Arc 9: Chapter 13: One Who Bares Fangs At God |
The hag fled beneath the surface of her foul lake of corpse slime and poisoned well-water, and I chased her into it. I plunged beneath the surface, claws reaching, and—
Found myself back in the cavern and the ruins of the Well. I stood on one of the islands in the middle of the lake. There was no sign of Narahn, and everything had become still and quiet again. The surrounding township had an odd quality. Everything looked off, and I realized quickly that it was because everything had inverted from my memory of the place.
A reflection. This was the realm beneath the Well. A presence watched me, and I knew I was not alone.
I’d lost my ghost-shape, so I stood unclad in that mirror-space in my true form. My wings and tail were out, and both flexed in agitation as I inspected my surroundings. I hadn’t willed myself to become corporeal and had felt no power forcing me to, which told me that this was an ethereal realm, so my spirit was as tangible here as any assumed flesh in the mortal world.
“I know you’re here,” I said into that silence. My voice echoed back to me, so it sounded as though the Well mocked me in my own words. It was a gauche trick, and I waited for it to fade before speaking again. “I have no patience for this theater.”
I did not need to wait long. When the Old Woman in the Well appeared, it was without ceremony or pomp. She simply crawled out of the water like some putrid mermaid, emerging from the lake with a quiet splash and crawling onto the island on all fours before unfolding to her true height.
She was taller than any human, and though she stood bent and crooked like an ancient crone, it was only a superficial resemblance. There wasn’t anything frail about the hulking shape of her torso, or the trollish arms so long she could knuckle along the ground like an ape. Her garments were ragged and shapeless, her flesh ranged through the colors of an infected bruise, and her white hair grew long enough to make a cloak and trail behind her. She dripped as she stepped forward to greet me.
“Well, well!” The hag leaned forward and sniffed, her slit nostrils flaring. “If it isn’t the infamous Lady Wurmwing, come down from on high to grace this old beggar with her presence. I had wondered who was hiding behind that pup.”
Acrid blood dripped from the wound Narahn had dealt her. Whenever she breathed, the chill air in the ruins moved in response, like I stood inside the windpipe of the witch’s own lungs. Though the decaying bodies of the other version of this place were missing, I did see bones scattered about the ruins. Enough to belong to thousands of victims, centuries worth of murder.
The hag threw her head back and let out a dry, breathless laugh. “You were smart to bring a warded human to face me, little demon, but now you’re in my place of power, with no thralls to shield you. What makes you think this will go your way?”
In answer, I spread my hands and wings out to show all my sharp edges. My wings sported large, hooked claws at the main joints, shaped and articulated like a hawk’s talons. Each ridge connecting the membranes also ended in sharp protrusions, including larger claws at the outermost tips. Propelled by fiendish muscle, they were strong enough to punch through armor. My tail-serpent hissed in threat as it poised to strike, venom dripping from its fangs, and the nails on my fingers were iron-hard and sharp enough to gouge flesh with ease.
In a cold voice I said, “I am a veteran of the siege on the Silver City. If you think my only weapons are a pretty face and illusions, then you are in for a shock.”
“Indeed,” the Old Woman in the Well said as she studied me with what seemed like approval. She had no eyes, just scorched layers of flesh where they should have been, and her small mouth evoked a sickly, sucking fish. “I can see Heaven burning behind your eyes, little stain. If only I could have witnessed it myself… Karvessa underestimated you, that’s for certain.”
I’d not forgotten the gorgon’s words, even though I’d mostly been lost to madness while hearing them. “She thought I would help you with your plot against the Exalted.”
The hag turned and spat onto the island’s surface. The gray mucus that landed on the temple’s floor wriggled a moment, then grew many small legs and skittered into the water. “Never patient, that one. Did you kill her?”
“Thoroughly,” I said. “You might be able to revive her, if you can gather all the pieces.”
The hag let out a bark of laughter. “Feral hussy. Do you know who I am?”
