They brought God's wrath on Sodom (We Who Are Hungry Part: 2/5)
The maze welcomed them into its gaping crevice where the party plucked meagre fruit from the painful, hairy plants which lined the sandstone walls and bathed together in pools of gathered water in the footprints of Shield-bearing Giants. As the vagabonds advanced into the maze, Rachel took up a stick and began to mark their path in their path in the sand. At each dead-end, they retraced their line and kicked sand over it before continuing down a different corridor.
Soon even the deepest wells dug out by Colossi long passed ran dry. At first they gathered water from the prickly white plants dotting the stones but after a night on wobbling feet, new friends who weren’t truly present and insuppressible giggling from the group, they came to the agreement that the water from the hairy plants was forbidden - they would have to sustain themselves on just the fruit for as long as they could.
Ody and Paula plucked some from their rocky beds, brushed away their spines and hid them away in her pouch.
Soon even the fruit began to wane, shrinking further and further with each retracting plant they passed, and they retraced their steps to gather up as much as they could carry before continuing onwards. Each night, Korah squinted up at the stars and told them whether they were still heading towards the Shelter or not.
Eventually, they ran out of corridors to explore and circled the same pathways they had before, drained of their resources, until they finally came upon new cavern so dry that Rachel could not carve her stick into the ground to mark their path.
“Could lead us out of here. ” Paula murmured.
“Its wort a look.” Ody agreed.
“It could be.” Rachel nodded. “Korah and I will stay out here, you and Paula go and take a look. If you find something, we can follow your voice inside, if you don’t then we can call you back out.”
Both father and daughter nodded.
“Ya take care of yourselves, ya hear?” Ody stepped into the cave.
“Dinnae get eaten.” Korah snorted.
“By rocks?” Questioned Ody.
“Ye'd find a way.”
Ody turned with the roll of his eyes and was gulped down by the cavern, along with his daughter.
Sun poured into the cave in thin cascades, spilling platinum across the stoney floor. Jagged walls reached out to claw at the pair, sharp stalagmites watched them from the ceilings, trembling with eagerness and the roof was held only by the occasional slender, uneven pillar - gaunt stone Atlases all, safeguarding their passage through the hollow. Despite the thousands of passageways presented to them, Ody led the way with confidence, eyes pinned to the ground as though it were speaking to him, telling him exactly where he ought to go.
Together, they came to a fork of two lightless tunnels, to the right one of smooth rock and to the left one barbed like a thorn bush.
“With our luck, it’ll be that one.” Paula gestured half-heartedly to the left mouth.
“It’s not.” Ody approached the mouth to the right.
“How do you know?”
“Water makes smooth stones ‘n tis whole cavern’s been goin’ upwards. Tis place was once an ancient river, ‘n that water had to come from some place. If tere’s an exit, we’ll have ta follow ta river to find it. ”
“I ain’t seein’ no water. How do you know? Were you there to see it?”
“No.”
“So we’re possibly hingin’ our lives on somethin’ that ain’t got no evidence?”
“Tis entire cavern is evidence.”
“Some smooth rocks?”
“Some smooth rocks.”
“Then what made that one?” Asked Paula, pointing to the left cavern.
Ody glared at it. “Someting dug it, but it weren't water.”
The sunroofs of the cavern ceiling had darkened by then, the setting sun splashing the floors and pillars with blood before giving way to lightless night. The pair bivouacked on a ledge overlooking the twin mouths, naked and surrounded by nothingness, Ody was awoken by a sudden chill. He raised his head and found no trace of his daughter.
Blinking away the blackness, he stood and immediately made a beeline for the left maw where even the whistle of the falling breeze dared not follow him.
Wandering in nothingness and bloodying himself on the knife-point walls, he found himself feeling his way through the abyss until his sole fell flat against something slimy.
One by one, a trail was lit before him - a hundred will-o-the-wisps guiding down the angry gullet. For a moment, he wondered if the fungi were edible, but he decided that even he was not stupid enough to test that when his family was relying on him to survive.
He pushed forwards, feet prudent and eyes strained, until he came to a narrow, diagonal slit in the cave’s end which sliced into him as he crawled through.
