Beyond the Twilight Veil: a flash fiction anthology

The Titan in the Storm

Prompt – Drip

A furious wind gusted and raged and a rain the likes of which I'd never seen pelted down on me like the heavens themselves had opened up in an attempt to drown me. Water soaked through my boots as I trudged through the sodden earth of this nameless moorland, untouched by man for gods knew how long. There had been civilization here once, long ago. Segments of crumbling ruins, overgrown by ivy and vines creeping up through the cracks between the bricks dotted the landscape, flashes of battles and burning buildings filled my mind, imagining all the ways this kingdom could have fallen. Watery, earthen sludge flowed down the hills, prompted by the rain, unearthing fragments of half buried skeletons, skulls and rib cages protruded from the softened ground. Lost in my thoughts, I didn't notice the hand sticking out of the ground until I was planted face down in the mud and looked back to investigate what had tripped me. The hand reached up, as if attempting to claw its way to the surface. Whoever it was in life must have been important. A silver ring sat on its index finger, gilded with gold and jewels. It was strange to think of a nobleman living here in ages long past. My home was a simple one, a town of farmers and weavers, not kings. Many had passed this way before me, though none took any of the treasures of the corpses buried here. None of them mattered, not when compared to the ichor. The greatest treasure my people would ever know lay just up this ridge.

I was still far off when it came into view. The remains were colossal, its obsidian skull leering at me from a mile off. As I slowly slogged closer, I began to see its form clearly, hundreds of pockmarks and scars lined the fossilised body, where countless others before me had come to claim a drop of its golden blood. Little remained of its original form, just a head, an arm and a desiccated torso, the rest swallowed by the earth, or maybe washed away in the rain. I drew my knife and prepared my bottle, donning my thick leather gloves. We were not to touch the ichor. Master Brannick had always made that clear. If a dead god's blood touched the skin of a mortal...

I could not bear the thought. I had heard the stories. Men driven mad from its touch, faced with the nigh-infinite lifetime of a celestial being. The day was nearly done when I reached the divine corpse. It stretched out across the horizon, until it was all I could see in any direction, except behind. Something almost compelled me to turn back. No. This had to be done. Every ninety years, a harvester was sent to the corpse. No-one knew what was done with it, except for the Circle. They said it helped us thrive. Approaching the giant fossil, I plunged my knife in, taking some force to penetrate its thick, age-worn skin. Careful not letting the blood touch me, I darted back as the viscous, golden liquid began to slowly drip, one by one at first, then pour onto the ground, scorching the grass. The ichor shimmered with a rainbow light, like oil spilled on water. I held the bottle up to the open wound, watching the ichor drip into the glass. Something about it made me want to reach out and touch it. Brannick said that would happen too. Not all had the strength to resist the urge. I hoped I did. The bottle filled up, and I pulled it away, putting the stopper back in. The ichor kept dripping. Yanking off one of my gloves, I held my hand just away from the wound, hovering, so close to touching. I could feel its warmth on my palm. It was comforting, in a way. Pointing one finger out, I held it under the dripping ichor, at last, giving in. One drop, that was all it took to wrench my out of my body, into a swirling maelstrom of sound and colour, before everything went black. Then, stars winked into existence, one at first, then, more. Some of them began to move, take shape, forming arms, legs, a head. The outline of a man. It reached out a hand towards me, pointing a single finger forward. The shape was somehow simultaneously impossibly large, looming over me, yet also stood of a height to me, and when I reached out with my own finger in response, they touched. Images flashed through my mind, dust, and rock churning together, forming a vast plane, a tiny orb in the grand scheme of the universe, but infinitely large to the scuttling specks that emerged upon it. I stood among them, watching them build, houses, walls, castles. When I looked up into the sky I saw it, reaching out with a guiding hand as the world around me grew. I stood at the centre of a boundless kingdom now. Then lighting flashed in the sky, a storm began to rage, and in an instant it was under siege. Towers burned, walls crumbled, and a legion of masked obsidian warriors marched through the streets, slaughtering all in their path. They breached the central citadel, and, in its deepest chamber, found a beating, golden heart. One of the warriors, unmasked but cloaked, took the heart, and plunged into it a long black dagger, gold blood gushing out, and the citadel collapsed around them. In its place was a corpse, lying alone, the storm still raging around it. The vision ceased. I closed my eyes, and they never opened again.