committed before?”

“The government troops are no better. I know what they do to rebels when they capture them.” Ritter glanced out the window to watch his men. “We are doing terrible things for the right reasons. The Allied States have turned away from the principles this nation was founded on.”

“A nation of browbeaten cripples,” the Hierophant muttered. They turned to face Ritter. “Is that what your Commander in Chief wants?”

“I don’t care what he wants. What about what I want? You promised me that you would make my dreams come true!” Ritter cursed himself for ever glancing at that strange book.

It had been months ago, when he had been leading a small squad on a reconnaissance mission. Just before sunset, they encountered a platoon of Alliance troops, and reconnaissance became retreat. Ritter led his men up into the foothills. It began to rain as they fled further and further upwards. Someone had set bear traps along the treeline, and one of his squad members was injured and left unable to walk. Rather than leave him behind to be found by the enemy, Ritter snapped his neck. It was the sensible decision, but it left his men grumbling.

After another miserable hour, the squad came across an old log cabin. It looked like it might have been a hundred years old, with “FUTTERMAN RULES” painted on the walls, but the roof seemed solid enough, so Ritter and his soldiers had taken refuge there.

The building had reeked of mildew and old fire. The first floor had been stripped of anything valuable; the only furnished room was on the second floor. It had once been a study, with a fireplace, a mahogany desk, and an entire wall of books. The books were in a dozen languages, but most fell apart the moment Ritter tried to turn their pages.

The chimney had long since collapsed into the fireplace. The desk, warped and rotting, held drawers full of papers that rodents had shredded into nests. Atop the desk lay a thick, ancient tome in perfect condition. It was leather-bound, with a symbol painted on the cover in dark brown ink—a curved line atop a circle. When Ritter leafed through it, he found the pages warm to the touch. The front page read: THE NINE REBEL SERMONS.

He read on. In his memory, the words had been in English, but he knew memory could deceive. The strange text made him shudder with revulsion as images flashed through his mind—visions of spidery gods and goatish messiahs, bleak landscapes littered with broken minarets and squat, blinded temples.

When he finally tore himself away from the book, it was morning. He went downstairs to check on his men and learned that an Alliance Regiment had passed them by. But something else disturbed him more—his men had been searching for him for hours, yet he had no recollection of being missing.

A sudden terror gripped him. He ordered his men out of the building and rushed back upstairs to burn the accursed book, only to find the Hierophant waiting for him.

The sound of chalk hitting the floor returned him to the present. The Hierophant was standing before the blackboard, admiring their work. The symbols seemed to twist in the half-light like living things.

“If you could do anything right now,” the Hierophant asked, “what would it be?”

Ritter grinned. “I would take what I wanted and live like a king, and the rest can go to Hell for all I care.”

The Hierophant laughed. “How petty. How banal. The dreams of an old man consumed by fear.”

“I fear nothing!” Snarling, Ritter raised the pistol and fired, emptying the clip. When he recovered his senses, he found the blackboard riddled with bullets, but the apparition was gone. Ritter cursed under his breath.

***

“And when EZZERHODDEN burst from the broken ground, he plucked the slivers of indigo stone embedded in his flesh. As the CANDLEBARONS danced, he etched the RUNES OF NINAZU upon them. In doing so, he cast the titans that had come before him into worlds beyond dreaming…”

The Nine Rebel Sermons  
Sixth Canto
Translator unknown

***

One of the other child soldiers was a scrawny boy named Joseph. He had been traveling with the rebels for almost two years—first with another group that had been wiped out by a government mortar assault, and then with Ritter’s men. He was quiet and efficient; the officers frequently trusted him with difficult and dangerous tasks. They had even pinned a makeshift medal to his shirt as a reward for courage under fire.

Little Queen had lured him out of the town, telling him they needed to bring the men on sentry duty fresh water. Then, when she knew they were alone, she had shot him twice in the back.

She stood over his dead body, trying to understand the strange fluttering in her belly that seeing him still made her feel. She glanced back toward the camp, to the screams and the fires, wondering what she should tell the Major. That it was an accident? That Joseph was a traitor? A deserter? She wondered if she should just say nothing; drink and drugs often left the men with foggy recollections of what had happened the night before. Little Queen decided to do just that—let the adults make sense of it.

“He knew it would be you.” A voice started her from her thoughts. She turned to see a stooped shape resting against a tree. A pale mask covered its face, and a yellow cloak was draped over its body. “He always knew it would be you.”

Little Queen drew closer. “You’re Ritter’s ghost. I hear him talk to you sometimes.”

“He thinks he’s discreet, but someone always notices.” The Hierophant watched her. “You should know that. Someone always notices.”

“No one saw us.” She glanced back toward the town again. The schoolhouse was burning now.

“Someone will put the pieces together and understand.” The Hierophant drew closer. “And then what?”

“They won’t care.”

