I’m not certain why today I woke up huge. I thought that I was small because I was a baby snake, and indeed I remain recently-hatched. A mere larva. Yet, so soon after I completed my first burrow and slept in it for the first time, I woke up in the cold morning air, my own bulk having completely demolished my hideaway. Luckily, it was close enough to the surface that I wasn’t trapped, or worse.
Normally, being exposed to the world in my sleep without my knowledge or consent would anger, depress, or terrify me, but as I got my bearings and realized how huge I became, I was filled with nothing but elation.
So many years. So many years did I find envy in the women who towered above me, resplendent, scraping the heavens. My eyes were always looking skyward for what I wanted to become. But in the world of cyanen, there was no cure for being short, for being wrong, for being male. Now, in my serpentine afterlife, I can finally be as tall as I always wanted. I can finally feel like the woman I am.
The feeling was tremendous, but it was soon tempered by curiosity.
As I stewed and pondered about my new large life, I remembered once again how it felt to be small. I thought about being small, of the perspective I had from a lower angle, and then the world grew around me. And so now I know: it isn’t only that I can be tall, now. I can change my size with a mere thought.
It is starting to be hard to ignore the implications. My scales are holy and my scale is servant to my will, so what does that make me? A god?
I don’t know. For now, I’ll operate under the assumption that I might be a god, and hope that doesn’t come across as arrogant when actual gods hear about it. But what do I really know about gods? Gods must be able to affect great change as well as consort with mortals, which explains my ability to change size. Fine. Some gods are tied to the land as well. I should try to leave Aoge to test that. And, if I am a god, that explains why I thought I might be able to create life.
For now, I decide to remain enormous. It feels... more right. More affirming. Although in that form, my weight is massive and I leave deep gouges in the earth wherever I go. Merely thumping my tail shakes the world, and my spiny scales tear the lingering carapaces of soldiers to shreds as I push my way through to the battlefield’s edge.
Something is wrong with all of the bodies.
I have often been accused of being overly upbeat for a soldier and former mercenary, but I am a soldier. Or, I was. I have scavenged battlefields before, and I can tell this is different. I don’t know how long I remained dead, but the Battle of Aoge was alright almost a year past when I passed away. So why has it taken these corpses so long to rot? Normally, the stage of decomposition I found when I arrived would have taken a mere week. A year on, all that should be left of the carapaces are scattered shards, but they’re in mostly pristine condition. The same holds for the clothing and battle standards littered about.
It isn’t that a year hasn’t passed. I thought, at first, that I might have appeared somehow earlier than I died, but the few weapons I find that haven’t been picked clean -- the broken ones, and those of low quality -- are properly rusted and corroded. Time has passed, but the aftermath of death, alone, has failed to progress.
If I am a god tied to this land, that can only mean there wasn’t a god here before. Perhaps there used to be. Perhaps this is what they mean when they say a place is god-forsaken. So now that I’m here, maybe things should start to change?
Immersed in my thoughts about the sea of bodies around me, occasionally scratched by a stray ventral blade or morning star, I make my way to where the bodies thin out and eventually fade to mere trampled dead grass. I cross the river on the way, noting how my scales slice through the water as I squirm my way through it. It really could be inconvenient if I can’t figure out how to flatten these keeled scales of mine when I need to, but it isn’t too bad so far.
Eventually I start to feel... faint. There is no barrier, and no tether, but I reach a point where the ground beneath me starts to drain me. It continues to support my weight, but there’s another kind of weight that sinks directly in; that’s the type of feeling it is. I stop, turn around, and as I go back from whence I came the feeling almost immediately fades.
Fine. So I can only live in Aoge now. It’s not a very glamorous home, but I was tired of traveling from battlefield to battlefield anyway. As the new maybe god of Aoge, what should be my first decree?
I jump as only a snake can, springing my body meters into the air and landing heavily, slightly cratering the soil, as I hear a voice directly in my mind.
I may be unused to being alone in my head, but voices are new. What’s more, this doesn’t sound like my voice, which means it might not be coming from my mind. I seem to have a passenger. It should surprise me more, but the revelations of this chapter of my life have never stopped long enough for me to get comfortable in the first place.
I can’t talk with this mouth (I have tried, but there is nothing to vibrate), so I try thinking at the voice instead. Who are you?
Sharur, hm? I believe that was the name of my own mace, in life. My faithful companion, whose hammering and tempering I watched, who I oiled and polished and maintained, who I stained with blood and smashed thousands with. It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? But I didn’t recognize the voice at all. My memories were still chaotic, but had slightly stabilized, and I couldn’t remember talking to anyone with this voice.
That, alone, wouldn’t prove anything, though. Sharur? Could you be, um...?
What I did? As a soldier?
I could feel the muscles in my sinuous body slump. Was it... fair, for me to keep all these deaths with me? I killed every last one of them, undoubtedly, but it would have been someone else otherwise. The war carried on with or without me, and yet, I was meant to purify it.
I was a sacrifice, I realize.
