THE FORSAKEN LAND OF GENèSE

  600

  Vast is the stretch of imagination.

  Pastures promised on the other side of truth.

  Bright-unbroken is a wish for paradise unspoken.

  Tantalise—the ichor of forbidden fruit.

  Never caution the child of your abstract creations.

  For the beast in the corner takes heed to your tales.

  Make abundant a dream of sunlight salvation.

  Or he will rip them apart with your teeth and nails.

  Peace unto thee—the flock that denies acceptation.

  Promise your lover a lifetime of gold.

  Life is a chance and a grand machination.

  Dreams up a dream. Ne’er shall you be consoled.

  ~Excerpt From the Shepherd’s Logbook

  The Forsaken Land of Genèse.

  A land of the end rather than the beginning. Dim and lightless as far as the eye could see. Uninspiring as far as the mind could wander. An atmosphere buried in the sand. Weighted and dull—like a head tethered firmly to the spine, no longer daring to run away with a thought.

  Somehow, still, my head has flown away and left me.

  I wish to share it with you because I know you will understand.

  The giant’s heavy footsteps press the ground. The wheels draw a line not far behind him. And yet, when I look behind ourselves from my perch upon his shoulder, I see no proof of our existence beneath the sky…

  It is cold here.

  You feel it, don’t you?

  Not the biting cold of frostbite. Nor the bitter cold of despair. But the cold of ‘left behind in an empty home.’

  On a quiet afternoon…

  The sunlight and your lonesome.

  Your neighbours are at work. The children played themself away in some world you were never expected to be a part of. So, no one stayed behind to keep you company. Not even your shadow beneath your stride, because there are no candles in the daytime, Solvanel.

  Not even if we’re alone.

  The birds are chirping novel melodies. The leaves—a gentle, deafening sway. Midday through your windowpane is a pattern of fractured rays, and sunlight’s fleeting solace is a multi-coloured kiss upon your eyelids. And slowly, they flutter.

  Awake from an hour-long nap, he pulls away from the window.

  This drooling child—

  Thinking he’d overslept when it had only been five minutes.

  He doesn’t know it yet, but he’d transcribed the pattern of glass onto his cheek.

  There was a woman who called him the world.

  There was a man who carried it on his shoulders.

  And a brother who wanted to leave this world behind.

  If those things were real, then this lonely chill must be a dream.

  Or was it the opposite?

  He’d woken up in a world where he was all alone.

  Smothered by that same chill, the answer becomes unclear. But you, the nameless watcher, who bears a single promise. Surely, you must know the truth.

  Tell me. Have I overslept?

  The Centre of the Universe lies in the middle of the Forsaken Land of Genesis.

  It is surrounded by a sea of corpses—dreams desiccated beyond recognition of their original passion and scale. Each grain is a wish that humanity… a human being left behind.

  Identical grains lay out soft and loose on a continuous plain.

  Endless and Devoid like the expanse above it.

  Except that the perpetual night sky was no longer empty. And neither did it seem endless. For there had been a comet ripping through the atmosphere. And it was rapidly approaching the end of its journey.

  Seven sheep. A shepherd. And a half-tamed wolf.

  In Dunreach village, we loathed the slaughterers of men.

  Beasts of a hundred fangs. Harbingers of a thousand wings. All of which prowled on the other side of a glorious fence barrier that separated us from the darkness.

  I knew these slaughterers had many names.

  But it never occurred to me that some of them knew mine.

  My closest neighbour in Dunreach is a man who lives at the bottom of my grandfather’s hill. He is a farmer by trade—meek, gentle, but quite determined to live by his Raison d'être.

  At dinnertime. [Do you hear that? Who could be shovelling at this hour?]

  [Never takes a break—that Georges.]

  Midnight. [I can’t sleep! What the hell is all that racket?!]

  [Another late night for Georges.]

  And in the morning. [Ah, what a lovely morning! The village is so quiet today, hm?]

  A deep sigh. [He overslept again.]

  This Georges Harrington, with a spade hooked on his belt, who toils through the night, is prone to oversleep. However, the best farmwork is done under the sun. So, despite their differences in being, my grandfather, who laced his boots in the morning and hoisted a broadsword upon his shoulder, waited by his doorstep at dawn.

  Their walking side by side was the start of many days for our village.

