《Serpent Hallows the Scar》 1. I, From the blue ¡°This isn¡¯t fair,¡± Haunt complained. The small cyan stood over his ritually ribbon-trussed and blindfolded former comrade, who remained silent, despite being left un-gagged. While the captive was unclothed, Haunt wore a vest, leg-warmers, and a loincloth, all in a pristine white that matched his aberrant shell color. The two weren¡¯t alone. This ritual was, at least nominally, quite important. The god Rhoda would surely welcome the offering of an infantry officer as accomplished as Kur, and Haunt had apparently known Kur since they were both children. Distrusting that Haunt would be able to carry out his duties unsupervised, the army had appointed a military tribunal to oversee the sacrifice of the legendary soldier. ¡°It¡¯s not fair,¡± he said once again, his words directed as much at the world as they were at the tribunal. ¡°I don¡¯t care if you get yourself sacrificed, but why did you have to make me do it?¡± Kur¡¯s chelicera twitched, and he said something that only his former friend could hear. ¡°Yeah,¡± Haunt acknowledged. The shell of his face started to stain black with tears, a vestigial response from a time when cyanen had eyes in softer places. ¡°Yeah, I know. I¡¯ll be praying too, ¡®Spar.¡± Kur didn¡¯t seem to expect that response, because their resolve seemingly broke, and they let out a choked sob, tears staining their face as well under the blindfold. ¡°Fare well, Hunt,¡± Kur said, voice almost impossible to make out. ¡°Fare well, Gather,¡± Haunt choked out. He unfolded one of the chitinous blades that lay across his chest, and stepped close enough to his friend to embrace them. Instead, he held their head up with his hand and gently slipped his blade into the gap between their head and their chest, cutting his throat. Aquamarine blue pulsed out of the wound when Haunt removed his blade. The stark blue of a life leaving its body filled the world and drowned it out.
¡°Bolt from the blue¡±. That is the term I¡¯ve heard. Sometimes, even when a thunderstorm has passed, a divine fork of light will spill backwards from the top of the cloud like water from a too-full glass. Such lightning tends to be even more powerful than the lightning during the storm, as if mocking the enthusiasm of anyone rushing outside after the storm is over. It wouldn¡¯t be a bad way to describe what I am right now, either. After all, dimly, I can feel the massive current of power behind me, and the pre-burned path for it in front of me. I ride that power like kelp rides a wave. It pushes me down to earth regardless of my will, with a force that gravity can no longer exert on me, and I slam into the soft mud. I cannot hear it, but I¡¯m sure the shockwave must have been tremendous. And as I lie there in the muck, I can feel the deadly energy that had carried me there surging around and through me. It feels like instant death, but it calls something else. It calls pieces of me. The water that rained down from my storm, I can somehow tell that it had dissolved shreds of my life within it, along with something else. The call from the lightning creates pathways, and the shredded bits of who I used to be follow those pathways and slam back into me, forming layers of leathery shell and alabaster around whatever seed the lightning planted. An egg. I sink into the mud. I don¡¯t know how long I stay like that. My shell lets the light through, and I can dimly see as day turns to night turns to day again, but my mind is too hazy to count. I only have the present tense for now. Any memories I may be making are out of my reach. But at the same time, because I have no memories, I have no sense of progress. If I¡¯m growing, or if I¡¯m not, I can¡¯t tell. All I know is that I am in a cage and that I am not ready to be outside of it. Until eventually, I am. Around the same time I start to feel the pressure of my body trying to push out on my leathery cage, I also feel a stirring in my mind. I have absorbed enough of myself that I can start forming memories again. I also know that this isn¡¯t my first life. I have died, and yet I continue. Although, my memories of the previous one are... chaotic. Swirling and churning. I remember enough to think it¡¯s strange that I¡¯m alone, and I remember that I didn¡¯t die in battle. I tell myself to be patient, that my thoughts will settle over time and I will remember all of who I was and what I did. But for now, I know my name is Gather, and it is dark and uncomfortably tight in this egg. It is... uncomfortably tight in this egg. Ouch. I lash out with my whole body in annoyance, but the egg isn¡¯t so flimsy that it would crumble from only one struggle. Again and again I pull on every last muscle in my body just to find what part of my body will apply the most force, and eventually I realize that my head seems to make a hard knocking sound when I smash it into the egg at just the right angle. It¡¯s good that I have something like an egg tooth, because I don¡¯t seem to have limbs. Pointedly not thinking about that, I push out firmly with my head, leveraging my entire body, and break through into the light of day. Immediately, from instinct, I sample the air and deposit the sample on the floor of my mouth. Closing it, I find that I can smell the air. I smell the heady scent of my own egg, the waves of warmth from the sun-baked soil... and death. I smell a lot of death. I look around more closely. I take in the distant mountain range, the river and its floodplain, the fields which lay fallow and discolored by our worst poisons, and the decaying carapaces of cyanen bearing the colors of my homeland and the ones bearing the colors of my birthplace. I may not recognize my body, but I recognize this place. This is... Aoge. I killed a lot of people here. Why am I here? I feel dizzy, and I¡¯m not sure whether it¡¯s because of the miasma, or because of the sudden weight that lodges deep in my heart as I remember what I was. In a daze, I wiggle around to crush more of my shell, widening the opening in it, and I start the lengthy process of extricating my body. It takes a very very very long time. Likely due to my similarly long body. I stare in amazement at myself when I¡¯m at least halfway out into the open. My chitin is so long and flexible! Or rather, I have scales, now. They¡¯re rough, and spiny. As much protection as that may afford, I still feel exposed. Even though my scales are hard in their own way, they¡¯re made of a completely different material from my old shell, and they flex and bend as I move. Like this, I could be killed with a mere bow and arrow, let alone a spear strike or hammer blow. No, I don¡¯t need to worry about that yet. I¡¯m completely alone out here for now. I turn my attention back to inspecting my body. Bands of deep maroon and deep green travel down my spine, separated by thin ribbons of dull yellow. I rush to pull the rest of my body out of my egg so that I can confirm that the pattern does continue down my entire body all the way to my tail, which tapers to a point. I had more or less figured it out already, but now I know. I am some manner of snake. A small one, I note, and I try not to be too frustrated about that. I am just hatched, after all. