Thus, the Crippled God was brought down to our world. Through this… this terrible puncture. And these giants… follow. Like an army behind its commander.
Or an army in pursuit.
Were all of the jade giants appearing somewhere in his own realm? That seemed impossible. They would be present in countless locations, if that was the case. Present, and inescapably visible. No, the wound was enormous, the giants diminishing into specks before reaching its waiting oblivion. A wound such as that could swallow thousands of worlds. Tens, hundreds of thousands.
Perhaps all he witnessed here was but hallucination, the creation of a hen’bara-induced fever.
Yet the clarity was almost painful, the vision so brutally… strange … that he believed it to be true, or at the very least the product of what his mind could comprehend, could give shape to-statues and wounds, storms and bleeding, an eternal sea of stars and worlds…
A moment’s concentration and he was turning about once more. To face that endless progression.
And then he was moving towards the nearest giant.
It was naught but torso and head, its limbs shorn off and spinning in its wake.
The mass burgeoned swiftly before him, too fast, too huge. Sudden panic gripped Heboric. He could see into that body, as if the world within the jade was scaled to his own. The evidence of that was terrible-and horrifying.
Figures. Bodies like his own. Humans, thousands upon thousands, all trapped within the statue. Trapped… and screaming, their faces twisted in terror.
A multitude of those faces suddenly swung to him. Mouths opened in silent cries-of warning, or hunger, or fear-there was no way to tell. If they screamed, no sound reached him.
Heboric added his own silent shriek and desperately willed himself to one side, out of the statue’s path. For he thought he understood, now-they were prisoners, ensnared within the stone flesh, trapped in some unknown torment.
Then he was past, flung about in the turbulent wake of the broken body’s passage. Spinning end over end, he caught a flash of more jade, directly in front of him.
A hand.
A finger, plunging down as if to crush him.
He screamed as it struck.
He felt no contact, but the blackness simply vanished, and the sea was emerald green, cold as death.
And Heboric found himself amidst a crowd of writhing, howling figures.
The sound was deafening. There was no room to move-his limbs were trapped against him. He could not breathe.
A prisoner.
There were voices roaring through his skull. Too many, in languages he could not recognize, much less comprehend. Like storm-waves crashing on a shore, the sound hammered through him, surging and falling, the rhythm quickening as a faint reddish gleam began to stain the green. He could not turn, but did not need to, to know that the wound was moments from swallowing them all.
Then a string of words reached through the tumult, close as if whispered in his ear, and he understood them.
‘You came from there. What shall we find, Handless One? What lies beyond the gash?’
Then another voice spoke, louder, more imperious: ‘What god now owns your hands, old man? Tell me! Even their ghosts are not here-who is holding on to you? Tell me!’
‘There are no gods,’ a third voice cut in, this one female.
‘So you say!’ came yet another, filled with spite. ‘In your empty, barren, miserable world!’
‘Gods are born of belief, and belief is dead. We murdered it, with our vast intelligence. You were too primitive-’
‘Killing gods is not hard. The easiest murder of all. Nor is it a measure of intelligence. Not even of civilization. Indeed, the indifference with which such death-blows are delivered is its own form of ignorance.’
‘More like forgetfulness. After all, it’s not the gods that are important, it is the stepping outside of oneself that gifts a mortal with virtue-’
‘Kneel before Order? You blind fool-’
‘Order? I was speaking of compassion-’
‘Fine, then go ahead! Step outside yourself, Leandris! No, better yet. Step outside .’
‘Only the new one can do that, Cassa. And he’d better be quick about it.’
Twisting, Heboric managed to look down, to catch a glimpse of his left forearm, the wrist, the hand-that was not there. A god. A god has taken them. I was blind to that-the jade’s ghost hands made me blind to that -
He tilted his head back, as the screams and shrieks suddenly rose higher, deafening, mind-numbing. The world turned red, the red of blood-
Something tugged on his arms. Hard. Once. Twice.
Darkness.
Heboric opened his eyes. Saw above him the colourless canvas of his tent. The air was cold.
