Maxwell

  “We have reached the edge of the world.

  It stands before us. The Long Divide. A colossus of rock and bone, constructed by the Stonefather himself. No map can prepare a man for its sheer magnitude, nor for its grotesque artistry. The stone is veined with marrow-white latticework: spines, ribs, skulls, all fused into the mortar as though the very dead were conscripted in its making. Some of the bones are too large to be human. Some are still faintly warm.

  Cynthia was the first to approach. She ran her hand along the surface and recoiled as if stung. The wall hums with a kind of pressure, like a held breath. Regulus believes it a kind of ward, the very same that allows the Bone-Lamps to render the Husks vulnerable.

  Athelos offered no comment. He simply stepped forward and laid his greatsword against the bone, as if challenging the wall to resist him. His silence now frightens me more than his rage ever did.

  The others prepare their weapons. Cynthia is grinding something into her silver dust: coarse flakes of obsidian. She will not say why. The wind here is hollow. It does not pass over us, but through us, as if we no longer possess the right to resist it.

  Before we enter, I have sent the last of our supply runners back. I gave them one task: if we do not return before the winter season, they are to consider us lost, and subsequently seal the gates with flame and prayer, and speak no more of what they saw here.

  I shall write no goodbyes. I have written too many already. We enter the Darkenlands at first light.

  May the Gods have mercy on our souls if this mission ends in failure.” - Writings of the Sword-Saint, 2156 Post-Separation (PS).

  Thought.

  A thin ribbon of consciousness, stretching unto wide horizons.

  Sensation.

  The windswept stroke of a calm breeze upon my skin, ruffling hair and brushing my cheek in a gentle caress.

  Desire.

  A fierce call to independence, to autonomy without bounds. To rule one’s flesh without need of permission.

  Action.

  A primal scream, emerging from the inky depths of the subconscious, calling me to greater purpose. An urge too strong to resist, a compulsion profound, crucial in its obligation.

  With a heave of exertion, I plucked myself from the ether, and forged anew the network of connections that constituted my mind.

  I awoke to silence so deep, it felt as though the world had ceased breathing.

  Eyes fluttering open to a field of mist, pale tendrils drifting through silver shafts of dawn-light. Yet the fog here was different. Softer, mournful, alive with low, wood-borne sighs. It obscured shapes of all sizes, interspersed with great blobs of crimson painted upon a greyish canvas.

  Then I remembered.

  The Mistmother. Her eyes. Those fathomless voids that drew my soul like water down a drain. The gentle whispers of solace she had offered, the promise of meaning in a world unhinged. I should have died beneath her mercy, my body undone in the cradle of her limbs.

  Yet, here I was, flesh whole, mind scattershot but strangely lucid.

  The fog lessened. Blobs formed into shapes, formed into objects.

  My hands, slick with something warm, trembled as I raised them to my face. Red. Thick. Too viscous to be dew or sap. I blinked, and my surroundings sharpened. The canvas of grey became clearer, and with it, a horrifying truth revealed itself.

  I was sitting on an altar - nay, a throne - stitched together from the mutilated bodies of people. They had been arranged with perverse care: torsos stacked like cordwood, limbs splayed to cradle me in grotesque homage. Some faces stared upward in permanent surprise; others were mercifully turned away, their final moments spared my witness.

  The blood had dried in places, flaking from bone like rust from steel. In others, it yet dripped, rhythmic and soft, the sound of a slow, dying heartbeat.

  I staggered to my feet. The corpses shifted beneath me with wet squelches, as though even in death they sought to bind me, to hold me to this seat of dominion.

  Wh-What happened…?

  My thoughts were slow in the coming, as if wading through a sea of molasses.

  … Where am I?

  An impression of death, so recurring my mind could not fully grasp it. I stumbled upon the shoulder of an upturned corpse, and rolled down the hill of bodies. By the time I came to a halt, I was slathered in bits of flesh and viscera.

  This… can’t be happening…

  I scrambled backwards, hands slipping in blood, the taste of bile rising in my throat. I pressed myself against the blackened trunk of a great oak, trying to make myself small, invisible, unreal.

  Yet the scene before me resisted denial.

  The throne towered overhead. Grotesque, obscene, constructed not in haste, but ritual. Each corpse a deliberate offering. Every face an indictment.

