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.
