Order and Chaos

i dunno how you'd fight him, but ask him to just manifest physically because he can just do that and finish off the rest of the gods

i dunno how you'd fight him, but ask him to just manifest physically because he can just do that and finish off the rest of the gods

"I've got a better idea," I said. "Why don't you just manifest physically and finish what you started? Kill off the rest of the gods?" My troops murmured in approval, agreement, assent.

Malcolm paused. "Did you remain at the home of the gods? Can you point me at a live god, right now? No!"

"That shouldn't matter if you can manifest anywhere you want all willy-nilly," I said. I could feel my troop's morale increasing ever-so-slightly; a verbal battleground was a much more natural fit for me than an actual battleground.

Malcolm paused again. It was hard to tell behind that facemask, but I was almost certain he was... actually thinking. "How," he finally said, "do you think I am currently manifesting? Only by the permission and power of the living, grateful gods, who I, dead Malcolm Vindictus, can no longer harm."

It was an argumentative dead-end, and made me look the fool despite not possibly having known about that fact. Or was it a fact? Something smelled fishy to me. Why was he not able to summon that ghosts-can't-kill-gods clause up in an instant? Still, though, if Malcolm COULD kill gods from beyond the grave, he probably would have already...

"The great orator Commun Marx," chuckled Malcolm, "struck silent! He is now forced to admit his cowardice. Perhaps she is right, perhaps it is better to be a traitor than a cowardly husk of a man, and you should hand over the reins to her. Come on, you chickenshit. Land one hit."

Inside I felt something primal surge within me — what was left of my minuscule pride, after weeks of getting beat down. In anger, I lunged forward at my ghost boyfriend and swung down my sword with all my might. I only dented his armor, and fell over backwards right after. Malcolm chuckled, but the crowd gasped at the sheer audacity of the attack. In seconds he had his own sword at my throat.

"Give up?" He was practically smirking through his mask. I rolled out from the underneath the sword and, without even turning over onto my face, kicked his legs out from under him so he fell back into the snow (bruising my shin on his armor.) We both tried to stand up. I slipped back down, deeper into the snow, twice, but he didn't even get up once in his heavy full platemail before I had my foot on his throat. He grabbed my leg, but at the same time I swung the flat of my sword at his head, like it were a golf club.

His head went flying and his arms fell back down to his side. I did not mean for that to happen. I even used the flat of the blade. This was not right.

Someone went out to fetch the helmet. "It's empty!" she hollered. The armor was empty too. It didn't make sense, but the army under my command seemed to think I had bested Malcolm in a brief, furious spat. It cut out any talk of mutiny, but... no obvious boon was forthcoming. Perhaps I had not truly won the war, but merely a battle? Perhaps I had just... killed him off, for good now. I couldn't bear the thought and pushed it far from my mind as I donned the armor and led my troops, now unquestioned, down out of the snowy peak and into the rockier territory winding down the mountain. The stones cut their feet like they had been whipped. We filled our canteens from the rivers and waterfalls of melted ice from above, which we would follow into the desert.

Water splashed on my face. I shot up like a bolt and swiveled my head around, trying to get a bearing on where it had come from, but quickly got very dizzy and fell back down onto the bed. Wait — bed? Bed. I woozily turned my head to face the rest of the humble wooden room.

Sir Nose in the corner sprayed me with his trunk again, grinning. "Good morning, kidd," he said, handing me the glass of water he had been drinking from. I swatted it out of his hand and onto the floor.

"Demon," I spat, hoarsely. I really, really did need that glass of water. "Wake me up. Now."

"I just did!" he said. "And I'm not a demon. I'm a celest."

"Wake me up," I said.

"Not a bad guess, since I am the subliminal seducer, but I had to get out of your mind to take your dead ass west. You shouldn't have taken that armor. It made you hot, made your temperature rise."

"...Liar," I said, eyeing the armor and sword (in a pile in the furthest corner. Damn.) "Wake me up."

"You're up! From the heat stroke!" he said. "You're dizzy, you got a headache, and talk about the agony of defeet!"

I was too tired to argue any more. "Let me be," I said, collapsing back into my pillow.

"That's the spirit!" he smiled. Ugh, what? "It ain't like you're crooning 'bout how you misjudged me, but I'll take what I can get. Now I gotta go 'cause you're running behind schedule, but like usual, I'll be watching you move your body." He made finger-guns with both his hands and also his trunk, then blinked out of existence.

Man, fuck that guy. I rolled over and lied down so I was facing the wall, then put my pillow over my head.

"Oh, you're up!" said a different voice from behind me. Ugh, I had to roll over AGAIN?

It was worth rolling over for this beauty, though. It was another bad case of the I'm gay, and it made me smile inside and out.