  Their eyes burned into me, though they were long past sight.

  “N-No…” I gasped, my voice a specter of its former self. “Don’t look at me… I didn't do this… This wasn’t me…”

  My gaze landed on the frail body of a young girl, her pale skin marred by a hideous gash that ran the length of her chest, cleaving flesh from bone. I felt my stomach churn once, twice… before I learned over to retch, soaking the ground beside me with vomit.

  … I… I can’t…

  Tendrils of spit and bile trickled down my chin as I learned back to avoid the stench now assaulting my senses. Had I died on that bridge? Was this purgatory? Was that my heart beating so fiercely in my chest, or did it belong to someone else, someone foreign and distant and evil and murderous and-

  A loud crack sounded above. I lifted my eyes to see a looming shape cloaked in shadow, moving between the trunks, great platforms of wood cradled in her arms. It was the Mistmother, her sepulchral form no less imposing at a distance, as she worked to rebuild her domain. To shape anew that city in the trees, which had been ravaged by battle and ruin.

  She moved like a sorrowful tide, her vast limbs drawing towers of broken timber with uncanny grace. What had been shattered in fire and blade, she now reassembled. Monuments not to life, but to memory. Her platforms lifted silently into the haze, the wood groaning under ancient weight.

  Where the citizens of Fogveil themselves had disappeared to, I could not tell. The corpses piled in front of me were all dressed in odd furs and mismatched armor pieces, scrappy and practical, with little to no unifying theme. They looked the part of vagabonds, lawless nomads and mercenaries, living outside the comforts of society.

  The Marauders, I thought, recalling with sudden clarity the scenes of our arrival to Fogveil, and the meeting with Gareth and his Warborn. But what were they doing here? And how did they…

  Another bout of nausea pulled at my stomach. I fought the urge to gag anew at the scent of iron now invading my nostrils and coating my tongue. I pushed myself off the blackened trunk, legs trembling as they found steadier ground. My fingers twitched with phantom pain, the remnants of Astra yet stirring within me, but quiet now, smoldering in the depths of my bones. Dormant. Patient.

  My boots squelched through the crimson-drenched earth as I moved, desperate to put some distance between myself and the throne of corpses. Above, the Mistmother’s towering form labored in solemn devotion. She did not acknowledge me as I moved, nor did she slow in her reformation of the city’s remnants.

  I need… to get away…

  My vision swam with spots of white, making a mess of the world. I could not tell where I was, nor where I was going. All I knew was that I had to get away. Far, far away.

  I stumbled forwards, each step unmoored from the last. For a while still, I wandered aimlessly, stumbling over what could have been roots or corpses. It mattered little to my detached mind. All about, the charred remnants of Camp Ivory Dawn lay in shambles. Cut, torn, broken and bleeding.

  Then, I heard a sound. Low, crackly. Twisted as though by something arcane.

  It snapped me to stillness.

  At first, I thought it was the wind. But then came the scrape of metal against bark, slow and shrieking, like a blade dragged across stone. I turned, heart caught in my throat, and followed the noise into a hollow beneath the raised roots of a fallen tree.

  There, in the gloom, something shimmered. At first, I thought it was armor, but as I drew close, I realized it was something far worse still.

  A shell - jagged, thorned, pitch-black like dried blood under moonlight - enfolded a crouching figure at its heart. Tendrils of blackened steel curled inward from all directions, forming an exoskeletal chrysalis that pulsed faintly with crimson light.

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  Cliff.

  His form was half-swallowed by the blade’s twisted protection, curled like a dying insect in the center of its cocoon. His hands were gripped around the sword’s hilt, still embedded in the earth, though its blade had shattered down the middle. Barbed vines ran up the length of his arms and across his chest, sunk deep into his skin.

  “Y-You…”

  I approached on unsteady legs, but the shell flared, an arc of jagged metal lashing out to block me. I recoiled just in time to avoid losing a limb.

  His eyes fluttered open, red-rimmed and fevered. He saw me, and grimaced.

  “Sigil-bearer… I… I thought you dead.”

  My mind blanked. No response seemed forthcoming. I scarce knew where I was, much less how to formulate myself properly.

