Chapter 463 – IT’S NOT OVER UNTIL– (III) (Patreon)

I am the most competent incompetent bitch in the world. Let's fucking go homies, we got words done and it work I think.

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Oh my. Now isn’t this a show.

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It’s Hunger. 

Above all else. Beneath every surface. Beyond every shape and horizon. 

Hunger. 

The world is a screaming void that demands that everything be as it must be and in its demands is the overwhelming demand that all things must Hunger. All things must Eat. All things must Feed. 

The ground was not large enough for all that hunger. 

The sky isn’t big enough for all that hunger. 

The world is not big enough to fit the screaming hole of everything in its stomach. 

How could it be? The world is just another stomach, after all. 

A hand grasps a star and pulls the body beneath it. 

A claw grips a cloud and shoves the body forward from below. 

 A paw steps on space, and forces the corpulent mass to its left to harshly slide forward. 

A thousand other grasping, reaching things take hold of the world, making the impossible mass of the beast move almost smoothly. 

Its shadow lurks across the world below, and where it passes, a canyon, so deep as to have no bottom, appears in its shape. 

It is hungry. 

One limb touches a cloud, and rain begins to fall. Where it touches the earth, the earth begins to fall upward, reversing and then exponentially increasing the hold of gravity as it tumbles out of space and into the original cloud, where it vanishes. 

A scale sheds as the beast scraps across reality, and it lands like a guillotine the size of a small mountain. A village and forest and fields lie in a fraction of its shadow, and become more of that same canyon, and all that is not beneath its shadow begins to boil and spark with fire-crackers of electricity. 

The beast opens its mouth and bites, and the possibilities of a million different lives become reduced to a single inevitable Fate. Impossibly, defying causality, they tumble into the maw, wide enough that rivers of saliva drown some of its food, and are swallowed whole.

Hungry. 

It sees the world below, and is insulted by it. 

How dare it make Hunger be the law of all that is.

How dare it not be enough to satisfy what it has created. 

All that is beneath the beast is its to own. Its to devour. And it’s not enough. 

A hundred thousand thousand limbs, so differing in size that some dwarf the others by exponential degrees. So differing in shape and substance that feathers made of sunlight and bile scrape against fur of nettles and venom, which chafes in turn against chitinous exoskeletons made of blood and curses. All of them drag forward the thing in the sky. 

They exist because they would not be enough to satisfy the Hunger, and so, they work in malformed discord to drag their devourer across the heavens.

Below / ahead / outside, there is a bubble. 

It is a tricky thing, this bubble. Old, older even than the beast, and its oily surface bends its shadow, diffusing it painfully into the mere absence of light. A claw reaches down and presses upon the bubble, and it fails to burst, fails to unveil the rich juices at its center. 

Long it has stared at this particular feast. It is one of the few places that make its Hunger pang particularly, and yet it has always remained strong enough that the beast’s will has prevailed. All That Falls Beneath It Is Devoured, and to challenge the bubble would be to challenge that fact, and perhaps find it wanting. It has been broken before, and could be rebuilt in a new form yet again, but the cost? 

There are sharp needles and rich poisons and heated stones inside the bubble, and not of the kind that provide nothing more than flavor. There are things within the bubble, hidden inside their world, larger than the beast if only barely, which could challenge it. 

And yet, there are so very, very many other factors to consider. 

Appetizers crawl through a hole in the bubble. Murky seasoning swirls inside of it, slaughtering each other and flavoring the juicy morsels within ever more. Millions on millions of little grains of flavor dash themselves against each other, seasoning the chunks of meat, the full bites, the little treats, with higher levels of taste. 

And above them, swirling about like lights inside the bubble that is a dome, are the true meals. The ones that might even make the Hunger abate for a while.

Never more than just a while. But what joy, in that while.

They circle around the thing that shivers in its center, like a nervous system infecting a dead host. The organ that shines brightest reminds the beast of a brain, or perhaps a liver, fatty and delicious, rich in all the healthiest of things, that one craves for when the Hunger grows wise and demands more than just empty fats. It is less vast than the proper banquets that have yet to move, that have yet to take to the field of the plate within the bubble, but it is a special pearl, its flavor unique, its value impeccable. 

It looks like a screaming sun.

The beast opens wide its mouth, and exhales a breath. 

The force of it is enough to ignite the atmosphere, compress air into near solidity, and burst the bubble, made porous by its many infections and the turmoil within. It shatters open another world, a world that dares not to satisfy it immediately, unveiling the deliciousness within. 

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There are sharp metal things in her skull.

They take out another piece.

She moves so that they may take out more.

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Green leaves flutter in the breeze. Many of them wither and die every day, never growing enough to become a sapling, never becoming more than just infants. 

And yet, the Forest endures, for there are always more. 

Some of its branches are cut, are cracked, are lit aflame, but still it extends them, and still, that which would seek to supplant or unmake it is smothered beneath the green. It is broken apart, down to the very last atom, and studied, down to its roots, and then integrated into the next batch of trees. 

For the Forest is always growing.

Some of its branches are special. They twine out from some of the older growth within the Forest’s boughs, thicker branches that lead to thicker trunks that lead to deeper roots, and they only ever leave the Forest for purposes that truly matter. They find and they take and they unmake, they break and they sever and they distort, until whatever it is that has drawn the attention of the Forest is a part of the Forest, or has become soil upon which it may someday grow and feed. 

Above, there is a sun.

It is an eye, wrapped in a golden cage, whose edges are nails and whose nails drive into that star and render it immobile and bloody. The face it belongs to is as large as the Forest, perhaps larger, and its light shapes the growth below. 

One might be mistaken for thinking that the Forest is bound to that sun. Dependent upon its light. 

