(alright, here we go)
oh, we don't talk about it
it's better if we don't
talk about it
you never call me out you just
shout maybe i should
swallow my pride
with or without it
i don't believe it
all the things that you said
when you said 'em
did you mean it
i hate to waste time hate
keeping a secret i can't
erase it all now i can't
just leave it
❧ mk.gee, "DNM"
Underground, a roar rippled.
In the lowest antechamber, the Goldsmith stirred a fragrant pot of pear stew with a slotted wooden spoon. They ladled their creation into an earthenware bowl and neatly tapped the excess onto the rim. Their gold-plated hands darted with blade-like precision - practiced efficiency. Tools.
The Goldsmith carried their steaming bowl out of the kitchen, through the corridor, down the hallway, and finally into the library where Xosa lay, crumpled like an old rose.
The Goldsmith set the pear stew near the other uneaten bowls circling their friend and stood back in observation.
"Death," a pause. "You must eat."
Xosa didn't move. He hadn't lifted a finger since Sunkanmi's departure, statuesque in his betrayal.
"You are more mortal than divine now." The Goldsmith perched on a workbench, leather apron curling over their legs. "And your body will begin to consume itself before long."
Stirring, Xosa lifted his head. His black gaze cut a jagged edge.
Still, the Goldsmith persisted. "You will need your strength for when you see her again-"
"What," Xosa spat. "Do you know about consumption?"
"Nothing but what I see before me. You're wasting away for what? Get up."
The handcuff on Xosa's wrist ached like a baby tooth. "How?"
"Tell me something. Anything. One secret and then you're free."
Xosa groaned and clutched his forehead. Could it be so easy?
A vision of Sunkanmi taunted Xosa from the tree he was lashed to, shimmering and defective.
"I love you," it said. "And I love you enough to leave you."
On and on, echoing in his ears.
love you...
LEAVE YOU...
love you...
LEAVE YOU...
Xosa, who had run out of tears half an hour earlier, stared blearily at the false image.
"And I love you, too," he exhaled. As if it could've made her stay. "With all my heart."
A moment suspended in interminable tension. In the distance, the Goldsmith's machines whirred and rattled. Sunkanmi's figment smirked before disappearing.
Unburdened, Xosa tugged his wrist upwards.
But the handcuff held fast. Tight as ever.
"It didn't work."
The Goldsmith looked away, humbled.
"It has to be a secret unknown to anyone else. Compromising information only you know."
"Oh," Xosa froze. "But-"
The pitying glances. The embarrassed bristling. Laqueheia's solemn resignation. The Goldsmith's neverending amusement. How his followers hovered around her, protectively, long before Sunkanmi proved she was his twin flame.
Because they knew.
They all knew before he even had an inkling. It must've been so painfully, glaringly obvious to everyone in a twenty-mile radius. The uncomfortable half-life of affection left strategically unrequited.
But it wasn't one-sided at all, was it?
His feelings were returned, and-
"...Does she know?"
If Xosa could've died, the Goldsmith's silence would've killed him.
"Goldy?"
"The answer to that will not free you from this predicament any faster," they said.
Xosa had half a mind to smash a rock in the Goldsmith's stupid symmetrical face.
"What's the point of immortality if I never gain any wisdom from it?"
The Goldsmith glanced up from their workbench, sucking on a platinum nugget.
"You are old, friend, but you have never been wise."
Truthfully, the Goldsmith never considered what would happen if someone locked the cuff onto an inanimate object. They surmised the tree pipe provided enough living energy to sustain the cuff's magic, even without the benefit of blood. The Goldsmith began to question the very definition of life, seeing as the cuff so readily attached itself to Death's wrist in the first place.
"She's getting away," Xosa bemoaned, chin touching his chest. "And she'll get herself and Zeusah slaughtered in the process."
"I doubt that. She has more common sense than you give her credit."
"She behaves more like a Divinity than a mortal," Xosa scoffed. The confession burned his lips, too little, too late. "More than I ever did, at least."
"What will you do now? Surely that wasn't your only secret."
Suddenly dizzy, Xosa gripped his head again. The wall of reality was too high to climb. "How could she keep this from me?"
"The benefit of admitting she loved you outweighed her duty to say nothing."
"Duty? Duty! Was it her duty to pretend she didn't love me?"
"She's a master tactician in the greatest army the Empire has ever seen." The Goldsmith punched a hole into their gizmo, tossing the scrap into a basket at their feet. "A folk hero renowned for her prowess just as deeply as she's despised for it. What did you expect?"
