The Comfort Of The Knife

Behind Piggy, the remains wobbled as the miasma flooded back into the room. It forcibly condensed itself into a tighter weave of threads that regenerated the White Womb’s skeleton first. Then it packed itself around the bones. A new color dyed the threads alongside Death, the iridescent hue of Dream that I had become so familiar with. I watched the colors blend, and held a bated breath to see what Court it’d fall into.

Principles swirled together—Piggy didn’t notice, he was still gloating—until their deliberation was done. Its Court was decided, Oblivion. The White Womb was whole again, and rose as if a string tugged its chest. It had filled out with muscle and sinew, stringy but far more present than its initial allotment at birth, and from the sides of its torso another set of arms peeled away.

It screeched, “Mommy!”

Spittle hit his neck, and Piggy spun and swung his fist with perfect accuracy and honed instinct. The White Womb caught his fist. He’d had less time to build up raw power behind it, but it was still a sorcery assisted punch thrown by someone at Baron. I could see how the force made the tightened threads of this pseudo-entity’s Court rippled. It coughed—not blood, I’m not calling it blood—but damn it it still caught that punch.

Before Piggy could throw another one, the White Womb threw him. It used all four of its arms and flung him so high in the sky that he’d disappeared even to the clarity of my Omensight. The White Womb was stunned by its own power, distracted, and so I attacked. Shot across the floor with my glaive trailing behind. Torque’d my hips and swung with all my might. A bright line traced through the air—only to stop at its fingers. It caught Mother’s Last Smile by the blade.

It whispered, “Mommy.”

“She’s not yours,” I yelled.

I formed Atomic Glory and unleashed a bowling ball sized burst of fire. The White Womb let go of the glaive to cover its head. Flames splashed against its scales. My face fell as I watched it stare in awe as my spell danced on its scales. It burbled at the beauty of the fire that ate at its flesh. Then it clenched in on itself, and I watched as fire fell into the void it briefly turned into. It stepped forward, I stepped back, and it pointed at my weapon.

“Mommy,” it said, possessively.

My eyes widened at the possibility I’d not only die, but lose my mom twice over. Then I heard the sound of a pig flying. I looked up to see Piggy angle himself to cleave through the air at double speed. Hands clasped for one hell of a hammerblow. I aimed my hand-spell at him.

“Godtime,” I said, more as a prayer than an incantation.

The White Womb slowed to a crawl—it may have found a way to swallow my flames, but it wasn’t strong enough to shirk all my spells. I leapt backwards, and watched as Piggy swung.

His fists connected with the top of the White Womb’s head. This time flattening it in one go, and pressing it down into a crater of the house’s flooring. I slid backwards from the pressure wave of his blow. Stopped only by a wooden pillar holding up a portion of the second floor. Piggy twisted in the air—he was briefly pushed up from the sheer power—to right himself before landing.

“Okay, now I think it’s dead,” Piggy said. “Hate death-defying spells.”

I said, “Piggy, it didn’t use Sorcery until right now when it ate my flames.”

“How’d it come back to life then?” he asked.

“It just did. Came back together the same way a ball falls after you toss it up.”

“Still, it should’ve been weakened, right?”

“It ate my spell.”

“Orchard, you had summoner’s exhaustion a few minutes ago. You’re not as strong as usual.”

“Listen to me. It came back stronger. Denser. I don’t know how or why, and I doubt the answer is in your grandpa’s theories!”

“You don’t know what he knows,” Piggy said, cold.

“Maybe not, but I doubt he knows anything about that.”

I pointed to the fleshy splatter of the White Womb in the crater. Looked more closely, and noticed that while there wasn’t a single whole bone there was still the dust. Threads of Oblivion surged up into the tapestry of the world. Fell on the pile of bone dust like a blanket. Warped around the reformed skeleton of the White Womb that regenerated standing up. Piggy watched, and his muscles clenched in the same abject rejection of whatever inhuman thing this was that caused my own body to stiffen.

“It’s not fair,” I whimpered.

Stunned, Sphinx said, “It graduated.”

In three minutes and two deaths, the White Womb went from being bereft a Court to now dense and large as a Baron. Its body was ten feet tall. Sharp edged vertebrae peeked from its spine like teeth on a chainsaw. The four arms it had stretched wide to prop it up like some kind of six limbed dragon. Those once bulbous eyes became inset within its tree-splitting skull. Three layers of eyelids cleaning each toxic purple orb. It hissed and its scales fluttered like flowers in the breeze. From beneath the raised scales, missiles of white bone cloaked in purple-black smoke shot out fast as fireworks.