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. I have never been one to pay undue attention to beasts of the wild - I always had someone else to hunt for me - but I am fairly sure most snakes don¡¯t come from thunderstorms. Presumably a normal snake would have a parent who would lay its egg, and perhaps watch after it for a while before eventually leaving it to the whims of fate as all parents must eventually. Fine. So I¡¯m not a normal snake. Then, what? Well, I used to be a person, a warrior. I try to remember if it was considered normal for warriors to start life again after death, but it¡¯s no good. The maelstrom will not budge. While I muse over such insignificant things as my provenance and the meaning of my birth, I try to move. It is the hardest I have had to work to move in my life, barring injury. Even if I were to compare it to crawling in the earth as a cyan, I have no arms, no legs, no ventral blades to crawl with. I do have a hazy instinct to move sideways if I want to move forwards, and I compare it with my own image of how snakes move. I hesitantly undulate my body, forming bunches and waves, and to my delight I realize I can push my body with a forward bias in that position. And so I slither slowly, clumsily, practicing until my new muscles know it even a tenth as well as my old ones knew running. It¡¯s difficult to do consciously. My body understands all of the little forces it needs to apply and where, but if I try to think about it, my path wobbles. I think about walking. Pushing with the left foot should send you to the right, and pushing with the right foot should send you to the left, but with balance you can walk forward. It must be a similar principle where the motions must cancel each other out. It must be an hour of this before I realize something is missing: I¡¯m not hungry at all. Hm. Again, I never really paid much attention to snakes before, but I¡¯m fairly certain they need to eat. I remember soldiers and supporting personnel complaining about wild snakes stealing our poultry and eggs, and stories of larva and children being stolen away in the night. Well, if I don¡¯t get hungry, I probably won¡¯t need to do that. For the first time since I hatched, the sky begins to dim. I taste the rank air again. It¡¯s not as if nothing is alive. This place is brimming with life, lousy with it, the way that corpses are. But none of it is useful life; I can¡¯t repurpose any of it. But I might be able to make something else that can. I try to blink, only to discover that I lack eyelids, so I content myself with shaking my head to clear it. Where did that thought come from? What would make me think that I can create life? Can this body lay eggs? A brief exploration yields the answer that no, this body cannot. Although snakes don¡¯t seem to have external genitalia, I¡¯m pretty sure the two things I find hiding in a vent don¡¯t lay eggs. I¡¯m disappointed, but not too surprised. But, making life? Is that an instinct I possess? Hm. I start to feel a hazy sense of what I could do, a blueprint of an outline of a silhouette. But, I have a feeling that I shouldn¡¯t play around with it, at least not yet. I may not be used to being alone, but I¡¯m even less used to being a mother. And I would be a mother, I¡¯m realizing. I¡¯m in a new body. Even if it isn¡¯t a body I wanted, it¡¯s a body I have a chance to define on my own terms, in my own mind. Sure, I¡¯m a snake now, and it¡¯s very unlikely that anyone will ever see me as a woman, but it¡¯s no more unlikely than anyone seeing me as a man. Since I do have a mind, since I still am a person, I am finally the one and only authority on what kind of person that is. It¡¯s not like it matters which barracks I choose now; I¡¯ll be kicked out of them all equally. I¡¯m a little surprised to realize that the thought of being forced out of every military barracks in the world doesn¡¯t make me very sad, but thinking about barracks also makes me realize that I am tired, and very cold. Aoge could be quite hot during the daytime, but the evening chill is making me sluggish, and that feels dangerous -- I think there¡¯s nothing else moving around me, but how much do I trust that I¡¯m truly safe? Digging in the mud would probably sap all remaining heat from my body, so I head for the nearest source of warmth, which happens to be a pile of corpses. Actually, it¡¯s surprisingly warm, which I quickly realize probably has something to do with how bad it smells. Ugh. Well, if I hate smelling it so much, I can always try not to stick my tongue out. It¡¯s surprisingly difficult, though. I¡¯m thankful enough to have a place to sleep amongst the battered chitin and tattered standards. I wonder who piled up all the bodies like this. Ah, wait, they¡¯re all missing armor and weapons. I guess that makes sense. Scavengers would have no reason to leave the bodies where they had originally lain. Anyway, it¡¯s not exactly the softest bed, but my own coils are softer than my body used to be. I curl up, unable to close my eyes, and let my still-swirling mind start to rest.
My dreams are uncomfortable, fitful, blurry, and full of a pathos that¡¯s disconnected to who I am now. Long-dead comrades and foes flit through my tiny brain. My old body is splattered with viscera, then scrubbed clean, then splattered again. Scenes I was never even a player in play once again in front of me, my throat humming words I never thought of. I¡¯m a passenger, and my journey has been torn to shreds. Where did it go? How did I get here? I claw at the abyss for answers, but I have no claws anymore.