"I expected honesty! I expected a fair chance to represent myself, the same courtesy I would offer her."
A small bulb of flame ran along the Goldsmith's fingertips. They snapped the spark between their thumb and pointer fingers before tracking the heat along a metal seam.
"Well, that's why she's running free to fight a glorious war and you're shackled to one of my rubber trees like a deflated balloon."
"Not. Helping," Xosa snarled. "She did the same thing with that fool Urfan and here she is, doing it again. She's learned nothing!"
Steam belched from the forge, shrouding them in mist.
"How about you free yourself before you start raving over someone else's intelligence?"
Xosa was at wits' end. "I bear no other secrets! There are no other mysteries within me!"
"Alright, fine," the Goldsmith pat their hacksaw. "Just keep in mind there are other... alternatives."
"I'm not cutting my hand off."
"At least consider-"
"Stop offering! It's not going to happen!"
The Goldsmith glanced dubiously between Xosa's captive wrist and the tree branch holding him fast. The serrated bone saw slithered inside their sleeve once more, utterly disappointed.
"She should've told me," despair welled in Xosa's gut, quickly morphing into rage. "Why didn't she tell me?"
"She did. We were both in the room for that conversation."
"Before! Earlier!"
"Because it's not in her nature?" More steam. "Because it would've changed nothing?"
"I politely, emphatically, disagree."
"Ah. Right. Because you deserved to know. You have an inherent right to that sort of information. The knowledge that someone has chosen to love you."
"It's not like that-"
"She could've died without telling you and she wouldn't have been wrong to do so." The Goldsmith carried on as if he hadn't spoken. "You aren't owed that. She doesn't owe you anything."
"You make it sound so transactional," said Xosa.
"What would you have done differently if she told you before now? Had a deep conversation about your feelings? A sudden enlightenment?"
"The average person would want to discuss-"
"You would've only slowed her down," the flame bulb traveled across the floor and lit the dimming lanterns. "She is not the average person. She stood more to gain by withholding her feelings until this very moment, even without the failsafe. You knowing would only complicate an obscenely simple arrangement. She intuitied an advantage and she took it. It was probably kinder, in her mind, if you both cleanly parted ways after you broke your chains. No mess. No feelings. No fuss."
"And what if you had been able to cut our chain as we'd planned?" Xosa's neck hurt. "She would've just... carried that secret to her grave? Not said a word about it, not once? What if one of us died before we ever made it here? Then what?"
Sighing, the Goldsmith paced over to their bookshelf and thrust their copy of Songs of Ourselves at Xosa's chest.
"She's equal parts brave and foolish for choosing love again. And again. It has been notoriously unkind to her in the past. To both of you. But it hasn't stopped her yet, and I'm not certain it ever will."
"But-" Death couldn't believe it. Not even with the golden proof right in his hands. Xosa wrote it, hell, he lived it, yet he couldn't shake the feeling that he was watching the bittersweet pages unfold for someone else entirely. Powerless in the face of history. A stranger to himself. "But no one in their right mind would choose this."
The Goldsmith's eyes were sad. "Choose what, Xosa?"
"Me!" His roar shook the walls. Xosa caught his breath and hung his head between his knees. "She made her choice and it wasn't me."
"Stop feeling sorry for yourself." Firelight flickered on the Goldsmith's face. "Caring is a choice. A matter of agency. She may host a speck of your spirit, but you did not force her to care for you. She did not haplessly fall into this. Her loving you was no accident. It wasn't dictated by a meddling force of nature. Her eyes were wide open, and she marched right in. She picked you, even if you're too silly to see that right now."
"She must regret it now. Choosing me."
"I met your twin flame only last week," the Goldsmith turned away as if Xosa's ignorance shamed him. "And even I know she doesn't."
❦
Sunkanmi rode out to No Man's Land in a state of serenity. She had achieved nirvana. She had ascended all earthly concerns. The wind blew through her curls. The pale sun battered her skin. Her horse sprinted as if she were lighter than air. Nothing could stop her. She was weightless.
She paid no mind to what she left behind, surging ever forward toward the future.
The past would only hold her back. The past was a blister of love. It hurt her to leave it because Xosa and Urfan and her mother were there, but in the end, it would all wash out and she, too, would join them in the past.
As history. A story. Folklore.
A few days before Urfan left, before he died, he held her hand.