He found himself tumbling down into an open chamber and when he stood, his blood ran cold through his veins.
Bones. Bones so large that Ody could carve a hundred small homes into them. Hooves and shields and shattered weapons lay strewn about, shining flakes formed patches of gold which decorated the floor and surrounded a glorious grail in the very centre of the room. There were several open gates leading into the room, some so large that a Chimera could squeeze through them, some so small that they would have been a struggle for even Paula to pass.
The realisation came to Ody swift and cold; this was no mere chamber, this was a treasury, and the cave system was no cave system at all, but a Tyrant’s palace - and Paula was climbing into the altar bowl.
“Paula!” Ody hissed, sprinting after her.
The daughter paid her father no heed, entranced by what lay before her.
Nestled in a bed of gathered ash, as though too precious to risk even a scrape from the edges of the bowl, were five glorious pearls so large that it would have taken the entire family thrice over just to surround one of them. Spotted and glistening with gems of all colours, they laid undisturbed and unprotected.
“Can we eat them?” Paula didn’t turn to her father.
“No, now get away from tem.” Ody seized her ankle and tugged her down from the ledge of the bowl.
“Why are you whisperin’, there’s nothing here.” Paula whispered.
“T'ere's always someting. The gods don’t abandon tier lands.”
“I thought the gods were all gone.”
“Me too, but tis place? And te bite taken out of that poor Chimera? Tis place ain’t for us.”
The pair departed from the chamber in mutual silence, crawling up through the jagged gullet until they were regurgitated into the open cavern once more. By then, the sun had risen and they limped down the smooth throat of the parched river.
Spurned by both sun and moon, the pair carried on. Their only indicator of how much time had passed outside being their dwindling supply of food and how far into decay it had grown.
By the time they reached the tunnel’s end, all of their possibles had lost most of their colour. They’d rotted to the point of comforting Ody into one-sided chatter, because if anything had been following them then they’d surely do so by their pungent smell rather than the sound of their voices.
When they came to the end of the runnel, Ody and Paula stood atop a ledge overlooking a grotto surrounded on all sides by five openings: some, like the one they’d exited from, just small enough for Ody to climb through, some like gargantuan gates like those found in the Tyrant’s Treasury. Some high up atop sheer cliffs of lime and sand and shale, some on a level slightly above the pond itself. The oasis was fed by white sunlight slipping down from the various cracks splitting the roof.
They descended the smooth slope leading to the ledge.
“I’ll race ya to te water.” Ody challenged, already sprinting before he’d finished his sentence.
Paula kept on walking.
Ody’s smile fell but he did not slow down. He came to the water’s edge, lips crispy and split, and quaffed the water with his entire face under the surface. When Paula joined him, her tongue swollen in her brittle throat, she knelt down and supped with her lips.
Ody came back up, gasping, and then dunked his head back into the water again. When he came up again, he wiped his mouth and cast his gaze to the surrounding chamber. His brows furrowed.
Doorways. Hundreds of adobe homes dug into the walls, their doorways empty and silent.
“Hello!” Ody called out, grinning. When his greeting was met with silence, his smile slowly fell.
“Probably dead.” Paula concluded dryly.
“Or tey moved. Could be lookin' for te Grave as well.”
“We oughta stay here, we’ll never make it to the Shelter.”
Ody turned to her with furrowed brows. “Now don't go sayin' tat.”
“It’s the truth! Do ya even know if it exists or are we just plannin’ on walkin’ South until we wrap around and end up North again!?” Paula snapped.
“It’s real.” Ody asserted. “We can't stay here. T'ere's no food.”
Paula reluctantly nodded.
The pair stood up and turned back to the ledge before once more delving into the darkness to return to the rest of their kin.
Starving and parched, the pair found themselves at the twin entrances again, licking moisture from the walls. Voices raking against their throats, they called out for their companions to no avail. They were too far away for them to hear. Furrowing his brows with thought, Ody soothed his withering vocal chords with his own saliva before turning to Paula.
“Ya stay here, yell as loud as ya can every once in a while. I’ll walk as far as I can down te cavern until I can’t hear ya no more. Ten I'll start yelling for te oters and see if tey can hear me ten.”