  “If it… wouldn’t be too much trouble… could you help… release me from this thing?” Cliff continued, fighting to get the words out. “The blade doesn't… want to let go…”

  My eyes lingered on the pulsating vines, embedded in Cliff like parasitic veins. They trembled with each ragged breath he took, feeding off him like roots sunk deep into loam.

  “I… I don’t know if I can,” I said, unsure if I was speaking to him or myself.

  Cliff let slip a pained chuckle. “Then that… makes two of us.”

  I hesitated for a touch longer, before extending my hand before me. The moment my fingers brushed the surface of the cocoon, something… shifted. Not in the shell, but in me. The sigil flared to life, a scorching heat burning me from the inside. A terrible brand of radiant agony. My thoughts scattered like leaves in a storm. And I saw visions. Flashes of Cliff’s descent, of the boy-god’s wrath, of blood soaking into root and bark. The Blade of Greed was trying to speak, not through voice, but memory.

  “Papa…”

  A child. Bright eyes beset by golden curls, a smile to brighten the darkest of days, a love so warm and profound that-

  “Papa… It hurts…”

  Blood. The feel of hot flesh beneath a blackened cleaver of hate, of malice, of absolute avarice that would swallow the world itself if only it could fit its jaw about its shape.

  “I’m scared… Please don’t hurt me anymore…”

  A plea to stoke the flames. To fuel the hunger, to entertain the devil screaming for joy in his mind.

  THERE IS HATRED IN YOU THAT KNOWS NO BOUNDS.

  THERE IS LUST IN YOU THAT CARES NOT FOR OTHERS.

  THERE IS GREED IN YOU THAT TRANSCENDS COMPASSION.

  YOU WISHED FOR RELEASE, AND I LISTENED. YOU WISHED FOR STRENGTH, AND I PROVIDED.

  YOU WISHED TO KILL, AND I OBLIGED.

  I screamed. And the Blade rejoiced.

  A tremendous surge of Astra consumed every part of my being, igniting my nerves like fire through dry grass. My body seized; not from pain, but revelation. This blade was no mere weapon. Nay, it was a conduit... a crucible, for something ancient, monstrous, and very much alive.

  The shell shrieked in response. Not in sound, but in thought. Its barbs retreated in a flurry of metallic whimpers, twitching as though scorched by unseen flame. Cliff let out a guttural gasp as the vines recoiled from his flesh, tearing free with wet, sucking snaps. He collapsed forwards, his veins alight with a dim glow, as though lit from within.

  I caught him as he fell.

  “Cliff…” I said, but his eyes, bloodshot and trembling, barely registered me.

  “You…” he rasped, a grimace twisting his features. “You called it. You let it in.”

  “No, I… I didn’t mean to-”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He coughed, blood flecking his lips. “It’s seen you now.”

  I eased Cliff to the ground, my legs aquiver beneath the weight of revelation. The sigil along my back yet throbbed, a phantom heartbeat that would not still. Cliff’s breathing was ragged but steady, his skin slick with sweat.

  “Can you walk?” I asked, offering him my hand.

  He blinked slowly, eyes unfocused. “Define walk.”

  With great effort, I hoisted him up. He leaned heavily on my shoulder, every step a stagger. The air was thick with fog again, but it was shifting. Disturbed, somehow. Each movement sent echoes into the stillness.

  We made our way up from the hollow, weaving through broken branches and scorched roots. The smell of ash mingled with the iron-sweet tang of blood. Above us, the Mistmother loomed, her work paused mid-motion. She stared into the far distance, her expression unreadable, as if awaiting some unseen sign.

  “It’s Amelie,” Cliff murmured, his weight increasing against my side.

  “What?”

  “She’s close. I saw her… embrace the Mistmother. Right before the Blade… consumed me.”

  I frowned but said nothing. A few more paces brought us to the edge of a half-burned clearing. The roots creaked underfoot as we stepped on them, the mist parting just enough to reveal a figure standing at its center.

  She faced away from us.

  Her shoulders were relaxed, one arm dangling loosely at her side. The other seemed to be clutching something against her chest, though I could not rightly tell what.

  “... Amelie?” I called softly.

  She did not answer.

  Something in her stance was wrong. She was standing too still. Too rigid.

