This, then, the beginning.
The ending of the world.
There was a city silent and ravaged in the dark, its fires extinguished, its souls consumed, the world gone bright and wrong with the death of a god. The Light of Aesarii had come, with the winds of empire to drive it, and it came in force and violence its front-line soldiers had failed. The city of Gaet Cuolam paid homage to Neydiri, goddess of metalwork and iron, fire and industry and healing. Neydiri blessed the iron dragons, and gave to their keepers the gift of joining; blessed the foothills of the mountains that marched, white-capped and jagged, to the sea, so they grew herbs and fungus and plants that kept within themselves the power to cure sickness and hold back death. And Neydiri was favored by Melanth the Dreamer: every dark long winter the lights came to ripple in the sky, the gods dancing, and Gaet Cuolam’s people would dream with them, of wonderful things and worlds beyond theirs, and their healers would be touched by grace.
When the Light came, and offered first their usual tokens: a cure for sickness unneeded, forged weapons that the iron dragons might covet, their brightest minds and greatest works. They offered schools, and journeys to other lands, and fleets of ships made for leisure. Alliance, whispered of and offered.
But Neydiri did not like them, and remembered somewhere in the ancient vastness of its mind something unnerving. So she said no.
And so their god changed its face, and they came again, and this time they offered nothing but an end.
There was a little girl in a heap of rubble, blood-streaked and trembling, huddled up in the lap of the corpse that had protected her and birthed a god.
Her name was Tyroxian.
The scream inside her curdled and died, like the city that had birthed it. Her little fists clenched with rage, and her body quivered, and the scorpion on her shoulder, the avatar, snapped its pincers and whispered, Vengeance.
But she was just a child, and her fathers were gone into the flame and ash, and there was no one there to comfort her in the silence. The scorpion’s legs pinched her skin, and there was nothing warm in its touch. If she looked at it, really looked at it, past the cluster of shining bead eyes and chitinous hide, she’d see the touch of stars in its flesh, the death of suns in its eyes. It spoke and the shriek of planets rode the edge of its words. It was not a god that comforted or gave warmth, this thing that had chosen her.
They would call her god-touched.
They did not know then. When Aesarii’s vultures came to gather what was left, and round up the surviving children, the scorpion crawled beneath her shirt and sank into her chest where no one but her would every see it, no one but her would ever feel the heat of its fury in the dark spaces where her blood ran. They came in their armor, with mirrored helmets they pushed back from dirty faces, speaking a language she didn’t know. They were not rough, but they weren’t kind either, and she was too stunned to do anything but let them pick her up and swaddle her in a dirty blanket. With five other hollow-eyed boys and girls she rode in the back of an armored vehicle that shuddered and groaned. The floor was sticky under her feet, and the skullhead charms—Aesarii’s terrible face of war—rattled from their mounts, their empty eyes full of shifting shadows. If she listened she’d hear the whisper, the distant sound of battlefields. Or maybe it was only in her head that she heard those things.
The children did not speak to each other, but they huddled close for comfort, and in the child’s chest the scorpion burned.