"I brought you a sandwich and a dress," she said. She had brought me a sandwich and a dress. One of her own, no doubt.

"Thank you," I croaked.

"You need more water. Other than what's all over your face," she giggled, and started looking through the room for the glass she must have left for me. She found a shard. "Oh," she said, confused. "I'll... get you another one. I'll be right back."

She left again, and I took the opportunity to slip into the (very modest and plain) clothes she left behind for me and start on the sandwich. It was hard to chew and swallow even one bite without all my saliva, so as soon as she returned, I grabbed for the water and washed it down.

"Can I ask," she said, "what happened to your hair?"

"Burned off," I said.

"Is that why it's white?" she said.

I put my hand to my head and grabbed a lock of hair. It was short, but I must have been out for a couple of days! "Uh," I said, "just born that way," I said, and smiled.

"I should let you get some rest," she said, and left.

For the next two weeks I lived with her. I recovered within the first, really, but... couldn't bring myself to leave. She was the only person around for miles, with only camels for companionship, and had to live off of what she could grow and harvest from her spot next to a river but in the middle of a desert. (Mostly, corn.) She was almost 21 and not even married. Her father died when she was a teenager, and she never met her mother. I didn't tell her anything about myself, for obvious reasons. Mostly, we just talked about books. Neither of us said or did anything about it or to acknowledge it, but we fell in love with each other. I was certain that this is why De had sent me west.

Which is why it fucked me up so much to find her corpse in the top of the hayloft after I had nipped up there to investigate a rotten smell. I got up close — though the body had been decomposing for quite some time in the hot desert, I could tell it was definitely the corpse of my host.

"Mary!" I heard her holler from the ranch, sweetly. My stomach churned. "Are you done feeding the camels? I made corn soup!"

What the fuck? What the fuck?!

Go downstairs and inform your definitely-now-a-ghost translucent girlfriend that she's dead and a ghost now, since she apparently hadn't noticed herself!

IT'S COOL, THIS IS ACTUALLY FINE, PROBABLY

I mean, how old is that corpse? She's probably been dead the whole time you've known her, right? The person you fell in love with is still the same person you've been with this whole time, it's just that she may or may not have been, at some point, the corpse you're looking at.

Anyway, you should invite her to come along on your journey to usher in the catpocalypse, since that's infinitely purr-ferable to a full on apocalypse.

IT'S COOL, THIS IS ACTUALLY FINE, PROBABLY

I mean, how old is that corpse? She's probably been dead the whole time you've known her, right? The person you fell in love with is still the same person you've been with this whole time, it's just that she may or may not have been, at some point, the corpse you're looking at.

I tried to calm myself.

Restless spirits were hardly unknown. Indeed, if anything they'd be more common now; most of the gods responsible for leading them to the underworld would have perished in Father's war. Not to mention most of the gods responsible for keeping them in the underworld once they were there.

The more disturbing question was how long she had been dead. I knew I could answer that if I really wanted to - I had been taught much about identifying the age of a corpse, as it was useful to know if whoever or whatever had killed it might still be around - but I did not dare. I didn't want to accept that the woman I loved had been dead since before I had met her.

Go downstairs and inform your definitely-now-a-ghost translucent girlfriend that she's dead and a ghost now, since she apparently hadn't noticed herself!

I considered telling her what I had seen, but I was terrified to. Perhaps it would be better to just go back and pretend I had never seen this. I could still love her.

But then, I shook my head. I was the daughter of Malcolm Vindictus, and I could not call myself his heir if I was afraid to face anything, least of all the truth. I would have to tell her what I had seen.

I summoned my courage, and climbed down the ladder. I wasn't sure exactly what I would say, but I had to tell her the truth.

But when I arrived and returned to the kitchen, it was not my love that I saw hunched over the stove, stirring the corn soup. It was Sir Nose, his grotesque face sewn onto a body that was otherwise identical to hers.

"You didn't finish feeding the camels," he - she? - said nonchalantly. "Well, I suppose that doesn't really matter. I still love you."

"What did you do to her?" I screamed.

"I didn't do anything. I am simply here to fill the gaping void in your heart. Your lady is dead, and so here I am, taking on her role."

"You didn't... Then how did she die?"

Sir Nose chuckled. "A very good question! Well, let me put it this way. Someone in this room killed her, and as I've already mentioned, it wasn't me."

"I've done no such thing!"

"Have you? Do you remember what Felus said to you?"

I'd forgotten, but the moment he asked, it came rushing back to me.

"He told me to kill all humans. But what does this have to do with that? I refused, and cut off his head!"

"Mary, Mary, Mary. You don't understand, do you? Gods don't make requests of mortals. They make prophecies. Whatever you may intend, it is foretold by the god Felus that you will kill all humans. It doesn't matter that he's dead, his divine decree persists. Only another god could annul it, and seeing as most of the others are just aching for another apocalypse, I doubt they'd be willing to do that."

