CW: attempted SI
Quote:
Immediately follows aue vs faustite.
my face is falling off & yours is under it
Word Count: 2327
The general burst into the room, wreathed in fire, haunted by mistakes. Faustite hampered it with smiles, with grins that fell to grimaces. Ey ground voice against tongue until a pained sound keened out with half a tablespoon of blood. The curse of that grief leaked from em like inkwell rivulets. Stumbling into that space, hands clutched to eir vomit-crusted grate as they plucked and pulled and wrenched impotently at its fastenings, ey scrambled while that starseed churned and burned.
That starseed crackled and spat on its funeral pyre. All this time, I was the fool. I was the idiot taken by this pseudo-intellectual self-awareness. I made the mistake. Eyes chased about the naked space, finding stone walls and glaring crystal and a desk so beaten and bent and charred and overburdened with paper on paper with ink with pens with cell phone and charger and speakers and notes and tea mugs until the desk was no longer a desk but a singularity. Then eir chair, just as burn scarred, just as littered with hours upon hours of idleness, of plans wasted, of legs crossed and uncrossed in self-grounded, teenage boredom. Two empty chairs reminded em of eir precious lack of company. A bistro table rocked bitterly when ey bumped it in frantic passing, in dashing up to the over-cluttered conglomeration in the center of that space. Faustite whorled about the desk, leaving orange starlets in eir wake.
Faustite dug and sifted and bustled through each drawer, knowing eir window shrunk with every second wasted. Fire burned in and out, overbright with its new fuel, pleased for everything it ate today. Eir hands trembled with dread and paradoxical delight, rattled with them. Every scrap of useless material fell in eir path like a burden. Soon ey dug out a surfeit of it -- every used-up pencil, every wad of papers, every file folder and every ink set ey thought ey'd use -- and threw it against a rock-hewn wall in a hail of beleaguered cinder.
Hands dug and fought and scraped at the back of the desk, clawed their unsettled messages into the corners of every drawer until they trawled out the first tool with a chance to save em. Eir heart railed against its fetters, beat into eir ears. It started with Umber. I ate Umber and he cursed me with this body. Cursed me with the devil I didn't know. Cursed me with Schörl, who taught me all the ways that eating people didn't matter. Taught me that I was an incinerator. That I would eat and eat and eat until I gorged myself into a youma or gorged on myself.
Now I'm all these people I never met. All these people who stained me with their moral bankruptcies. A legion of disaffected sinners. Faustite pressed the screwdriver against the grate. Ey missed the screws, once, then twice. Then eir tremulous hands jittered the tool from its alcove and ey started to eir feet again, stormed past a growing smolder of papers, and snatched the ovoid mirror from eir desk. Faustite crouched with it, pressed it to the a stony wall while ey guided the screwdriver back to one of a hundred thousand fastenings.
On the other side of eir brass cage, that starseed began its slow melt into slag. They fed on my complacency. My idleness while they shoved their bad deeds into me like so much coal. I'm their pyre, their bonfire, their crucible. Another cough, a wheeze against the simmer of hurt that welled up inside em, that threatened to burst like a boil while eir frantic hands dug circles with the screwdriver. One screw fell, then two.
Faustite swallowed a cough, eir eyebrows crumpling upward. Eir jaw grew sore and sour. Unmourned sorrows collected under eir eyes before they pattered the floor with the screws.
Then the plastic grip of the screwdriver softened so much that the metal burst through its back. The rest dripped to the ground like a Dali clock. Sucking in a broken breath, Faustite threw the melted remains into a distant wall where they cracked and clattered to the floor. A bloodied sound churned raw from em as ey beat fists against desk once, twice, thrice in heavy ember showers. Ey seethed with forehead pressed to battered wood.
A breath passed. Faustite reached out, gathered space in eir fist and tore eir youma from the Rift. It floated, clueless, all water and gelatin and trapped fires. It drifted about with a grating listlessness that burned the general for all its mockery. All its dismissal of eir desperate moment.