Paula nodded. Ody kissed her on the forehead. “Be good. Don't give te stones no trouble.”
He turned from her and disappeared into the cavern, his hope carried only by the distant echo of his daughter’s voice which grew more and more faint with each passing hour until he could barely hear it. He stopped and screamed at the top of his lungs, “Here! We got someting!”. In the silence left behind by the departure of his own echo, Ody listened. Nothing.
“Here!” He called out once more. Still, nothing.
His heart pounded against his chest. “Come on ya deaf bastards. Here!”
Silence again.
He took a step forwards, eyes wide, only to be brought to a halt by a response so weak in his ears that he barely registered it above the sound of the wind.
“We’re comin!”
The journey back to the grotto was fuelled primarily by the fruit Korah and Rachel had the sense to bring along with them from the canyon, and when they reached their temporary sanctuary, they rejoiced for the rest of the day in the shadows of a far grander company than they had ever been. They drank and dined on the final rations of sordid mush they had in their pouches until the moon’s reflection cast a ghostly glow over the grotto, which bounced off the pond and danced across the walls to a song of whistling wind and desert flies.
As they took to the open homes and searched for any abandoned food, they came across a tunnel in which sat an abandoned inhabitant of the city of dugouts. Sat in utter silence, she stared at them under her hanging, wrinkled brow with a content smile. Hair raised, Korah sneered at her. “Is she still alive?”
Ody stepped forwards and tilted his head from one side to the other. Her gaze followed him. “Oh yeah, she’s still in tere.” He replied.
“Why is she just sitting there, not saying anything?” Rachel asked, tone soft as though she’d spook the Crone.
“I don’t know. Hello?” Ody waved a hand in front of her wrinkled face. She did not reward him with a response. “I tink she’s mute ‘n deaf.”
“What are we going to do with her?” Asked Rachel.
“Well if she's alive then we canae just leave her.” Korah murmured.
“We'll have ta take her wit us when we leave. Hey, ma'am, do ya want ta come wit us?” Ody asked.
She stared at him and continued to smile at them with distant satisfaction. Ody took that as a yes and the family left her where she sat, continuing their search for food and a preferred sleeping spot. There was no food to be found.
Paula took Abida, Adah and Epher and sought refuge in a hollowed out home just a few feet from the pond. Ody had moved to join her when Korah took ahold of his hand and tugged at it.
“I think she could use some space. An ye could use some rest.”
Ody swallowed dryly. “What if someit finds her?”
“If there was somethin’ here, it would have found us all by now.” Korah reasoned.
“But what if-”
“She’ll be fine.”
“What if she does someit ta herself?”
“She wouldnae leave us like that.”
Reluctantly, Ody communed with the other adults in a dugout across the pond perched atop a ledge. Upon entering, they found a bedroom tunnelled out of the dirt and all sat down upon the bed. Ody held in his hand the hairy plant that he and Paula had stowed away in her pouch, pondering it in silence before taking a bite out of it and slurping at the intoxicating liquid. Wordlessly, the three handed the plant around in a quiet ritual, ending only when the plant ran dry and the three were snickering at one another. Then, Rachel drew her own stache from her pouch and they kept on drinking.
“Jonah-” Rachel cut herself off cackling. “-Jonah and I, we used to do this all the time back in the Basin.”
“Old jonah? that uppity bastard?” Korah grinned.
“He was a whole lot less up-tight when we were alone, just me and him.” Rachel stared at the empty plant in her hands with fondness. “He had a lot on his shoulders.”
The three fell silent.
“Part of me wonders if isaac would still be around if jonah were here.” Ody admitted.
Korah placed a hand firmly on Ody’s shoulder. “Whit happened te Isaac wasnae yer fault.”
“I could have gone wit him.”
“Then you’d both be dead. Be grateful that you’re not.” Rachel pointed out.
Ody stared at the ground. “You’re right. Paula’s still here. You’re both still here. Te triplets, they’re doin’ just fine.” Drawing in a deep breath, Ody closed his eyes and smiled. “‘N neither Isaac or Jonah would want us miserable tonight.”
“Jonah wouldnae want us drinkin' that juice without him, neither.” Korah pointed out with a snort.
“Wherever Jonah is, he can get his own!” Ody snapped.