I’d gathered stray facts and stories across my ten years in the city, and made some educated guesses. “You are Zebulga. The priests of Aghar warred with you in these lands long ago. They bound you beneath the surface of the world, where you could not reach the Plague Stars from which you drew power.” I paused before adding, “You are one of the Old Demons, the ones who defied the God-Tyrant before we Abgrûdai ascended.”
A relic of a past age. A failure.
“And you are Pernicious Shyora,” the Night Hag said. “I expected some great evil, but you’re just an abyssal strumpet.”
I flexed the fingers of my left hand. “Is this the part where we hiss and bark at one another, or shall we skip to the rending?”
The hag spread her arms out wide. “Try it, hellslut. This is my innermost sanctum.”
My wings spreads out in anticipation of violence, making me look bigger. A primal, primitive display, but I operated on instinct then. My tail hissed and spat, the venom dripping from its fangs sizzling on the rock. I could take this old has-been, I felt sure of it. She did not seem so powerful, certainly not enough to challenge the Exalted. His presence had scorched me, while this witch only put my hackles up.
Had Deacon been mistaken? If she’d truly been gorging herself as I’d theorized, then she should be stronger than this. Narahn should not have been able to make her flee so easily.
Something wasn’t adding up. It made me hesitate.
Zebulga let out a strange sound, like a throaty, burbling purr. “Look at you! How precious you are, trying to figure out whether you can take me. You turned out excellently. So many of the others don’t think, they just rage blindly. It takes self-awareness to know how truly hopeless one is, and that’s where you get the rage, the misery. You have it, girl. You practically stink of torment.”
“I have no patience for your mad ramblings.” My wings flexed in vexation. “Neither am I some human to be uneasy at your whims and allusions.”
“Abgrûdai,” Zebulga snarled in disgust. “You win one measly cosmic war, and now you think you own the shop. But it wasn’t even your war, was it? You think you can supplant me here, in this place, but you don’t understand this city, little demon. Rot Voraag is old. It came from before, and will persist until after.”
“Before what?” I asked, betrayed by my own insatiable curiousity. “Before the Exalted? I already know that. I saw relics from the Abyssal City above.”
“You see the tip of the mountain, and you think you know the shape of its root!” Zebulga cackled.
I ignored her goading and began to pace around the outer ring of the platform, the outer claw of one wing all but strafing the water’s surface as I inspected it. Narahn would be on the other side, but as a mortal it would not be as easy for him to reach this place.
“I know you mean to challenge the Exalted,” I said. “You want to bring him down, the Zosite want to raise him up, and everyone else scrambles for his favor. Yet, beneath it all, he is just a man. Were I to get close enough, I would break him as easily as any other.”
As easily as the Dust Prince, as Didikas. Beneath his ochre robes and behind the eldritch moans of his harem, the Yellow King was merely mortal.
“His kind will one day inherit the cosmos,” Zebulga said in a more serious voice.
“They are prey and playthings,” I said dismissively.
“They will conquer us!” Zebulga insisted. “It was the Magi who opened the gates that let you free.”
“As our dupes,” I argued, caught in the debate despite my bloodlust.
“The only things that separate them from we immortals are time and knowledge,” the Old Woman in the Well said. “And they have been allowed to grow unchecked, filling the night with the disquiet of their wretched souls! I can hear the stars, my tormented little sister, and they are ringing.”
“I am no kin of yours.” Bored of this, I pretended to study the reflection of my horned visage in the water even as I tensed to strike.
But Zebulga seemed deep in thought rather than hostile, and she launched a sudden question then, stalling my violence. “Why did the Abgrûdai wage war on the Heavens?”
I scoffed. “That is an idiot’s question.”
“Answer it anyway.”
Though I did not know what game this was, I had to admit that part of me was curious. I decided to play along.
