The young men exited the eastern gate of the nome at dawn, the luminescence of Yaesu casting its ailing purple light across the plain. Six of the men hauled the crucifix on their shoulders, laughing and kicking dust at each other as they went. A seventh man comedically balanced on the cross, tip-toeing its length with outstretched arms. “Who are we?” he shouted down to his comrades. “Quake killers!” they bellowed back with adolescent enthusiasm. These junior theurges were not celebrities or heroes—not one was a housemen of Menceta or a poet of the Guild. They were a rural militia, refugees from a dubious parish to boot. As such, no crowd formed at the city gate to cheer their departure. They were followed only by three of the Averers Penitent, who acted as the custodians of the nome during the Dark Months. The Averers were a somber lot, or perhaps the long masks they wore only made them appear that way.
“Eleven battles!” the man on the cross hollered. “Zero defeats!” his friends responded. “And who is the greatest among you?” the man demanded, jumping forth and back on the cross. “Anyone but Vunc!” they laughed in jest. “Come on, you of little faith,” Vunc shouted, slapping his belly and rump as he thrusted against the air. “Who is the best? Who is going to be five meters tall?” His comrades began shaking the cross and grabbing at his ankles when he teetered near. “Oh, fine. It is you, saucy boy!” they cheered. “Let it be known! Honesty is the hearth of civilization,” said Vunc, beginning to quote the Saintly Scriptures—this he did often, particularly when performing his theurgy. “Sympathy from honesty. Duty from sympathy.” He pulled his almanac from the band of his loincloth and waved the booklet in the air. Across its fan-folded pages was written his allotted corvée for the current Dark Month. From the start, Vunc had found the assigned responsibility underwhelming—toiling in the field, creating battens for houses. The state did not ask enough of its people. Vunc pivoted on the cross and waved the almanac at the following Averers, calling out, “From now on, the House of Months can save its ink! My corvée cannot be documented…A shame though, what lovely calligraphy!” At this juncture, he did not hesitate to dance with disrespect. Deeds spoke louder than words.
By morning’s end, the party reached the crucifixion point several kilometers east of the nome. The nomarch’s augurs had forecasted the next quake would approach from the east by the end of the day. Each quake was preceded by an accumulation of the black tendril-like clouds of the Soot-Sky, upon which the augurs based their prognostications. Vunc dismounted the cross with a leap and gazed up at those obsidian tentacles high above, their undulations contrasting the unmarked flatness of the open plain. Three of the young men began to dig the hole into which the crucifix would be implanted. The parched ground was unyielding, and so they toiled with magical means. Vunc’s other comrades and the three Averers joined around him in a semicircle. Vunc held out his almanac to the senior Averer. The robed figure accepted the booklet with a massive hand, his face hidden behind his mask. “You do not have to do this, my son,” he said. Vunc smiled, replying, “I know, father. But I want to. Oh, how I want to.” If his courage was feigned, he was a convincing actor. One of the young men chimed in, “I knew you would never back out, but please let us fight with you. There is no dishonor in numbers.” Vunc gave the friend a playful slap on the cheek, declaring, “In glory, I am most selfish! Besides, you are too polite for this taunting business. Commiseration is our power, thus I will be most emboldened knowing how you will be heckled back at the city gates, and how no woman will have you!” He looked over his shoulder at the three diggers. “Deeper, my friends! The winds will be very strong, and I must be five meters tall!”
Seeing that he was committed to the task, the three Averers produced from the depths of their robes small gourds filled with beast blood. Vunc removed his descriptive amulet, the only thing he wore beyond his loincloth. As the diggers toiled, the Averers and Vunc’s remaining friends dipped their fingers into the gourds and began to daub the thick sticky blood upon his body. The Averers covered his chest and back with orthodox prayers, whispering as they penned the hieratic script which Vunc could not read. In contrast, Vunc’s rural friends adorned his arms and legs with the flowing designs of their native parish. Vunc nodded to himself as he was marked, quoting scripture. “And Esakh smiled. And Dyrjisq smiled. And Yaesu smiled.” When the painting was finished, Vunc reached his hands into the gourds and withdrew fistfuls of blood. He then knelt and, clasping it with hands dripping red, held his amulet an inch from his brow. “And Yaesu. And Yaesu.” The Averers held their palms over the young man’s head.
