Breaking Points

Smoke obscured the god of desire even more as he nervously scratched at himself and pulled his feet beneath his hips.

“Y-y-you should lie down. You should lie down and sleep now. You’re in my sanctuary. Mine! You’re mine! In mine!” Ysmerath shouted as he slapped his seat in a tantrum.

Grief didn’t wake or move. Sol felt an unwanted force snapping within his ribs. He’d fought for so long to keep it at bay. The fire had almost unleashed it. Standing there now, he was exhausted and delirious. Cruel as it was, it seemed like the beast was trying to help him.

WhatIsDesireInAWorldWithoutJoy?

“Sit, sit, sit,” Ysmerath repeated.

Sol’s mind cracked like a shell being pried, and his jaw snapped wide. Hoarse, raspy, dangerous chuckles gathered in his worn throat. The beast waited.

Smoke was nearly suffocating them. Grief whispered his name. But that was not his name at the moment. ThatWasNotHisName.

WhatIsDesireInAWorldWithoutJoy, the beast asked.

If nothing else, the little ones and Grief weren’t there or conscious enough to see it. As he frantically slapped at the former doorway in hopes of finding a way out, he could feel his bones snapping slowly like ropes breaking during a freeze. He was coming undone, and he didn’t think he could stop it.

“LET ME OUT IF THIS ROOM!” he snarled in a murderous voice.

Far below them, Wretch was shouting the same words as she strained to crawl between perspiring and putrid prisoners. Burden was hyperventilating a few meters away, but she could not reach her.

“Let me reach my sister!” Wretch shouted, but none could move.

Limbs tangled and twisted like vines. Ankles bent out of alignment. Shoulders dislocated in strain. Some vomited. Some passed out. And not far away, two lovers began to finally give up.

Weeks of despair had finally caught up to them. They had not seen one another in weeks, even though they were pressed against one another there in the horror. The collectors had snagged them as they dared to drink from a waterfall, and then they’d been thrown into this cavern with so many others without a single explanation.

Ever since then, they’d survived off the drops of water that sprayed down on them twice a day and the scraps of molded bread that were dropped without a word. When the light had appeared above them, they’d thought it would be freedom from the filth. Instead, they’d been buried under hundreds of new captives.

Her cheeks were sunken in his hands. His mane was matted and crusting. They sobbed as they pressed their heads together in solemn acceptance.

“I cannot do this,” she cried.

“Nor can I. If we are to die, I’d like to feel joy just once,” he admitted.

“Find me in another life. Far from here,” she whispered.

Wretch managed to crawl beside them just as they pulled their own torturous restraints away and embraced in a passionate kiss.

“You were always the most beautiful thing to me. I never saw a sunrise, but I bet it would have made me feel the way you do,” he whispered as Jo’s lips began to rip and turn towards.

The laughing began, and Wretch could hear it.

“Oh no. No!” she gagged as the sound built.

“You were answers to wishes and prayers you’ll never know. I love you. Always,” she replied.

His fingers twitched in the dark as she began to laugh. Their mouths met, and they began to bite at one another’s faces. Flesh tore and warmth sprayed onto Wretch’s nearby paw.

“Oh, gods. Oh gods, no,” she gasped as the two lovers joyously flayed one another alive with their teeth, laughing as they did.

Others realized what was happening, and the panic began. It spread like a sludge, gathering muck and bodies as it spilled through the nothingness.

“Wanderers!! Wanderers!!!!”

“Joyous ones!!!”

Burden choked as panicking hands and paws clawed to push her down. A new sound rose, gurgling and unwell. Someone was flailing between the jaws of the monsters. Their bodies went limp, then they began to laugh as well. Burden’s chest started to break beneath the crush, and she could no longer breathe. Thousands tried to climb, and she was sinking.

“Wretch?!!!” she wept as she held out her paws.

“I’m coming! Sayane!! Keep screaming! Keep screaming, Sayane!”

WhatIsDesireInAWorldWithoutJoy?

Sol was shaking now. Everything suddenly felt very wrong. This place was not a sanctuary. It was a trap. Metus may not have been involved or even known about their presence, but the god of desire was up to something.

Shudders of transformation rippled across Sol’s back as he felt himself being unmade and made again. HeDidn’tWantThisHeDidn’tWantThisHeDidn’tWantThis. He could not look at any of them yet.

“Why didn’t you aid me when I came to you, Ysmerath? What happened to you?” Sol asked between scoffing, coughing chuckles.

The god pulled his legs and arms close to his body for comfort.

“Fear and conflict make mortals selfish. When the darkness spread, I felt them turn inside themselves, caring only for their own survival. I saw it in the raiding. In the butchering of families by desperate mouths. It… changed me.”

There was a hint of solemn understanding in the fretful god’s voice. As he spoke, Sol recalled the devastated landscapes he’d beheld as he marched towards Metus’s stronghold.

“And then… you failed us all. And the world broke,” the god lamented.

There was no mockery or jest in the smoky figure’s voice, just a sad statement of a fact. Sol sighed and lowered his head as Ysmerath clawed at his skin with his chipped nails.

“Desire in a world without joy is… addiction. That is what I… am.”

Darkness hid the sisters and also drowned them. They screamed as the madness of bodies frothed around them. Limbs appeared on top of one another, gushing from the dirty blackness like stabbing knives. They clawed for anything to grab onto as the thousands fought to breathe and escape the horde that was spreading with ripping flesh and laughing voices. One second, a voice would cry out in agony as its host was ripped open and infected with joy. The next, it would laugh in delirious merriment. Dozens were laughing now. In a minute, it would be hundreds.

