This/Reapers song
Some stories end badly. Nobody goes home in the end, there are no happily ever afters, and the matter is not settled. There are loose ends everywhere, but over time people simply forget and the entire thing fades away. These stories are buried. Nobody wants to tell them. They don't seem worth remembering.
The problem is, sometimes such stories are the only ones that are worth remembering.
From up here, Coraline could see the entire world, or near enough - the City spread out before her, the wastelands beyond fading into the distance, and almost entirely out of sight, a single dead tree jutting from the drifting sands. Beyond that, there was only nothing. A whole lot of nothing.
Coraline liked the dead tree. From time to time she would come up here, to the top of the looming tower, and simply watch it. It wasn't about to change, of course - it never did, and only lingered, alone and out of place - but it gave her comfort nonetheless. It was something that didn't fit, and it was still there.
And then it wasn't. There was a moment of uncertain stillness, and the distant shadows erupted.
An invasion. To date Coraline had not figured out just why folks would attack the City of Death, but from time to time they would, spilling forth into the streets in an attempt to push back the defenders far enough to... well, she wasn't quite sure. As entertaining as the invasions could be, she usually ignored them for the most part, only shooting at anyone who got too close to wherever she happened to be at the time.
But not this time. This time they had harmed her tree. They had harmed her tree, her tree, and that was simply not something she could stand by and allow. They would pay for this, they would.
Coraline raised her staff and fired into the seething distance.
Several minutes later, she woke up at the base of the tower, her nose twinging and a tentacle crab perched atop it. Her staff was a few meters away, but all in all she seemed quite fine despite having apparently flung herself off the tower with the recoil from the blast. Aside from her nose, that was. She batted the crab off before it could pinch her again and sat up.
"Normally we allow them at least the illusion of hope, you know."
Picking up her staff, she looked around, and found Kyrule, the Lord of the Dead, standing behind her. "Yeah?" she said. "Er... what exactly happened?" This was the first time she'd ever actually tried firing the staff at full blast, as she'd always been slightly afraid to do so. Something about its tendency to blast large holes in things even at low power, and something about how that was usually more than enough already.
"The invaders were eradicated before they ever got close."
"What about the tree?"
"The tree is as it was."
"Oh."
Kyrule paused, as though waiting for something. Then he asked, "How exactly is it that you came upon such a weapon?"
Coraline looked at him suspiciously, but couldn't make out anything for the mask. "Sherandris," she said slowly.
"What did he tell you?"
"Well... 'Have fun,' among other things." She cocked her head. "And something about being careful, and 'if you accidentally blow yourself up I'm not cleaning up the mess, but seriously don't blow yourself up'. Apparently it's kind of a... dangerous piece."
"Dangerous."
"Yeah?"
"That is a resounding understatement." The shadows twisted and Kyrule was gone.
"Right," Coraline said to the empty space. "Thank you for that assessment. Very illuminating." She holstered the staff, saw a nearby sphinx watching, and hissed at it. It hissed back and waggled its head slightly.
"And what do you want?" she demanded.
"Stories," it hissed.
"A real cat, are you?"
"No stories here," it whispered, slinking closer. "Never any stories."
"Contrarywise," Coraline said. "There are always stories."
The sphinx stared at her with the sort of insane longing she knew all too well - the sort of longing dredged out of unyielding despair, after all other hope had long since died - and Coraline felt her irritation melt away in light of its sheer horrible power.
"Come with and I'll tell you one."
There were essentially three sorts of souls in the Underworld: the Honoured Dead, the Damned, and the Lost. None of them talked to sphinxes. They all either knew better, or quickly found out: not exactly cat and not exactly spirit, the sphinxes of the Underworld haunted corners, rooftops, and dead ends, waiting for anyone unwary enough to get too close, where they would then devour them whole.