When the hole was excavated, the diggers implanted the crucifix and sealed the earth at its base with their magic. Vunc donned his amulet, rose to his feet, and looked up at the east-facing scaffold with desire. “It’s been agreed,” one of Vunc’s friends declared, “that I shall have the honor of bringing you food each day.” Before Vunc could reply, another friend snapped, “Conniving ass, no such thing was agreed! I should be our boy’s caretaker.” Immediately, all the young men were clamoring for the honor. Vunc stretched as they bickered, reaching for the sky, then for his toes. When the argument failed to dim, he shouted over the assembly, “Friends, why do you insult me? A needy body means a weak soul. My mana is my food!” One of his comrades spluttered in disbelief, crying, “Be reasonable. The quake could last days!” Vunc shook his head. “A sponge of sedge-milk, you stubborn bastard!” the friend pleaded. The others agreed. Vunc shook his head more vigorously until he was tossing about like a beast. “Food is for atheocrats!” he pronounced. He then turned to the Averers. “Enough dilly-dallying. Take me up, fathers!”
Without a word, the Averers took Vunc by the arms and levitated up to the cross. They positioned him, tying his hands to the arms of the crucifix with rope, his feet resting on a tiny crosspiece. “Above the ground, below the sky!” Vunc quoted elatedly. His friends called up to him, pleading, “If you are too pure for food, then let’s agree on a safety signal! What magic will you perform to let us know if the going gets too tough?” Vunc spat on them. “A safety signal! More insulting than your sponge of sedge-milk! Averers, re-educate this lot!” His friends gathered at the base of the cross, reaching up to him. Some cried, hiding their tears. “Please,” they begged. “Please.” Vunc was not having it. He kept spitting on them, aiming for their heads. His relationship with them was special—a playful father, an older brother, a youth leading the younger. Societies in crisis owed much to such young men and their dim-witted bravery. When Vunc could not overcome his comrades’ concern with humor, he declared over their din, “If I cannot break the quake, then death I want, friends! We need victors or martyrs, not mediocrity! And whoever dares defy me and wanders upon this plain during my vigil will face my wrath! Now, away with you!”
Upon hearing his words, one of the floating Averers reached into his robes and retrieved a small, glittering tablet. It was an Averer sugar—a mana-infused foodstuff produced in the distant capital. The masked figure held the sugar to Vunc’s lips. “This will help you,” he whispered. Vunc frowned at the elder. “Why tempt me with weakness, father?” The Averer kept his hand extended. “…Please eat, my son.” Vunc chewed the hard candy impatiently, hurting his teeth. Its magic was undeniable. “Thank you for fastening me, fathers,” Vunc said. “Now take these kiddies back home.” The Averers ceased their levitation and returned to the ground. The three figures then turned west and began the trek back, prompting the others to follow. The six men in loincloths hesitated, some dragging their feet, others incapable of turning away from their crucified leader. “Away with you!” Vunc shouted again. His older comrades honored his wish and began to walk away, confident in his abilities. The youngest member of the group fell to his knees and cried openly. “Only a few days,” Vunc offered to comfort him. “Keep both temple and tavern warm for me. For now, away with you!” The senior members doubled back and dragged their crying comrade by the arms. Soon they all had passed west beyond Vunc’s view. “Away, greedy thunder-stealers!” he bellowed over his shoulder a final time.