"I lived near the temple as a child," he began, smiling beneath his mustache. "Beautiful structure. Vaulted halls. Marble floors. A place of worship for countless lost souls and open to the public, no less."
Urfan's grasp was warm and dry, and all the affection in the world could be found in that single point of contact. A vein straight to her heart.
"My village was notorious for its vagrant population. And the local fanatics took advantage of this fact. They rounded up the beggars in the square and promised them that if they converted, they would receive food aplenty. Fresh bread. More meat than their pantries could hold. The temple would provide medicine and new huts made out of stone. The priests would teach their children how to read and sew them tunics without holes or patches.
"'But first-,' they said. Because these miracles always come with their own conditions. 'But first, you must pledge your loyalty to the gods above. Become a member of the temple. Praise any god you wish, but you must offer yourself as an adherent to the divines. Make that promise, and we will provide all that, and more.'"
"And all two hundred, save for a few stubborn holdouts, let the fanatics draw the holy tears on their cheeks. Drew the sigils on their doors. Built altars beside their hearths. And they feasted. Oh, how did they feast! Stuffed themselves fat. Learned how to read. Clothed themselves in fine furs and leathers. Healed their broken bones and slept in warm, safe homes. Watched their children learn a language they never dreamt of speaking. And I could not blame them, the peasants." Urfan's gaze grew distant. "I could not feed them either, small as I was. And who's to say they even made good on their promises to follow the temple's directives?"
"But even as a child, it was clear true faith could not grow in starvation. Thirst is not conviction, well reasoned and firm. Need is not trust, healthy and whole. Danger does not inspire confidence or belief. What they're looking for is desperation. The fanatics prayed upon it, daily. And when planted in such soil, it blooms only resentment. It was made to wither."
Urfan leaned into her ear so she could hear him over the howling wind.
Even now, she is still not certain whether Urfan said pray or prey, or if it would've made any difference in the end.
"It cannot thrive."
❦
The Heretic Army was easy enough to find.
Sunkanmi just had to follow the trail of fleeing, terrorized peasants and ride in the opposite direction. Towards the destruction and the horror. All hers. All her own.
After Sunkanmi shackled Xosa to the tree pipe she ran, fleet-footed, to the nearest village. Soaked with sweat, she staggered into the open stables like a woman deranged.
"My mother's estate for a horse!" Sunkanmi nearly screamed.
"Good gods!" A poor stablehand leaped back.
Sunkanmi yanked the coin purse from her utility belt and poured the raw gold into his fist.
"All of this for your fastest mare."
Sunkanmi's new roan, Grits, was saddled and ready within the minute. Slinging one leg over Grits' back, she took off across the river. Sweat burned down her back. She tracked the smoke on the horizon, the trail of wagon wheels, and muddy boot steps. The blood.
"Yah!" Sunkanmi drove Grits hard and the horse proved worthy of her name. Her black mouth hung open, tongue loose. Foam gathered along the horse's lips, single-minded in her pursuit.
Sunkanmi spotted a family of peasants carting their every possession away from the chaos. What was left of their home burned and burned, the wooden skeleton crackling under the heat.
Sunkanmi slowed Grits just long enough to shout: "Loveschild?!"
The parents cowered away, but the children silently pointed back down the road they came, as if seeing Loveschild in person had robbed them of speech.
She poured more gold out of her purse, as if it could replace a childhood, or innocence, or anything, and rode hard down the road. She didn't know if she had hours or minutes until the potentate clashed with Xosa's nephew. Maybe he was already dead, maybe she'd wasted so much time playing house with Xosa that she'd missed her chance.
But the wet, cold vibration in her chest told her there was time. She could stop this.
Finally, finally, the rear of the Heretic formation rose into view, marching steadily toward destruction. The last soldier in line turned at her furious hoof-beats and gasped when he saw her.
"Commander!"
Sunkanmi almost flinched at the word.
"Commander!" The warriors cried out as she passed. "Commander!"
"Could it be?"
"Is it her?"
"She's back?"
"She's back!"
A few warriors dropped to their knees in deference. Others unsheathed their swords in fear. Confusion rippled through the ranks as they debated whether to celebrate or attack.
Their astonishment left a wide-open berth to the potentate's encirclement. Carving through a forest of shields and lancers, Sunkanmi slowed Grits and caught her breath.
"Commander?" One of the older warriors edged forward, uncertain. "Is it really you?"
Startled by the question, Sunkanmi caught her reflection in the burnished brass of a Heretic canon.