Coraline, on the other hand, upon seeing this happen for the first time, promptly asked the sphinx why it had done that, if it liked stories, and how pages tasted. She hadn't been entirely sure where the questions had come from - really she hadn't been entirely sure of much of anything at the time - but it was the sphinx that had been really thrown off by it. It had been thrown off even more when, upon running away, Coraline ran after it and asked if she'd said something wrong, perhaps? She didn't mean to scare it. When further questions hadn't proven any more effective, a good ear-scratching and an offering of darkfish did make her a solid friend, even if it wasn't one that could tell her a whole lot. Sphinxes never were much good at that, it turned out. But they did like eating pages.
She had had to apologise to the depressing book she had used afterward.
The sphinx following her now hadn't tried to devour her, but the story it ravenously took in, poking at her when she paused too long, picking apart the words, and staring. Always staring. The story itself was a fairly strange but standard children's tale about birds and hills and the strangeness of words that she'd often tell her brothers long ago, but here it was probably entirely new.
"And?" the sphinx prompted when she got to the end.
"And nothing," Coraline said. "It's the end."
"Whyso?"
"Because everyone went home and lived out their lives after that. And then they died. And that was that."
"Then what?"
Coraline stopped and looked at the sphinx. Of course that would be an issue here, where everyone was already dead, but it never had been before. There'd never been much talk of any afterlife at all, back home - odd mention of heaven, the usual cursing of hell - but all in all most folks hadn't really believed in any of that anymore. All the science just said folks died and that was it. Hells, even the deathgod had said that folks died and that was basically it, and he of all should know, but that was... there. Here... was different.
"Well," she began slowly. "Back in the world I know, they'd probably just forgot it all and begin again. That's what happens where I'm from, see." She gestured around. "Nothing like this, of course."
"No stories?" the sphinx growled.
"Lots." Coraline laughed. "Somebody always remembers something. Nothing ever entirely dies, when somebody remembers. Isn't that why..."
A hiss interrupted her and she looked back. The sphinx was crouched, watching a soul that came toward them, and ready to pounce. Eyeless, the soul stared unseeing, but stopped as though sensing their attention.
"Hello?" Coraline placed a hand at the base of the sphinx's wings, not that it would stop the creature from pouncing if it decided to.
The soul mouthed wordlessly and flickered slightly. The sphinx hissed again.
"What eyes?" Coraline asked.
Again it mouthed the words that she couldn't hear but understood nonetheless.
Coraline shook her head. "I don't see any eyes here."
The soul threw its head back and screamed silently, a horrible piercing non-sound that filled every crevice and rebounded upon itself. The sphinx ran for it. Coraline staggered backwards.
"Stop it! Be silent!" She finally managed to shout, and amazingly the soul stopped, only flickering slightly, back in its original position as though it hadn't done a thing.
Coraline stared at it. "Lost," she whispered. They were something of a mystery, wandering in and out of nowhere in particular, lingering, generally being, well... utterly lost. She supposed sometimes she might be one of them, but hadn't particularly wanted to ask any of the other denizens. It didn't seem right.
"Who were you?" she asked it.
Nobody. The word was nowhere, whispered in nothing, but in its echo, she heard a name.
"David Weaver?" she repeated.
No.
"Yes. You were David Weaver."
It took a step backwards.
"How came you here?" she asked.
The response came all at once, bundled fragments that only unfolded slowly, but the soul itself was already fading as the answers formed in her mind.
Don't know.
Please!
Madness. Nonsense. Impossible.
World fell apart.
Roof caved in.
Just a dream.
He was in the wall, half in, half out.
Wake me, please. Please.
And then it was gone.
Fragments
This is the place to be for the end of the world show.
"It was like walking into someone else's story well after the fact, after everyone had failed and those who survived had already gone home, lived out their lives, and died of old age.
"It felt like trespassing on a cave-in."
Worst god in ages. So bad she got kicked out of the God Impersonation Guild. Died too much.
"Of course you are welcome here, for all that you have sacrificed. You are no Lost soul, Coraline Henderson."