  I never worried about my neighbour turning his tool against me, because his hands worked for the village. This, I know now, was not owed to his simplicity, nor the goodness of his heart. But to my grandparents, who prevented idle hands from developing evil thoughts.

  The mercenaries are such name-knowing slaughterers, killing for profit and personal gain. The shades, habitual slaughterers, who kill out of instinct. Then there are protective slaughterers, like Sir Saint and myself, who kill in the name of justice.

  We sinners are irredeemable, and we are many, but the few hours after the lost kingdom have taught me one thing.

  Albane Feroce is not one of us.

  “Once there was a brother and a brother, too.”

  “A brother me. And a brother, you!”

  The oaf carries me on his back while singing a tune.

  “Mama pushed them out, and the daddy turned blue.”

  “A brother—one. And a brother—two!”

  Creaking woodwork dots his verses.

  Saint’s axe led him through a market during his chase, where he found a wagon made for hauling produce. Time had done its due to the wooden frame, but it is still strong enough to bear the weight of a thin flock.

  Albane pulls the wagon single-handedly.

  “Big brother Albus. Little brother -Bane.”

  He maintains a steady pace despite his injuries, but every so often…

  “Little brother bigger…”

  He pants.

  Then, he digs his boots into the sand.

  His inner flame is a molten concoction of charred flesh-meat and liquid bone. A bubbling soup that drives him forth. The veins bulge out of his neck. Albane roars internally, not daring to show me the effort.

  And the wagon moves. “Big brother, big brain!”

  He knows what’s happening to him. How could he not?

  But he’s not quite recovered from his older brother’s betrayal and abandonment.

  This song—a reversion to an even more childlike state. Even a broken mind needs to cope.

  However, it’s latched onto me beyond my expectations.

  When I set out of the abandoned household, I left him and the late wastrel coward bitch to guard the others. The wastrel accompanied me of his own accord, but the oaf knows that brothers can be dishonest, so he views our time apart as punishment.

  Now, he won’t even let my feet touch the ground.

  Sweat was pouring down his brow. An internal immolation for the sake of a brother who might otherwise shiver in the cold.

  I…

  I am no longer comfortable calling him the oaf.

  “Albane,” I begin, my lips having gotten the better of me.

  “Brother?”

  “Have you ever had a dream?”

  “One time,” he panted. “I dreamed where my big brother turned into a lady and his lady name was Alboob.”

  “Alboob?”

  “I know!” He laughed. “He couldn’t use his real name anymore since he turned into a lady. It was so funny then I laughed until I woke up… then I just felt really bad and started crying.”

  “Why did you feel bad?”

  “Because I started thinking about how bad it feels when people laugh at me. So, I went to bed to try having a dream where I was a girl, too. But then I had a new dream about something else.”

  “What would your lady name have been, then?”

  “Albitch.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Ah...

  “Not that kind of dream. I’m talking about your wish.”

  “Whush?” He asks. “What’s that?”

  I point at the comet falling onto the horizon. “You see that thing falling from the sky? A friend of mine told me that it’s a star. When you see a star, you’re supposed to close your eyes and tell it about the one thing you like the most. The brighter the star, the more likely it is to listen to your wishes.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  His response seems final.

  The question drifts unanswered through the cold air of the Forsaken Land.

  As the crook buzzes with second-hand embarrassment, I gaze off to the side. My cheek is pressed to the warmth of his back, thinking how na?ve it was to assume that we were the same.

  Albane and Albus were my father’s peers once. Despite his mental shortcomings, this man was still many years my senior.

  It was childish to expect anyone apart from myself to still be dreaming in a place like this. I don’t know what came over me.

  “I’ll tell you what my wish is.” A voice cuts through the cold. From the wagon, a flame about the same age as the giant.

  She had been quiet since we fled the locusts, always positioning herself at the rear of our procession, as though hoping the darkness might swallow her whole before anyone noticed she was there.

  "I shaped clay in Derelitch," she begins, her voice carrying the texture of someone who has spoken these words in her mind a thousand times but never aloud. "Mostly vessels to keep the bread. Five years past, my hands started to betray me.”

  She holds her palms before her, studying them as though they belong to someone else entirely. “I couldn’t hold my own creations without watching them shatter against the floor. My son—bless his heart—inherited the trade, but not the years of expertise. I wish for steadiness. So that I can go back to doing what I love."