"De," I said.

"Maybe she would. She was willing to sell out cats for humanity, or so the rumors go. But who knows? The gods are inscrutable, and can change their minds on the slightest of whims. And, of course, she might not have survived your father's purge."

He leaned in closer to me, and I felt my rage growing. He was using her body!

"But where De represents a mere possibility, I can offer you a guarantee. You see, my dear Mary, do you know what the difference between a celest and a god is? Faith, that's what. Get me enough worshippers, and I'll have the power to put a stop to this murderous destiny you've been saddled with. And I promise you, right now, that I will do exactly that. All you have to do is devote yourself to me and help me ascend. A small price to pay for the future of humanity, wouldn't you agree?"

So this was the choice I was faced with. I could ignore everything he was saying, and go on with my life, inexplicably leaving corpses in my wake wherever I went. I could desperately pursue the one goddess who might release me. Or I could make this horrible little monster, who had stolen my lover's beauty, into a new god.

What was I to do? Which of those unpleasant choices was I to make? Or, was there some other path open to me to end this madness?

why do you need to get worshippers for sir nose? get worshippers for YOURSELF AND YOU CAN BECOME THE GODDESS!!!!!
kill sir nose. one who kills a celest becomes a celest

Ugh, this guy.

I have a better idea, let's go to the underworld.

With the gatekeeping gods dead, we can probably even get in without having to do something stupid like offing ourselves. We (probably) can't kill anyone who's already dead, and someone there might have some ideas about this mess.

kill sir nose.

Sir Nose went back to the stovetop to stir his corn soup. "Take your time to decide," he said. "I can wait forever."

I staggered to the counter beside him, leaned above the sink, and looked a thousand miles out the kitchen window. This was no time for moping and tears, though, much as my heart craved to wallow in it — I was a Vindictus, and it was time for a little Vindictus action. I threw open the silverware drawer, grabbed her biggest carving knife, and stabbed Sir Nose in the side.

I had planned it so he wouldn't have time to react. What I didn't expect was no reaction. He stepped to the side from the force of the actual blow, but was otherwise unphased. When I took the knife out again, the wound closed itself. I stabbed him again, with enough force to knock him back and send his wooden spoon flying out of his trunk and across the room, but he took the knife out of his own gut and began to stir with that. His face — either of them — didn't so much as twitch.

"You might have killed Felus, but HE was an idiot," said Sir Nose. Then he laughed once. He honked. "Two stab wounds to the torso with her biggest carving knife — do you even remember that's how you killed her?"

I didn't. But then, it's not something I would want to remember.

"Soup's done," he said, then upturned the pot right into the sink beside it. It was only "soup" in the loosest sense of the word. Watered-down boiling blood, interspersed with human viscera and even bone cascaded out of the pot and pooled in the sink. Two human eyes floated to the top as it drained.

Now it was my turn to be unimpressed. It's not like I needed a violent metaphor for the violence I was guilty about, and it wasn't scary, just so gory that it was impossible to take seriously.

"If you're trying to psyche me out," I said. "It didn't work. Those eyes aren't even Adeline's color."

"Boy, you ARE little miss tough stuff," he said, sitting down at the dining table. "That's good, I can use that when you're on my team." He beamed.

Ugh, this guy.

I have a better idea, let's go to the underworld.

With the gatekeeping gods dead, we can probably even get in without having to do something stupid like offing ourselves. We (probably) can't kill anyone who's already dead, and someone there might have some ideas about this mess.

So I couldn't kill him. Fine.

"I can talk this over with the gods themselves," I said, voice unshaken.

"It took your dad 2 years to get to the home of the gods from Vendet castle," said he. "Do you think you won't encounter more people to slaughter along the way?"

"I know a shortcut," I said, returning to the silverware drawer. "I — I —" I stammered and caught myself. I would not let my emotions get the better of me. "I deserve it."

"Death won't release you from Felus' curse," he said. "You'd have to break out of the underworld and then it's still a journey to the home of the gods. Face it, you really only have the two options I said. Might as well flip a coin."

"I'll find a way," I said.

"I'll be happy to watch you agonize over it and fail," he said.

I spent days there, trying to figure out any way around the issue. I tried Ouija boards, but nobody was there. I tried prayer, but nothing answered. I buried Adeline next to her father, weeping bitterly: "it's not fair" and "I'm sorry." And all the while, the elephant in the room watched me like a vulture in that chair at the dining table. ("Life's not fair," he told me, "death triply so.") Every day he made more blood soup for the hungry sink, though it didn't make it any more scary. More effective psychological warfare was the mounting stench of rotting flesh that got a little more rancid every hour. I was afraid to sleep, afraid to dream.