“We waged war on Him because He was weak, and because His decree condemned us to eternal darkness.” I turned to face Zebulga and lifted my chin, spreading my hands and wings so my shadow stretched out across the lake. “He feared us, and was right to!”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Condemned you!” The hag chortled.
“We were born in darkness,” I continued, growing more angry at her mockery. “In darkness and fire! I… We were born suffering, while all other souls were given choice! If my only crime was to defy that old fool’s tyranny, then I wear it proudly!”
“You are quite young,” Zebulga said. Her voice had an almost motherly aspect to it then. “You do not know, do you? You don’t know what you are.”
“We are the children of AZOTH!” My voice was a triumphant cry then, echoing even louder in the ancient ruin than Zebulga’s laughter. Clenching my teeth, I carried on even as pride began to boil through my indignation. “We are the scions of the true God of Creation! The Star King was but a usurper, his Silver City a lie! We proved it!”
“Ah, girl.” Zebulga sighed. “Asteroth fed you a pile of dung, didn’t he? You are no Azothspawn. His children have all fled into the furthest darkness, into the hinterlands of the night or into deep water.”
“Lies,” I hissed. “You deceive as you breathe, witch of the Bile Star.”
“It’s true!” Zebulga crowed. “No god made you, poor little spirit! We did.”
I scoffed. “You toy with me.”
“No!” She insisted earnestly. “Come now, you’re a smart little spawn, you can put two and two together.”
“Speak sense,” I demanded, confused and thrown off balance by this unexpected admission. I did not believe her, had no reason to, but I was so surprised and fascinated that I kept listening.
“My kind were at war long before yours crawled out of the muck, little sister. There were more of us once, and we were strong, so strong. But the Star King and His Onsolain culled and fettered us just as they did to the Court of Song and others who swam through the seas before time. We knew we could not harm Him through sheer might, but we might” — here she giggled at her wordplay — “brew the very pox that would gnaw at His kingdom.”
She paced to the edge of the lake some distance from me, staring into it much as I had moments before. Her lank, dripping hair seemed to form tentacles connecting her to the putrid water. “It happened in places much like this one. Abysm was not merely conjured along with the stars, but cultivated. It was a dumping ground when this present Creation was young, a dreg heap where all that was unwanted got tossed.” She made a tossing motion. “It grew so fat and so heavy that it sank through whole dimensions, like a sea of mercury melting through a planet’s core. I’ve seen that happen, you know. It’s quite a sight.”
“I already know the origins of the Abyss,” I said impatiently. “It was the First God’s grave, the place where the Usurper slew Him.”
“It was where the Bloated Idiot’s remains came to reside,” Zebulga agreed, then shushed me. “I’m getting to my point, don’t you fret. You see, the Star King’s empire was vast, His creation impressive to be sure. With His Onsolain, He fashioned the gears and the pipes of existence, put His vassals to work taming and remolding the Astral Seas, forged galaxies in the Material, wherein all other realms intermingle. They made the Wending Roads by weaving together the unconscious thoughts of mortals and immortals alike, tying them like threads so that all might dream of one another and know they are not alone. These threads became roads through entire realities, the very highways of a cosmic empire.”
She clasped her crooked fingers together, then lowered them and tilted her head in my direction. “But even from the start, the Star King’s realm was threatened. There were Azothspawn and other beings from the time before, remnants of Old Night. My kind were among them. The Lord of the Silver City waged many wars against these enemies with His angels, and much fell back into darkness. This is the origin of the eternal war for Creation, for you see, little demon, there was a time before aught was made, and we who remember it do not enjoy dwelling within a god’s clock. The ticking, you see… it never stops. I can’t get the sound of those wretched gears out of my head.”
She drew her claws down her face, cutting her own leathery flesh and drawing rivulets of green blood. “You were but the latecomers to the darkness, little Abgrûdai. There were gods and monsters before you. I would know, for I am one of them.”
“An amusing fairy tale,” I said. “Does it have a point?”