Piggy grabbed my arm and flung me back into the kitchen. With a mystic burst he leaped after me. It was a good attempt, but I saw what he didn’t. Void-black threads traced each missile directly to us—it was attacking us along a vector of fate for guidance.

“They’re homing spells,” I said.

Piggy spat, “I hate those the most.”

He gripped two drawers and ripped them from the cabinet. Wooden utensils, silverware, and cooking tools flew through the air. He formed a hand-spell, and I watched as the ties that connected the spells to us were redirected to the aerial spray of kitchenware. The missiles consumed their new targets in a spherical pop of black that removed itself from existence.

I pulled Piggy down after so we could take cover. Used the Omensight to crawl my vision around the kitchen island, and observe the White Womb as it extricated itself from the pit Piggy had punched it into. Its head swung this way and that in search of us. Though it didn’t actually move and truly seek us out.

“It looks stronger for sure, but not smarter,” I said. “It’s learning fast though. I think each death is just giving it the stimuli it needs to grow.”

Piggy sighed, “So how do we kill it?”

“Its revival isn’t instant,” Sphinx said.

And it always centers on the bones. The only Real thing about it.

Sphinx and I spoke at the same time. “We destroy its bones between resurrections.”

I smiled inward toward Sphinx. Its purr rolled inside of me—mutual approval.

“Okay,” Piggy said, “I’ll destroy the bones. You get out of here.”

“What? I’m not leaving you.”

He laid a hand against my masked face. His hand was big enough that it felt like my entire head was supported. He shook his head.

“You won’t be leaving me. Once you’re gone, I can go all out and finish the thing off. But when you’re here I have to worry about not harming you with my actual spells. I’d be doing more than throwing haymakers if I could.”

“What an honorable pig,” Sphinx muttered.

Honorable my ass. “If I didn’t tell you those weird disintegration bolts were homing on us you’d have died dodging around a kitchen island.”

“I would’ve,” Piggy admitted, “and now I know. Doesn’t change the fact that you getting caught in a fight between Barons isn’t good.”

“You don’t know how many Barons I’ve fought,” I hissed. “Besides, when I say ‘destroy the bones’ I mean burning them out from Realspace entirely. Not a hint can remain inside of reality. Do you have a spell that can do that?”

“Not a one,” he said.

“Then it’s settled. We kill it, and I burn the corpse.”

Piggy muttered, “Alls below, I love an obstinate woman.”

Thump. Thump. Thumpthumpthumpthump. The ground quivered beneath us. I turned my Omensight back onto the White Womb to find the hulking thing throwing a tantrum.

“Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” it chanted furiously.

With each stomp a pool of Oblivion stretched out from beneath the creature’s shadow. It crawled amoeba-like as it pulled across the floor. Where the pool touched furniture fell with it. The tv, the chair, the edge of a table slipped past the rim and into the sprawling void. I watched it spaghettify as it disappeared.

“Get up, get up,” I ordered.

Piggy and I climbed atop the island to avoid the pool that had crept around the structure.

“It figured out field-spells,” Piggy groaned. “Some things have all the luck. Cover me, Orchard.”

He clapped his hands, and I felt Realspace flex around him. Whatever his Court, it was cold and intolerant of anything Piggy deemed didn’t belong. A category that currently meant the White Womb and its own field-spell. The monster was a newly made Baron, and for all I could tell of Piggy—seeing as he was holding back apparently—he wasn’t. His use of power was fluid and smooth. Even pushing back against an already established field-spell, he didn’t lose any ground or cohesion in the bubble of safety he’d made for us.

“Lucky for you, I’m a specialist in field-spells,” Piggy said. “I’ll have this thing broken in no time.”

I looked from him to the White Womb and swore. The creature’s mouth was wide open, yellowed teeth framing a growing ball of Oblivion that condensed beneath its tongue. Its eyes were narrowed on us with hatred, and I could swear its mouth was smiling. I was wrong. The thing was stronger and smarter. Luring us out from cover with the field-spell, distracting the only threat—Piggy—and taking aim with a second attack to kill us. If Piggy stops fighting the field-spell we fall into the void, and if he doesn’t we’ll be shot.

“I think we lost,” I said.

Piggy asked, “What?”

The White Womb fired. I dragged Piggy and myself into Godtime. The Obliteration Beam trudged solemnly through the air. Shuffling forward a few inches every second. Who knew one’s doom could be seen in such slow motion.

“Just block the spell,” he said.

I choked, “I can’t. I don’t know any defensive spells.”

“Fuck, Orchard, I won’t say I told you so,” Piggy said.

“So don’t.”

“No, I have to say something,” he stated. “Getting into fights without knowing a single defense is a bonehead move.”