Palms pressed on Burden’s face as she cried out for Wretch, sliding damp and moldy detritus into her open mouth and snapping a tooth loose as the body tried to use her as a brace. She was suffocating.

“I DON’T WANT TO LAUGH!!!” she gargled as the force began to push her deeper into the abyssal crowd.

Wretch could not focus on anything. Even with her eyes open, she could not make out anything beyond the most basic, fundamental references to bodies. Her own claws extended to their full hatred, and she began to rip at everything before her. Not to kill, but to maim. Each screeching slash would cause the one before her to recoil in pain, and she was able to crawl slightly faster.

Burden’s voice was gone.

“SAYANE?! SAYANE!!!” Wretch screamed.

Then she heard a whimpering gurgle and felt her sister’s paw clawing for her. Blades sank into her skin but she didn’t care. She grabbed her little sister and ripped the small body into her arms. Everything was overwhelmingly hot. Air was thinning. Burden was delirious. Smells beyond redemption were coating her nose.

“Climb. We have to climb,” Wretch choked as she gagged on the taste that was flung into her mouth.

Someone screamed close beneath them, and there was a fleshy, heavy ripping sound as some form of beast began to shake the mortified victim in its mouth. Voices begged for help, then silenced.

“Oh no. Oh no, they’re close,” Wretch cried as a desperate body above her kicked her in the face.

Its foot landed on her safety shard and began to use it for leverage, sending the bladed stone deeper into her skull then pulling it across the entirety of her face. Absolute, broken agony scorched through her face and soul as she feared they were going to finally die.

Grief twitched.

Burden gave up and cursed the life she’d lived.

Grief felt a pull in her chest that began to overpower the drugging smoke.

Without knowing it, she had formed a complete acolyte bond with the little one. Now, that little one was dying. Grief grunted and began to stir.

Sol sniffed as a single tear of gold ran down his ruined skin. For a moment, the beast within him receded and paused to mock his sadness.

“I am sorry. For all of it. I am… so very sorry,” Sol cried as he felt the monstrosity roiling again.

When the time had come, he had not been strong enough to overpower Metus. The beast had been there all along, begging to be unleashed. He’d kept it at bay, shamefully hiding it from his party members every time it threatened to rise. But when it had looked like Metus might win, he’d given himself over to the ugly side of his soul in a desperate attempt to claw victory back. It had worked. Metus was nothing compared to the part of him that found joy in hurting others. And that had scared Sol.

Deep within his subconscious, he fought with himself to deny that the uglier side of him may have been stronger. It may have been purer. He hadn’t wanted to save the world with cruelty. That single regret had caused the beast to hesitate on the final swing, giving Metus the opening he needed. That single regret, nothing more than a milisecond of sand in the ocean of time, had damned the entire world.

The beast felt like it was laughing. It pulled his skin in shifting snaps, hinting that it was still there and once again ready if needed. Sol felt the blades of obsidian cutting, and he felt the lack of oneness in his body and mind. He may have been “well”, but it was only “well enough”. All of this torture and agony had left him frayed, like nothing more than the edges of a once fine curtain that had scraped too long against unforgiving stone. He was breaking once again.

“Please, let us go, Ysmerath. I have to make it up to these little ones.”

Burden covered her ears when she heard the cries of voices she knew. Below them and beside them, their tribemates were being torn open. Warmth rose into the air nearby, and she knew it was from bodies being ripped. Scents of iron and rust drifted into her nose, and she knew it was from blood pouring like rivers. If every living moment had led to this, then life had never served any purpose. If a soul was only meant to suffer, it shouldn’t have been carved from the stars and sent to the mortal realm.

Grief woke, feeling something heavy and tragic in her ribs.

“The little ones! Sol!” she gasped.

The beast clawed to the very edge of Sol’s mind and whispered to him that it was ready.

Wretch was sobbing as the flesh above her eye hung over her brow with a slopping fold. Still, she kept Burden close as the cries behind them turned to laughs. Subtle bursts of air on her face told her that they were nearing the top of the pile.

Ysmerath kept his gaze on Sol and Grief. Green lights stared unblinking at the two of them as he slouched back in his chair. Then they shook side to side. The beast grinned. It was time for cruelty to awaken.

Sol tried one last time.

“Ysmerath, I am BEGGING you. Let us go or you and your acolytes shall all day on this night.”

Wretch’s paw burst through the heap of flesh and felt nothing but air. Her fangs sank into the one beside her, forcing the being to move to the side with a yelp. One last heave of strain pulled her and Burden to the surface, and the two of them gulped in as much rancid, free air as possible.

Grief stood beside Sol, but he was different to her. His color had begun to shift, and his voice felt off. When she neared him, she saw every fiber of his being was spasming. Sol was crying again, shaking his head. He didn’t want to commit any more violence. He was tired. He was tired of hurting. He was tired of causing hurt.

“We are not simply what the mortals made us, old friend. Look at what I am. I am not just joy. You can be yourself. You can make your own choices beyond desire. You can make the.. the right choice. If not…”

Ysmerath inhaled, then shook his head once more. It was impossible to know how much of the decision was his own, or if he was projecting

“No. Y-you should stay here with me. With us. F-forever.”

Smoke billowed with more intensity, and Sol accepted that there was no other choice.

“Brother?” Grief asked.

Sol inhaled and surrendered to the beast. Light exploded across the room and everything disappeared as a ground-shaking laugh sounded out within a crackling dome of orange.