The three erupted into laughter. Ody took up the plant and shook it. Empty.
“Too dry for a toast.” Korah observed.
“Says who?” Ody wrapped his lips around the hole gnawed into the plant and pretended to drink. Korah and Rachel watched with curiosity. He pulled the plant away, gasping, and raised it. “To Jonah and Isaac?”
“To Jonah and Isaac.” Both elder and mother agreed in unison, taking turns pretending to drink from the plant. Korah tossed it on the ground and wiped invisible liquid from his mouth.
They spoke long into the night about whatever miscellaneous topics drifted between their minds. They told stories which ranged from plausible to clearly false to somewhere in the middle. They spoke of how grateful they were to still be alive. Korah spoke of how grateful he was to finally have some privacy from the kids. Ody spoke of what he imagined the Shelter to be like.
“I wonder if tere’s anythin’ green tere.” Ody slurred.
“What’s green?” Asked Rachel.
“It’s like a colour, like a mix of yellow ‘n blue.” Ody turned to look at her, sprawled out on the bed.
Korah scoffed. “There’s na such thing.”
“There is!” Ody protested and pointed to the ceiling where coloured danced across the stone. “Look, there it is.”
Rachel squinted and smiled. “Yeah I see it. Wait - wait no, no it’s not real.”
Ody sighed as the colours faded from his vision. “Damnit. I bet tere’s someit green at the Grave of Wormwood.”
Korah turned to him. “What are we bettin’?”
“I’ll bet my first meal there that tere’s someit green there.” With all of his strength, Ody turned his head to look at Korah.
Korah smiled at him. “I’ll take that bet. I bet there's nothin’ green there or anywhere because green doesnae exist.”
Ody’s head flopped over to look at Rachel. “Rachel?”
“I’ll bet that green does exist but not at the Shelter. The Grave’s a real specific place.” Rachel reasoned.
They continued to speak well into the night. At some point Korah turned to Rachel and called her pretty. Rachel chuckled and proclaimed him to be the prettiest thing she’d ever seen, despite his face melting in front of her. Korah laughed and gestured to Ody, enscrusted in days worth of dirt and sand, claiming him to be the prettiest thing either of them had ever or would ever see. When they were done throwing slurred compliments at one another, they embraced eachother in intimacy. Korah with Rachel, then Ody with Korah. When their night was over, they slumbered in the same bed beneath a shared ceiling dreaming of a shared future.
It was Paula who was the first to realise that they were not alone in this city of tunnels.
They were set upon in the morning. Ody was dragged from bed by a fist full of his hair, waking the others with a yell only for them to be seized as well. Standing in the dim light of the windowless chamber were several others - their numbers filled the room, their dark eyes pinned unblinkingly on the parents.
“What!?” Rachel questioned to no response. Like monks in a hymnless procession, they drew the three from the chamber and out the dug-out and under the infant sunlight of the dawn and across the coarse stone until their bare knees and legs bled - all bucking and thrashing. Korah managed to scramble briefly from the hold of his captor, only to be thrown to the ground by two grown Barbarians who stamped his left knee out of place with shoeless heels.
“Don't fucking touch tem!” Snapped Ody - yet again, none of their assailants responded, they just kept on hauling them closer and closer to the oasis.
Ody managed to turn his head over his shoulder enough to sink his teeth into his captor’s hand, drawing a stifled yell. He took the opportunity to leap to his feet, only for a white, burning pain to shoot across the left side of his face. With a scream, he stumbled, feeling something wet and round lightly bumping against his cheek, his eyelids enclosed around something thin and wet and weeping with something foul which ran down into his mouth and coated his tongue in iron, his nose filled with rust.
“Ody!” Distantly, he could hear Korah calling his name, but he could not register it beyond the thrum of his own heartbeat and the echoing thought of did they get Paula too?
He was thrown to his rear and towed along with the others, sucking air through his gritted teeth.
When he finally managed to pry his eye open the world was blurred beyond recognition. He was faintly aware of the weight hanging from his left eye socket being lifted for a brief moment before another bout of searing hot pain shot through his nerves and directly into his brain. He screamed, eye wide as his mind frantically searched for the cause of it’s fresh agony, he soon found one of the Barbarians stood a few inches away from him, blood on his lips, slurping up the detached chord of his left eye.