Faustite's hand snapped at half the room with words as sharp as eir wit. "Find me something to open this cage."
The squid snapped to without complaint. Its tentacles peeled through papers and discarded pens with impeccable motor control. Where Faustite thrashed about, wasting strength in eir search, the youma operated methodically. It pushed its way through the desk's offerings while extinguishing a few small smolders on its way. Once it finished the top, it probed each drawer. Tentacles mapped out the exact dimensions for those dark spaces before shutting each one, until the desk was nearly organized. Then it dropped to the floor and checked the underside.
A tentacle struck a lump nigh flush with the floor. More arms curled around the object until the youma lifted itself out of that space. It turned, bubbling, and drifted toward its master.
Its master who upturned eir bistro table into the wall while ey searched with growing urgency. That table struck a bookcase which rattled, wobbled, then fell in a shower of neglected texts. The youth strode over top of it, still caged, still sentenced. Ey kicked through half-charred illegible plans and found only more cinder. Ey ceased only when ey caught eir overbright reflection in Perkele's mirror.
That pause passed in an instant. Ey snatched at the youma's find. Mirror in hand, ey tried leveraging it against screws. But its sides proved too thick; those fastenings sat snug while the mirror's edge stripped their threading. Even nails that fit the remaining slots broke with no luck. Faustite stalked back across the office, the sounds of eir duress growing louder with every burgeoning bubble of blood. Every breath the ghost of another, greater pain.
Loosing another cracked, wet set of breaths, Faustite sprinted back across the room for that abandoned screwdriver-turned-metal-stake. Again ey pressed it to more screws, one hand palming it taut while the other bloodstained hand tried to wrench it in counterclockwise circles. "Please," ey muttered in a sooty whisper, but the process dragged unending.
Lauri built that cage to Schörl's specifications, ey knew. Ey remembered the grueling surgery spanning hours, all to put em back together. To make em the ghost of eir human shape.. Aue and Schörl and Heliodor and Kamacite and Vitriol and Tourmaline and Arsenopyrite -- where were they now? Could ey call them? Seek help from them? Trust emself to show eir pity and ask? Faustite's work faltered.
It dragged on and on and on. One, two, five screws fell out. Faustite dropped the screwdriver in the shudder-gasp of another sob, losing time, losing face. As ey scooped it back into eir grasp against a half-finished hole in eir hand, eir flame started guttering. "No," again ey dug at emself, efforts renewed, each twist another desperation until eir center piece rattled, until it taunted in how it refused to part from the rest of the cage, standing strong, while lower and lower that flame settled, while that last fleck of fuel sputtered its violent last sparks. "Stay with me. Don't let this body take you."
Schörl waited for moments like this, these embittering failures. Waited for em to ride out the good fortunes from all the missions handed to em, for Faustite to prove eir lack of ingenuity with the lukewarm and quickly simmering youma seminar, waited for the tournament to showcase eir laughable combat usefulness, waited for Heliodor to prove that ey could not lead, waited for Wolframite to show that ey could not shape an officer out of a man, waited for em to choke at every critical moment, owing to the ghosts ey saved like violent souvenirs, like self-flagellations. Schörl brought to light everything she needed to cinch em into place.
She cinched Faustite into a prison that eir core would not respect. It would eat through the general's bisected body like a rat running mad from a smoking basket. Once its food ran out, there came but two outcomes: a pile of reeking ash for eir subordinates to find, or a youma born from a blistering crucible. One an example, the other a warning.
The pyre quelled. The grate came loose, clattered to the floor alongside Faustite. Teeth grit, ey stabbed the stripped screwdriver against the paved floor. Frantic hands pilfered the naked fire, jumped and shook with every scorching bite, but out came only flecks of soot and ravening flame. Ey doubled over, braced against the cool stone, wailed against it. I'm always burning and I don't have enough tears to put myself out.