Her heart ached at what she saw. She hadn't actually looked at herself in weeks, too preoccupied with her own inner turmoil to spare a glance.
No wonder the Heretics cowered in fear.
She could've been mistaken for one of the Divine.
Her hair and eyes wild and large, quirking upward into playful points. A faint shadow permeated her entire being, reaching beyond her physical frame, quite literally larger than life. Her brown, bare arms were laced with light grey tattoos so intricate no needle could've possibly drawn them. Deathmarks, perhaps. Or maybe just a trick of the eye.
She looked old and new and tragic and glorious.
She looked unholy.
She looked like Death.
"Of course," Sunkanmi turned away from her image, wondering who Xosa saw when he looked at himself. She hadn't even noticed her scars. "Who else could I be?"
"Dayblaze!" The potentate, high upon a dais, bellowed his welcome. "Back from the dead so soon?"
Like a wave, the Heretic warriors quieted and shrank back, knowing better than to interrupt two giants.
"Not for lack of trying," Sunkanmi dismounted Grits with a grunt, mindful of her position. Precarious. "But not even Xosa himself could keep me away."
"Some of our warriors thought you'd deserted at the height of our cause." The potentate's smile tightened. "But I told them a hero of your ilk would never abandon the best army on Samsxal."
"How true and kind of you," she ambled forward as if she'd been gone for a few minutes, not presumed dead for several months. "What have I missed?"
"Well, you're just in time to witness me execute the demon who terrorized the good citizens of the empire."
Eager to show off his prize, the potentate ordered his servants to haul the dias aside.
And then she saw it.
A young man, a child really, lashed to an ancient tree.
Zeusah thrashed violently against his bonds, nearly ripping the trunk from its roots.
Blackened energy leaked from his mouth, nose, eyes, and ears. Xosa.
Pink, heart-shaped freckles glowed on his cheeks. Poallu.
Severance radiated with pleasure on her back. The God-killing sword would find its completion in the body of the Divine. It would all be over soon.
"Lucky for us, you brought the exact sword we needed to end this creature," the potentate descended his throne, bejeweled hand thrust out like an oven mitten. "Our previous attempts have proved... unsuccessful."
Dark red blood coated Zeusah's thick iron chains like velvet and his filthy clothes were shredded, but he appeared generally unharmed. The boy's injuries must've healed faster than their heretic weaponry could handle.
"The might of our empire can't defeat a mere child?" Sunkanmi glanced around, hedging for an opening. "If we are so easily foiled, this war may not be ours to win."
"Your comedic timing is impeccable, Dayblaze," the potentate said it like an insult. "Now if you would please return my sword."
"You mean Urfan's sword?" Sunkanmi edged forward. Slow and steady. "Because Severance belongs to Urfan."
The potentate's lips curled upward. His platinum armor gleamed in the pale sun, spattered with recent grime.
"It was assigned to him. But that artifact always belonged to the empire. Regardless of Commander Starglide's previous ownership. May he rest in peace."
"Urfan won't rest until Severance kills a god."
"Perfect. I will happily fulfill our fallen comrade's last wishes."
"That," Sunkanmi gestured to the heaving boy. "Is a demi-god. His mother is mortal."
The Heretics whispered amongst themselves and the potentate reddened. Even Zeusah stopped struggling long enough to watch the tense exchange.
Because how could Sunkanmi know that?
"What difference does it make?" The potentate hissed. "Even a single drop of divine blood makes him an animal. Worse than! Loveschild has killed scores of our ranks and you wish to grant him mercy?"
"Release the boy," Sunkanmi said. "Or I will have to hurt you."
The potentate laughed, braying like a donkey, but there was fear in his eyes.
"Your time away has made you forget the order of things, Dayblaze! I give the orders around here."
"Let him go," Sunkanmi's fingers twitched at her sides. "Now."
"Give me the sword," the potentate seethed. A dark, damp curl fell onto his baby-smooth forehead.
"Ujji," Voice soft, Sunkanmi raised her hands. She didn't draw her sword. She didn't throw a punch. "Don't make me do this."
The warriors snickered at the name, giddily repeating it for the soldiers in the back who couldn't hear. The potentate sensed he was losing them, that he was seconds away from insurrection. To think the baton of power would slip from his grasp after a decade of clinging it to his chest, all because some miserable, ugly woman had a change of heart in the eleventh hour.
Why couldn't she stay away, stay dead? And how did she survive the assassin he hired? She couldn't have done it alone.