I wake up and the sun is already some time risen, but it hasn¡¯t warmed the air yet, so I stay in my putrid shelter for now. It¡¯s truly awful, and I wonder if I can still catch illness in this form. It doesn¡¯t... feel like I can? The feeling is similar to how I don¡¯t feel like I can starve. But it still feels... impure, I suppose. An impurity that I won¡¯t be stained by, but that doesn¡¯t please me to dwell in. Can I do anything about this? I suppose I can always look for better shelter once it¡¯s warm enough; rather, I¡¯ll have to, because a pile of corpses is definitely not a permanent home. But this is Aoge. I can explore all I want, I know for a fact I won¡¯t find anything convenient like a home. This place is a poisonous wound on the land, one that I had a hand in carving. I don¡¯t know why, but that thought is disquieting. Should I really be thinking of this life as something I can use for myself? Before, I¡¯d never put thought to something so wide and abstract as ¡°the land¡±, or my impact upon it. I was a tool to be used, and in its use it would prove its worth, its existence. I barely considered myself a person at all; perhaps I would have considered it arrogant to question the decisions of my betters. But what proof did I really have that they could take responsibility better than I could? All of my loyalty, all of my subordination, and in the end after dying alone I was still left with my own thoughts. Didn¡¯t that mean I was responsible for all of my own actions? Was there really anyone else who could bear the weight of the deeds I carried out? No. In death, the chains of command had been severed, so there was nothing to carry that weight for me. My own actions were my greatest burden in the new life I¡¯d been given. My thoughts have begun to careen uncontrollably, and not even I really understand what I¡¯m thinking. But I feel like I have to do something to balance out my thoughtless life, here and now, even if it isn¡¯t enough. It¡¯s still not quite warm enough for me, but I push my way out of the pile of bodies, dozens of minute contact points of friction giving me purchase to move in the tight space. As foul as the miasma was within, the chitin itself of the dead soldiers remained mostly clean, and so I did as well. I slide out onto the ground, and I start trying to rub my rough scales together. I have a vague memory of the process for a purification ritual. Something important must be buried, its essence dedicated to consecrating the soil by beseeching the gods, and the consecration will match the magnitude of the dedication. I wouldn¡¯t be so conceited as to call one of my own scales something important, but it¡¯s something to start with, and I would have to see what kind of effect it would have. Unfortunately, I was having a problem. Despite how rough my scales were, not a single one was coming off from rubbing them together. I try to look carefully at the area I rubbed together, but it¡¯s completely scratch-free! I focus a little harder on just one of the scales in question and... it falls right off. Apparently, if I want to remove one of my scales, the only way to do so is to ask it nicely. I can¡¯t tell if this will be useful when it¡¯s time to molt, or if it will be an absolute pain, but it will certainly be novel. It is getting extremely difficult to ignore that something is very strange about my body. Using my tail, I dig a small groove in the earth and shove the dark green scale inside. I don¡¯t pray. As I watch the dirt cover my scale, I wonder if it will really be able to dissolve and spread through the earth, if even the gods will be able to heal this land. I don¡¯t even have time to imagine how that would look before the ritual takes effect. I feel something like a piercing note, like the bowing of a stringed instrument by a ventral blade. The world rips like paper being torn, and I can feel that something is ripped away. Nothing looks any different, when I turn my eyes over the landscape -- the corpses don¡¯t disappear, the landscape is still torn apart by cannon fire, and everything isn¡¯t covered with ferns and grass. But... the sun feels warmer. The putrefaction of the dead smells more like loam than it smells like disease. I¡¯ll be able to sleep underground without the mud sapping the life from my body. And most importantly, I can tell. The poison is gone. How far did this ritual reach? What god did I pray to? Why did my scale have such an immense effect? Just what kind of snake am I? 2. I, My pathetic hiss, a great wail Days later, I am absolutely euphoric, and I am also certain I am not a normal snake. I¡¯m not certain why today I woke up huge. I thought that I was small because I was a baby snake, and indeed I remain recently-hatched. A mere larva. Yet, so soon after I completed my first burrow and slept in it for the first time, I woke up in the cold morning air, my own bulk having completely demolished my hideaway. Luckily, it was close enough to the surface that I wasn¡¯t trapped, or worse. Normally, being exposed to the world in my sleep without my knowledge or consent would anger, depress, or terrify me, but as I got my bearings and realized how huge I became, I was filled with nothing but elation. So many years. So many years did I find envy in the women who towered above me, resplendent, scraping the heavens. My eyes were always looking skyward for what I wanted to become. But in the world of cyanen, there was no cure for being short, for being wrong, for being male. Now, in my serpentine afterlife, I can finally be as tall as I always wanted. I can finally feel like the woman I am. The feeling was tremendous, but it was soon tempered by curiosity. As I stewed and pondered about my new large life, I remembered once again how it felt to be small. I thought about being small, of the perspective I had from a lower angle, and then the world grew around me. And so now I know: it isn¡¯t only that I can be tall, now. I can change my size with a mere thought. It is starting to be hard to ignore the implications. My scales are holy and my scale is servant to my will, so what does that make me? A god? I don¡¯t know. For now, I¡¯ll operate under the assumption that I might be a god, and hope that doesn¡¯t come across as arrogant when actual gods hear about it. But what do I really know about gods? Gods must be able to affect great change as well as consort with mortals, which explains my ability to change size. Fine. Some gods are tied to the land as well. I should try to leave Aoge to test that. And, if I am a god, that explains why I thought I might be able to create life. For now, I decide to remain enormous. It feels... more right. More affirming. Although in that form, my weight is massive and I leave deep gouges in the earth wherever I go. Merely thumping my tail shakes the world, and my spiny scales tear the lingering carapaces of soldiers to shreds as I push my way through to the battlefield¡¯s edge. Something is wrong with all of the bodies. I have often been accused of being overly upbeat for a soldier and former mercenary, but I am a soldier. Or, I was. I have scavenged battlefields before, and I can tell this is different. I don¡¯t know how long I remained dead, but the Battle of Aoge was alright almost a year past when I passed away. So why has it taken these corpses so long to rot? Normally, the stage of decomposition I found when I arrived would have taken a mere