“Indeed!” The hag shushed me. “As I said, there were many wars in the early days of this cosmos. Whole realities were scoured and left to ruin, and still their graves drift through the churning darkness beyond time. The Star-Made and their shining lord were mighty then, undefeatable! But we daughters of Old Night are patient, and we did not wage open battle like many of the rest. No, we retreated into the deepest places, the most distant edges of the void, the most barren dimensions, where we fashioned our cauldrons in the primordial sludge we found in those wastelands. Much of what we made turned out unrefined, unraveled and stillborn things. That codger owl kept much of the alchemy of creation to Himself, but we were persistent in our labors.”
The bilewitch paced along the edge of the lake, her demeanor almost nostalgic at the memory of these distant nightmares. “It was not until mortals began to breed and proliferate across the scattered spores of the middle heavens, and the sparks of light they carried within themselves began to burn across the planes, that we found the final needed ingredient. It was easy! Those sparks that were allowed to fall between the cracks, those that were cast out for rebellion and sin, those who wandered beyond boundaries they should not have… they fell into our hands.”
Zebulga clenched her gnarled fingers into fists and tilted her head towards me. I had begun to understand where this story was drifting, but found I could not interrupt her, had become entranced by her spell against my better judgement.
“We took these lost motes of light,” she all but whispered. “Each an echo of eternity itself, of will, of thought, of experience, and we mixed them into our black cauldrons in the sunless hinterlands of existence. Even then, there were elder spawn of Old Night and outcast spirits of the Star King’s realm who dwelt with us in Hell, and they mixed their seed and their blood into our brew. So many failures, so many horrors we made, but in the end…”
Her clenched fists relaxed, and she extended a palm towards me. “In the end, we conjured you into being. And oh, sweet child of hate, you have done your parents proud!”
Liar. But I could not say it aloud, was choking on my own indignation.
It could not be true. I had been there when the Gatebreaker came before us, an angel who had willingly abandoned his maker and strode into the deepest depths beneath Hell itself to preach to us. He had told us that we were the inheritors of everything, for we were born within the dreaming corpse of He who had made it, born of His own lingering desire for just revenge.
I was born in Azoth’s own womb. Did that not make me His daughter? Did it not make me a small goddess in my own right?
I could not just be a mortal soul remade by insane crones and malcontents, not just a homunculus bred in abyssal vats to vindicate some primeval grudge.
“Abysm isn’t a place that rewards intelligence.” Zebulga was practically preening, and with a start I realized she’d drawn very close, almost enough to look over my shoulder. “It was hard to coax it out. There were so many duds before we got what we wanted, but it was worth it!”
“Silence,” I ordered.
“You call mortals mere playthings,” Zebulga crooned, “but we molded you from the dregs of their souls!”
I found myself taking an unconscious step back. “Ridiculous.”
“If it is not true, then why do you feel so drawn to them?” The hag stepped closer, forcing me back. “Why do you covet their dreams, want for their warmth? Why did you spend ten years in this place sleeping around like some desperate street cat? Within your mouldering essence, you still remember what you used to be.”
“Shut up.”
But she did not. Instead she stepped forward, gleeful as she taunted me. “We wanted to make sure you knew envy, that you would look out from the darkness and crave the very light that rejected you. There is nothing better to brew hate than to deny love, after all.”
“We took the light for ourselves!”
“Then where is it?” She demanded. “Show me Heaven’s light, little demon. Lift your hand and cast me from this place.”
I hesitated. The hag took another step forward, tilting her head to one side in question. “Can’t do it? Because you’re not an angel, little spawn, and even now this reality rejects you. You belong in the filth, for that is where you were born and from what you were made.”
“I am not like you! I escaped my prison!” I’d lost control of this dialogue utterly, I knew, but I wanted to reject what she said, to convince her and myself that it wasn’t true. I wasn’t just arguing with the hag then, but also with the Urrson, with my mentor, with Urizen and a legion of truth-seeking fools like him.