“Are you sure?” Ritter’s ghost cocked its head. “You don’t think you’ll be punished?”

“Shut up.”

The Hierophant moved closer, the yellow cloak gliding over Joseph’s body. “If you had the power to change the world, what would you do?”

“A wish, if I had a wish?”

“Perhaps… perhaps something better than that.”

“I would go back.” Little Queen said, her voice hollow. “I would make it so that Ritter went to some other town and found some other girl. I would make everything like it used to be.”

“That’s all?” The Hierophant slouched a little. “You could have anything.”

Little Queen walked back over to Joseph’s remains and gave them a savage kick. “You don’t understand. He made me kill him. I didn’t want to… I don’t… why did he make me do that?”

***

“Praise THEM!  
In THEIR madness, they are never cruel.  
In THEIR wisdom, they are never uncertain.”

The Nine Rebel Sermons  
Sixth Canto 
Translator unknown

***

Barely able to breathe, choking on old blood, he awoke. Sounds rattled through his head, full of fresh screams and past conversations. Phantom agonies wracked the jagged stumps where his hands and feet had been. He didn’t remember being blinded, but he could feel the remnants of his eyesight running down his face like tears. Prichard Bailey couldn’t believe he was still alive; he couldn’t believe this wasn’t all some impossible nightmare.

He tried to shift to catch his breath, but a soft weight held him fast. Twisting and pushing, he felt limp arms and faces brush against him.

How far down was he buried? How many bodies were atop him? He almost giggled at the question. Was that Ophelia pinning his knees? What old friend was crushing his chest?

Leveraging one of his elbows against the crumbling wall of the mass grave, Prichard started to crawl. Dirt tumbled over him, sprinkling into his empty eye sockets. The bodies pressed down on him, pushing him back. If he had a tongue… when had they taken his tongue? If he had a tongue, he would have cursed them, cursed the world.

He thought that perhaps, in a way, Father Warrick had been right. Perhaps after two thousand years, all humanity deserved was judgment and fire. As he struggled up through the bodies, Prichard imagined himself passing sentence on the entire world—on the two governments for ten years of blundering, terror, and mutilation. Even the people of the town of Knoxbridge would feel his wrath. Why didn’t they rise up? Were they so afraid of dying that they were willing to suffer such tortures? Their daughters were being raped, their sons turned into monsters, and they did nothing but weep.

A waft of cool air filled his nostrils. It smelled like smoke and cordite, but it sent a shiver through him. The sound of his own struggling breaths filled his ears as he pulled himself over and through the dead. Their skin felt clammy and rubbery to the touch, fluids and waste slicked across his skin. He wondered madly where their blood ended and his began.
 

If I could, Prichard thought, I would teach them all how to weep. Everyone in the world—the sinners and the pure. I would flay the skin from their backs and leave them living. I would see them eaten alive and split in two. I would watch their cities burn and crash around them.

Sobbing and exhausted, he pulled himself free of the shallow grave and dragged himself worm-like over the ground. Prichard gurgled and hissed as blood and bile spilled from his mouth.

The Hierophant was waiting there.

***

 

“THEY are less than MANKIND and THEY are more than US.  
THEIR dreams are our FLESH; OUR dreams are THEIRS.”

The Nine Rebel Sermons  
Sixth Canto
Translator unknown

***

By the light of the burning town, Major Titus Ritter of the United Revolutionary Front watched his men dance drunkenly and sate themselves with the new camp wives. From where he sat in his Jeep, Ritter could see the three boys from the town who had been found acceptable and conscripted; they were lying passed out on the ground in a stupor. Little Queen stalked the edges of the scene, her eyes puffy and sullen.

One of the officers was discussing plans to rendezvous with another branch of the United Revolutionary Front. He was eager to make another run at Lancaster, but Ritter didn’t think much of the idea. The Alliance would defend Lancaster to the very end; the only way to win the nation now was to break the spirits of the people.

Every town they raided sent more and more frightened citizens fleeing to Lancaster and the military garrisons. It strained resources and put more pressure on the President.

A scream suddenly shattered the air from one of the trucks. A handful of the camp wives that had been lying low spilled from the vehicle. Dark shapes clawed at them, crawling over their bodies. Ritter was about to shout orders when, in an instant, every burning building extinguished—its fires snuffed out as though they were mere candles.

The town of Knoxbridge, now lost to darkness, was filled with fresh screams and flashes of gunfire. Ritter took cover behind his Jeep. What was this?

The UN?

Impossible. They would never make an appearance without air support.

The government?

It was too organized for that. Stealth had never been the regular army’s strong point.

A scuttling sound roused Ritter from his thoughts. Something was scrabbling under his Jeep. He drew his sidearm and looked down.

At first, he thought it was a rat or some other small animal, but there were too many legs, and the shape was headless and spindly.

Then he realized it was a hand. A severed hand, half-coated with gore and blood.