week. A year on, all that should be left of the carapaces are scattered shards, but they¡¯re in mostly pristine condition. The same holds for the clothing and battle standards littered about. It isn¡¯t that a year hasn¡¯t passed. I thought, at first, that I might have appeared somehow earlier than I died, but the few weapons I find that haven¡¯t been picked clean -- the broken ones, and those of low quality -- are properly rusted and corroded. Time has passed, but the aftermath of death, alone, has failed to progress. If I am a god tied to this land, that can only mean there wasn¡¯t a god here before. Perhaps there used to be. Perhaps this is what they mean when they say a place is god-forsaken. So now that I¡¯m here, maybe things should start to change? Immersed in my thoughts about the sea of bodies around me, occasionally scratched by a stray ventral blade or morning star, I make my way to where the bodies thin out and eventually fade to mere trampled dead grass. I cross the river on the way, noting how my scales slice through the water as I squirm my way through it. It really could be inconvenient if I can¡¯t figure out how to flatten these keeled scales of mine when I need to, but it isn¡¯t too bad so far. Eventually I start to feel... faint. There is no barrier, and no tether, but I reach a point where the ground beneath me starts to drain me. It continues to support my weight, but there¡¯s another kind of weight that sinks directly in; that¡¯s the type of feeling it is. I stop, turn around, and as I go back from whence I came the feeling almost immediately fades. Fine. So I can only live in Aoge now. It¡¯s not a very glamorous home, but I was tired of traveling from battlefield to battlefield anyway. As the new maybe god of Aoge, what should be my first decree? I jump as only a snake can, springing my body meters into the air and landing heavily, slightly cratering the soil, as I hear a voice directly in my mind. I may be unused to being alone in my head, but voices are new. What¡¯s more, this doesn¡¯t sound like my voice, which means it might not be coming from my mind. I seem to have a passenger. It should surprise me more, but the revelations of this chapter of my life have never stopped long enough for me to get comfortable in the first place. I can¡¯t talk with this mouth (I have tried, but there is nothing to vibrate), so I try thinking at the voice instead. Who are you? The voice sounds impatient, but not annoyed. Sharur, hm? I believe that was the name of my own mace, in life. My faithful companion, whose hammering and tempering I watched, who I oiled and polished and maintained, who I stained with blood and smashed thousands with. It couldn¡¯t be a coincidence, could it? But I didn¡¯t recognize the voice at all. My memories were still chaotic, but had slightly stabilized, and I couldn¡¯t remember talking to anyone with this voice. That, alone, wouldn¡¯t prove anything, though. Sharur? Could you be, um...? the voice echoed within and through me. What I did? As a soldier? the voice confirmed. I could feel the muscles in my sinuous body slump. Was it... fair, for me to keep all these deaths with me? I killed every last one of them, undoubtedly, but it would have been someone else otherwise. The war carried on with or without me, and yet, I was meant to purify it. I was a sacrifice, I realize.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. I try to sigh, but exhale a hiss instead. It¡¯s never truly been my lot to question what I¡¯ve been given, and this burden of deaths is no different. Besides... Do the gods really give out godhood as a punishment? said Share. What about you? Hm. Alright. Hm. Alright. Well, it¡¯s good to hear your voice, Share. Were you saying something about corpses? The voice seems to hesitate for a moment at my frankness. I interrupt Share with a thought. I know that part, I think. But what do I have to do? Since you complained, I¡¯m guessing that means my presence alone won¡¯t complete the decay. <...I see. Observing you on the battlefield, my only real chance to observe you, I thought you simple and instinctive. My apologies.> If I had book lungs, I would huff through them. I realize that, throughout this conversation, I¡¯ve been simply lying prone in the grass, and I bury my nose into the dirt for a moment in shame. When I recover, I begin to wind through the grass again over towards the battlefield. My battlefield. I suppose I want them to do what the land normally does after a battle. Before you know it, you return to the site where so many died, and the earth has... I have a sudden realization, and an unpleasant feeling travels down my long spine. ...I¡¯m not hungry. I don¡¯t think snakes eat carrion. People don¡¯t eat people. I may be a killer, but I¡¯m still a person.
It doesn¡¯t get easier after the first few. Despite Share¡¯s ruthless words, I still feel as though I have some snake instincts, and those instincts are screaming at me that I¡¯m poisoning myself. Food that doesn¡¯t move isn¡¯t fresh, food that isn¡¯t fresh has rotted, and food that has rotted carries disease. I choose not to think about the fact that the rotting of the flesh is the point, but regardless, I feel nauseous and even slightly panicked at my foolishness. As if that weren¡¯t enough, I do still have memories of being a cyan, even if I¡¯m not one anymore. I never ate the flesh of my own kind, and I never wanted to. I still don¡¯t want to, even if they were fresh. This act, desecrating the dead, desecrating the bodies of my fellow soldiers, makes me feel more like a monster than a god. I wonder if this is why people don¡¯t become gods more often, at least not in the legends. Finally, on a pettier level, the mouthfeel is absolutely awful. Cyanen shells poke at my throat mercilessly, and I think I would tear up if I could cry. At least once I get them down, I don¡¯t have to worry about the taste; apparently, my only sense of taste is through smell. Fortunately, Share was right. For one thing, no matter how much I eat, I don¡¯t seem to grow less capable of eating -- nor less hungry, if only because I wasn¡¯t hungry to begin with. For another, when I eat, the soil beneath me grows a layer of peat, and as I wind through the field, I¡¯m starting to create a visible raised bank of fertile land. Share observed at one point. I don¡¯t like thinking of it that way. How many of them are the bodies of people I killed in the first place? Who would be happy to be an offering for their killer? Share went quiet at that. I¡¯m still swallowing corpses when the sun goes down. My enthusiasm for finally being large and feminine has cooled somewhat, because I¡¯m using my size to do something so gruesome and distasteful. I wasn¡¯t raised like this! Well, I wasn¡¯t raised at all, but that doesn¡¯t make it easier. But I know I actually have to. I think about the sparkling fields on the morning of the day before the battle, and the barren scar we left in their place. I may have only led the infantry, but I was complicit in what the artillery and chemical units did, and in the way our enemy was forced to respond. If there is anything at all I can do to heal this place, whose fate I share now... I don¡¯t sleep. It still feels too cold to be out working, but the idea of sleep feels absurd now, and maybe forever. Even if I wanted to stop, I haven¡¯t rebuilt my burrow. I¡¯d be working all night anyway. Share suggested. I eyed the rich substance of decay in my wake. I have no way of igniting it. And so I keep working all night, as well. Gradually, it gets easier. My snake instincts dull, seemingly mollified by my failure to become ill, and my disgust fades into a sense of duty. I think about every last body I bury, and it doesn¡¯t take long for me to realize I¡¯m mourning them. They¡¯re me. They¡¯re all me. I realize I¡¯m mourning myself, too. Gather, the traitor. The berserker. The champion. The soldier who killed ignobly and died ignobly. <...