Eventually I had to give in on that last point. I dreamt of a life in Cordonia with Adeline, I dreamt I told her all the things I never did and she wrapped me up in her arms and told me she forgave me (even though in the dream there was nothing to forgive,) also I dreamt of a circus where everyone in the audience and all the performers were bears. Sir Nose made no appearance.

When I woke up (at 3 am, having simply passed out the previous afternoon,) Sir Nose had disappeared from the ranch entirely. I allowed myself to wonder if it had all been a horrible dream and searched the whole farm top-to-bottom, calling out for my Adeline. Before the hour was out I was disillusioned of the notion, especially by that ever-worse stench that followed me around all through the farm.

I sat on top of a sand dune to watch the sun rise. Wind blew through my hair, which was now long enough to be blown through. In 3 weeks, it was my birthday. They'd send out a search party for sure, by then. They'd find me, and I'd have to marry whoever my mom said, then I'd start killing again. I wondered whether I even had loved Adeline, or some illusion or impersonation designed entirely to make me suffer. I hadn't done anything, not a damn thing, to deserve this.

The sun broke over the horizon with an incongruous flash of beauty. As the daylight grew I saw... something at the bottom of the dune, uncovered by the wind. I scrambled down and dusted it off. It was a dead man, but he hadn't just passed out in the desert. His face was skinned off and his eyes were gouged out, his right forearm was cut off, and his torso had been cut open and emptied of organs like you would to prepare an animal. Had I done this too?

The next day, the man in the elephant mask returned. I sat down across the table from them. "Apologies," they said, "but I do have other parts of my plan to attend to sometimes. I meant what I said about waiting forever, though!"

"I figured it out," I said, smiling.

"Oh?"

"I didn't kill Adeline," I said. "I saw, when I was burying her — she was strangled, she had bruises on the neck. Those torso stab wounds, you went back to add them to the corpse after you said that's how I did it. She didn't have any blood on her dress. I don't know how corpses age in the desert, but I'm willing to bet she was dead before I even got here."

"The human mind really can convince itself of anything, can't it?"

"I'm not done. You're not even Sir Nose. I found his body out in the dunes. You've been turning him into soup and dumping him down the sink so there wouldn't be a body to find. You haven't even said any of the weird nonsense stuff about funk nobody understands but he's always saying."

"Ooh, clever girl! I guess it's time to stop lying then," he — she — it said. "It also means it's time to stop explaining things — Oh, I repeat myself. I hope you meant it when you said you had it figured out."

Without warning, the thing in Sir Nose's skin threw the whole table at me. I leapt to the side. Damn, I was actually really really hoping it'd help fill in the gaps for me.

"Queen will be a nice stepping stone on the way to god," it said instead. I went back for the carving knife. "Still won't work," it said.

It whacked me upside the head with a cast-iron frying pan and I went straight to the floor. Holy shit, did that ever hurt. At least if they were trying to kill me, that meant I was onto something, right?

"Don't worry," it leaned down and put its hand on my throat. "You won't even know you're me until someone reminds you." (Does that mean that she...?)

I grabbed its arm and twisted it off of me, then got back on my feet. I tried to stab them in the throat, but this time it passed through like it wasn't even there. I lost my balance and nearly fell on my face right through it. It laughed.

"I'll make it easy," it said, its form shimmering back into Adeline's. "If I kill you, your soul will be reunited with its mate." She — it rushed right at me, but I sidestepped it and it went right through the wall. In a couple seconds its arms went right back through, and pinned me to the wall by my neck with its... black gauntlet? I tried to pull the arm off of me, but I had no leverage. "And your father, too!" it said. Oh, it was the Nothing. Great to piece it together, but that didn't help me not suffocate.

I had to do something stupid, before there was nothing left to do. "I can help," I croaked, desperately. "I'll help you."

"Oh, I was just gonna take your life when you said that anyway," it said. "Queens can declare a state religion."

I still had the knife in my hand and my hands on the gauntlet on my neck. I was going to die. I laughed, barely, wheezing. It was just a short trip from the gauntlet to...

I stabbed myself in the neck and died. The last thing I experienced was a very angry Nothing, which must have meant I was REALLY doing something right.

-----

It had been almost 3 weeks since I had donned Malcolm's armor and started down the mountain, but despite the improved weather conditions, the troop count had dwindled down to a paltry 1,030. What went wrong?

you forgot how to count

Cannibalism, lots of it.

Cannibalism, lots of it.

The rumor was that the mutiny hadn't died down - it had simply gone silent. Rather than open warfare, the mutineers were quietly taking out loyalists and consuming their flesh, as provisions were becoming scarcer.