“Fine,” I said. “You’re right.”

“I know.” He smiled behind the words, “Now go cast a defensive spell and give me some time.”

“Did you not hear me say I don’t know any?”

“Then figure one out. You were clever enough to get us into this place. Just be clever enough to get us out.”

Sphinx whispered, “You’re not alone. We can solve this.”

I swallowed and nodded, to Sphinx and Piggy. Then I tested some options. I unleashed a Fivefold Atomic Glory along the tie of fate stretching from us to the Obliteration Beam. The beam drilled through the blazing star and scattered the power. I moved around the small island, and discovered that the tie was to our direction not us specifically. Unfortunately, even if I wanted to abandon Piggy—which I didn’t—the moment I left the protection of his field-spell I’d be swallowed up by the black hole pool that was consuming the living room and kitchen. I wracked my brain and came up with nothing.

Sphinx, anything?

I felt it purr, “Always something, Nadia. If it cannot be destroyed, dodged, or denied we still have one ‘D’ that is available to us. Your noble boar already demonstrated it. Even though his demand poisons the well of your creativity.”

We don’t block it? Ugh, what did he do? I rifled through my immediate memories and did my best to ignore the destructive spell that was already halfway to us. Piggy had punched, punched some more, ran really fast, and none of it helped me. I fluttered through memories, but felt Sphinx’s paw press against my heart.

“Slow down,” Sphinx said. “Revelation doesn’t bow to time.”

In one motion, assisted by its paw in my mind, I flipped back a memory—just past the way Piggy’s hand cradled my face—to when he overcame the homing spells. Fate led them to us, and he drew, no, diverted them to another object.

We divert it. If Revelation can burn fate, perceive it, then who says we can’t divert it!

“No one who wishes to live long, Nadia,” Sphinx said.

Can you help me shape it?

Sphinx smiled, “I already said you won’t have to walk alone.”

My spirit flexed as Sphinx pushed its wings out of my back. Guided by inspiration and Sphinx’s own insight, we made the first time I cast the spell into a dualcasted work of art. The eyes of its wings flared with power as chalcedony fire streamed out from them. Accreted itself around the chalcedony nucleus I conjured myself. The flames fused into one whole as unified as my spirit was with Sphinx. Gone was the fire, and in its place a frozen starburst that always held four points no matter the angle you observed it from.

In one voice we named the spell, “Inviolate Star.”

“I knew you could do it,” Piggy muttered.

When Sphinx and I cast the spell we dropped the Godtime, and put our new magic to the test. The bar of raw Oblivion crashed into the aura of the Inviolate Star. It tried to drill forward, but only unspooled itself around the “shield” of the star’s light. Something akin to an aurora borealis snaked through the air as the condensed energy split apart into the baser principles of Death and Dream. I couldn’t help but scream.

“It’s working,” I said.

“So am I,” Piggy affirmed, “we’re nearly out of this.”

I could feel the cracks ripple through the White Womb’s field-spell. It wouldn’t be long until—it gave up? My eyes widened in surprise as the flat black hole that had carpeted the floor just dissipated into the air. Piggy shot to his feet, triumphant, and turned just in time to see why his victory was sudden. The White Womb’s body inhaled all the threads of Oblivion that were freed up from maintaining the field-spell. It made a choking sound as a boulder-sized tangle of Oblivion zipped down the Obliteration Beam to smash into the light of my Inviolate Star.

My feet slipped. Piggy flexed his field-spell to keep me from falling. I still slid backwards. The White Womb’s spell had been half-cast. Its power split between maintaining the field-spell and trying to destroy us directly. Now I felt the full mass and density of a Baron pressing its weight against my defenses.

Piggy crushed the White Womb’s arms with his field-spell. Turned bone to dust and muscle to mush, but the creature had learned a lot from us already. It learned violence, hatred, and now it mirrored our own persistence back at us.

I felt Piggy push me forward—flexing with the entirety of his field—all to keep me standing. If the Inviolate Star fell there wouldn’t be a chance to dodge.

“It dropped its field-spell,” I yelled. “You can run!”

Piggy disagreed, “Not a chance, Orchard. What kind of Baron leaves a soldier to fight his battles.”

“A smart one,” I joked.

He laughed, “Unfortunately my sister’s the smart one. I’m just pigheaded.”

His field locked me in place the best he could, but from how he panted I knew the summoner’s exhaustion was creeping into him as well. No one came out of a direct clash of sorcery at a hundred percent—a fact I was quickly learning from how my spirit cried under the abuse I was putting it through. I begged my body to hold out for just a moment longer—until I could find a way out of this spell clash—then my spirit tore.