Look at all the nothing I made. Look how no one comes so many months after this body lost so much of itself. Weariness soon overtook em as ey remained doubled over the stone. Ey managed a weak smile. Ironic that I want to lose more. Tragic that I never opened myself enough. Never tore down this grate to let others peer inside.
That's why no one comes. I never called them. Never thought to. I helped her tie my voice down with all these ghosts.
As eir fingers retreated beneath eir eyes, ey looked across the bleak room. No longer did it look like an office. The desk was upturned, the chairs scattered and sat broken, papers burned in their own controlled pyre in one corner of the room, and eir bookcase was collapsed against the floor in another corner. Pages and pages and pages had fallen about like a dozen officers tossed it for answers about Umber. In eir frantic searches, ey broke one of the violet crystals from the wall. Its deadened pieces lay scattered like so much rubble.
Faustite coughed out another wet breath, drew emself upright. Watched eir youma with weary eyes as it bobbed in the center of eir fire-stricken and sundered space. Busied flames glinted their lights off its star-flecked body. Droplets of water arced off it with each sweep of an arm. It said nothing, uttered not one bubble into the silence of that broken place. For a breath, it looked solemn. Quiet.
For a breath, the place stiled. Guttered with dying fires. Then, slowly, eir hand gathered around the makeshift metal stake. Faustite raised it as ey brought emself to eir feet, as ey dashed at this facsimile of a thinking, feeling thing --Schörl's petty little foreshadow -- and ey struck at the cephalopod's head. Eir free hand gathered a pair of tentacles, restrained it from its instant attempt to retreat. The creature petted at the air frantically, then curled its remaining arms around Faustite's wrists and pushed with all its mustered strength. Bubbles blew about them and ink sprayed in droves into and through eir open grate. The caustic fluid spattered under eir chin, lit on eir lips. The taste soured with memory.
It struggled, it seized, it pressed tentacles into eir face. But Faustite punctured the creature a dozen times, dotted its jellied head with ashen holes the size of bullets, sprayed the floor with soot and cinder and scorn. Again and again the squid thrashed as if it had a life to protect.
But it shattered. Burst into so much ash that Faustite sputtered in a black cloud of it. A few coughs cleared the aftermath from eir lungs. Ey waited then, wary, counted the seconds where eir hearing peaked high like an electric whine. Soon the the crackle-flicker of fire reached eir ears again, and still ey waited. Silence cottoned up the room. Faustite heard the gravel in eir breath again. Heard eir heart's proud brag again. Still ey waited. Still ey hoped until ey passed half a minute with one hand open in the air and the other clutched uselessly around a broken screwdriver.
Nothing came. Faustite threw the tool. Sank to the ground. Braced his shoulder against the ash-laden wall and pressed the heels of eir hands to eir eyes. More ash from eir youma drifted around em like a snowfall. And in those seconds ey realized, still too late, that every speck spent in eir belly was another thing consumed. But did consuming the afterbirth of a man's broken body outweigh the horrors of eating his soul? Faustite hadn't room for another haunting.
As eir gaze found the mirror, ey saw the sum of a hundred ghosts. Sitting at the back of it all, marred with spent ember and black blood, coiled up like a victim, was a dwindling cinder. Some subadult creature caught between antithetical paths who thought tragedy was a synonym for personal history. Ey licked eir lips, watched the cremains wash inside.
What Moonstone said, what Benitoite said -- they lied. What came from that burst of ash was a faulty anticlimax. Interruptus interrupted. What Vitriol said -- he lied. No charm could come from such a wretched thing. What Schörl said --
Faustite's mistake was thinking. Faustite's mistake was thinking about it. That despite eir desperate strides, despite clinging to humanity's better prescriptions, ey already became Umber. Ey already became Schörl. Eir mistake was realizing, too soon for eir scathing indifference, that Ochre was right. Eir mistake was becoming self-aware.
Now it hurts enough. Faustite drew a stippled breath, and eir gaze rose up with eir lazy, helical smoke. Skin crawled over em and ey rose as the ghost of a dead boy.