I knew this wasn't true, if only because the former mutineers were dying as fast as the others. If there was any secretive cannibalism, it was a two-way street. But I doubted it; I had carefully started accounting for the bodies once the rumors started, and they matched up. There might have been nibbling of corpses, but no outright consumption, unless people were sneaking back to feed on them - which, honestly, seemed like far more trouble than it was worth.

But the more I reflected on the matter, the more I realized there was another explanation.

you forgot how to count

It had become impossible to count any number higher than 1030. The moment I tried to conceive of adding one to that number, I found my mind overtaken in a wave of confusion.

This was either a delayed curse by the dead gods, or a change in the very nature of the world caused by many of the gods governing numbers dying out. It would be some time before I could determine which.

That meant we likely had more soldiers than I was able to account for, but there was no way I could be sure of how many. I tried asking the soldiers to stand aside after I counted them, but after I reached 1030 my mind was a haze and even starting over on the new group seemed impossible. I could tell we still had a considerable number with us over the limit, but as to how many, I had no idea.

The most important question was whether this was only affecting us. If it was a curse, it likely was; but if it were a broader change caused by a god's death, then we might be able to take advantage of the confusion. After all, the enemy forces would have no idea if their group of 1030 soldiers was actually larger than ours.

But there would be no way to know that until we were off the mountain. And that would still take some time. The worst was likely over as far as the terrain, but there was still the matter of curses.

And, of course, there was the more immediate, if less deadly, problem that stood in our way. It would have to be dealt with before we could go any further down.

The first step was to work out exactly what we were up against.

up against exactly 1024 slime monsters (from a single slime monster that has divided in half 10 times since)

A cozy field of flowers, tempting your soldiers to forget their cares and simply frolic about

A cozy field of flowers, tempting your soldiers to forget their cares and simply frolic about

We had encamped four nights before in a relatively flat and clear area by the frozen river, only to find when we emerged, well-rested, from our canvas cocoons, that spring had seemingly broke overnight. The sun was shining warmth upon us, the river was flowing, trees bore ripe fruit, the flowers were in bloom, and we could walk throughout the area without shoes or fear of cutting our feet on the rocky outcroppings thanks to a healthy layer of grass.

My troops beseeched me to let them rest up for a day, now that fortune had favored us. Surely, we had conquered our pursuers at the pass, and we should use the time to harvest the fruit and freshwater while we could. Reluctantly, I agreed, but only on the condition that I take up a guard shift personally.

On the second day, I woke up later than most under my command because of that extra responsibility and its correlated staggered sleep schedule, only to find that that very morning, one of my women had successfully proposed to one of my men, and the soldiers were already setting up an impromptu wedding for the two with whatever they had on hand — a flower wreath for the lady, crushing berries and leaves into his-and-hers matrimonial fingerpaint, burning an "aisle" into the grass. I was already fairly unpopular as it was, and besides, who was I to stand in the way of love? It would be worse than nasty, it would be downright hypocritical.

The next day was their honeymoon, so that was right out too, as expected.

It was the fourth day that I begun to get a little worried. The troops had... certainly been softened by their time away from the elements and the stern discipline of a Vindictus, and had been whittling away the hours playing games, giggling like little children. Except for a handful who had sneaked into the woods. I went off to investigate and found them using their swords as axes to chop down large trees!

"What are you doing?" I asked them.

They stopped, turned to me, then muttered indecipherably among one another before one stepped forward, coughed... and began to nervously jabber gibberish.

Ugh, none of them even spoke my language. I went to fetch my new second-in-command, the woman who had nearly executed me, but told me that she spoke only 3 languages and none of them this one. It took hours to locate someone within the ranks who could speak this mystery language, but they too did not share a tongue with me and had to translate through a third language to my second-in-command. (It all made me appreciate my previous second-in-command, the polyglot, much, much more.) All the while the foreign soldiers continued their work.

Apparently there was a hole in their tent that let the breeze in, so they were "doing some wood" to build walls with. Ludicrous! I asked them why they didn't just use their loincloths to patch it up, but it wasn't able to survive the translation process and they just politely informed me with bows and curtsies that, yes, sir, some of them WERE wearing clothes, thank you for noticing.

Annoyed, I told them to desist with this nonsense, but by then they had already finished the chopping and, with a shrug, blatantly and blithely engaged in insubordination in completing their little shed!

Once construction on one wooden yurt had begun, others found the idea irresistible, and set to work on their own even against explicit orders. It spread like a disease, and by the time the sun set and all retired but I, there were around a dozen completed or in-progress sheds, and an outhouse to boot!

I stewed and steamed at my night watch post. They had all abandoned their duties for this frivolity. Even the first and second night shifts had run off somewhere or another, leaving me with all three shifts.

