Chapter 1
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Blood splashed around Troweia’s feet as they dashed across the muddy field, desperately looking for a survivor. Their eyes snapped around independently, searching the wet grass and the faraway trees and the black sky, yet they found nothing and they found no-one. No birds sang and no beasts walked and no soul bent the world to its will. Troweia turned their thoughts away from the emptiness, focusing only on the possibility that someone, somewhere nearby, lived and could tell them what had happened.
Background will is low, they thought. I’ll risk more power. They stopped, letting their feet sink deep into the reddened mud, and called for help.
“Mother of Rivers,” they whispered, clutching their hands into three pairs. “I offer you what flows in my veins, that you may reveal the world to me.”
The cost came: blood flowed out of Troweia’s upper two eyes, falling up into the sky like purple rain. It wasn’t much; revealing an area empty of the will to hide would not challenge the more powerful Deities. Had the people around been alive, the required sacrifice would’ve rendered Troweia a husk.
The reward came: Troweia heard and saw and felt and sensed and a circle around them for miles showed itself to them clear as a dream before it was forgotten. Emptied settlements, broken weapons, blood that would fill more bodies than should’ve been here before it was spilled. And far away, on the edge of perception, an individual half dead and wholly drained lay next to a broken tree.
Troweia dashed again, jumping over hill and stone and house for a straight path to the survivor, gliding as far as their wings would let them. They saw broken trees and they saw cracked stones and then they saw with their eyes the arthropod survivor that the Mother of Rivers had shown them. Their face was that of an ant and their body was that of a spider and a wasp, changed to fit the humanoid model that many bodies styled themselves after. Where they should have had eight limbs, five had been torn or shattered. Troweia landed next to them and spread their feathers over them and willed them to heal, and their blood stopped flowing. Troweia did not think they would ever heal fully.
“You know me; I am Troweia.”
“Hero!” said the arthropod, happy and sad as one who sees prosperity and death. “Go! Flee! Save others, where your power is great enough to matter! The foe here is beyond any force you can muster.” They started crying, producing a strange approximation of tears that Troweia had not before seen from insect eyes.
I am sorry, but I cannot obey you. I must confront what did this, Troweia thought. “I will do as you say and leave. Tell me first, what happened here?” they said.
“I will show you,” said the ant’s mouth. “I know a spell of sharing unaltered memories, lean your head towards me.”
Troweia did so, and felt a cold hand on their scalp. Then the world they saw and felt fell away and instead they looked from ant eyes and felt from spider limbs. They walked in the woods and guarded a family of mechanicals that was traveling to a village that was just around the corner. The travelers turned with the road and saw the village; it burned with a bright green flame.
“Erût!” screamed the bodyguard even as Troweia realized themselves that the Feaster was upon them. Their borrowed eyes spun to the mechanicals and the bodyguard prayed to the dead builder of roads to let them escape, but their sacrifice was not fast enough. A sword faster than thought shattered the mechanicals like a hammer shatters glass and before the bodyguard stood a too well-known shape. Human spine, gray head with left horn and right antler, glowing lightning connecting the spine to wings of butterfly and hands of no creature with jointless bendable fingers stretching longer than the body by far.
The memory ended, or so Troweia thought until they saw the arthropod. The ant-head was cracked, and the vision had ended with them.
Troweia leapt straight up into the sky to escape whatever had killed the last survivor, but it did not help. Long fingers wrapped around them and bound them in the air, and Horror fluttered up into the air behind them.
“I have been waiting for you,” spoke the creature behind them. “I am sorry we had to meet like this.” Troweia might’ve thought it was Death that spoke, had they not seen the memory and the Feaster in it.
“Greetings, Conqueror,” said Troweia. “Do you intend to kill me?” They desperately hoped the answer to that was yes.
“I intend to do much, much more than that, and the world will not be the same again.”
Troweia glanced down. The arthropodal body was gone. Their own strength fell, flowing out into the air behind them. They did not doubt that the world would not be the same again. Perhaps it was selfish, but their only wish after hope had passed was that Erût would not let them live to see it all.
They could feel the three-eyed face smiling in its mouthless fashion, staring into the back of their head and into their despair. “Are you not happy, hero?” Erût asked, and Troweia now thought that the voice of Death would have spoken more kindly. “The servants of Erût hold great glory among those who see our value. And you are to be my greatest servant yet.”
The free fingers of Erût stretched out in front of Troweia and ripped apart the air, revealing a cell of stone on the other side of the hole. “Wait for me here.”
Troweia fell on the stone and did not notice the pain. The hole closed behind them, and the darkness was complete, leaving them only with the thought that the arthropod had proven to be the wiser of the two when they had said for Troweia to flee.