Arguing with God, though He would never deign to hear the likes of me.
“You are just a maggot!” Zebulga’s laughter scalded me. “Just a mealworm born wriggling in the shit the gods tossed away! You know it in your bones, little tormentsister, in your soul!”
“I have no soul.”
“You are a soul,” Zebulga told me. “A dead and damned soul lost in the darkness, stained so thoroughly the light will never again touch you without burning.”
“I can walk in the light,” I snarled. “I do every day!”
“Oh, dear.” She gave me a look of false sympathy. “Have you convinced yourself that the dead flesh you’ve hidden inside is your true self? Have you forgotten what you really look like?”
“I look as I please.”
“Beneath all of it, you are this!”
Her talons lashed out and grasped me by the chin, dug into my flesh, and jerked my face to the side. I saw into the water again, but this time the reflection was clear rather than murky.
And I saw myself within. Not the comely form of Kaida, which I’d worn this past decade like clothes, not merely a pretty young woman with the superficial appendages of a fiend. The thing in the water was lean and burnt, lacking so much as a strand of hair, with a scalp like cracked and blistered rock and ill-formed bones marring gray flesh like a rampant rash. A crown of twisted horns grew from an overburdened skull, fangs from a mouth that slashed the face ear to pointed ear, and long claws — almost exactly like Zebulga’s talons — sprouted from unnaturally long limbs. The eyes were smoldering wounds in a face wracked with both agony and hate, glaring, haunted, full of a yawning and unquenchable hunger.
She had wings too, that thing in the water, torn and fleshy things like peeled skin, and I watched her cover herself with them in sudden shame. No demon can look at its own reflection and react otherwise. It was instinct, reflex.
The hag’s howl of laughter thundered across the lake, from so close spittle struck me. “Why hide if you are so proud of yourself, little succubus?! I’ll tell you why. It’s because deep down, deep in your rancid, blood-soaked soul, you remember what you used to be and abhor this form. It’s instinct! When the very first Abgrûdai was born, it knew what it was and that it was damned.”
It’s not true, I thought. I make my own fate.
“If it’s not true,” Zebulga said directly into my ear, “then why did you flee from Onsolem to come to this pit?”
I waited for her tongue to catch fire, but nothing happened. She’d said the blessed name of the God-Tyrant’s realm, and it had not burned her.
That was impossible. She was as much demon as I.
She saw my shock and grinned. “I can say it because I am not one of His castoffs! I have nothing to burn, girl, for I ama daughter of Old Night, while you are just a misbegotten orphan.”
Had she been so large before? She towered over me, a behemoth, her face split by a crocodilian grin.
And I knew I’d been a fool. She was mighty. She simply hadn’t needed to announce the fact.
“You accomplished nothing in your war!” Her snarl drowned me in fetid breath. “All existence remains contested. You drove away one god, but now an endless legion of them clamors to take the throne. That war is young yet, but it will last eternities. You did this! You turned Heaven into Hell, brought us back to the bad old days and did your parents proud.”
I’d backed as far as I could without going into the water, and my wings brushed against the viscous slime on its surface. Zebulga leaned down close to me, so near that her putrid breath washed over my face. It was so rancid that even I, who had willingly favored a son of Urr with my kiss, could not abide it. Whispering voices emanated from the hag’s maw, the echoes of her many, many victims, who were trapped still inside her gullet.
That mouth stretched wide, wider, soon becoming a chasm which emanated an unmistakeable pull, one that began to tug at me.
I had come here thinking to match her with my wickedness, yet knew in that moment I had only been lured forth to be devoured. I tried to move, not sure if I meant to flee or fight, but I’d been entirely frozen, caught in the power of the Well’s mistress.
And inside the elder demon’s advancing jaws lay something I knew, could not fail to recognize, for I’d been born of it.
Abyss.