I kept my eyes peeled for the whole night. Perhaps it was the sleep deprivation, but I began to get quite paranoid. We had been in one spot for almost five days, which was more than enough time to catch up, find, and then completely surround us. Tomorrow we'd wake up with 1,030 loaded crossbows in our face, and we'd all be slaughtered or taken as prisoners of war. Or another curse would befall us. The other shoe would finally drop. These thoughts kept me well awake at least.

Deep into the second shift, I jumped at the sight of a silhouette of some man cresting over the cliff in the distance. I thought, it must be their scout, and they've only now found us! (Nevermind how he set to work climbing DOWN the cliff immediately after.) I stumbled up and grabbed my — Malcolm's — sword. Perhaps it made me less cowardly, or perhaps I had simply grown more brave, but I determined to strike out and meet this strange foe before he made it to the edge of camp.

I met this traveler at the foot of the cliff. It was an overmuscled, aged, dark-skinned, mighty barbarian warrior — or in other words, Malcolm himself! (It was mighty fortunate that I had been on second shift tonight, for the rest of the army wouldn't have recognized him out of his armor and in just a loincloth, where I would have recognized him in even less.) I dropped my sword and ran into his arms, and we embraced like we used to, when he was alive. He picked me up and swung me around and lifted my visor up to kiss me. And to think, I had been worried based on our last few encounters that he didn't love me anymore! It was just his way.

"So you're not dead," I said.

"No, I still am," he said. "I'm sorry I've been gone so long, Commun, but it's just... so hard to leave Heaven."

"What's it like?"

"Exactly like you'd expect," he said. "They have a fake you up there, but... when you know it's fake — you're not supposed to know — it's... it's not..."

I kissed him again to shut him up. Then my visor clunked down in front of my face, so I threw the helmet aside. Malcolm helped and started working on unhinging my left shoulder.

"Malcolm," I said, "Maybe we should bring this to my tent, hm?"

"No," he said, now onto the right shoulder, "They think you killed me, and they respect you as the true leader you are now." I didn't have the heart to tell him of the rampant insubordination consuming the camp right now, especially when he was already starting on the legs.

Needless to say, I skipped out on the watch I was actually scheduled for that night.

When I woke the next morning (more like noon,) Malcolm was already up and loading himself back into his old armor.

"Hey!" I shouted, although I can't say I really expected anything different. He tossed his loincloth in my face and went back to screwing in his gauntlet.

"You look better in that anyway," he flirted. I smiled.

Then a gear slipped in my head...

"...What did you say Heaven was like, again?"

"What you'd expect," he said. "Except better. Everything breaks your way, without breaking your belief. The whole idea is you're not supposed to know you're dead."

Expect...

existential anxiety.

Oh gods, it was the moat all over again! I tied up my loincloth and sprinted through the forest back to camp, leaving the fake Malcolm far, far behind.

I met my troops again in a wide-eyed panic, waving my arms above me frantically. "IT'S FAKE!" I hollered, over and over again.

"What's fake?" my second-in-command said.

"IT'S ALL FAKE! IT'S AN ILLUSION!" I said, speaking with conviction that was not rightfully earned by the strength of my conjecture. "IT'S ANOTHER CURSE!" Likely the work of a dead Felus.

My troops, those that could understand me whispering to those who couldn't, turned to each other with confusion and met my decrees with a wave of shrugs.

"So?" said one.

"You don't — You don't CARE?" I stammered.

"As far as curses go, this is a pretty nice one!" Another soldier joked, and they laughed. They laughed like nothing was wrong.

I couldn't believe my senses, for more reason than the illusion now.

"Actually," started in my second-in-command, "We got to talking and we all agreed — we're just going to stop here."

"STOP?!"

"Settle down," she said. "Start a town, some farms... Stop marching into death, you know?"

They were dead serious. I built a raft from some of the wood they gathered, bundled up enough supplies for just myself, and set off down the river alone. I rode that raft all the way down the mountain, not knowing for days whether or not I had left the realm of illusion for reality, until the lush vegetation began to grow more sparse and give way to sandy desert.

The river terminated a little past the foot of the mountain, bizarrely enough, straight down into a cave in a sheer cliff-face that seemed to erupt from nowhere. I hastily abandoned my raft and, on foot, got up close to its mouth and listened for the sound of it shattering over the end of the waterfall, but couldn't. Must have been some way down. I slung my bundle up on my shoulder and prepared to cross the desert when I heard some... human noise, and turned back to the cave.

On the dry part of the rim, a woman's hand, with scandalously naked, cracked nails, clung on for dear life. I grabbed her and pulled her out, nearly falling in myself.

She collapsed on the shore, breathing heavily, soaked and exhausted. She was dark-skinned, which contrasted heavily against her totally white hair — inexplicable since she couldn't have been any older than... oh, 27, tops.