Upon release, Ody raised his hands to cover the left side of his face.
“Holy shit!” Rachel stared aghast at Ody.
Korah turned his glare on the crowd of a hundred, all staring back at him wordless, eyes glinting with hunger. He turned to stare dead ahead and his heart sank.
There, squinting under her heavy brow, the water’s dancing reflection painted across her back and pouring over her shoulders in shifting white light, was the Crone. Cradled in her arms were all three of Rachel’s triplets.
“Rachel.” Korah pulled the mother’s attention from Ody and when Rachel turned to find her children in the arms of the hag’s arms her face drained of all colour.
“Please.” She pleaded vaguely.
Two Barbarians approached the Crone, one tall and one taller. “We got them all?” he asked.
“There’s one missing.” Replied the Crone. “There could be more.”
For a short moment, all of the pain evaporated in Ody’s mind. Paula had escaped.
“Send Samaria and her brood to the tunnels, we can’t afford to let any of them escape.” Ordered the Crone.
“Yes, mother.” With a dipped head, the tall Barbarian turned and left. The taller one stayed.
“Are eating them now?” He asked.
“Was the hunt successful?” Asked the Crone.
“A dead Monk.” The young Cannibal replied.
“Then no. The Monk will last us four days, then the hunger will return within three. We should keep these ones alive so they don’t rot on us, then feast when we’re starving again. We don’t know when we’ll find food again.” Answered the Crone.
“What are you going to do with my babies?” Rachel interrupted the pair.
The Crone turned her eyes on the mother. “They won’t grow without milk.” She croaked.
“Then share some.” Rachel begged.
“My children number in the dozens, and my daughters’ children number more. We have nothing to spare.” The Crone leaned in, a glimpse of pity in her gaze. “My blood will survive. Have you run dry yet?”
Rachel did not answer her. The Crone handed the three babes back to her and she tucked them close to her chest.
Korah turned his gaze on the crowd and found a couple of barbarians who’d turned away in shame. There were children among them, some young and confused, huge black eyes devoid of understanding. One mother, holding her child in her arms spoke up. “We can always look for more food.”
The Crone turned away from the prisoners and towards the mother. “It took us weeks to find that Monk. We have to do this.”
“This isn’t right.” The mother protested. The Crone ignored her, as did the other Cannibals.
With that, Ody, Rachel and Korah were steered back to their dug-out and haphazardly tossed into the entrance. With no barrier, the Cannibal brood used their own bodies to block their way out.
The three retreated to their shared room and perched all on the bed, the two males huddled around a wide-eyed Rachel.
“We’re gettin’ out of here.” Korah’s promise was empty and they all knew it. Nevertheless, they all nodded.
“Ody, your eye.” Rachel murmured.
“I know.” Ody nodded.
Drawing a deep breath, Ody stood up and approached the wall of the bedchamber, the one which connected to a different, neighbouring tunnel-home, and he began to claw at the wall. Soon both Korah and Rachel joined him, bloodying their hands against soft stone as quietly as they could. One of Korah’s nails came loose and opened up like a grizzly trap-door with each movement, flapping up as he dragged his fingers down the wall only to slap back down against it’s nail-bed. Rachel wore three fingers down to the bone. When pain seared his fingers beyond the point of use, Ody dug with the heels of his palms and when they too grew raw with use, he dug with his knuckles.
It was an hour before their escape attempt was foiled by the entrance of a Cannibal, who saw the three frantically clawing at the wall and took up Abida by the ankle, dangling the now sobbing babe. The three came to a halt immediately.
“Quit digging, or we’ll take one kid at a time until you learn to behave.”
All escape attempts ceased after that. They took up vigil in their bedchamber and mulled over increasingly hopeless plan after hopeless plan with no concept of how much time had passed. Every so often, their captors would retrieve them and bring them to the oasis to drink, but these visits seemed random and ill-paced. The Cannibals made no sound, so Ody could not tell when most of them were asleep or awake. He doubted it would have mattered, the Cannibals knew this sandstone palace as though they’d built it themselves, and he knew he and his company’s aging, well-travelled feet would not carry them fast enough to outpace them, even if they could fight their way past the guards.