  Without turning, I ask her, “What’s your name?”

  “Argila. Meaning—”

  “One who works with clay,” I finish. There was a similar name in the village. I hope she's still alive. “Thank you for sharing, Argila. I hope your dreams may come true.”

  Another emerges from the half-darkness; a flame I had watched stumble during our endless march, always catching himself against the female prisoner in front.

  "They called me Pèramor in Tarshish. I had a daughter. I…” He struggles with his next words. A cruel reminder of what came and passed. “Still have… a daughter. A fever came and took her mind. My wife and I—we broke down when she didn’t recognise us, and I ran out when the doctor asked me to introduce myself. Couldn’t stand the sight. I wish I told my baby girl that I’m her father. And I wish my wife were still here to remind me who I am.”

  His hand moves to his chest, as though trying to hold something that is no longer there.

  “A loving father,” I tell him—hoping that was any consolation. His name was a combination of the two words. “Thank you for sharing that, Pèramor.”

  "Isley," A third speaks up, younger than his companions but carrying the invisible weight that comes from years of violence. His flame remains perpetually roused, as though expecting a blow that never stops coming. “My father was a blacksmith. Every morning, I wished to be stronger than the hammer. To be the iron that breaks the blacksmith’s fingers.”

  “Thank you for sharing that-”

  “Save it,” the escapee interrupts, sniffling. “I wouldn’t be here if my wish came true.”

  It doesn’t stop the others from sharing, however, as a flame as thin as a needle speaks up. "I come from a long line of handmaids servile to a family of penny-pinching nobles. I scrubbed their clothes starting at the age of three. Washed their clothes at the age of seven. My hands knew how to work before they knew how to write.”

  Her voice carries the exhaustion of a life spent in service to others.

  “Whenever the household needs new help, the master or one of his sons has a night with one of the maids. It’s all one big family at this point: My grandmother’s name was ‘Ancilla’. My mother’s name was ‘Ancilla.’ And if I go back, then I can expect a daughter with the same name.” She laughs into a cough. "If I survive this, then I want a pretty face. Because if I must go back to breaking my body, then I’d rather sell it to the highest bidder.”

  Ancilla. The handmaid. How bleak. “Thank you for sharing, Ancilla. May your dreams come true.”

  “Is that so?” She says in a sultry voice. “Sounds like someone’s planning to buy.”

  “N- no! I simply meant that-”

  The atmosphere shifts.

  ‘Are we under attack? What could these people be doing in a place like this?’

  Unease takes in my chest.

  All of them: Argila, Pèramor, Isley, Ancilla, and the others—their flames are quivering in the wagon bed.

  How a breath may turn irregular without a moment’s notice.

  Hands slapping on knees. Breath escaping the lungs.

  A sight familiar, but so distant.

  Because I thought I left it in Dunreach.

  It has been so long that I’d forgotten what it sounded like.

  So much time has passed that I’ve forgotten what that sound is for.

  But then I remember when a disobedient child managed to find his place at the dinner table by calling the head of the household a dirty name. The entire family cleared out of the room. And he found them coughing, as if struck by a plague.

  Joy breaks my voice as would sorrow. I don’t even get the joke!

  I can’t help myself—I never could!

  The Shepherd’s Logbook states that no two breaths are the same.

  That outside of ailment, corruption, or death, each flames follow a pattern developed in the womb. That pattern is independent of either parent, unchanging till death.

  However, it fails to account for a single occasion.

  When a group of people share in on the same joke, their flames twist and contort; they flatten and stretch; they hop and skip in the exact same way! It’s ridiculous!

  The sound is so foreign to this place and our journey.

  A group of escaped prisoners sentenced to certain doom in a land even the Heavens have left behind, bringing relief to themselves in the form of inappropriate comedy.

  The unfettered cry of a people with nothing left to lose.

  It was a small chuckle, perhaps inaudible to the rest, but the weight on my shoulders loosened tremendously.

  Following the chain, the fifth clears his throat, an older man with a deep, rumbling voice. "Name’s Perte," he offers quietly.

  Meaning ‘Loss’.

  "After years of trying, my wife and I finally managed to put some firewood in the ol’ furnace. The two of us went into the clinic. Two out. That’s including the nurse. Serves us right. There are plenty of kids on the street where I come from. I wish we adopted.”

