CONTENT WARNING

This story contains horrifying situations, graphic violence and gore, explicit language, descriptions of psychological and emotional trauma, sexual themes that might include violence and challenges to consent, and implications or even portrayals of outright abuse. And the story's characters aren't exactly good role models, either. You are responsible for the stories you choose to read. This tale can be a lot of fun if monster stories, body horror, and various kinds of trauma don't bother you. But please, do know yourself well enough to make that decision. By continuing to read, you are agreeing that you -- and only you -- are liable for any feelings and affects the story might prompt.

You have been warned.

* * *

It’s well known that we are born.

 

It’s well known that in the room

or in the wood

or in the shelter in the fishermen’s quarter

or in the rustling canefields

there is a quite unusual silence,

a grave and wooden moment as

a woman prepares to give birth.

 

It’s well known that we were all born.

 

But of that abrupt translation

from not being to existing, to having hands,

to seeing, to having eyes,

to eating and weeping and overflowing

and loving and loving and suffering and suffering,

of that transition, that quivering

of an electric presence, raising up

one body more, like a living cup,

and of that woman left empty,

the mother who is left there in her blood

and her lacerated fullness,

and its end and its beginning, and disorder

tumbling the pulse, the floor, the covers

till everything comes together and adds

one knot more to the thread of life,

nothing, nothing remains in your memory

of the savage sea which summoned up a wave

and plucked a shrouded apple from the tree.

 

The only thing you remember is your life.

 

-Excerpted from "Births" by Pablo Neruda

* * *

In Phaeduin’s memory, Myrel was born in a white room overlooking the Eating Sea, metal shivering on the walls as boiler pipes clattered welcome. The windows were iced over with elegant fractals. Anthrals with gray and white fur, long tails like banners, stood about the walls while Phaeduin’s wife panted upon the bed. And the doctor, like a soothsayer in steel gray robes, slowly coaxed Myrel’s bald body from the womb and held it aloft. Tail curled around the doctor’s wrist, Myrel cried, and at Myrel’s first breath, their mother took her last. The woman lay quiet and peaceful, fur polished with sweat.

* * *

Phaeduin eyed the Sickle-Man, the fire burning over its head, scythes singing through the air to embed in its body and face. Then he turned in search of his child. “Myrel?” And they weren’t there.

* * *

In the warehouse, Norgash emerged like a lantern from behind a door, preceded by her own firelight. On stage, she stood simply still, her mask directed forward in an eyeless stare. A hush went through the room, then the clicking sound of shaken jars. With the simple movement of a hand beneath her heavy robe, parting it just slightly to let out more light, to give the slightest glimpse of her concealed body, Norgash coaxed the furor of the room. Excited voices, cheering and calling one another to attention, almost quashed the rattling. Almost.

* * *

In Phaeduin’s memory, Myrel was born in a white room streaked with black from fire. It overlooked the Eating Sea, but the windows were fogged, the ice thawed to slush that slid to the sill. Anthrals with gray and white fur stood at the walls; two of them burned like pyres, red and orange heat peeling angrily off their bodies and licking the ceiling. They spat sparks that left black marks on the others. Phaeduin pushed away from the wall to shout at them, but nobody else seemed to notice. The doctor held up a bald infant. At Myrel’s first cry, their mother sighed and went still. She was quiet, peaceful, her polished fur shining with untold beauty in the firelight. Something Phaeduin would never forget.

* * *

Amo didn’t understand the power of Norgash’s dance. The magic, at least, made sense: the thrumming drone of the music pitching fire over Norgah’s body, her movements manipulating the spell to give it shape around her. What Amo did not understand, at least at first, was the dancer’s sensuality. With her robe thrown aside, Norgash now wore nothing but for her mask and the fire. Her body, smooth bronze skin gleaming with sweat, was itself a muscular blaze licked by tongues of fire that she bent herself into. Fire gathered along the lines of her hips and arms, enveloping her head in a wreathe-like shroud that surrounded her mask like a golden facet.

Amo found themself staring at that mask, at the gems, its red eyes aglow. There were patterns engraved into the ivory, an angular gridwork inflected here or there to imply a hard cheekbone, a sharp brow. The shape of it was somewhat reptilian.

