“—incoming, get the shit downstairs, before those sons of bitches bring this whole fuckin’ place down around our goddamn—”
(ears)
—
Three hits, Goss thought, or maybe two and a half; it was hard to tell, when your head wouldn’t stop ringing. What he could only assume was at least two of the trucks had gone up right as the walls came down, or perhaps a shade before. Now the top half of the temple was flattened, once more indistinguishable from the mountainside above and around it, a deadfall of shattered lava rock, bone-bricks and fossils. No more missiles fell, which was good, yet—so far as they could tell, pinned beneath slabs and sediment—the storm above still raged on. And now they were all down in the well-room, trapped, with only a flickering congregation of phones to raise against the dark.
“Did you have any kind of plan when you came here, exactly?”
Goss asked Camberwell, hoarsely. “I mean, aside from ‘find Seven congregation site—question mark—profit’?” To which she simply sighed, and replied—
“Yeah, sort of. But you’re not gonna like it.”
“Try me.”
Reluctantly: “The last couple times I did this, there was a physical copy of the Liber Carne in play, so getting rid of that helped—but there’s no copy here, which makes us the Liber Carne, the human pages being Inscribed.” He could hear the big I on that last word, and it scared him. “And when people are being Inscribed, well...the best plan is usually to just start killing those who aren’t possessed until you’ve got less than seven left, because then why bother?”
“Uh huh...”
“Getting to know you people well enough to like you, that was my mistake, obviously,” she continued, partly under her breath, like she was talking to herself. Then added, louder: “Anyhow. What we’re dealing with right now is two people definitely Inscribed and possessed, four potential Inscriptions, and one halfway gone...”
“Halfway? Who?”
She shot him that look, yet one more time—softer, almost sympathetic. “open your mouth, Goss.”
“Why? What f—oh, you gotta be kidding.”
No change, just a slightly raised eyebrow, as if to say: do I look it, motherfucker? Which, he was forced to admit, she very much did not.
Nothing to do but obey, then. or scream, and keep on screaming.
Goss felt his jaw slacken, pop out and down like an unhinged jewel-box, revealing all its secrets. His tongue’s itch was approaching some sort of critical mass. And then, right then, was when he felt it—fully and completely, without even trying. Some kind of raised area on his own soft palate, yearning down as sharply as the rest of his mouth’s sensitive insides yearned up, straining to map its impossibly angled curves. His eyes skittered to the well’s rim, where he knew he would find its twin, if he only searched long enough.
“Uck ee,” he got out, consonants drowned away in a mixture of hot spit and cold sweat. “Oh it, uck ee.”
A small, sad nod. “The Terrible Eshphoriel,” Camberwell confirmed. “Who whispers in the empty places.”
Goss closed his mouth, then spat like he was trying to clear it, for all he knew that wouldn’t work. Then asked, hoarsely, stumbling slightly over the words he found increasingly difficult to form: “How mush...time I got?”
“Not much, probably.”
“‘S what I fought.” He looked down, then back up at her, eyes sharpening. “How you geh those scars uh yers, Cammerwell?”
“Knowing’s not gonna help you, Goss.” But since he didn’t look away, she sighed, and replied. “Hunting accident. Okay?”
“Hmh, ‘kay. Then...thing we need uh...new plan, mebbe. You ‘gree?”
She nodded, twisting her lips; he could see her thinking, literally, cross-referencing what had to be a thousand scribbled notes from the margins of her mental grand grimoire. Time slowed to an excruciating crawl, within which Goss began to hear that still, small voice begin to mount up again, no doubt aware it no longer had to be particularly subtle about things anymore: Eshphoriel Maskim, sometimes called Uttukku, Angel of Whispers...and yes, I can hear you, little fleshbag, as you hear me; feel you, in all your incipient flowering and decay, your time-anchored freedom. We are all the same in this way, and yes, we mostly hate you for it, which only makes your pain all the sweeter, in context—though not quite so much, at this point, as we imitation-of-passionately strive to hate each other.
You guys stand outside space and time, though, right? he longed to demand, as he felt the constant background chatter of what he’d always thought of as “him” start to dim. Laid the foundations of the Earth—you’re megaton bombs, and we’re like...viruses. So why the hell would you want to be anything like us? To lower yourselves that way?
A small pause came in this last idea’s wake, not quite present, yet too much there to be absent, somehow: a breath, perhaps, or the concept of one, drawn from the non-throat of something infinitely larger. The feather’s shadow, floating above the Word of God.
It does make you wonder, does it not? the small voice “said.” I know I do, and have, since before your first cells split.
But: Because they want to defile the creation they set in place, yet have no real part in, Goss’s mind—his mind, yes, he was almost sure—chimed in. Because they long to insert themselves where they have no cause to be and let it shiver apart all around them, to run counter to everything, a curse on Heaven. To make themselves the worm in the cosmic apple, rotting everything they touch...
The breath returned, drawn harder this time in a semi-insulted way, a universal “tch!” But at the same time, something else presented itself—just as likely, or invalid as anything else, in a world touched by the Seven.