> By first light, I¡¯m starting to realize that the corpses are disappearing faster than I¡¯m swallowing them. I watch curiously as, one at a time, the bodies sink into the dry earth like it¡¯s a bog. Ah, I see. The earth, my literal body, has started to copy the snake, my metaphorical body. It¡¯s responding to my intentions and my feelings. Quietly at first, I coil up and watch the sunrise. I force air through my throat, making a hissing sound, the only sound I know how to make. I want to cry, but I can¡¯t. I don¡¯t know how. Share. <...> Share, why did I do it? Why did I spend my life like that? You were there for most of it, right? Couldn¡¯t I have chosen any other path? I don¡¯t understand myself anymore. Why was I always on battlefields? Why did I kill so many? In my memories, I never question it even for a moment. Why did I have to wait until now? Share took a while to answer again. She was the one who suggested it, but she got awfully quiet when I needed her. No, I shouldn¡¯t blame her. She doesn¡¯t finish her thought, which is fine, because I don¡¯t need her to. I don¡¯t want her to, either. I sit there as the sun crawls through the sky, hissing as loud as I can, praying that somehow my pathetic hiss could transform into a great wail that even the dead and buried could hear. My silent grief covers my domain, and one by one, the corpses sink and become part of me. 3. He, Cover your violence He spent the first few years of his life nameless. When many cyanen lived together in one city, it was inevitable that an egg or two in some clutches would be misplaced. As much as one would expect for such an untended egg to hatch a diseased abomination or nothing at all, many weren¡¯t so lucky. Those larva with the misfortune to hatch healthy were called ¡°lice¡± and belonged nowhere. But even with nowhere to belong, they remained. A pointless, desperate existence, so close to the locus of civilization. In his case, the locus of civilization was known as Athens. He wasn¡¯t a particularly noteworthy louse, either, not even after he had molted past the homogeneous larval stage. He had a muted dust-brown carapace, marred by a black splotch of a birthmark that spread from his left shoulder and stretched two fingers up his neck to just below his face. His build was hardly wiry, but his sex-appropriate diminutive stature meant it was hard for him to look imposing, even for his age. His first calling, as with many lice, was theft. At first, he would lift bits of sugarbread and fruit from refuse piles, but he quickly learned it tasted better if he stole from stalls and open markets, and was less likely to make him sick as well. But, he would get in trouble when he did that, so he figured it would be better to buy food properly. And how to buy food? Why, with coins. The city was a cornucopia of coins if you knew where to look, and most of the places you could find them would hardly miss them. At least, that was what he assumed, when purses parted with their owners at his command with barely a sound. From purses, he became more daring, and turned to jewelry. And this was where the trouble began. Jewelry and finewear tended to be strung around the necks and wrists of his targets, and it was much harder to steal from someone¡¯s neck without them noticing. So he honed his craft, stole and stole and stole until he was certain he could steal someone¡¯s head right off of their shoulders without them noticing. However, his certainty was misplaced. The priest of some god or another walked into the alley adjacent her temple, likely thinking that she was safe so close to it, and the louse took that chance to strike. Keeping his blades safely stowed, he leaped past her, grabbing her holy symbol, a pendant of a rose, and effortlessly slipping it over her head. But before he could properly escape with it, he felt her hand close shut around his wrist, and knew he was caught. The priest dangled him high in the air, arresting his momentum and lifting him up to get a better look at him. She was tall even for a woman, and moved with practiced grace and elegance. She had a ponderous look in her eyes that scared the louse, so he acted without thinking. He swung back and forth, moving his entire body with his hips, and kicked the alley wall to break the priest¡¯s grip. He barely got free on the forward swing, which launched him directly at the priest¡¯s chest. He pulled out one of his ventral blades and, grabbing onto her head, drove it straight into her soft, exposed neck. A maneuver that could only be performed by someone much smaller than his target. The priest coughed and staggered backwards. Blue sprayed out over the louse as he fell to the ground, not quite landing on his feet. He stared up at the stricken priest, even more afraid than he had been before. The priest seemed to recognize that, because as she fell backwards onto her rear, she stretched out a hand, as if to say ¡°it¡¯s fine¡±. But that wasn¡¯t the case. ¡°To be brought low¡­ by a louse,¡± the priest rasped. ¡°I don¡¯t know who you think you are, but¡­ for good or ill¡­ Rhoda will be watching you. Always.¡± With that, the priest slumped forwards, limp from bleeding far too quickly. She wasn¡¯t dead yet, but she would be soon. The louse ran from that place. He wasn¡¯t sure where he was going, but he needed to escape the accusing shadows, the stench of blood that clung to his blade. Such was the darkness of Athens that hardly anyone passing by took any notice of the child covered in blood running through her streets. Eventually, he made it to the city outskirts, where he found a bridge to crawl under. It wasn¡¯t one he was familiar with, but he didn¡¯t want to bring himself as he was now into familiar places. He felt oddly heavy, and his flesh under the shell felt clammy, and shivered anxiously. He felt sick, like he had just eaten bad food or slept in the cold for too many nights. He couldn¡¯t dispel the image of his blade disappearing into soft flesh, or the feeling from it, the smoothness. ¡°Never again,¡± he whispered aloud. ¡°Not like that.¡±