More of them were scrabbling over and under the Jeep, blind and purposeful. Ritter stood frozen, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Rebels and prisoners alike were dying around him—faces clawed away, windpipes crushed.

The hands began to climb over the bodies like a writhing, fevered swarm, their movements jerky and mechanical, as if they were led by some dark will. Ritter's breath caught as a severed hand—a pale, gory thing—scrambled up the back of a soldier who had been caught too slow to react. The hand reached for the soldier’s throat, its fingers digging into the soft flesh. The soldier gurgled in surprise and pain as the fingers tightened, squeezing until the last breath was forced from his body. His lifeless form crumpled to the ground, an expression of horror frozen on his face.

Nearby, a camp wife shrieked as a dozen hands swarmed over her. She struggled and kicked, her bare feet barely touching the ground as the hands crawled over her, tearing at her skin with the mindless precision of scavengers. They burrowed into her abdomen, their fingers prying open her chest. Her screams were muffled by the gnashing of teeth and the wet squelch of tearing flesh. Within moments, her screams ceased, her body twitching only in the death throes.

Another soldier, a burly man who had been standing guard near the edge of the camp, spun in place as his boots skidded on the dirt. Hands were crawling up his legs, crawling under his uniform. They scrabbled over his arms, his chest, his face. He howled in panic as they dug into his mouth, his eyes, and his nose. The last thing he saw was the grotesque image of his own hand being clawed away from his wrist by another relentless hand that had found its way into his skin.

As Ritter ran, the severed hands moved in a frenzied blur, tearing into every victim, indifferent to the cries of the dying. A soldier’s arm was yanked clean from his body, and the hand—still gripping the rifle—scuttled away, as though it had a mind of its own. A camp wife was dragged, her body thrashing as hands clutched at her waist, at her throat, at her limbs, pulling her into the center of the swarm. The last thing she saw was a pair of hands gripping her skull, dragging her into the pitch black of the town square.

Ritter’s eyes were wide, his mind struggling to grasp the madness unfolding before him. He fired into the swarm, but his bullets did little more than slow the relentless assault. The hands seemed to absorb the impact as though they were impervious, their momentum never faltering. Each soldier and camp wife caught in the swarm was methodically dismantled, torn apart as though the hands were harvesting the very flesh from their bones.

The ground beneath Ritter’s feet seemed to pulse with the movement of these severed limbs, and he could hear their ceaseless scuttling, like the clicking of insects, reverberating around him. He fought back the rising panic, swatting at the things that brushed against his legs, his arms. They were everywhere, everywhere, tearing through the bodies of his men and the helpless camp wives with an insatiable hunger.

Little Queen Lancaster voice was shrill and pleading. Ritter turned to see the girl being dragged into a shallow grave by a mass of blunted limbs and eager teeth.

Years of experience on the battlefield had taught Ritter when to retreat. He spared the girl a fleeting glance, then moved on. The supply truck was on the outskirts of the town square. He knew that if he could reach it, he could escape. A short drive would bring him to one of the rebel bases, or perhaps he would cross the border into Liberia. All that mattered was finding his way back to a place where the world made sense again.

Near the supply truck, the schoolteacher was waiting. Instead of blood, his wounds bled something like smoke. He stood without feet, glared without eyes. When he spoke, his voice was a gurgling nonsense, yet perfectly understandable.

The sight of him froze Ritter.

“The Psychogog has a vision for the future,” the Hierophant stood nearby. “He wants to share it with you.”

Ritter could hear skittering sounds all around him. He thought of the strange book with its strange gods. Was this a dismembered harbinger? Or a broken seraph? How could a bullet kill such a creature?

With a single, swift motion, he jammed the pistol under his chin and fired.

A disappointed howl escaped from the Psychogog, his tears were smoke.

“Don’t mourn him,” the Hierophant said. “Not when there are such terrible wonders before us.”

They faded into the darkness as the fires snarled back to life. The legion of severed hands climbed over the body of Major Titus Ritter like ants—tearing, pulling with mindless determination. They devoured his remains until the sun began to rise. Then, they sputtered and slowed like clockwork toys, until they stilled, their bodies locking into a clawed rigor.

 

***

“In the wake of THE HIEROPHANT’S passing into the secret places,  
THE PSYCHOGOG was left behind.  
HE safeguards THEIR memory.  
HE will choose the FLESH and DREAMS that make THE WORLD ready.”

The Nine Rebel Sermons  
Sixth Canto
Translator unknown

***

It took Ophelia three days to reach the nearest town, and another three for the Alliance troops to arrive at the ruins of Knoxbridge. When they finally arrived, only the schoolhouse remained standing. Their anger and outrage quickly shifted to confusion as they realized that Titus Ritter’s soldiers and camp wives had been dumped into the same mass grave as the citizens of Knoxbridge. No one had been spared.

Despite a long search by the Alliance troops, not a single severed hand was recovered from the ruins.