But the roots run deep, and the leaves grow wide, and there is more sky than just that single sun. 

And perhaps someday it will need no sun at all. 

The Forest sees, in a glade near its edge, how the branches tumble and crack and bend. How they take the fertile, frustrating things that demand rectification and shape them just so. 

If the Forest bent itself to that clearing, even without the light of the Cage and its sun and its billions of weapons in the form of people, it would crush it. The snake that slithers through the glade is large, large enough to encompass several trees at once, and the deep pit of mulch beneath it squirms with things that could cause fires or plagues or droughts or more, but in the end, the Forest would overwhelm them all in turn. 

But it is not bound to time or to death or to sanity. It is not bound to such simple need. 

And so it does not bend its trunks or snake its roots or curl more branches through the air. It waits, as the feeding frenzy of insects decimates the grass and churns the earth full of blood and fills the dirt with more for the trees. 

Some branches will be lost, yes. Such is meant to be. They, too, shall fertilize the soil.

Though there are surprises, even to one as old as the Forest. 

There is a branch that has grown wrong angles. Whose leaves are empty things, like spider-silk, and which grows longer and thicker as it passes over the others, and as it passes over the worms. 

Though it may perhaps be better to say the worm.

Its pieces split and split and split again, but always, they are a worm. The empty branch waves over them, and they are gone, but the bits left behind grow and split again. They writhe and break some of the lesser bugs beneath them, beneath it, and are devoured in turn, fueling the frenzy ever higher. 

Once it is done, there will be nutrients here for a millenia. 

And yet, it is not enough.

The branch waves, and the emptiness of its leaves grows deeper, as a layer of the Forest rarely changed gains fresh growth. 

The worm writhes. 

The snake above begins to eat, and the endless swarms of little bugs die and die and die. 

And soon, they will spread. 

One way or another, the muck will become food, will become a feeding ground for that which thinks it owns the forest and is instead already a part of it. They will spread, and the Forest will contain them, of course.

Eventually. 

When the soil is rich enough. 

When the flames have burned down the chaff. 

When the Forest has more room to grow.

And yet…

The worms writhe. 

The bugs die slowly. 

The things in the mess that crawl up to bite at the snake do so less viciously than they should. 

New things. Strange things. Curious things. 

All in the depths of the Forest. All beneath its leaves and betwixt its roots. 

A risk?

Perhaps. It seems strange for the Forest to even call it that, for a risk implies danger, implies loss, in a way that the Forest does not fear. It will grow anew. 

There Are Always More Trees.

But a risk. A calculated possibility for a setback. 

Trees have a network between them. They send nutrients and chemicals and signals for danger and for safety, and, on a scale vast enough, the signals become complex. 

The Forest knows the risk. 

Some trees cannot plant seeds without burning.

And so it waits. And it watches. 

Beneath the light of a Cage. 

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Something that is physical only when the context is right digs out a chunk of neural tissue.

She tries and fails not to feel it. 

It Hurts.

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There is a shadow in the shape of a Knife. 

The Knife is transformed, shifting into petals of a flower in bloom. 

She stares out at the lights in the distance.

They’re not actually visible, technically. The way that land is mostly flat makes the horizon a distant thing, but with the right magics and the right Truths, one can stare all across it. That is not what the shadow is doing. 

In a body of writhing worms and nibbling beetles, wearing skin of moth’s silk, and it sighs, a bit dramatically.

“Are we sure this is the right idea?” asks a boy of smoke and whispers.

“Not at all,” says the shadow.

“Then why not do something?”

“Because she’ll eat me alive.”

It is a good answer. Only partially true, but true enough to mean what it is meant to mean. 

It wouldn’t work that way. 

Instead, the shadow continues to stare, feeling herself get weaker with every passing moment, drop by drop. Even as she intakes more than she can properly process, she spends it even faster, moment to moment. 

It’s an uncomfortably familiar feeling, and one that she looks forward to not having for a while after. 

The shadow rolls her jaws, mirroring the glow surrounding her. 

“Does it hurt?”

“A bit.”

“Not too badly?”

“No. Not too badly.”

Silence, for a time. 

Then:

“Do you see the trees?”

The boy of love and necrothurgy does not wonder at the question. He looks, and he squints, and he sees nothing.

“Yeah. Figures.”

“Is it important?”

“Probably.”

The boy who is loved nods.

“Would you like anything else?”

“More of that tea, please. Tell my sister she’s getting better at making it, and that if she doesn’t give me the formula, I’ll find every weird thing in her lab and put it in a pipe.”

The boy smiles, nods, and leaves.

The shadow stares out at the lights she cannot see, but can feel as clearly as the one that just left the room.

Her jaws ache. 

They stay lit a little longer. 

“She’d better hurry this shit up.”

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Another piece, gone.

“I believe we are nearly finished with this function, vessel.”

She drools, and changes a little more.

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How many generations has it been?

Every new one follows the last. Every new one breaks. Every new one makes another and carries on. 

An exercise in falling ever forward. 

There is no room for anything else. 

Not with all the screaming.

It Hurts.

Truer than bone. Truer than being alive.

It Hurts.

Every new iteration shaped by the pain a little more. Every new iteration clawing itself together a little bit more tightly, a little bit more desperately.

It Hurts.

How many times has she died?

The answer wouldn’t matter.

She has to keep going.

She is screaming because Everything Hurts.

She holds herself together. She keeps going forward.

How many parts are what they used to be?

Pruned. Carved. Taken apart and shoved away. Unhelpful pieces. 

She falls apart and builds back together worse. 

It Hurts.

She can keep going. 

She can do more.

She has to.

Or else… what is she for?

IT HURTS.

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“Mmh. A difficult one. Artistry prevails.”

It hurts a little less.

“Yes. There. I believe we’re almost done.”