One night - though the family were given no hint of night or day in their lightless, stone cell - a familiar voice spoke to them through the wall they had attempted to dig through.
“Hello?”
Ody approached the wall and pressed his ear to it, eyes wide with fear. “Paula?”
“Paula?” Asked the voice - it was feminine, but it was not his daughter. Ody relaxed.
“Who are you?” He asked.
“You don’t know me. I’m going to dig you out.” She promised. Korah squinted with thought and recognised the mother who had spoken out against the Crone. Rachel’s shoulders lightened, hesitant hope entering from the outskirts of her scattered mind.
“Tank you.” Ody sighed, resting his forehead on the wall. “Tank you so much.”
For the next two nights, the Barbarian mother came to the wall and clawed at it quietly, digging with rocks and her own nails. On the second night, after chiseling a good few centimetres into the wall, the sound of her digging came to a sudden halt.
“Wait! No! “This isn’t right! This isn’t right! Let me go!” Ody heard her voice on the other side but did not speak up, even as her voice trailed off into the distance and vanished from earshot. He sat back and dug his nails into his temples and comforted himself with the fact that, at the very least, Paula would not meet the same fate as them.
Rachel suspected it had been six days since they were captured, based on the progress of their healing wounds and the fact that she’d ran out of milk.
“We should make a run for it.” drawled Korah, swallowing his clumping saliva.
“We wouldn’t make it ten metres.” Rachel shook her head.
“We won't make it if we stay eiter. May as well try ta escape.” Ody replied from his perch on the edge of the bed.
“That’s easy for you to say, your child isn’t going to get eaten if we get caught!” Hissed Rachel.
“Tey'll be eaten eiter way, Rachel.” Ody fully turned to her with a glare.
Rachel shook her head. “We don’t know what they’re capable of. If we try to run they could make it so much worse for us. For my children. We don’t know how bad things could get.” Rachel looked between Adah and her own scarred hands.
Ody glared at her. “Don’t. Tere’s still hope.”
It took Rachel a few moments to lower her hands.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Korah stood up, stretched and began to dance in the corner of the room. He hopped in a circle, stopped and rolled his fists about one another, smiling. Ody raised an eyebrow at him, the edges of his lips tugging upwards. “What are ya up ta, now?”
“Gettin some fuckin smiles on yer sour faces. Say, a fat juicy pile o ginko nuts says there's an afterlife.” Korah challenged, still dancing.
Ody grinned. “Oh ya're on, and a second fat juicy pile of ginko nuts says tere ain't one!”
“Fool, even if you win that bet, how is he supposed to pay up if there’s no afterlife?” Rachel asked with a scowl.
“I don't know, it's not like te fat fuck could get tem ta me witout scoffin' tem all anyway.” Ody’s smile did not fade.
“Ye eat half the supplies one time - one time - an ye never hear the end of it!” Complained Korah.
A subtle smile tugged at Rachel’s face, only to fall immediately with wide eyes. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what, lass?” Ody asked, smile falling.
“It was like a rumble. Like a storm.” She answered.
Ody squinted and lifted his gaze as he listened.
“It’s gone now.” Informed Rachel. “But I swear I heard thunder.”
“Maybe it’ll rain again.” Muttered Korah.
“It don’t rain twice in one season, tat ain’t thunder.”
The group’s quiet investigation was cut short by the rumble of curious conversation outside. Hesitantly, Ody, Rachel and Korah poured out of their bedchamber one by one and came to the guarded entrance of the dug-out where they peered over the shoulders of their sentries.
“Shit.” Ody’s eye snapped wide open, his daughter reflected in the sable pool of his iris.
Paula crouched atop one of the titanic pearls from the treasury, squatting on the smooth surface of her loot and glaring down at the gathering crowd. The Crone came to meet her, one brow raised so high that Paula could actually see her entire eye.
“Paula, get out of here!” Ody snarled, but his warnings went either unheard of ignored.
“I want my family back.” Paula told the Crone.
“And we want food.” Croaked the Crone.
“I brought you some food.” Offered the daughter.