* * *

“Myrel?” Phaeduin shouted over the Sickle-Sough Festival, feeling sick in his gut, heart pounding. He wasn’t sure what for. Panic had set in. He kept thinking about the day Myrel was born, those men burning in the room. He couldn’t remember why they’d been burning. Why did the fire of so long ago seem, all of a sudden, so presently dangerous? “Myrel! Answer me!” Phaeduin spun and shouted, but saw only the heads of the revelers, heard only the song of the magicked fire above, the peel of scythes cutting the air.

In a gathering of celebrants who had tried their hand at the throw, one grabbed at his head and muttered urgently, drunkenly, and went to stumble away from the party. His friends grabbed at him and called him back, but he wouldn’t be stopped, clumsily chasing whatever propelled him. He joined a sparse gathering of others who moved like him, drunk anthrals pushing away from their friends to rush in strange unity toward the side of the road.

Phaeduin had been trying not to look at the sorcerers on the walls, but now when he glanced at them, he saw them watching these evacuating partiers with grim interest. There were some twenty sorcerers lining the wall along the road, their numbers almost precisely matching those who ran, their gazes seeming to have each picked out one of them. Phaeduin could hear it in the air: the magic that connected them, a grim, slurring drone of song that bound a sorcerer to a stumbling celebrant. By chance, Phaeduin got the gaze of one of the sorcerers – a large, broad-shouldered alpin of gray fur and so much hair he almost had a lion’s mane spilling down around the front of a robe of green and black wool – for just a moment before looking away. After the barest hesitation, Phaeduin grabbed the long metal beak of his festival helmet, reassuring himself of the anonymity it provided, and followed after the stumbling horde.

* * *

It had been wrong to assume that the magic of the fire was the show’s selling point. The fire barely mattered at all. Norgash conjured tendrils of flame to dance around her, wrapping her body without burning her. Great, slithering patterns churned rhythmically on the walls and ceiling, darkening the wood but leaving it intact. At one point, Norgash conjured hands of fire that pawed greedily at her body, grabbing her neck and wandering her thighs, and Amo supposed that people seemed to like that.

Amo looked around at people’s faces, rapt expressions, cheeks flushed with heat, tongues on lips. Amo had heard it said that Norgash had accrued a following, fans traveling across the Warring Lands to follow her shows, and now Amo understood. These people were in love with Norgash, or they worshipped her, or they just wanted to fuck her. After her shows, Amo had heard it said, Norgash would offer private dances to those most eager and devout, and money wouldn’t matter. Some of those people would become her masked-and-robed followers, her biggest fans.

Amo felt Indirk's body lean heavily upon them. Amo had almost forgotten she was there, but Indirk abruptly pulled Amo against her, pressing her hanging palm firmly against Amo’s side. This was in response to some movement of Norgash’s hands. Indirk probably didn’t notice what she was doing, how she was clinging. Amo looked up at Indirk’s face, her expression one of very serious concentration. Maybe she’d want one of those private dances after the show.

* * *

Indirk stared at Norgash’s body as it moved. The clattering sound she’d thought she’d heard seemed to have fallen away, replaced by the drumming music of Norgash’s magic, and Indirk felt a bodily kind of gratitude for that. It was as if, in throwing off her robes and summoning her carnality, Norgash had wrapped the threat of the memory in a shroud. The trauma that Indirk had carried, the panic in her sleep, was buried beneath the façade of decency. Gratitude could describe what Indirk felt in her body, then, in her thighs, her stomach, her chest and throat, the heat of wanting to reach out and…

Yes, that was it. Indirk pulled her hands toward herself, drawing her body to the warmth that was against her, feeling the way her skin came awake and her lungs shivered. Yes, she wanted to replace the calamity of before with a different kind of calamity: that of body, that of sex.

* * *

In Phaeduin’s memory, Myrel was born in a room scorched black. The windows that looked on the Eating Sea had been shattered, snow and ice blowing in only to evaporate into steam in an instant. Phaeduin threw himself to the middle of the room and spun to look at all those who had come with him to witness the birth, watching how they burned in place, bodies blackened and shaking in pain. They crumbled to the darkened floor. But in the center of it, he heard Myrel’s first cry. Phaeduin turned to see the doctor in steel gray lifting a bald child toward him, to see his wife’s fur glistening as she sighed and went still. Sparks fell over her, leaving dark marks on her body. Sparks fell on Myrel’s brand new skin and the baby screamed.