  “Ahem!” Out of respect for a fellow human being, I clear my throat. “Forgive me, sir. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “I’m so sorry!”

  The others follow suit, offering awkward apologies while averting their gazes.

  But as the sixth is about to speak out, the man snorts. “Hey, Ancilla. What kinda businesswoman are you, anyway? Didn’t you hear that I’m in the looking?”

  The laughter reignites all the way into the next story, where the sixth speaks barely above a whisper. “Bethany…”

  “Bethany?!”

  “Yes, Bethany! My parents thought I’d be a girl, okay?” The flame shrank as he tried his hand at a joke, “And I’m Bettin’ ye can’t guess my wish.”

  He looks around, expecting the laughter to continue.

  And for once, I thank the heavens to be blind.

  The air is left open for the next wish.

  The silence hangs for so long that I start to question if I’ve miscounted the sheep.

  “Oh, me?” Asks the final flame. “Sorry. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

  Ancilla fakes a gasp. “My, my! What a character we have here. We’re asking about your past, sweetie. And your wish.”

  He chuckles embarrassedly. “Oh, my past. My past…”

  I imagine he scratches his head. “Well, it’s not much of a past. I’ll tell you that. I spent most of my life doing nothing, really. Never had a mom to pull my ear or a dad to look up to. Or anyone, for that matter.”

  “I guess you could say that I’ve been alone since the beginning. And I think it’ll be that way when I die, too.”

  Argila scoffs. The clay maker’s contempt is near audible. “Must be nice. Jumping all the way to death with a young and healthy body like yours. Just sounds to me like you don’t want to work.”

  “You’re right,” he answers, without a change of tone. “It is nice.”

  “Hold on, kid!” interjected the widower, Perte. “Before you go talking like a dead man, why don’t you try making some friends?”

  “I have made friends, Perte. More than you could ever imagine.” The wagon creaks as the flame leans back in comfortable defeat. “I’ve made short friends. I’ve made tall friends. I’ve made young friends. I’ve made old friends. Strong friends. Weak friends. You name it.”

  As he speaks, the wheels keep turning in an endless loop. “But you know how it ends, don’t you?”

  “Eh! What the hell are you trying to say, you bastard?”

  “I’m talking about your wife,” he says—targeted. Then to the rest of the group, “Your wives. Your husbands. Your mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and your children.” As he continues, the air grows colder. “They were all happy to die and leave us here to suffer. Why waste our breath feeling sorry for them?”

  “You can start over a thousand times. Make all the friends in the world. Put a ring on their fingers to boot. But they never stick around for long enough, do they?”

  “At least,” the flame scoffs lightly. “Not long enough for me. That’s why I can’t wait for this to be over. To die and have that be the end of it.”

  Were his flame any different from the rest of ours, I would have thought a shade had infiltrated the group. One who feeds on hopelessness and despair. However, I don’t believe it for a second.

  There are people like Wilhelm, who add to life’s cruelty.

  Others, like Sir Saint, who surrender and let life take its course.

  There are fools, like Jonah, who live for an escape.

  And others, like me, who refuse to die until life is changed for everybody.

  This life was many things, cruelty making up the brunt of it, but there isn’t a single human being, dead or alive, who wants to see the end of it. Because deep down, we know that life is all we have. He’s lying.

  “Your name,” I say to him. Not a request.

  “Who’s asking?” He says back. Not a question.

  “Sharing your name is basic etiquette. Furthermore, everyone else has shared personal information about themselves. Their past. Their name. And a wish. Those are the unspoken rules of this discussion.”

  The pretender clicks his tongue. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “I think nothing,” I answer plainly, agreeing with the insinuation. “But if you thought the same, then you would have kept your mouth shut.”

  He sighs. “You sure? With a name like yours, it’s not like you’ll remember mine anyway.”

  “I will.”

  “That so?” The seventh flame fixes his gaze upon the comet. “Johnathan.”

  “Johnathan,” I repeat. The name is set in my memory. “Please keep your mouth closed for the rest of the journey.”

  The others cheer over the sound of his defeat, though I don’t sense a protest in the pretender’s breath.

  It unsettles me. His breath flows too freely within his chest. Untethered by the concepts of shame, defeat, or victory. Aloof. Like a certain liar who stayed behind in the lost kingdom. Except that man was the true pretender. While this man is the wastrel Sir Saint pretended to be.