She stared at the deathgod. "Do you even know why I'm here, in this place, or even this universe?"
"I understand it to have been something of an accident."
"No." Coraline smiled, shaking her head, and picked up the sphinx. "No accident. That was just what folks were supposed to think. Cover story, if you will."
Stroking the sphinx, she looked around, searching for the right words to explain. "Sherandris sent me here, to this 'verse," she said. "He asked me to do something crazy, something utterly insane, and noone could know, and I agreed to it for the very same reason he asked. For her." She shook her head. "He was willing to destroy himself for her. All I had to do was survive, and maybe it would work.
"But really I don't know why I'm here. I don't know how it was supposed to help, or what the hell Sherandris was thinking or if any of this had any chance from the start... but... but I am here. Thing is, I'm here because I trusted him, and that's really it."
"There will be expectations."
"There are always expectations."
---
The champion drew his sword. Realising she didn't actually have a weapon, Coraline held up the sphinx she was holding in what she hoped was a plausibly threatening manner.
The champion paused uncertainly for a moment, then after a hissed command from his god behind him, he raised his sword and charged.
Coraline took a step backward and then, for lack of any better idea, threw the sphinx. It caught him full in the face, a hissing ball of fluff and claws and teeth and wings that scrabbled for a hold and immediately dug in. He dropped his sword and screamed, flailing at the cat to get it off, but to no avail.
A moment later, at Orin's gesture, the champion was standing beside him once more. The sphinx, with suddenly nothing to hold onto, fell to the ground, hissed at noone in particular, and skulked out of the circle into the nearest alley.
"Er, sorry about that," Coraline said after it.
"You cheated!"
Coraline looked back to the champion she had apparently defeated.
"You cheated," he repeated. "That wasn't fair at all."
"Oh?" Behind her mask, she gave him a look it was probably fortunate he couldn't actually see. "I didn't even have a weapon, and here you come at me with this big old sword! Arguably that might be considered cheating too, then."
"It was a fair fight," Orin said, and bowed slightly to Kyrule. "Fair by the rules we agreed."
"Right," Coraline grumbled to herself. Rules. Whatever those were.
"My champion will challenge," Ghurasis growled, waving his own, a large orc, forward. The orc glared at Coraline.
She smiled brightly. "Great! Can I forfeit yet?"
"No," Kyrule said behind her.
"Okay," Coraline said, trying not to sound too noticeably disappointed. "Just checking." She rooted through her pockets in the hopes they might contain something useful, but only managed to pull out a large wad of lint. The orc, in the meantime, hefted his axes and began sinuously twirling them, faster and faster, creating a devastating whirlwind of the sort which would probably decimate any armies stupid enough to get close.
The whirlwind moved toward her.
She sidled away along the edge of the circle, fiddling with the lint wad, and then, realising it was mostly a single piece of string wrapped around her key, tied the two together and flicked it at the orc.
It was the sort of move that only worked in the movies, and yet somehow it worked here - the string tangled in the axes, one of them bonked the guy in the head, and he fell sideways, impaling himself on the other.
"Huh," she said. Then the orc was back by Ghurasis' side, intact and unbloodied. Coraline picked up the key, its string conveniently no longer tangled in anything, and moved back toward Kyrule.
Ghurasis bowed as well, much deeper than Orin had. "Your champion fights well, if... oddly," he conceded.
"Yes."
Coraline snorted, then tried to turn it into a cough.
Nausica's champion stepped forward and bowed to Coraline. She bowed back, surprised that apparently this basic courtesy was apparently somewhat at home in this world after all.
Then he blurred and came at her. She reacted, blurred as well, and then the other champion went flying.
There was a stunned silence. Then the champion was back beside Nausica, but flat on his face, and murmurs rose amidst the other gods.
"What did you do?!" Nausica shouted, covering his champion.
"Er," Coraline said. "I... tweaked his nose?"