* * *

In an alley near the Sickle-Sough festival, Phaeduin watched drunk-seeming revelers stumble down different walkways, splitting up. Slowing their pursuit, letting some get away from him, Phaeduin listened for magic. In the dark of evening, the alley flickered red with the light of the fire above, echoed with the song of the magic that held the fire in the air. It reminded Phaeduin of the day Myrel was born, the people who had burned to death in that room. Why had that happened? It didn’t make sense. The memory didn’t make sense. But it was so strong, so hot, still burning inside his mind even after so long.

It didn’t matter. He pushed it aside. He needed to hear a different magic now. Not the fire, but the sorcerers, the dirge that connected them to the stumbling celebrants. Yes, it was still here, closer now, in this alley and the ones connected to it. The green-robed sorcerers had come down into the alleyways to seek their targets. To what end? It didn’t matter.

Phaeduin’s body hurt, his muscles so tense beneath his armor, his heart pounding so hard, his teeth so fiercely grinding. His sword was in his hand. He wanted to call out for Myrel, sure they were here somewhere, but what would the sorcerers do? They wouldn’t be happy to be interrupted. The officers of the Watch had always warned him to stay out of the way of the sorcerers.

* * *

Indirk’s body hadn’t been this awake in years. She was sweating beneath her dress. She rolled her shoulders and let the sleeves slide a bit down her arms. She watched Norgash’s every movement, wanting so much to be the fire on the woman’s skin. It was a strange thought to have, but Indirk got stuck on it. She wanted to slide over Norgash’s skin just like that, taste the salt of her sweat, curl around her sides and lick at her thighs. Yes, she wanted to become that fire. Yes, she wanted to burn. She wanted to…

There was a flick of orange in the corner of Indirk’s gaze. She glanced to the left. Someone at the next table had begun to burn, firelight coming first from their eyes, shining beneath their skin as though under cloth, and then bursting out of their body. Indirk watched a person erupt into flames. They didn’t scream. They didn’t collapse. They just stood there and burned.

And, worse, no one reacted.

* * *

In Phaeduin’s memory, there was a room full of fire. His family burned along the walls. His wife burned on the bed. A doctor dressed in flames slowly coaxed a baby from the woman’s womb. Phaeduin collapsed to his knees, hands over his face to protect his eyes from the heat. But then flaming hands held aloft a screaming baby, new skin burned red from the fire. Shouting through the smoke and the stink of burned anthrals, Phaeduin threw himself to his feet and reached for the baby, heedlessly taking hold with his bare hands.

Myrel had been born in Vont. Phaeduin's youth had already passed him, his wife on the verge of old age. Her pregnancy had seemed a miracle, so they’d found a doctor that had once been a soothsayer of Wind and Sunfire. For good luck. They’d chosen to give birth overlooking the sea. For good luck. They’d worn simple white sacks made of silk from deepwood moths. For luck.

In Phaeduin’s memory, his silk burned around him as he threw himself through the window out of the fire, crashing hard onto the sea-licked black stone of Vont’s cliffs. Ice and snow around him, he rolled to his knees and held the burned baby in his hands, gasping as he watched the infant's tail and arms shiver desperately, listening to the gurgling scream of burned lungs. Inside the baby was a song, an old song of the spirits of Wind and Sunfire, a song of blessing. Over the next few years, Phaeduin would hear this song come from Myrel’s body from time to time, as they slept, or when they were angry and throwing a tantrum, some inborn magic that Phaeduin couldn’t understand.

Slowly, though, there on those cliffs, the song began to fade. Orange light began to move beneath the infant’s skin. Phaeduin said the baby’s name – Myrel, Myrel, blessed Myrel – over and over as the fire grew in his memory.

* * *

In the alley beneath the fire of the Sickle-Sough Festival, Phaeduin pushed the ruined memory aside. He listened for magic again. Not the magic of the fire above. Not the dirge-like song of the sorcerers. He listened for the magic of Wind and Sunfire, the gentle song of spirits almost forgotten by the Rhyqir peoples. But he remembered it; the burning of his memory hadn’t yet stolen it. And when he heard it still, here, he followed it. He ran down the alleyways, turned confidently one way and another through the labyrinth of them, charging shadows as he chased the faintest echo he’d ever heard.