Seconds before seizing his ultimate glory she was going to ruin everything.
"What exactly do you think you can do?" Ujji hissed. "To me?"
Sunkanmi could do a whole lot, actually. Her capability was best measured by what she couldn't do.
She couldn't turn back time or reverse the harm she'd done to people worse off than her. She couldn't beg for forgiveness, or heal the sick, or revive the dead.
Instead, Sunkanmi willed Laqueheia's apology to the forefront of her mind. She concentrated on that singular point of light tucked inside the hole in her head. She imagined the unspeakable, unknowable truth rocketing down her neck, across her shoulder, and into the last knuckle of her pointer finger. There.
Before the potentate could have her arrested, Sunkanmi leaned forward, hands ever so steady.
She tapped Ujji's temple.
B̸̢̦̦̣̙͗̑̉̅̏̍Ö̴̧͙́͒̓̈̓̓̚̚͝Ȏ̴̧̱̝̫͖͕͌̀M̷̞͚̫̟̣̗̠͂̊͒̿̉̅̽̕.
The visions, Laqueheia's forbidden memories, transferred easily.
The potentate's eyes rolled back into his skull, receiving quantities of data too vast for even the most advanced computer. Unwritten history inserted itself into the brain folds of an unprepared mind. Pulsing and throbbing against the bone.
"Argh!" The potentate staggered forward, clutching his forehead. "What evil is this?!"
Immediately, Sunkanmi's head felt lighter on her neck, unburdened by the knowledge. She maneuvered closer to Zeusah, not taking her eyes off Ujji for a second. Laqueheia hadn't fully explained what would happen to the recipient after she shared her gift. It was just as probable that the potentate would spontaneously combust.
"No!" Ujji punched the air, fighting ghosts. "It's not real!"
The warriors surged back, astonished at their leaders raving.
"Your Highness?"
"Get back!" The potentate screamed, their faces suddenly unfamiliar to him. He spun in circles like a children's toy. "Tell me it isn't real, tell me it isn't real."
"What isn't real, Your Highness?"
The warriors didn't understand, they could never understand, but Sunkanmi knew full well what shattered the potentate's composure.
The Future. And everything that awaits.
If Ujji possessed an ounce of imagination, perhaps the truth wouldn't have devastated him so. But without the buffer of curiosity or creativity or a blessing from Laqueheia, he was forced to see it all, exactly as it would happen. His legacy, his power, all meaningless and hollow. He was a germ riding on the back of an ant, convincing himself he tamed a dragon fit to conquer a nation.
He wasn't a hero, or a liberator, or a god.
He was nothing.
Download complete, the potentate froze and stood ramrod straight.
He blinked once, then twice.
Ujji turned to his soldiers, gazing upon their sun-stained, raisin-brown faces. Their loyalty carried them this far, deep into Iron Country, and that same loyalty would launch them off a cliff into a permanent meaningless death if they continued any further.
"Go," he said. "Go home."
Then the High Commander of the Heretic Army, Legion to the Unholy Miseal Empire, broke off into a sprint. His legs kicked so fast they blurred beneath him. Mid-step, he tore his ornate armor off and dashed the golden plates into the earth. His wrist greaves followed shortly after, flying over his shoulder like twin hawks.
Some second-in-command yelled after him. "Your Highness, where are you going?"
"Stop this, sir!" Another cried.
Ujji didn't stop. He kept running. He told himself he would stop running once it all made sense again. He would rest when all the pieces fit together, harmonious and unbroken. He ran from Sunkanmi, and Severance, and his fabled Heretic Army until they were a speck in the fading horizon, until Iron Country was but a passing thought. He ran until his boots, handcrafted with the finest leather, fell apart. He ran across fields and through valleys and over streams. He ran past schools and dancehalls and cemeteries. Past libraries and temples and outposts. Whenever he ran in town, he ran so fast he couldn't see people's faces. Dogs were brown blurs in the road. Birds were flecks of paint on a grey canvas. He ran until the sun set and rose and set again. He ran until all weight left his body until only muscle and sinew and bone remained.
He ran past the temples he destroyed and wondered, briefly, how long before the fanatics he fought so hard to convert would rebuild them to their former glory, where they stood for thousands of years against countless disasters, natural or otherwise.
He ran as if he had no other purpose. Was born to no other act.
He ran and he ran and he ran.
He ran until his vision blurred and the ground tilted up.
He would stop when it all made sense again.
Ujji did not stop running.
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