The louse didn¡¯t know how long he remained under that bridge. The bridge spanned a drainage ditch that was mostly dry, but the air was still damp and unpleasant, and mold clung to the quarried stone around him. The smell made him shiver. He tried to wipe the blue blood off of his blade with the rags he always wore, but part of it had stained. He tasted metal somewhere in his mouth. Eventually, the mouth of the bridge darkened, and the louse looked up to see a slightly larger boy, a louse as well. ¡°Hey,¡± the boy said. ¡°What¡¯s my savior doing cowering under a bridge like this?¡± Right, the beleaguered louse thought. I remember this guy. He had filched the baton right out of a private guard¡¯s hands when the other boy was being beaten, and only the other louse had gotten a good look at his face. Of course he would recognize him.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. ¡°You don¡¯t have to call me that,¡± he replied. ¡°I just needed a weapon back then.¡± ¡°Bet you did.¡± The other louse called him on his lie. ¡°That your blood all over you, mate?¡± The louse involuntarily shivered, his chelicera and teeth chattering. He hated looking weak in front of other children of the street, but today was different. There was no other option today. ¡°Hey,¡± the other said, his voice turning soft. He gently sat down next to him. ¡°Hey, hey. I¡¯m sorry. You don¡¯t have to talk about it if you don¡¯t want to. Just nod or shake your head. Is this your first time killing someone?¡± The louse bobbed his head up and down weakly. He wondered how the interloper knew he¡¯d killed someone, but he supposed it wasn¡¯t that hard to piece together. Positions reversed, he was sure he would have recognized the signs, too. The streets were not so kind that lice could not be expected to bite once in a while. ¡°Do you think you¡¯ll be able to do it again if you have to?¡± The louse shook his head emphatically. ¡°Thought not.¡± The other louse sighed. ¡°Then let me propose an arrangement tween the two of us, yeah? See, I¡¯ve killed before, myself, both vermin and cyanen, and I must be a much worse villain than you -- cause it means nothing to me, at this point. Problem is, I got no finesse, and if I spend all my time fighting for food, people like the guard you saw last time are gonna catch me tired, you know?¡± The louse nodded slowly. ¡°So let¡¯s pair up. I¡¯ll cover your violence, and you¡¯ll cover my vittles. I¡¯ll hunt, and you¡¯ll gather. How¡¯s that sound?¡± The louse glared suspiciously at the other boy, but the shivering was starting to subside. Now that he looked, the resourceful louse could see the telltale signs of starvation on the violent louse. He had made the effort to seem kind, but it was an act of desperation as much as anything else. That was a little bit reassuring; when pairing up with muscle, you wanted to make sure they needed you. The louse decided he could trust that desperation if nothing else. ¡°Alright, Hunt,¡± he finally said. ¡°I¡¯ll lift for you, if you¡¯ll have my back.¡± The other boy, Hunt, laughed, seemingly surprised. ¡°So you¡¯re Gather, then? I like it. Didn¡¯t have names in mind, but if your mind is anywhere near as sharp as your eyes were, appraising me just now, I trust your judgment. Seriously, how scary. I felt like a mark.¡± ¡°Gather¡± looked down, embarrassed. Whether or not he fully trusted ¡°Hunt¡±, he could feel the terror and nausea deep within him starting to fade. He wouldn¡¯t have to feel that awful sensation on his blade again, or take on any more curses from gods. It still took a few days before he could join in when Hunt laughed.
Hunt and Gather terrorized the streets of Athens for years. Gather quickly found that Hunt wasn¡¯t very devious at all. The violent boy had simply learned to fight the way Gather had learned to steal, and he was good at it. To Gather¡¯s relief, there didn¡¯t appear to be any ulterior motive, or intent to terrorize him later. That said, the larger louse was more confident than Gather was, so he quickly settled into the role of a leader. He would also occasionally live up to his name and actually hunt for prey in the wilderness, but never to great effect. Gather himself went back to the theft he had worked so hard to perfect. If anyone noticed that a small child had killed some priest of Rhoda, they didn¡¯t piece together who it was; or at least, they didn¡¯t confront him about it. He resisted the urge to find out who the priest had been, whose life he had ended for no reason, until the urge passed altogether. His desire to escape the memory was stronger than his sense of responsibility for what happened. Killer or no, he was still a mere louse. But he never went back to stealing jewelry, and he never went after those of the cloth again. He stuck to mere pickpocketry, kept a low profile, kept his protector fed, and came home every morning. He had a name for himself now, after all; he didn¡¯t feel the desperate need to make one. He rarely talked to anyone else. Hunt took care of all the grocery shopping in between his own much riskier, less frequent ventures. Muggings, mostly. Though he no longer ran the risk of exhaustion, more than once did Hunt return to their hideaway with a dented or smashed shell, forcing Gather to patch him up. Gather learned first aid rather quickly, with such a reckless partner. Gather and Hunt were confidants, partners, accomplices, and friends. As long as Athens prospered, they could prosper off of its excess. Like lice. Then, one day, Gather started to hear disquieting rumors circulating through the capital at night. Foreign things started to enter the periphery of his world, with names like ¡°levy¡± and ¡°glory¡±, and ¡°defense¡±. The rumor had it that the Astarians were preparing to attack Athens. The Astarian Empire was different from Athens. Athens was an independent city with its own domain, ruled by council, with barely a military to speak of. It was surrounded by farmland that supported its markets and trade, and there were natural caves nearby that had been expanded and stabilized when valuable metal ores had been found in them. It was wealthy and prosperous, but that was the extent of its reach. The Astarian Empire, on the other hand, ruled many cities, each with their own domain, with a variety of natural resources and crafts that could circulate throughout its bounds. Gather couldn¡¯t understand exactly why such a wealthy country would attack Athens, but Hunt explained it simply and cleanly. It was a mugging. For the two petty crooks, that was enough of an explanation; neither had any particular need to understand the complicated politics that led to the war, at least not back then. They were still young, and boys besides. They were certain that the levy would never include a couple of runts who hadn¡¯t even reached their fourth molts. And for most of the war, that held true. But then they molted. The two were adolescents now, and fair targets to fight the losing war. Hunt molted first, and he was caught and taken away first, too. As he was dragged away, he continued slinging promises until he was breathless; that he would keep Gather safe, that the war would end before Gather would be forced to join it, that he wouldn¡¯t let Gather kill anyone even if he were forced to fight. But all of that was in vain. The day Gather started shivering and itching at his shell, he could feel the life he¡¯d built collapsing around him. It only took days afterwards for the grim-faced men and massive women responsible for recruiting the idle youth to find him and take him away. Hunt had no way of fulfilling even one of his promises; by the time Gather reached the battlefield, the other boy had vanished into some other company of the levy, faceless and teeming. Gather knew he wouldn¡¯t be able to stop himself, either; whether he liked it or not, he had the instincts of a killer, and he always would. So he did the only thing he knew he could do; he insisted on using a mace. Normally, with tiny arms like his, a mace would be a waste of time. Other boys and men learned stiletto knives, spears, needles; anything that could puncture gaps in armor with finesse and aim. They were simply too weak to try anything else against their foes¡¯ powerful shells. But Gather knew he could never feel the sensation of slicing through living flesh again. He wasn¡¯t even sure using a blunt weapon would help, but he knew he would die if he had a breakdown on the field of battle. So the quartermasters grumbled a brief ¡°fine, maybe you can be a diversion¡± and handed him little more than a metal rod with a ball on the end and a wrapped grip. The lead-up to his first battle was boring. There was a lot of walking, some of it through blood-soaked fields of turquoise-dyed grass, and trying not to think about all the diabolical smells around him. And then, before he knew it, there was an enemy soldier in front of him, and everything else faded away. He used the acrobatic prowess he¡¯d developed as a thief, spinning through the air with his mace out like a maple seed floating from a tree. But as the head of the mace smashed through the head of the enemy soldier, it was Gather who shattered forever. 