In a dead-end alley, with fire burning overhead, Myrel crouched in a corner and grabbed at their horns, tail circled twice around their own body. They shook and hissed and whimpered, It burns it burns it burns.

A narrow sorcerer stood over Myrel, arms crossed, muttering to himself. “Something wrong with this one. Her magic isn’t…” The sorcerer heard a sound behind him, pivoting and looking up. “Hm?”

One shout was all the warning Phaeduin gave before the long, heavy sword of the Watch tore across the sorcerer’s face, cutting and bludgeoning with equal force. The sword slammed the sorcerer against the gray stone, crushed his skull and tore half his face aside, its swing painting the wall with blood and fluid and chunks of pink and red. The sorcerer’s body slid down, toppled toward Myrel, but Phaeduin’s armored fist grabbed the half-headless corpse by its collar and threw it down the alley.

Phaeduin crouched over his child. “Myrel!” He put hands on their shoulders and shook them. “Answer me. What’s happening? What did they do to you?”

Myrel hissed, Burns burns burns burns.

* * *

Indirk felt herself paralyzed as she watched the person at the next table burning. Then, beyond that, another fire peeling out of a body, roaring toward the ceiling. To Indirk’s other side, someone shouted out for Norgash, reached toward the stage in desperation, and then fire erupted across their arms and out of their chest. It started along their veins, like it was their blood that burned, their heart that erupted. There was heat in her own chest, Indirk realized, the lingering heat of lust and…

“Wait.” Indirk leaned back, grabbing at Amo. Indirk stared at Norgash. The dancer turned her mask at each of the burning people in turn. More fires went up in the room, each only slightly preceded by the turn of Norgash’s mask toward them. Like she was summoning the fire.

Or just accepting what was offered.

Still, even watching this, Indirk could feel inside of her the desire to become the fire on Norgash’s body, to taste the skin, to touch each curve and crevice. Indirk had all but asked to become the fire.

* * *

In Myrel’s memory, Phaeduin had taken them to an old temple where once people had worshiped the spirits of Wind and Sunfire. It had been remade into a boiler room for factories below, pipes punching through the walls and furnaces hissing, but the doctor that had brought Myrel into the world – doubling as a soothsayer to any who would listen – was there with a few other children. Myrel had still been young, barely ten, too young to understand the radical nature of all these children in a place like this. In Myrel’s memory, they played with the other children, running among the pipes, ducking and vaulting and chasing, while Phaeduin and the soothsayer spoke of magic.

In Myrel’s memory, the building was narrow and full of fire, the soothsayer a burning pillar that stood still and slowly crumbled into ash.

In Myrel’s memory, the children that ran alongside them were covered in fire, and they tried to run all the faster as though they could put it out.

In Myrel’s memory, one by one, they fell. Phaeduin gave chase, tried to drag them into the snow to put the fire out, but the fire wouldn’t cease.

In Myrel’s memory, they stopped running and stood in the middle of the temple while every child cried out and ran circles, dragging their bodies desperately along the wall. Myrel held their tail anxiously, looking up at their father, who stared helplessly back at them.

In Myrel’s memory, they ran with the other children, burning alongside them. Myrel threw themself into snow and it did nothing. They writhed against the walls, shouted out for wind and water, and watched their shaking arms turn black and burn down to the bone.

* * *

Norgash stepped off the stage and onto a table, moving on the tips of her toes. She left her robe behind. She had a tail, long and thin, with fur so red that it blended into the fire that rose from it, and it swung for balance as she danced into the room. She came in a straight line toward Indirk and Amo, and Indirk couldn’t bring herself to recoil in fear. The burning people might’ve been an illusion, part of the dance, and even now, Indirk felt herself pulled toward the woman. Wanting her.

But Indirk’s mind was also full of a different memory: in the cells beneath the embassy, bodies burning, screaming in torment. That fire looked just like this. It had to be the same fire. This couldn’t be coincidence. This pull, this heat, this…

Rattling. Not the sound of the jars anymore, but distinct, rhythmic, inside the music of Norgash’s magic. Indirk shocked awake, straightening and almost throwing Amo away from her as she stumbled back and knocked a table aside. She shouldered into people without noticing them, elbowing them hard on instinct to clear space for her. “No,” she hissed, and then shouted, “No! No! What are you doing?”

