The Deplorable Word

I could feel the magics dissipating.

When the dragons attacked us at the grass moat, I sensed my death, moments ahead of me in the storm of time and atoms.

Great red and jade shapes shimmered and slithered on the city walls and perched on the pyramids. The creatures could coat the entire city in fire, from where the scattered structures stood. Their soft underbellies were protected by the marble and obsidian block, the structures basted in the blood of enslaved rebels and god-makers.

Testament to the power of Charn.

Our plan was that the dragons would have been drawn away by the hopeless charge of our main force towards the port cities and the star eggs. A plausibly desperate attempt to escape; while we made our real attempt.

Our final attempt.

Before it had well started, our plan appeared to have failed.

We were running towards the main gate, when a wall of fire began walking across the grassy open towards us.

Before my eyes had time to see it, I had used the last power that a soldier can. Light bloomed in my flesh. It became my flesh. The dragon fire passed through the light unheeded, as my men blossomed into flame around me.

Now, the wind was whipping the banners, singed with ruin, yet passed through me, leaving me with out trace of its scent or caress.

Now, the steps of the palace echoed and whispered under the sandals of the last few lovers' pairs of my elite men, yet under me the stone did not echo.

Now, the spell holding me together was coming apart.

The light that had become my body was dissipating. Tendrils of unsubstance were beginning to leak from the spell-wounds. I could no longer sense the atoms ahead of me.

I could no longer sense much of anything ahead of me.

But she was there. She was there.

That was all that mattered.

She stood, taller than I remembered, taller than she had believed. Her glamour was torn in places, though I had not seen her in the fighting, and glimpses of her Self were showing through.

Had there been dissent in the council at last? She still stood; had she quelled them?

I stopped at the top of the stair, the city burning in the sky around me, and gasped for breath that I could not draw.

She did not speak.

"I am come, Sister." I called out. "I swore that I would so do. That they could not hold you here, in thrall, forever. I kept my word."

She was silent for a long moment. Her face was still. The banners snapped in the wind.

She spoke.

"You have come too late."

I shook my head. Glowing fluid troubled my eyes and distorted my vision and I smiled.

"No." I said. "No. They have our forces at bay in only in this world. This reality."

I fell to my knees and I felt nothing. Unsubstance spurted out of me in so many breakages.

"You know the Name. The Word, as strangers call it. I know that you do. Only speak it, Sister, only speak it. This world can be made new. Made whole."

She stared at me for a moment longer. Her eyes were lovely dark coins. They said nothing. She wheeled around, hiding her face from me. I went on with my plea.

This might be the only true work allowed me, perhaps, in the grand weave of things.

"This, the Flower War, was commanded by the Dead Fathers to keep Time at bay. It has grown beyond all purpose laid down for it. It has become all consuming. It has become endless. It has killed our worlds around us. It has caused the very fabric of Space-Time to begin to unravel and no magician has been able to ravel it back again. It has nothing to do with life or love or substance. Why should we die in this, Their chosen destiny?"

She did not turn.

"Why should we wield power we do not understand?" her voice asked me. "Why should we risk what little life or glory is left to us, for some dream of unknown worlds? Unknown gods and peoples- that we might become?"

"Why should we not give life to the Dead, by continuing to live out their lives?"

My vision blurred completely. I wanted to scream, but when I spoke, all I heard was a breathless whisper.

"Our Mother, the Dragon, died in agony, hacked into so many pieces by the fathers. She sealed her lips and would not tell them the Name they wanted so much to know, even to save her life. Even to end her torment."

"She told you," I said.

"She meant for you to know it. She meant for you to use it. She believed that they could not and she believed that you could."

"Please." I begged her. "Please, Sister. We die."

She turned around and her hand struck a spell outward as she turned. I gasped nothingness. The last of my men fell into dust, their entropy spun forward a thousandfold. Their gem green warriors' garb floated to the pavement around me.

A smiled curled up one side of her face, baring the fang.

Never in my life have I seen such a smile flow out of my Sister's soul. Not in person. Not in the Mirror Pool in the Caves where I spent so many nights watching, biding my time.

The eyes in her body were speaking. My vision was blurred and patchy, but it seemed to me that some creature was perched in her lovely eyes as the dragons had perched over the city, looking out at what was theirs and theirs to destroy.

"Your deaths are of little concern to me," the Creature said.

"Your body," the Creature tilted my Sister's head to one side, looking at what was left of me "might have suited my experimental interests better, but this one will do well also. It has age before it and magic enough. If it fails, well, rumors of the Treasure Chambers of Charn have spread far and wide among the Worlds of the Many Turnings. Your stasis chambers are intact."

"If my return to my people proves difficult, sooner or later, another body will present itself for my use."

Frozen and flickering in despair I watched the Creature talk and move. She looked out over the city as if it were rippling with flags and flowers instead of scales and flame.

"I hadn't realized the corrupted Clades of this world knew of the Name. If it is anything more than a mere myth, perhaps your sister can be persuaded to set it down in our Archives. I'm sure, if my people ever run out of new bodied-species in our Turning, we would find some use for it."

"If you wanted her to use it so badly, I can certainly spread the idea that she did. Perhaps the state of your world will deter others from even beginning the search."

Her eye caught mine as she looked past me and she turned my sister's face to a sneer.

"What would you have us do? Reincarnate as mere beetles?"

Her hand flew.

A wave of pain hit me. I could feel myself flying to pieces.

The world was light. Light and horror and pain.

And Light.