The fibers that wove the spirit muscles in my arms shredded apart. In Realspace, my blood vessels burst and re-hydrated the blood that had soaked my suit. My fingers quivered—a crack snaked through my Inviolate Star—and tears rolled down my face.

“I’m sorry,” Sphinx said. “I couldn’t protect you.”

From the sound of its voice, I knew that the tears I shed weren’t mine. Just a manifestation of my bondmate’s sorrow. I ground my teeth into my lip and ignored the burst of copper on my tongue. If there was one thing I hated, it was being laughed at. If there was a second thing, it was to see those I care about cry. Whether it was Melissa—her face flashed in my mind, scrunched and red—or Sphinx. Its face artfully composed as shining tears fell.

My arms were destroyed, so I walked.

I took a step forward. Quivering, unsteady, but I moved forward. Then another step. Another! I ran my foot along the edge of the kitchen island. Traced a burning line in the proverbial sand.

“I’m not losing. I’m not giving up. I’m not dying!”

That line blazed in my mind. I felt it D***** the world before me. There was where I lost, succumbed, and let myself and Piggy be turned to dust. On my way to wherever the dead went, and there I’d greet Mom and Dad. They’d tell me I did my best. Amber and Melissa would find their letters. No idea what they’d do next in my absence. It was an abhorrent outcome. Then there was the other. Where I fucking won, and I saw how.

“Piggy, help me compress the star,” I screamed.

“What?” he asked. “We’d be shrinking our defensive zone.”

“Trust me,” I said.

I don’t know what he heard in my voice, but he nodded and trusted me. His field-spell pressed into the star. Compressing it while I maintained its cohesion. There was a shape I had in mind, but I couldn’t make it on my own. Sphinx, I need more flame to beef it up.

“Anything,” Sphinx said.

Its wings fluttered as it fed more flame into the Inviolate Star. I felt a rib shatter somewhere in my body—the core muscles of my spirit had snapped and took it with them. Blood dribbled down my chin as I bit down on my lip in focus. The Inviolate Star thinned, the flame caused it to grow, and I maintained the cohesion. None of us technically had the magic to make what I saw in that other outcome, but we got close enough that the Inviolate Star wasn’t really a star anymore. It was a fucking knife.

The Obliteration Beam split on the edge geometry of my spell. Scattered raw unfocused power around the destroyed remnants of the house. I breathed in and thrust my hands out. The newly formed Inviolate Knife carved down the beam. So sharp that the “inevitable” force of Oblivion was bisected as it swam upstream and slashed deep into the White Womb’s face.

It dropped the spell. We won. My body went limp as I no longer had the overwhelming pressure of a Baron to lean against. As I slumped in the air—held up only by Piggy’s field-spell—I felt that blazing line in the sand be blown away. With it went the memory of why I even thought to shape an Inviolate Knife.

My eyes rolled up to meet the White Womb’s gaze. One of its eyes had popped like a water balloon—the one that the knife had struck—while the other burned with infantile rage. I called the fight too soon.

Its arm lashed out—still shattered—and caught me full on with its palm. Like a full body smack, and whipped me through the ceiling into the second floor. Then it was dark.

“Nadia,” Sphinx said. “You have to get up.”

I floated in something warm. Reminded me of a hug. I submerged myself in it. Pain flared at my ankle—did Sphinx bite me?

“Yes, and I’ll do it again if you don’t get up.”

I gave it some thought, and decided I didn’t want to. If I got back up there’d be pain. I’d have to keep fighting. Kill stronger and stronger things until I was the stronger that got killed.

“That’s life, Nadia.” Sphinx pleaded, “It’s the life you held so dearly onto that you beat a Baron in a clash of sorcery.”

That was an exaggeration. It was me, Sphinx, and Piggy that worked together to win. I felt myself float back a bit—arguing always pulled me back, at least a little bit.

“Then argue with me,” Sphinx said. “Argue, fight me, don’t ever listen to me. I don’t care, I just need you to get back up. If you don’t Piggy will die. I’ll die. You’ll die. Please.”

Was Sphinx crying?

“Yes. I hate it, and it’s your fault.”

I couldn’t handle it when others cried. I let myself rise to the surface of that warm expanse. Sphinx rolled me onto what felt like my back. It hurt. Why couldn’t we know a healing spell.

“I don’t know. If we live, figure one out, but for now we play with the toys we have and see what happens when the body is made inviolate.”

What—my thought was cut off as I felt Sphinx’s lips press into mine. They were soft, but its style of kissing was so insistent. It worked my mouth open and slipped its tongue inside. Pushed something down into my throat. Then pulled back, and prayed to the Sovereign. I didn’t know how that would—hot—do anything. I mean—hot—it was just a kiss—hothothothothothothot.