4. I, What Ive wrought I survey my domain, Aoge. If I pay attention, I can still see the scars from bombs and cannon-fire, but otherwise I¡¯ve been left with a clean field of scraggly pioneer plants, a newly-clean river of snow-melt from the mountains, and a feeling something like being full of potential. I suppose that probably means I am fairly fertile after¡­ eating. Hopefully I won¡¯t have to do anything like that again any time soon. Mercifully, my former mace hasn¡¯t mocked me as a crybaby or a limp noodle or any of the other nasty things I called myself after my outburst. Actually, she has been rather quiet, which only reminds me of how alone I am. I haven¡¯t been this alone since my first battle for Athens back in the day. My first memories have mostly settled. The rest are still swirling about too fast for me to catch any one, although I can still get impressions. I still remember the facts about my life, even if I don¡¯t remember the experiences. But for the ones I do have, I relive them once in a while, to think about what I can learn from them. In particular, I have been thinking a lot about that priest, the first person I ever killed. I know almost nothing about gods ¡ª that was probably why Sharur passed into spirit form to help me out in the first place. Apparently, the gods had seen fit to burden me with responsibility, but I had no idea what my task specifically was. And if I complete it, then what? Is my job as a god over? Is Aoge assigned a new god? Or is this truly my new existence, not merely a temporary assignment? I don¡¯t know if even a priest would know the answer to those questions ¡ª their job was to venerate the gods, not to guide them. Still, I wonder if the priest is having a good afterlife. Whatever the afterlife is. Share, do you know what the afterlife is like? I don¡¯t think I was able to witness very much of it before I got here. The mace¡¯s voice returns, reassuring me that she hasn¡¯t left, she was just quiet. I suppose weapon spirits don¡¯t have the same need for concentration that people do. Anthema? Through our connection, Sharur made a kind of grunt. In the Principality as a whole, you mean? Ah, right. I suppose the priest from that time did mention Rhoda, so she must have been one of the others in the city of Athens that Sharur was talking about. I feel another sudden pang of guilt, but I suppress it. Thank you, Share. Those are volunteers. They¡¯re a series of hardy plants that colonize barren land after a disaster. They prepare the soil for the next wave of vegetation, and then gradually fade when their successors take all their resources. In this case, though, the topsoil is already fertile, so it shouldn¡¯t be more than a week until they¡¯re all gone. Do they really look that bad to you? I don¡¯t recall ever knowing so much about plants, soil, or webs of lives, before my death. Perhaps I wouldn¡¯t know if I had, with the sorry state of my memories, but it feels like knowledge I just gained when I became a god of the land. I can see how it would be necessary. Sharur hesitated. What opportunity would a mace have to think about weeds, though...? With all the time I¡¯ve had to spare, I¡¯ve been building a more permanent burrow for myself deep underground. It isn¡¯t exactly warm down there, but it¡¯s stable, and it¡¯s hidden. So far I have been alone out here, but I know at some point my country will send a survey team, and they will likely come to the conclusion that a god has come to reside here. I don¡¯t know why, but I don¡¯t want them to find me like this. I doubt they would try to hurt or kill a god of the land, or find out who I used to be, but¡­ whether it¡¯s shame, trepidation, or fear, it doesn¡¯t feel like a good idea. Oh, wait. I know what I¡¯m afraid of. I¡¯m afraid I¡¯ll try to help my country. But my duty is to the soil now. I can¡¯t forget that.
I decide that I¡¯ve put it off long enough. I¡¯m going to ¡°give life¡±. Sharur doesn¡¯t really seem to understand how I¡¯m supposed to do that either, so my only option is to follow my divine (?) instincts, which are telling me to¡­ bite something. I have a feeling it would be dangerous and reckless to give life to something that¡¯s already alive, so I¡¯ll go ahead and amend that to ¡°bite something inanimate¡±. It sounds¡­ weird, but not difficult. So, what shall I give life to? A stone? Some dirt? Actually, I already have a much better idea. Along the riverbank, there are several places on the outside of bends where the water is relatively still, or even eddied. If I gave life to the water in one of those areas, whatever formed wouldn¡¯t quickly flow away from me. But if it did, that wouldn¡¯t be the worst thing in the world, either. I truly don¡¯t know what to expect, and having a way to quickly be rid of my creation, as callous as that sounds, feels prudent. And so I find myself staring at one of those eddies, and I realize I¡¯m seeing my reflection for the first time in this body. I am, of course, an enormous snake. My face is somewhat shorter and broader than I¡¯d expected; I¡¯d assumed I would have a great diamond-shaped head like most of the snakes I¡¯d seen in the field. The spiked or keeled scales I¡¯d noticed all over my body extended right up to the end of my nose on top, and hardly any under me, and I wondered if real snakes who looked like me had problems hugging each other. Probably¡­ not? Probably not. My eyes are great scaly circles of smoky quartz with pitch black slits in the middle. My eyes don¡¯t close like lizards¡¯ do, and I have taken several glancing blows to them already, so I think they must be covered in transparent protective scales, which is unique. It¡¯s much harder to poke my eyes out because of that. I admonish myself for becoming distracted by my own beauty, and plunge my head into the ice-cold mountain runoff. It¡¯s absolutely freezing, but doing this makes me realize that I haven¡¯t actually drunk any water since my death. I take a few gulps of the fresh water just to feel what it¡¯s like, and it nearly empties the eddy entirely for a moment. It¡¯s hard to be big and beautiful.