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I try to sigh, but exhale a hiss instead. It’s never truly been my lot to question what I’ve been given, and this burden of deaths is no different. Besides...
Do the gods really give out godhood as a punishment?
What about you?
Hm. Alright.
Hm. Alright. Well, it’s good to hear your voice, Share. Were you saying something about corpses?
The voice seems to hesitate for a moment at my frankness.
I know that part, I think. But what do I have to do? Since you complained, I’m guessing that means my presence alone won’t complete the decay.
<...I see. Observing you on the battlefield, my only real chance to observe you, I thought you simple and instinctive. My apologies.>
If I had book lungs, I would huff through them.
I realize that, throughout this conversation, I’ve been simply lying prone in the grass, and I bury my nose into the dirt for a moment in shame. When I recover, I begin to wind through the grass again over towards the battlefield. My battlefield.
I suppose I want them to do what the land normally does after a battle. Before you know it, you return to the site where so many died, and the earth has... I have a sudden realization, and an unpleasant feeling travels down my long spine.
...I’m not hungry.
I don’t think snakes eat carrion.
People don’t eat people. I may be a killer, but I’m still a person.
It doesn’t get easier after the first few.
Despite Share’s ruthless words, I still feel as though I have some snake instincts, and those instincts are screaming at me that I’m poisoning myself. Food that doesn’t move isn’t fresh, food that isn’t fresh has rotted, and food that has rotted carries disease. I choose not to think about the fact that the rotting of the flesh is the point, but regardless, I feel nauseous and even slightly panicked at my foolishness.
As if that weren’t enough, I do still have memories of being a cyan, even if I’m not one anymore. I never ate the flesh of my own kind, and I never wanted to. I still don’t want to, even if they were fresh. This act, desecrating the dead, desecrating the bodies of my fellow soldiers, makes me feel more like a monster than a god. I wonder if this is why people don’t become gods more often, at least not in the legends.
Finally, on a pettier level, the mouthfeel is absolutely awful. Cyanen shells poke at my throat mercilessly, and I think I would tear up if I could cry. At least once I get them down, I don’t have to worry about the taste; apparently, my only sense of taste is through smell.
Fortunately, Share was right. For one thing, no matter how much I eat, I don’t seem to grow less capable of eating -- nor less hungry, if only because I wasn’t hungry to begin with. For another, when I eat, the soil beneath me grows a layer of peat, and as I wind through the field, I’m starting to create a visible raised bank of fertile land.
I don’t like thinking of it that way. How many of them are the bodies of people I killed in the first place? Who would be happy to be an offering for their killer?
Share went quiet at that.
I’m still swallowing corpses when the sun goes down. My enthusiasm for finally being large and feminine has cooled somewhat, because I’m using my size to do something so gruesome and distasteful. I wasn’t raised like this! Well, I wasn’t raised at all, but that doesn’t make it easier.
But I know I actually have to. I think about the sparkling fields on the morning of the day before the battle, and the barren scar we left in their place. I may have only led the infantry, but I was complicit in what the artillery and chemical units did, and in the way our enemy was forced to respond.
If there is anything at all I can do to heal this place, whose fate I share now...
I don’t sleep. It still feels too cold to be out working, but the idea of sleep feels absurd now, and maybe forever. Even if I wanted to stop, I haven’t rebuilt my burrow. I’d be working all night anyway.
I have no way of igniting it.
And so I keep working all night, as well. Gradually, it gets easier. My snake instincts dull, seemingly mollified by my failure to become ill, and my disgust fades into a sense of duty. I think about every last body I bury, and it doesn’t take long for me to realize I’m mourning them.
They’re me. They’re all me. I realize I’m mourning myself, too. Gather, the traitor. The berserker. The champion. The soldier who killed ignobly and died ignobly.
<...>
By first light, I’m starting to realize that the corpses are disappearing faster than I’m swallowing them. I watch curiously as, one at a time, the bodies sink into the dry earth like it’s a bog. Ah, I see. The earth, my literal body, has started to copy the snake, my metaphorical body. It’s responding to my intentions and my feelings. Quietly at first, I coil up and watch the sunrise. I force air through my throat, making a hissing sound, the only sound I know how to make. I want to cry, but I can’t. I don’t know how.
Share.
<...>
Share, why did I do it? Why did I spend my life like that? You were there for most of it, right? Couldn’t I have chosen any other path? I don’t understand myself anymore. Why was I always on battlefields? Why did I kill so many? In my memories, I never question it even for a moment. Why did I have to wait until now?
Share took a while to answer again. She was the one who suggested it, but she got awfully quiet when I needed her.
No, I shouldn’t blame her.
She doesn’t finish her thought, which is fine, because I don’t need her to. I don’t want her to, either.
I sit there as the sun crawls through the sky, hissing as loud as I can, praying that somehow my pathetic hiss could transform into a great wail that even the dead and buried could hear. My silent grief covers my domain, and one by one, the corpses sink and become part of me.