The murmurs rose, so Coraline tried again. "I tweaked his nose really, really forcefully," she announced resolutely, holding up finger and thumb for emphasis.
They all just sort of stared at her.
"It's like you all never saw anyone tweak anyone's nose at impossibly high speed before," she said, shaking her head. "Really, and you call yourselves gods."
After a long pause, Kyrule asked, "Have we any other challengers? No?"
"I challenge," Veshura said. "Let us observe the interaction between death and undeath."
His champion stepped forward.
Behind her mask, Coraline eyeballed it. The champion appeared to have once been an elf, but true to the ways of Velshura, in undeath it had since become a powerful liche, both befitting and yet very out of place in the City of Death. It rolled its head and smiled slowly, and Coraline realised it was a woman. Or it had been.
Then it threw back its head and raised its arms, and with them a small army of minions were summoned forth into the circle.
Coraline looked back toward the book she had left by Kyrule's feet. Not a weapon, and probably not helpful, but it had been, on account of the complete lack of any prior notice about this... event, the only thing she'd brought.
One of the minions came up to her as she watched suspiciously, but it didn't seem particularly threatening. Then, almost like a cat would, it rubbed bonelessly against her legs. She hissed at it and it jumped away.
The liche raised an eyebrow.
"Er?" Coraline said.
"They like you." The liche cocked its head. "That's not supposed to happen."
"It's not that unusual. Tame minions generally just ignored me in Ain, anyway."
"You can't be a necromancer. I'd know."
"Naw, just got basic coverage - corpse disposal, the odd dancing skeleton, you know? Illusion was my main."
The liche stared. "Of Asmodeus? What in the nine hells are you doing here?"
"Hell if I know," Coraline said, absolutely truthfully.
"You're supposed to be fighting," Veshura prompted flatly.
"Ah, yes. Pity," the liche said. "You do seem so lovely, for a living." It swept its minions forward.
"And you seem so lovely, for an undead." Coraline reached up as she had seen Vardaman do so many timed before, and then did what she had imagined he had done as well - called the reaper's scythe into her hands. To her utter surprise, it appeared, glinting dangerously in the off-light, so she gave it a sweep into the oncoming minions. Those it touched dissolved. Those it didn't shied back, but Coraline was already whirling, sweeping the scythe through the undead swarm, reaping what it was owed.
Suddenly she stopped, crouched over the liche, who had fallen backwards in the onslaught. All the minions were gone. The blade was a breath away from its neck.
"Yield?" Coraline asked.
"I yield," it said. "No army can stand against death."
Coraline drew the scythe aside and helped the liche back up. "Aye, so it is."
As their champions returned to their sides, Veshura, too, bowed to Kyrule. The liche smiled at Coraline, but she was too busy poking the scythe to respond. It seemed unusually... real.
We are not who we were. In every moment we live, we die, and from every death we are reborn. Our existence deforms the universe, through action and response, choice and consequence. Thus is the evolution of presense, and thus we live and change.
It is believed that souls are rather akin to stars - that they are simply patterns of dust that have over time emerged to form configurations of impossible brightness, repeating themselves throughout the universe.
"Be glad it's not like the Forgotten Realms. In their version of the Underworld, there's this wall around it that's built of the tormented souls of the damned. It's pretty awful.
"At some point I told this old friend on Kanata about it and of course he had to go and build one of his own - not a real one, obviously, but a scaled-down fence contraption of ordinary wall and holographic technology. Thought it was a right lovely idea to have this screaming, writhing mass of hopeless horror around his house, apparently.
"Neighbours thought otherwise, of course, but all the city ordinances in the system couldn't convince him to take the thing down, since technically it wasn't illegal. Classified as a 'standard annoyance' and that was it. Efforts to sabotage it didn't go anywhere either."
"So what happened?"