* * *

I reared up from the pool of my own blood. Clawed at my chest as I felt a horrible burning inside of me. Blinked on the Omensight and witnessed the frozen flame twirl in front of my heart. Streamers of Revelation bridged torn fibers of spirit back together. Latticed around shattered bone to fit it back into place. Whatever exhaustion—spiritual or bodily—was banished by the fire that seared down to the end of every extremity.

“Nadia, you have to move. It won’t last forever,” Sphinx yelled.

Even my cursory self-examination told me that. If the Inviolate Star could warp the lines of external fate, then when placed inside of someone it could, albeit temporarily, deny the fate of their body. The causality of failure that’d normally drag someone down. I flicked off the Omensight, and realized that the spell also had coated me in a corona of fire.

I groped for Mother’s Last Smile, rolled it into my palm, and propped myself up. From my second floor vantage point I could see that the White Womb had resorted to whatever primal—I refuse to say human—instincts it might’ve had. Its claws swung wildly as it sought to disembowel Piggy with each blow. He leveraged his field-spell, and parried every blow he could. Used it to slide himself around the room to evade the blows he couldn’t parry. Even as a summoner, he only had two arms. The White Womb had four. As he slid out of the way of one swipe he caught sight of me.

“Orchard, you’re alive,” he said.

In the gap of attention, the White Womb spun and swept Piggy’s feet out from beneath him with its tail. Thrust its four arms forward and caught him in mid-air. It creened gloriously.

“Mommy!”

I took a few steps back—pressed myself against the wall—and then bolted forward. Sprinting across the remains of the second floor before leaping into the air. Glaive high above me. In the eternity in which I hung in the air, a memory came to mind.

* * *

It was ten years ago when Mom decided I could finally learn the glaive. The autumn wind blew leaves all over the courtyard between the house and the temple. She waited for me to stop jumping up and down before she explained something to me.

“Sweetie, you have to remember the glaive is pretty simple. Beside the thrust there are really only two other moves. Encircle the Moon, where you twirl or rotate the glaive vertically, and Bisect the Sun,” she said, “where you slash horizontally or diagonally using your hips. No matter how small or grand the motion, those two movements build to everything.”

* * *

I exhaled. Let the corona of fire crawl from my body up the glaive to its head. The bright-white crescent of Mother’s Last Smile framed by chalcedony flames. They flared and I let myself fall forward. Faster and faster. Rotating until I was but the center of a wheel of fire and bright metal that descended violently to the earth. Encircle the Moon.

The glaive cut through the White Womb’s arms as easily as one draws a line on a piece of paper. I landed and slid my feet across the ground as I positioned myself between Piggy and the White Womb. I could hardly make out the details of my enemy—the flames were dying, and my sight with it. Good thing it was ten feet tall and screaming. Made it easy for the next bit.

I twisted my hips just like Mom taught me—could swear I felt her hands guiding me through the proper motion like she did ten years ago—sweeping the glaive around me in effortless motion.

“Bisect the Sun,” I said to no one.

The light within the glaive’s head flared. Then dimmed as a bright line of white flashed, flew, wreathed in a shell of chalcedony fire and split the White Womb in half. Its component parts tumbled to the ground.

“Orchard,” Piggy said.

He said more words, but I didn’t hear him. The spell was fading and I had to work fast. Do what only I could do. Using the glaive I propped myself up crossed the distance from me to the White Womb’s swiftly dying body. It had reverted to a skeleton again, unprotected by the layers of dense Conceptual flesh that fueled its resurrections.

Its jaw clacked. Speaking one last time, “Mommy?”

In my haze I responded, “You killed her.”

Then wound my fingers together and set fire to the infinite futures where it came back to life.

The wind blew, and I imagined it carrying the nonexistent ashes of the creature to that distant shore where the dead go. If it was lucky maybe it’d see its mom. I hoped she’d forgive it.

I turned to Piggy, and smiled forgetting that the mask covered my face in the eternal grin of a dog lusting for blood. Though right now my mind was completely sober.

“You’ll have to carry me out,” I said.

Piggy asked, “What?”

“Carry me.”

Then I collapsed, and fell into darkness once more. Though this time I rode the waves of unconsciousness in and out. Piggy had carried me out of the house. I could hear the howling of my fellow dogs praising my victory. Even the Kennelmaster said something.

“She looks like shit. If she doesn’t die, tell her to enjoy the points.”

It wasn’t much, but it was something. Then I felt myself get handed off to someone else, and I let myself fall into the dark properly this time. A smile of a job well done plastered on my face.