Anon Vunc was alone. The eastern plain was silent, void of artifact and life. There were no statues beyond—no constructs either manmade or unearthed. No settlers remained, nor herds floated above. Nothing grew, save for the tiniest stalks of black sedge, clenched up like dead spiders’ legs. The flat plain unfolded as far as the eye could see, but, in these Dark Months, that was not far. The luminescence from the west was wounded, now lighting only half its normal length, and less powerfully. Even now, as midday had passed, the remaining purple light was beginning to recede westward, dragging the horizon in silence. Beyond was blackness, above and below; one darkness obscuring perhaps mountains, perhaps canyons, perhaps cosmos. An all-pervasive dark, held at bay. The plain was like the floor of a twilit ocean—too much so, as the undulating tendrils of the Soot-Sky joined into churning waves overhead. Vunc began tapping into himself. He smiled but said little in those last hours of daylight, too busy thinking, too busy feeling. He reached deep inside for his power—his hottest memories, his deepest hopes, all his love, the fury and the passion. He did not waste his magic forming mail about his body, or chitinous plates; he simply chose his words. He wouldn’t be a barricade against the coming quake, but a decoy for it. He would be a beacon too bright to ignore, taunting the stormy predator—that cruel mistake of cosmos, approaching. Any hardship bound for the nome would be his. “There’s a big heart. Big heart, now.” Then the wavering oasis of light retreated behind him entirely as the day ended. Ahead was darkness only. His smile faded. And the winds began to blow.
The breeze was cold against Vunc’s body. It came from the sky, blowing on his head and naked chest, gooseflesh running down his arms and legs. It was a dirty wind, infected with formless feelings that clamored against the gates of one’s soul. Vunc snorted at the foreign smells that assailed his nostrils. Alone in that noisome blackness, he cohered his identity in the quoting of scripture. “The heavens are loveless. The underground is restless.” Dust flecked his teeth and coated his tongue; indescribable tastes, like the blood of ancient battlefields. “We exist above the ground, and below the sky. We are the people of the world.” Dirt stung his eyes, so he closed them—the same darkness. He thought of the bravery of his tribe: the peasants’ piety, the Averers’ discipline. He felt the warmth of the cult center, and the great call to service. “We make ourselves in this moment, for there is no past, and no future. Without mind, life has no meaning.” The night was cold, extracting shivers and shortness of breath. “Heal and build. Be kind and strong.” The winds intensified into a terrible whirring—the sustained exhaust of a broken sky. The hateful tempest roared across the plain, shearing a wall of dust toward the cross.
“Do not fraternize with uncertain people. Do not dither in doing, or be errant in feeling.” The windstorm parched his mouth and nose, dust choking any speck of moisture upon his body. His skin chapped, his lips cracking with beads of blood as he spoke. Stone flakes were driven like missiles across the plain, raking his ribs and thighs, ripping strips of flesh from his cheeks and brow. “Do not hate! Do not be a god!” Vunc could not shout over the blistering gale, only into it. But the storm was not his only adversary. Quakes were forces of insanity, which bent and broke reality. At their full strength, they ignored the spaces between planes, and thus caused spheres to conjoin. So it was that wolves from another world—already crazed, already diseased—bounded up from the darkness, baying at the base of the cross. The count of their limbs and eyes, or the color of their hides, could not be discerned. They snarled in the darkness, a pack of marooned fangs and confused killer instinct. “No suns, no moons! Only us, chosen echo!” One of the alien hounds leapt high upon the scaffold and bit off the front of Vunc’s foot. He clenched his eyes as tightly as he could. Thoughts of the nomes and their high walls, their defenders with brave faces. Thoughts of every township and parish, and the ruins they were built above. Pain connected him, to his ancestors, to their struggle. And, against his holdfast, the power of the quake raged unremitting, like a bombardment of atomized souls. Vunc felt feelings that were not his own, buffeted with waves of pure, disembodied emotion. “Hold my heart. Hold, my heart!” When he opened his eyes, they were shining. In the darkness, he could just make out the Soot-Sky sagging low, like a pregnant belly reaching for the earth. The ebon clouds bent at such churning, tortured angles, it was incredible they did not snap. They had spread far overhead, choking any light. There was now no differentiation between night and day, and Vunc did not know how long it had been.