“That?” One again, the Crone’s eyebrow hit her hairline.
Paula nodded. “It’ll feed you and your whole clan for weeks. You just have to get past the outer shell.”
“She’s lying.” One Cannibal pointed an accusing finger at Paula.
“It’ll take you just a few hours to dig into the shell and find out.” Paula wagered. “You can keep my family until you get inside. But you have to promise to let them go as soon as you realise I’m not trying to scam you.”
The Crone tasted her own response on her tongue, rolling it between her cheeks, gaze shifting between Paula, the pearl and her own kin.
She glared at Paula. “Grab the girl. We can eat her and the others when we finish whatever this is.”
“What?!” Paula’s eyes snapped wide as she was dragged down from her bounty.
“Put her with the others and start digging into this thing.” Ordered the hag.
“This wasn’t the deal!” Paula cried, jagged rocks scraping against her back as she was dragged to the dug-out. The guards shifted from their positions just long enough for the daughter to be thrown to her father, who took her in his arms and cupped her cheeks in his palms.
“Why did ya come back!?” Scolded Ody.
Paula sniffled. “I couldn’t leave you all behind.”
“Yes ya could! Ya should!” Ody snapped, shrugging off the hand Korah placed on his shoulder. “I thought ya had! Ya could have escaped!”
“I’m sorry!” She sobbed, drool dribbling down her chin. Her gaze shifted momentarily to the guards before she whispered, “The room.”
Pausing, Ody stared down at his daughter for a moment before pulling her into the bedchamber, followed by Korah and Rachel.
“What is it?” Asked Rachel.
Slowly, Paula turned her gaze on Rachel, plain and unreadable. “We’re getting out of here.” She promised.
Beyond the walls of the tunnel-home, the Cannibals chipped away at the outer shell of the pearl with their teeth and rocks. Some filed their teeth to their gums and left weeping, only for the Crone to send another to replace them. Others cut their tackless hands on the sharp edges of their chosen stones. The first layer of the pearl came away within the first twenty minutes. It took two hours to reach the fruits of their labour.
Wine leaked from the crack they’d drilled in it’s side, red like the sun peering over the horizon. The Crone dropped to her knees and lapped at the thick vermillion ichor like the starved beast she was. When she came back up, her mouth was coated in the liquid, red like the flames stolen away by Prometheus. “It does not taste like poison!”
The Cannibals stooped to their hands and knees and feasted on the growing lake of sweet, viscosity.
A rumble of thunder and stillness fell over the colony; like bot-flies popping from a gaping wound, they popped their heads out of their banquet and around the shell of the ruined pearl to stare into the abyss of the largest tunnel leading into their city.
There, in the roof of the great black cavity stared back at them with glinting white eyes. His gaze fell on the pearl, broken and running with red - red like the blood of blasphemers who steal from the gods.
His steps did not so much as disturb the surface of the oasis, silent on his soft feet. The cumbersome king stepped out of the shadows, naked and unabashed, golden skin spotted with white as though he were covered in shimmering coins, a thunderous chorale procession accompanying each and every movement of his unfathomable mass. His ribs poking against his flesh, his belly round and hanging, back broken so that he eternally stood horizontal as though he too were under some godly punishment. His hands hung armlessly from his chest and flopped limply as though their fingers had all been snapped.
The Cannibals broke their silence, shrieking and scurrying for safety. One of the Cannibals ran to the Crone and hoisted her to her feet, only for the Tyrant to bring the golden crown he held in his mouth down on them like a vertical guillotine, slicing them both in half at their waists. Three fat snakes of blood erupted from their bellies before what was left of their bodies fell stiffly in a cloud of dust.
Carrying his tremendous song through the unpaved streets, the sound burrowing deep into the bones of the forsaken and yet never reaching their ears, the Tyrant brought forth his wrath upon their pseudo-Sodom. Many found themselves frozen by the enraged song of the Tyrant and it snapped them up in his thick lips and swallowed them whole, ten, fifteen, twenty at a time. Those with the nerve to flee found themselves popping beneath his feet and when his foot came away from the earth they had vanished in swaths of gore and simply ceased to exist.