"Three months later a horse appeared out of nowhere in his bathroom. Wouldn't move. Resisted all efforts to remove it. Animal control agreed to take a look if he turned his wall off, found it didn't seem to be a normal horse. They called in a mage, found it didn't seem to be magic, so he brought in some priests from one of the local religions, who called the God Impersonation Guild, who called me, and I told them, 'yeah? So what? Who do you think looked at it in the first place and called animal control?'
"I hadn't actually, but you should have seen the looks on their faces.
"Anyway, turned out it was just some god who'd absolutely had it with godding so for some reason he'd decided to be a horse and not move any more than the planet did. And he decided to do it in this guy's bathroom.
"We wound up just moving the entire house out from under the god, since it didn't budge even with the floor gone. Seemed like a good enough idea at the time, and the neighbours loved it since it meant Gellin would be moving too, and since we left the wall there as a sort of creepy 'don't ask' sign... well, I dunno. Entire thing certainly looks strange in the middle of the night, though, that's for sure. Floating horse, eerily glowing wall of souls...
"Mind, it was muted at this point. No more moans and pleas and screams and crap. So it wasn't even a standard annoyance anymore, just an eyesore.
"No lack of those in any modern city. 'Art.' Pfft."
People often forget that the God of Death began his divine career as the God of Practical Jokes. They especially tend to forget that he never stopped.
Sherandris, of course, remembered. He remembered most everything, at least so long as he deemed it worth remembering, and since he wasn't really sure about the bulk of it and erred on the side of caution, that really did mean everything. For the most part. There had, after all, been that time he had spent dead - he didn't really remember that, of course. But he had been dead. Perfectly excusable, and as for the Duty, the Dark Sister would surely have seen to that.
Sherandris was the God of Death. He was not what most people expected, of course, but by the time it mattered, it really didn't matter anymore anyway. They entered his realm, what he called his Room, in the space outside of space in the time outside of time, and everything faded away. The dead were laid out according to the customs of the soul, and he passed them on into whatever next life was appropriate. And that was that, as far as he was concerned.
This left plenty of time for meat.
Sherandris rather liked meat.
"You weren't here," he said. "But I talked to you. Isn't it wonderful to have friends? They stave off the voices that come with the solitude."
"My agreeing isn't requisite to compliance."
She ran her fingers across the spines, glancing over the titles on those few with labels. None stood out, in their myriad scripts, as anything worth reading, though in this place she could undoubtedly have read them all. Biographies, manuals, catalogues, legends... what was she looking for? Was she even looking for anything?
Her fingers stopped on a spine that read simply, in flowing letters, 'A Very Useful Book'. She looked at it for a moment, then pulled it out. It was bigger than she would have expected, rather like a large textbook, but it was worth a try.
The first page was not an index. Instead it had a picture of a cat, curled up as though asleep, but with one eye open.
"Hello kitten," she said. The cat's eye closed.
She flipped through to a random page. It said:
- This is what you were looking for.
She looked around. She was essentially alone with the books. Two Keepers were in the vault as well, but they never paid her any heed but to move out of the way if she got too close. But even so, it felt claustrophobic, as though the other books were watching, waiting to see what she would do...
"Alright," she said, "then I want steel-toed fanged bunny slippers, with thick leather soles and soft interiors that I can just lose my toes in. And I want matching wrist cuff thingies with claws, because they have to have claws. And a big fuzzy hat. With fangs. And I want it all in plushy black.
"And I want a really big sword, but not too big or heavy. I need to be able to lift it and such."
The shade bowed its head and retreated into the vault. The door thudded shut before Coraline could follow.
So she waited curiously, and then walked around the vault. There was nothing interesting there, just a few odd rubbles and a dusty dog sitting on a sullen-looking shadow. It had too many legs, or possibly not enough; she couldn't quite tell for sure.
She turned around and nearly ran into the shade, its arms full, standing immediately behind her.
Found:
- book
- key
- mask
From random soul:
- hairdo
From vault:
- sword
- robe
- tunic
- amulet
- slippers
- gloves
- fuzzy hat
Brought with her:
- bag and sundry random junk
- staff
- knife