Unable to weather the storm, the hounds had fled, but were replaced by a flock of alien birds. They landed on Vunc’s arms with razor talons and leathery wings. Cawing cruelly, they pecked at his face and shoulders, even as the storm increasingly perforated his body with the shrapnel of the earth. A stone shard pierced his side, embedding in his ribs. One of the birds tore off an ear. Vunc’s own blood overran the markings upon his skin. He shook and thundered on the cross, and—to his shock—pulled his arms free from the ropes. He realized that the Averers had bound him loosely. They did not consign him to the martyrdom to which he consigned himself; he could run away! Instead, he only reached back and wrapped his arms around the crucifix. He did not concede the field, but escalated the battle. He reached deep within himself, beneath his memorization of the Saintly Scriptures, down into the sublevels of mind, and—like cracking open an ancient vault of forbidden weaponry—began to speak historical words from the Days-behind-the-sun. “Keep a distance, for I call all light!” he screamed, his eyes burning like red coals. “I have touched Fires!” He did not swat at the birds. Rather, as they ate of his flesh, now infused with elder magics, their timid bellies fouled and they collapsed dead, poisoned with power.
The quake worsened; it was a cauldron of fever and rapture, shredded elation, slivered despair—one gaping violation of soul, scouring the land. Vunc was covered in a cast of cracked earth, his countless wounds choked with dust. His spirit was injured like his body: bruised, confused by pain, stained by the invader. He cauterized these wounds with ancient words. “I have seen the Witch Moon! I can see the Moon Class!” And he could. Even now, he could see the mythic thing, so amalgamated with power it had to be carted around. Thoughts and visions of such profundity were unhealthy, they frayed the mortal soul; but Vunc found refuge against the quake in such immensity, like plunging a poisoned limb into boiling water. “I have studied Denj!” Honor cults with gem-encrusted skulls. Living abstractions, nightmares too beautiful, dancing with bladed fans. Nation of artistic mastery, conspiracy, and war. “I HAVE STUDIED VENSK!” Trapezoidal temples of flesh. Gridiron gore. Red clouds, stinking of rotten meat. Pyramids. “I have seen the Winged Caste take flight!” An empire turned into a hive. Eggs replacing cradles. Swarms replacing armies. Scale alone, beckoning the callow spine to curl.
Vunc’s eyes were white-hot metals. Even if the pain of present was beyond measure, the past held more. Hells had come before, survived by his ancestors. Oh, to feel those memories, to extend his roots, and draw up those ancient waters—the lightning blood of generations, fueling his soul in total war. Vunc did not use his magic to heal the wounds of his body, or shelter his senses, which had grown so taxed that they splintered and forked into new chimeras of sensation. Indeed, he now embraced the pain, for feeling begat feeling. The winds worsened; a giant knife, sharpening on his body. Deep inside, he could see his friends’ faces. Winds so loud, no conscious thing could stand to listen. At the center, their smiles! Vunc extended his untied hands along the arms of the crucifix, hoisting himself upright—a tattered sail of flesh, billowing on the cross. “The Polycanon is within me. Do you dare!?”
As the quake climaxed, the Soot-Sky became impossible. Atop the infinite din of the gale came a new sound, an awesome whooshing, like a great volume of water passing overhead. What tore through the blackness was not lightning, but some demonic relative of lightning—seething, crackling crystalline lattices that snaked in all directions, at all speeds. And, among the sharp-angled clouds, could now be seen shapes too real, glowing shapes of men and monsters. High above, they clashed, as if there were a war in the sky, some celestial rape betwixt clouds and cosmos. Such sights had never been reported before, and Vunc could not trust his mutilated senses. Nor could he continue his quotations, neither of orthodoxy or profane myth. His overwrought soul could not be composed. All he could do was cast forth ejaculations of his being, every word simultaneously a rejection, a retreat, a dam. “I’ll never change! No soul!” The figures of light in the sky singularly extracted his attention. In the eye of the storm, above the bedlam, they tantalized. Vunc could not separate the inside from the outside; perhaps this new derangement of the storm was his contribution. But, if he was not mad, what truth was he seeing? Of what new learning was this suffering making him a pioneer?