  “Little Guy!”

  Albane interrupts my thought with an abrupt proclamation.

  “Pardon?”

  “That my wish. Little Guy. It like…” The giant pauses as if formulating an explanation. “Big Guy, do this. Big guy, do that. Big guy ‘lead the charge’ or Big guy ‘scout the head. You know?”

  From his words alone, barely.

  The last time he mentioned this was inside the abandoned home. I wasn’t quite listening to their argument at the time, but from what I knew of Albane and the other mercenaries, I guessed he’d developed some kind of complex about his stature.

  “You don’t like that nickname?”

  “No!” Exclaimed the giant. “Every time I hear ‘Big Guy’. It always ask me do something hard. I don’t wanna check how hard the monster can hit. It hurts!”

  “Those guys were pretty mean to you, huh?”

  “Frickin’ right! And when you come back and sick and injured, they blam you hard on back and say ‘good job’. Like, ‘hellooo!’. Why you hurting me more?”

  “I see-”

  “And next day, they afraid to look you in the eye again like normal! They don’t play with you in sparrings. They tell you carry all of the stuffs. And you never makes new friends because everybody looks at you like you going to eat them!”

  “Calm down, Albane!” Again, I feel goosebumps on my neck.

  “Sometimes I wish I born a monster instead of regular me. ‘Cause when I try to be little guy like you, I feel like I just pretending. But regular me isn’t scary! And regular me don’t want to do scary stuff! Regular me scared! I scared!”

  His core is reacting to the outburst.

  When Albane gets excited, he is a furnace. While the heat is pleasant to me and the rest of our procession, the creatures of the Forsaken Land are desperate to be warmed.

  Deeper in the abyss, various degrees of cold feel our presence and have split off from the horde following the eunuch’s master’s creature.

  “Shh, brother!” I say, covering his mouth. “You’re being too loud!”

  Albane muffles an apology. When I release his lips, his body releases a sigh and a thick puff of smoke. “The dream I had after brother became a girl. I wasn’t Albane or Albitch. I was Little Guy. Friendly. Happy. Little Guy.”

  After listening to his wish, I tighten my wrappings.

  My chest aches with pity and sorrow.

  A few seconds later, he adds, in the same melancholic tone, “I wanted it to last forever. But a hisser bit me on the peener, and I woke up.”

  Ah...

  “Well, I’m sorry that happened to you, brother.”

  “It’s okay," consoles the giant. Then adds, "It’s bigger now.”

  We walked in silence after that, his boots against the ash. The air pressed cold against my skin, stealing warmth with every breath. Nothing moved across the grey expanse apart from us. And Albane’s beating heart was growing louder by the minute.

  BOOM!

  Then I heard it. A second rhythm.

  BOOM!

  Distant, but familiar.

  BOOM! - BOOM! - BOOM!

  I stopped, tilting my head. My chest tightened. I knew that sound.

  "Do you hear that?" I whispered.

  Albane nodded, his eyes wide beneath his wrapped brow.

  We hurried forward, the rhythm growing louder with each step.

  Then we saw them.

  Men made of lustreless steel; armoured fingers wrapped around all manner of unfathomable metallurgy. Weapons crafted for slaughter rather than subsistence. Shields made to parry rather than protect.

  Here in the Forsaken Land of the Gods, the steel men continue their march.

  But this earth does not quiver under their boots.

  Because no longer are they the slaughterers they used to be.

  The Men of Fer are broken.

  Some are crushed inward; armour crumpled like parchment.

  Others are rusted through, holes eaten into their chests and limbs. A few are smaller than I remember, others, larger than before. There are irregularities in their armour's structure. As though built wrong—sections swollen or shrunken by time.

  They march in a circle, limbs jerking like faulty puppets.

  A rhythm out of sync.

  Thump. Th- Thump. Th- Thump.

  Creak. Creak. Creak.

  Their boots strike the ground in random intervals, trying to pick up a beat they no longer remember. Their flames—a mighty coat that once burned in harmony—were dimming in and out of my [Discarded View].

  I knew nothing of the composition in our last interaction, but I know that something in their foundation has been changed. And when I peer into the soldiers, I see a word that I am certain does not belong.

  ? Folie ?