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. With enjoying being alive out of the way, I open my jaws wide, bare my dagger fangs, and bite down on the river. To my surprise, my jaws actually close around something, instead of merely snapping shut. Obviously I can¡¯t see what it is, but I flex something I can¡¯t see and pump something into whatever I¡¯m biting. I suspect, if I were a normal snake, I would paralyze or kill my prey this way. I doubt I can have prey, as it is. But while I am once again contemplating the difference between myself and other women, whatever is in my jaws begins to squirm. I quickly withdraw my head from the stream, keeping my grip fastened around whatever I¡¯m holding, and toss it behind me into the air. I hear it splat gently among the weeds, and after shaking my head free of water, I turn to look at what I¡¯ve wrought. Wriggling peacefully in the grass beyond the river bank, I see a snake made of water. It¡¯s tremendously beautiful. It¡¯s clear and colorless, and would probably be invisible if not for the glare of the sun lensing through it. Its shape is closer to what I would have expected my own to look like; round, flat head, beady little water eyes, and a smooth scale texture. All together, the water snake looks like a long, delicately cut jewel. Hello, I think, as if talking to Sharur. The little snake looks up at me. You understand? The snake slowly bobs its head up and down, as if trying to figure out how its body works. It slithers closer to me (which is odd to watch, now that I know how it actually works) and touches my scales with its snout. At this size difference, its entire mass is about the volume of my head, but I¡¯m quite large right now so it may be a normal snake, if only in size. Because of the difference in size between us, though, it has no difficulty weaving around my scales and climbing up my body until it is wrapped around. It feels cool to the touch, like the mountain runoff that I summoned it from. Share, I call out in my mind. Share, what is this thing? Naiad? The little snake wiggles through my scales, leaving a light trail of water as it passes. I¡¯m starting to feel like my own mace is making fun of me, but she continues before I can object. Something bothers me about what she said, but she pushed past it before I could register or comment on it. I try to brush it aside. Maybe I¡¯ll remember later. So you may learn to talk later, then? Well, then, I won¡¯t be so presumptuous as to give you a name yet, naiad, but I will talk to you as long as you need me to. I am Gather, the fresh-born god of Aoge. I will care for you, for the time being. I shock myself briefly with the tone I take with the little snakelet. I don¡¯t consider myself an especially friendly person, and I¡¯m awful with pleasantries, but if anything I think my sense of decorum is usually far worse. And yet, with this nymph, I seem to talk as if I¡¯m a real god, or even a mother. It doesn¡¯t bother me, exactly, because I still meant what I said, but it does make me realize that I¡¯ve changed more than I knew. It might be a good thing that Sharur doesn¡¯t have a body, or I might have tried to bite her.
The naiad¡¯s ability, it turns out, is mostly to call rain. I hadn¡¯t realized it, but it hadn¡¯t rained here at all since the storm that brought me, and that must have been a season or more ago, now. I wonder if the aridity of the soil contributed to the land¡¯s inability to heal without a god; no, more likely the lack of a god over the cursed land was the reason the rain wouldn¡¯t arrive to begin with. And a naiad, by Sharur¡¯s explanation, is something like a small god ¡ª smaller than I am, even. So I was only partially surprised when the little snake began to dance, and in doing so, summoned dark clouds even as I watched. It felt oddly satisfying to just bask in the rain, letting it wash the grime from my scales as if I were taking a deep soak in the river the naiad came from. I got an impression of joy from the smaller snake, too, although it¡¯s difficult to be sure. Perhaps it was starting to learn to broadcast its intent, after all, and it started with basic emotions. I wonder if something about my own deification has skipped the process required to learn. I feel slightly bad about it, like I cheated. With the naiad¡¯s blessing, the pioneer weeds quickly lost ground to the tall grasses and wild grains, and Aoge became a prairie again. I think when I hatched, it was early summer, which meant it must be at least early autumn now. I feel somewhat cruel for having brought a snake made of water into the world just before winter, but I suppose I can¡¯t exactly undo it. That means I¡¯m going to have to figure out how to shelter my charge when the cold comes. One option would be to simply let it live with me. Unfortunately, I don¡¯t think my body is actually all that warm. It will be chilly in my burrow, though admittedly it probably won''t be much chillier than it normally is. The temperature doesn''t seem to vary too much underground. I could try building some sort of fire lodge for myself and the snakelet, but this new body of mine isn''t very well suited for building artificial structures. As for starting a fire, I think I could find a way, but I''ve been reluctant to try it out in a new prairie. Plus, god or not, I do not want to risk building a fire underground. It might be irrational of me, but foul air is still somewhat scary. That leaves the simplest and best option, which I feel the worst about: leaving the naiad in the river overwinter. In theory, that''s a great idea. It will have the company of all the river fish that normally overwinter under the insulating layer of ice on the surface, and it won''t be too cold, either. It will have plenty of fresh water to sustain its form, and will remain connected to its domain. I don''t think it needs to eat or drink, but if it did, it could certainly do so in the river. The main issue is that leaving the naiad in its domain for the entire winter would feel far too much like abandonment, not to mention I would be lonely- Ugh. That''s the real reason, isn''t it? There''s no way I can justify doing anything else now. I''ll just have to sand down my shell and face the winter without another body nearby. I will have Sharur with me, but I know it still won''t be easy, especially since I don''t know if she would ever talk to me at all if I didn''t talk first. I suppose the addition of another life sleeping near me reminded me of the companionship I''d held with my comrades while I was alive. I will have to forget that as soon as possible, since I won''t be going back. I wonder how the others would react if they could see me now. The uncouth one, the fighter, the reaper, reduced to sulking about her own solitude. Oh, well. Perhaps I''m getting ahead of myself. It''s still only autumn. While she was certain the god-snake was asleep, the guide of the divine Sharur quietly contacted the naiad¡¯s mind. The naiad stirred with a silent start, looking around for the source of the voice, but heard nothing ¡ª it technically had no source, after all. Sharur said, with an air that was both imperious and kind. Wordlessly and somehow dazedly, the snake made of finely textured water bobbed his head up and down. I am he, yes, he seemed to say. The naiad nodded again. In response, the naiad simply stared off into the middle distance, as if trying to determine what the mysterious voice was really asking, but if he received any such revelation, it didn¡¯t show in his manner. Sharur sighed. The naiad nodded slowly, seeming to ponder something. Sharur caught just a shred of his intent. Um¡­ is she being punished? There was more, but the guide couldn¡¯t quite catch the clarification for the question. Still, she answered, with all the confidence of a practiced pedagogue.