Amo kept their footing, holding to their table for balance, watching Indirk. “Hey! What in the fuck are you-?”

“Fun.” Norgash landed on the table right next to Amo, a flare of fire, the skin of her naked body shining slick with sweat. She crouched to her knees, brought her long tail in front of her, and the gems on her ivory mask glistened. She said in a sing-song voice, “Oh, how fun. You see the fire, right? You see them burning? Because you’ve already seen it? You’re… Oh!”

The music stopped. The fire burning on Norgash lost its art, its music, and burned passively as though she were made of wood. Still, people burned in the crowd, unnoticed as every other eye watched Norgash, waiting as though she were about to erupt in elegance and beauty. Amo, perhaps realizing now that something was wrong, backed slowly away. The rattling sound continued, not even part of the music now, shifting about on the ceiling.

Indirk put her hand under her vest, grabbing her gun.

Norgash laughed. “You’re the woman who shot dear Anbash. The one with the Writhewife.”

Before Indirk felt herself moving, she’d already pulled her pistol from her vest. She felt the recoil in her hand and stared with an absent sort of horror as Norgash’s head snapped back and shattered ivory flew off her mask. There was recoil again, and again, as Norgash’s body toppled from the table. Amo grabbed Indirk’s arm and pushed it upward, so that Indirk was shooting into the air. Whatever Amo said, Indirk didn’t hear it. She barely sensed the movement around her, watching a flurry of bodies in motion. Robed sycophants rushed the open space between Indirk and Norgash, some hurrying to the aid of the fallen dancer.

Others angrily threw themselves on Indirk and Amo, shouting furious violence as they tore Indirk off her feet and slammed her to the ground. Indirk landed on her back, watching furred robes and masks move over her, glimpsing vengeful fists and murderous knives. But past them, above them, Indirk saw something else on the ceiling. A long, narrow shape clattered as it slithered one way and then another, bony plates along the length of its slender body shivering to make its rattling sound. Its many eyes shone in the dimming firelight. And then it fell, fanged mouth wide, toward Indirk.

* * *

In Myrel’s memory, the inside of the temple was so dark, and their body was part of the darkness. There was almost nothing left of them, the fire so hot, and yet they didn’t stop burning. It didn’t stop hurting. One crumbling body among the crumbling bodies that filled the place, they stared at their father. As Phaeduin slowly withered in the oppressive heat, fur darkening and falling away, skin turning red and then black, he just stood there and stared at Myrel.

Then suddenly, the memory was different. The fire disappeared. Myrel ran, chasing children, laughing as they vaulted over boiler pipes and absently listened to their father talking to the soothsayer.

In Phaeduin’s memory, there was no fire. His family stood along the walls and watched a silver-robed doctor coaxing a child from a womb. The doctor held up a baby with perfect, new skin, and the baby’s cry was as clear and strong as the mother’s final sigh was peaceful. She lay beautiful in her silence after that. Phaeduin took the baby from the doctor. He held his child to his chest and quietly smoothed the fur on his wife’s head, whispering to her breathless body about how beautiful their dear Myrel was.

In the alleyway, magic fire roiling overhead, Myrel collapsed against the wall, breathing hard. Phaeduin pressed his hands to his child’s shoulder and chest. “Myrel! What’s wrong?”

“It doesn’t hurt,” Myrel said through gasping breaths. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“What happened?”

“The scythe,” Myrel stared up at the fire overhead. “The magic. The Throw. There was a spell in it. Some kind of trap. Some kind of…”

A new voice grumbled. “Now, here’s a problem.”

Phaeduin was on his feet in an instant, spinning to put himself over Myrel and hold his great sword in threat to whomever had come. Near the dead sorcerer stood another green-robed figure, a large man with a gray mane of fur spilling over his shoulders, a serious frown on his face. This sorcerer looked Phaeduin over, seeing a Watch officer covered in the gore of a recent kill, but then looked past him to Myrel. “Yes, here’s the problem. The whole spell has been ruined, somehow. Did you do that? Either way, it's spoiled the entire Sickle-Sough festival for us.” Then, abruptly, the sorcerer smiled and let out a little chuckle. “Good for you. But we’d better get you out of here before the others notice you, or they’ll take you to the Keeper. And you don’t want that.”