  Cliff stiffened beside me. “Don’t. Not yet.”

  But I stepped forward anyway.

  “Amelie, it’s me… Maxwell. Cliff’s alive, but we need to move. The Mistmother-”

  She tilted her head, and turned.

  Hollow.

  The look in her eyes was hollow. Not blank. Not empty. Hollow, like the dark inside a crypt.

  She smiled. Not with warmth, nor with recognition. But with the serene, blind adoration of a zealot.

  “She is beautiful,” Amelie whispered, stepping toward us. “Have you seen her, Maxwell? Have you looked into her eyes and seen?”

  I froze.

  The Mistmother’s influence. It held her. It was writ plain upon her features, in the unnerving smile and the vacancy of her eyes. Amelie’s mind was no longer her own.

  Cliff pulled at my arm. “She’s too close. The fog… it’s thick here. We need to go.”

  Amelie raised her hand in offering.

  “She showed me peace,” she said. “True peace. I do not want to leave this place, and neither do you. Not really.” Her gaze drifted to Cliff, a slight frown settling upon her brow. “You will make her angry. All that hate. That greed. There is no place for such things in her garden.”

  “Amelie, listen to me,” I said, taking a step forward. “This isn’t you. Please, just snap out of it.”

  “She loves us, Maxwell. She loves you.”

  “I don’t want her love,” I said, shaking my head. The fog curled tighter about us.

  “Your heart says you do.”

  And for a moment, I almost believed her.

  The world dimmed. A warmth swelled in my chest. The desire to rest, to surrender, to be embraced.

  “No…” Cliff’s voice was mere rasp. “Don’t look at her.”

  Without thought, my eyes had begun to rise. Above, to the trees. To the Mistmother.

  But then, a fragile, pitiful sound shattered the spell. A whimper.

  I looked back to Amelie. Her arm tightened against her chest. What I had taken for an instinctive gesture of defense was, in truth, something else entirely. She was holding something… nay, someone.

  A baby.

  Swaddled in a bundle of torn linen, its form so small it could have been missed in the fog’s embrace. Its skin was pale, veined with sickly green, and its mouth moved in erratic gulps, as if drinking from the air. One of its eyes was normal; brown, round, full of infantile innocence. The other… the other shimmered a pale green.

  Infected.

  Like me.

  Cliff inhaled sharply. “No…”

  Amelie gazed down at the child, a gentle smile brushing her lips. “She entrusted me with her. The final seed. So beautiful… so pure… A vessel for corruption.”

  My stomach turned. The child mewled, but the sound of it was not right. There was a warble to it, a tinge of something sinister, warping its tone.

  “No,” I breathed. “No, no, no… Amelie, she’s infected. The Seedling is in her!”

  She did not blink. “She has been chosen… by him. Like you. Like me.”

  I stepped forward. “Put the child down, Amelie… Please…”

  She tilted her head, gaze unfocused. “She is mine.”

  “That’s not your child,” I said, feeling panic start to surge within me. “I don’t know where you found her, but she’s not yours.”

  A terrible anger welled to life in her eyes then. “Who are you to decide what is or is not mine? I found her, she came to me, she’s mine.”

  “Boy…” Cliff said, addressing me. “Tread carefully.”

  I willed my legs not to move, but my instincts would not be denied. “Amelie…”

  She lifted the swaddled bundle to her breast, rocking it gently. “The Mistmother chose me,” Amelie crooned, voice distant. “I am mandated to protect her garden, and this one… This one poses a threat to us all.”

  “She’s right,” Cliff said, words heavy with implication. “That infant… is too far gone. Maxwell… You know what must be done…”

  “No!” I said, gritting my teeth. “We will not kill children! There must be a way to cure it, to… to root out the infection…”

  “The child must burn,” Amelie said, pressing the bundle tighter as though shielding it from harm. “That is the only way forward.”

  “Stop it!” I said. “The both of you! You’re… These things you’re saying… It’s madness!”

  Amelie’s lips curved in a twisted imitation of a smile. “You are powerless to stop this. The Seedling is in her blood.” She stroked the baby’s cheek. “It is pain and promise entwined. Her fate is written.”