"Thanks," she finally croaked out, through labored breaths. "You wouldn't believe — I've been through hell."

-----

I woke with a scream and sat up straight in my... bed. My bed? The guest bed. It was the middle of the night, and I was sweaty as all get out. I had to laugh — it was all just so hackneyed.

The pitter-patter of worried footsteps cascaded through the hallway and Adeline threw open my door, candle in hand, and rushed to my side on the bed.

"Are you okay?" she said, running her hand through my hair.

"Yeah, yeah," I chuckled. "Just a scary dream... The boogieman. Can you believe I actually sat up in my bed? Like at the end of The Most Lamentuous Tale Of The Haunted Millstone or The Ghost Of Disvirtue, that schlock?"

"A lot of those stories have made-up words in the title..." she said. "But they're just stories, hm?"

"Yeah," I said. I could already hardly remember my bad dream. There was a dead body under some sand...?

"If it'd help," her eyes darted over to the left, like there was anything to look at over there except not my face, "you could sleep in my bed tonight." She blushed.

"I'd like that," I smiled. I hugged her. "I'd like that a lot, actually." What I wouldn't give to see how much she was blushing after THAT move!

I slept in her room from then on. One night, we... did more than just sleep. After that, there was no more dancing around it, the ranch was officially smooch central. (None for the camels, though.) It was like heaven.

That next morning, there was a knock on her door.

"Wow!" she said. "Two visitors in one month after years of nothing. How lucky can one gal get?" She kissed me on the cheek.

She opened the door. It was a Vendet squire, holding a decorative spear and standing like he had a board down his pants.

"Hello, ma'am, we're a search party for the missing princess and we would like to — Your majesty!" He kneeled, having spotted me at the dining table finally. Can't say I didn't expect this eventually.

Adeline turned to me, gaping. "Y — you're — are you really —"

I smirked and stood up. "Guess I am."

"The princess? The crown princess? Malcolm Vindictus' daughter?"

"Yup."

"Oh my gods!" she kneeled. "Your majesty! I'm so sorry..."

"Oh, get up," I said. "All of you."

They got up. All of them.

I moved into the doorway, to the squire and his fellow squire hanging back a little bit. "You'll be happy to know I've found a suitable fiance," I smirked.

"Really? Who, your majesty?"

"Let's keep that a surprise for mom, hm?" I said.

"Your mom... the queen..." Adeline reeled.

I went to her and held her by the chin. "Would you like to accompany me back to the castle, Miss Adeline?"

Her mouth flapped open and closed a few times. "YES! I mean, yes! I'll go get my stuff! I'll be right back!" She ran upstairs. It was adorable, just how I imagined it.

The closer squire looked at me curiously. I shrugged, "We get to use her camels." This satisfied him.

We rode back to the castle, through the desert and over the mountain, past the burnt-down forest, all the way back home.

Mom took the big news very well, besides some slightly-bitter muttered asides about how I really was my father's daughter, and just wanted to know what the dress/suit situation was going to be. The whole rest of the kingdom, including the court, was equally supportive, and there was record turnout for our wedding. That was a relief: I really didn't know what to expect, but it couldn't have worked out better.

Now that I was a grown woman with a wife of my own, I was freed from my brutal educational regimen, which left me plenty of leisure time to figure out I was dead. Now, how did I do that, again?

an asteroid fell from the sky and conked you in the head. sorry! that's just bad luck

an asteroid fell from the sky and conked you in the head. sorry! that's just bad luck

As I was contemplating my happiness, which seemed as though it would last forever, I heard a loud noise, as though something were crashing through the ceiling above me.

In fact, something was, and it landed right on me, striking me right in the head. At first I thought it was a star falling from the heavens, a last taunt from the gods, but then I realized it was just my father.

"Get up," he said, standing over my body. Never mind that my head was bleeding from where his boots had collided with it.

"You're not actually wounded. Because you're already dead. This is your personal Heaven, where your spirit experiences everything you ever wanted for all of eternity."

"That sounds pretty good to me," I groaned, picking myself up. Unfortunately, now that I realized it, the whole thing melted away. "But I guess you just can't let your daughter have any fun."

"If I'm dead, and you're dead, that means Milton is heir. Not to mention the whole apocalypse, which I'd like to see stopped just to spite the surviving gods. Oh, and there's a nonentity trying to become a god, too. You killed yourself trying to prevent it from assimilating you."

"Didn't... didn't it kill you?"

"You mean the gauntlet? It's just a black metal glove. Plenty of warriors wear them, especially the ones who dare to think they can be the next Malcolm Vindictus. Regardless, you have to go back."

"Why don't you go back, if it's that easy?"