Then, across the benighted plain, new aliens invaded: a plague of flies, buzzing, biting. The insects swarmed over his body, riddling his skin. They died as they partook of his enchanted blood, but were replaced by thousands more. The swarm pushed aside the carcasses of their kin as they tunnelled deeper into every wound. Vunc did not lower his gaze. “Your magic is weak!” The pests overran his face, eating the meat of his lips and the glowing flesh of his eyes, immolating with each tiny bite. About it all, the quake worsened—the winds hurling heavy rocks that pulverized bone; every sound imaginable clanging at once. Vunc’s mortal body was long dead; his overloaded soul puppeteered the husk, pure magic extruding the sanctity of his form. His blood had become a lava, which burned the earth itself. His limbs had become branches, ensnared about the cross. His teeth had become oversized fangs, clenched in insanity. Clutches of flies, living and dead, bearded his empty eye sockets. “You can’t eat me! YOU CAN’T EAT ME!”
The quake procured not only endless pain. It stretched his soul’s capacity to hurt, dislocating every joint in the pulling. Colossal aberration, this corruption of reality even evil would decry. No destiny could lurk in such miscalibration. There could be no meaning to knowing so much pain. Vunc screamed out the foulest obscenities to clear a speck of mind for his own thoughts. There was little left. The yurt of his childhood. His mother’s singing. His senses had darkened, his vision robbed, his other faculties hammered into spiral deadends. Where they failed, his soul filled the gap and extrapolated against its own will. He swore the lights in the sky reached a blinding intensity. He could describe the scene in impossible detail: A cyclone of incandescent forms, the size of antiquity, with the barding of a secret order. Riders of the storm, bitterly bending as the broken sky reached for the earth. Foreign fingers were violently severed, plummeting from the sky in crystalline slabs. Vunc felt the falling mountains shatter the crust of the planet, unleashing the Netherworld below. Monstrous epochs, calendars of excess and atrocity, peaks never reached again—history itself rising from the depths, called from magma to feel. Nothing withstood in Vunc. Not a word or a memory. Only failure overwhelming, attested by his perverted form. He shrunk as all things expanded. The dragon of universe splaying its wings—the left wing of past, the right wing of future. The pain of a god. The death of a mind. The pinhead of present consumed. No self. Just another monster. Full of aliens.
“YAESU!”
“YAAEESUU—“
.
The quake had lasted three days. When it broke, the luminesence of the saint radiated anew across the plain, upon which the storm had left surprisingly little trace of its devastation. In the pink glow of that first new dawn, the three Averers left the eastern gate of the nome. Save for the fierce sandstorm at their walls, the city’s people had been untouched by the quake. For this reason, it was decided the comrades of the crucified man best remain behind the city gates until the site underwent the Averers’ inspection. The three robed figures made the trek through the early morning, before any citizens of the nome began their corvée. When they arrived, they looked up at the cross in silence. Little of the man’s body remained, and what did had changed greatly. It did not hang on the cross, but lifted itself above the scaffold, frozen in death. The legs had fused into an atrophied amber stump, inseparable from the weathered crucifix. The arms and torso were a blasted tree of blackened bone. The head was an overgrown casque of enamel, unmistakably looking upward. A crack ran from a riven brow down the neck, the canyon filled with rows of clenched, sandblasted teeth. The senior Averer levitated up to the body. Unceremoniously, he explored what remained of the chest, splintering the bark with his magic. Not without effort, he extracted the young man’s descriptive amulet, which had fused into the ribcage. He lowered to the ground; his fellows gathered with interest. They were keen to know the true source of the man’s strength: Was he a martyr or a witch? The sandstorm had scoured the hieratic runes from the amulet’s cylindrical body. Stomaching the impiety, they broke the case and withdrew the tiny scroll of paper which contained the man’s amuletic decree—one’s distillation of their being into a single sentence. With anticipation, they looked at the scrap of paper the young man had written upon, and read the saintly words: I stare down stars. The Averers were a somber lot, or perhaps the long masks they wore only made them appear that way.