  I took a step forward, desperate to break the baleful shimmer in her eyes. “Amelie, look at me! The Mistmother lied. She’s no savior! She’s a butcher! There’s nothing here but hatred and death!”

  At my shout, the world quivered. Trees groaned. The Mistmother’s form loomed above, her movements like a tide of shadow and wood. I felt her disappointment like an icy grasp upon my soul.

  The child whimpered. Its green veins writhed beneath pale skin. Amelie inhaled like she had tasted sweetness.

  “Please,” I whispered. “Don’t do this…”

  She closed her hand over the bundle. With a single breath, she summoned dancing flames about her fingers, hissing, crackling. Her gaze remained clouded, locked beyond into the Mistmother’s promise.

  “No!” I roared, lunging to seize the child, but I was too late. Amelie pressed the bundle into the flickering firelight.

  A radiant pyre bloomed in the cradle of her arms.

  The baby screamed. A thin, shrill cry of pain and agony. The flames bore into the swaddling cloth, consuming the material with ravenous appetite. Before long, the child’s entire body lay engulfed in the inferno, the heat melting its skin like candle wax.

  “Look how it burns!” Amelie smiled, the very image of ecstasy. “Look how it purifies!”

  “Oh, Stonefather,” I gasped. “W-Why? Why is this happening…?”

  Amelie stared down at the flaming corpse in her arms, the scent of charred meat rising between us. Her expression remained serene, but her shoulders trembled.

  “I had to, you see,” she said. “She told me it was right. That it was mercy.”

  Stray tears pushed at the corner of my vision, breaking free of their captivity to trail undisturbed down the sides of my face.

  “Please…” I said. “No more. That… That wasn’t mercy. That was murder. You know it… I know you know it.”

  “I… I…”

  “Don’t you see?” I said, my voice cracking. “This isn’t you, Amelie… You’re stern, and stubborn, and willful, and solemn, but most of all… kind. That’s who you are. Not this… this… thing.”

  The flames in her arms dimmed, flickering at the words. Her hand rose slowly, reaching toward the smoldering corpse. Her mouth opened, and a sob escaped.

  “No,” she whispered. “No, no, no… What have I done?”

  At once, she dropped the body, its blackened form hitting the ground with a muted thud. And then, her knees buckled, and she fell, cradling air.

  I rushed to her side.

  “Amelie…” I said, grasping her shoulders.

  Her eyes, once hollow, now flickered with painful recognition. She stared down at her scorched hands, trembling. “I… I… killed her,” she sobbed. “I killed a child.”

  Behind us, the Mistmother howled. Whether a cry of victory or rage, I could not say. It echoed through the trees, a bone-deep vibration that set the mist itself to shivering. I turned, expecting some rush of limbs, of vengeance given form… but she remained still.

  Cliff swore, forehead slick with sweat. “We have to leave… while she yet hesitates…”

  Amelie did not move.

  I turned back to her. She was still on her knees, face buried in her hands. Her breath came in choked bursts, each more fragile than the last.

  “Amelie…” I said, feeling my heart break in my chest.

  “I… I felt her,” she sobbed, her voice raw. “The Mistmother. She was… She was in my thoughts…”

  “I know,” I said, willing my hands to stop shaking. “She did the same to me.”

  With gentle movements, I attempted to guide Amelie to her feet. She responded to my touch with resignation, leaning heavily against me, her arms wrapping themselves about my neck.

  The Mistmother let slip another sound, a groaning moan that shook the canopy.

  “She’s waking up proper now,” Cliff muttered.

  “Can you walk, Amelie?” I asked. She shook her head, and pushed her face into my shoulder.

  Ahh, Stonefather damn it all…

  I took a deep breath, and attempted to suck in some Astra from the trees around me.

  My sigil remained dormant.

  “Here,” Cliff said, hobbling over to take some of Amelie’s weight. “Allow me.”

  And so, with Amelie between us, we began a slow and meandering walk… though to call it a walk at all was perhaps too generous. It was more akin to a stumbling trot, summoned forth with what little strength remained to us. Past shattered bridges, blackened roots and the corpses of dead men, the fog lapping at our feet with every step.

  We would not stop. Not until Fogveil was behind us. Not until the Mistmother’s song was only an echo.

  Not until we remembered what it meant to be free.

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