"Well, unlike you, I don't have a body to go back to. The gods tore it apart, and made sure I was aware of every excruciating moment of pain as they did so. Got to admire how thorough they are."

Dead or not, Malcolm Vindictus was still Malcolm Vindictus, and appreciated a good bloody and needlessly violent death. Even if it was his own.

"In fact, something's happened lately and I haven't even been able to get my spirit across the boundary. I don't know what's going on in the world of the living any more."

"I don't see why I should leave." But I did. There wasn't even any use remaining here, now that Heaven had been taken from me. I was just being stubborn.

"You know, souls captured by the Nothing can't pass on to the afterlife. They're trapped in its being. Your girlfriend will never know the joy you knew here, even as an illusion, while the Nothing still exists."

"I didn't know her that well," I muttered, mostly under my breath.

"You knew her well enough for Nothing to kill her to get to you."

I couldn't take it any more. I couldn't take Father's condescending tone, especially not when I knew he was absolutely right. So I punched him right in the helmet. Since I was just a spirit, I didn't feel anything, and I assume he didn't either.

But damn, I needed that.

"I'm going back, but I'm not going back on your account. I'm going back for my own reasons. And more than that, so you can't bother me."

And with that, I found myself awake at the bottom of a sheer cliff inside a cavern. My neck was still wounded and my body felt broken.

Had I come back to life only to die again?

But I soon realized that I wasn't quite alive. There was no blood coming from the cut, and more than that, I wasn't breathing. I still felt pain, but I wasn't hungry or tired.

Apparently, reinhabiting your body after you die isn't a smooth process.

Nothing had probably decided to dispose of my body here. I had to find a way out. And all I could think of was to climb.

I have no idea how long it took me, but just as I drew near the top, someone came and pulled me up.

I couldn't believe my eyes. It was Commun Marx, and he seemed baffled by my appearance. A quick glance in the nearby water revealed why.

This was what I looked like in my dream.

It had been only a few months since I had that dream, but it felt like so much longer. Yet I still remembered the moment when I looked at my reflection and saw that face.

And here, I was... whoever that person was. Had I taken over someone else's dead body? Or did I, in my heart, see myself as a 27-year-old woman with dark skin and white hair, and now my body was reflecting that?

I couldn't say. I couldn't even figure out what to do next. The best idea I had was to somehow prove to him that despite appearances, I was Mary Vindictus.

But how could I do that?

videogames

say, "hey i'm mary vindictus, back from the dead. dunno why i look so weird. sooo commun how have you been"

say, "hey i'm mary vindictus, back from the dead. dunno why i look so weird. sooo commun how have you been"

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vI219YJ...sp=sharing

While it's not essential, it's considered good etiquette to ritually sacrifice a whole cow on a pyre of yew branches, and to follow up two days before the actual meeting day with a condemned cockerel.

You gotta bribe a priest/ess

appoint commun your new secretary, he can handle it and you won't have to worry about it past that.

"No, I haven't made an appointment," I admitted. "But I'm putting you in charge of that. If we have to sacrifice a live cow on a pile of yew branches, or bribe one of her priests, or whatever, it's your job to do it."

"What makes you think I know how to negotiate with gods? If I had any idea how to do that, I wouldn't have spent months on a freezing mountain trying to get away from them. I'm just an economic theorist, and technically a soldier. I don't even know how to kill gods, your father handled that part of it."

"It's not that hard," I replied. "Felus went down easily enough."

"Yes, but I already told you Felus was terrible at godhood. He was... wait a minute. You killed Felus?"

"Yes, did I not mention that? It was after he ordered me to kill all humans. I refused, but I was told later that a god's orders are prophetic and I apparently don't have a choice in the matter."

"That's a load of nonsense that I can't get into right now. If Felus is dead, how is it the soldiers on the mountain are trapped in one of his illusions? When did you kill him?"

"I don't know. At least two weeks ago, I think. I've lost track of time."

"And I've lost track of how long it took me to get down the mountain. So the rest of the troops might be freezing to death right now."

"Well, we'd best get up the mountain to help them, then."

"And what are they going to do when they find out you killed Felus and ruined their little illusory paradise?"

"Well, I don't intend to tell them that. Were you planning on it?"

"No, but I don't expect the gods to be cooperative in keeping your secrets."

That gave me pause.

On the one hand, I was queen and these were my soldiers. Could I really abandon them just because they were going to blame me for the destruction of their paradise?

On the other hand, well, they were probably going to blame me for the destruction of their paradise, and they were armed.

What was I to do?

tell them the truth, but if you simply must kill all of your previously-loyal humans, then so be it

Um, excuse them?? You are their queen, they don't get to slack off in some kind of paradise when you need them dying for you on some godsforsaken battlefield. Even if you have to make up a threat to justify it, they're following you into battle, dammit.