The mother who had attempted to free their captured visitors ran with her son trailing behind her and was crushed with them by the hungry tongue of the Tyrant, which licked them into paste and devoured them with the guilty.
Ody, Rachel, Korah, Paula and the triplets stole away in the chaos, clambering hand-in-hand up the steepest slope of the grotto walls, towards the highest exit. None dared turn back to the massacre, none but Rachel, whose gaze was drawn back to the city of tunnels by the sob of a lonesome youth - who stood beside one of the Tyrant’s footprints. His back was craned and he was weeping, too young to understand the Tyrant’s rage and the suffering that brought it upon them, wailing at the top of his lungs with all the desperation of one too young to know that crying could not bring back the dead, no matter how much he willed it to. In front of him was half of his parent - whether it was his mother or his father, Rachel could not tell from that distance - one of their eyes had popped out of its socket and they spoke their organs across the ground. At the bottom of the footprint was the flattened lower half of their body, and connecting the two was a stroke of viscera and skin which was plastered flat against the steep wall of the print as though it had been painted there.
“Rachel!” Ody snapped her out of her trance and she went scurrying up the stoney hill with the others. They came to a wall so steep that they had to climb it with their worn down hands and feet. Ody took Epher and slung him across on his back, Korah took Abida and did the same, Rachel carried Adah in her pouch and the family climbed desperately, the screams of those below them chasing them up the wall.
A small group of Cannibals prostrated themselves before the Tyrant and pleaded feebly for forgiveness only to be crushed under foot. Half of those who remained had taken refuge in the dug-outs like burrowing vermin, huddled so compactly that, despite their best efforts, they could not accommodate the other half of the remaining survivors who tried to shove their way inside with forlorn pleas clawing at their throats.
It didn’t matter. Eventually the Tyrant turned his attention on the homes and smote them with all the effort it took to raise and lower his foot. He brought down the ceilings of the dug-outs atop the trapped fugitives and summoned up those who had not hidden in his lips to chew on them.
Paula was the first to ascend to the top of the ledge, panting and collapsing on her back. Then came Ody, then Rachel, then Korah who pushed Rachel up the last few inches. They all stood, laid or sat huffing iron and rust, the scent of aerosol death inescapable.
“Everyone here?” Asked Ody.
“Everyone.” Answered Rachel.
The family jumped at the wet slap of a hand against the ledge, eyes wide as they peered over the edge. There, nails bleeding and gaze watery, hung the guard who had threatened Abida.
“Pull me up, please.” He whispered, as though he feared drawing the Tyrant’s attention.
It was futile, the raging god turned his gaze on him and strode forwards, sniffing.
“Please.” begged the guard. The family stared down at him with equal rage, satisfaction and pity.
The Tyrant’s pace hastened and he lowered his head. It was only from this angle, high above him, that the family took note of the Tyrant’s crown ofboulders perched atop his brow. He rammed his crown into the wall, causing the entire grotto to quake and the cliff to stagger.
“Please!” Cried the guard, hauling himself up on already falling stones. The family watched as he fell for a good, long while before exploding against the floor.
The blood god stooped down and lapped him up just like the others.
As the ledge crumbled beneath their feet, the family fled into their chosen tunnel and let themselves be swallowed by darkness. As they departed, the sound of the unseen choir faded behind them.
It was a few hours before they came into the light, and when they did they were met with a vast, open wasteland. Ody paused, confused for a moment, suddenly reminded that the world was not made up of labyrinths and sandstone and grottos and tunnels. Onwards marched the family in reverent silence until the sun dipped the horizon in molten ruby.
In the morning, they came across a heaping pile of manure left by a passing Giant, flattened by time the heap was still the same height as Korah. In the centre, at the heap’s summit, a young, slender tree reached for the clouds, its leaves purple and unblemished. They stared at it, taking in the heavy scent, before Ody grinned and took ahold of Korah and Rachel’s hands. Together, they pranced in a circle around the pile, cackling and grinning so wide that their dry lips burst open with blood where scabs had just finished sealing them. They sang and danced alone in the desert of rolling ash under a sky so grey that they could not tell if it was clear or cloudy. Paula did not join them. She sat on her own and watched distantly, her mind elsewhere.
Posted Mar 7, 2026, 6:00 PM UTC