The Crooked Letter

The Crooked Letter

[The Cataclysm 01]

By Sean Williams

Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU

* * * *

Understand that the daktyloi have no creation

myth, no gods bringing forth the world from

darkness and separating human from beast.

Those are human stories, and this is not a human

story you are about to hear.

The elohim do, however, tell of a time when the

realms were as one. All beings lived under the

same sky and on the same land. Their lives came

and went to similar rhythms. They spoke words

all could understand.

Then Ymir, the first dei, took his shadow and

gave it breath, and, naming it the Molek, set it

free in the world to bring disharmony. This the

Molek did well. It spread disease; it sowed

dissent; it turned neighbours into enemies and set

the strong against the weak.

Ymir’s subjects did not understand the necessity

for such suffering. They saw pain where there

had once been peace, unrest where there had once

been unity. The Molek rampaged unchecked, and

it seemed to them as though Ymir had come to

love and cherish pain over life itself.

Some of Ymir’s subjects allied themselves with the

Molek, seeking advancement among the chaos.

Others stayed resolutely at Ymir’s side, even

though the dei seemed utterly indifferent to their

fate. War ensued, fierce and protracted. Many

lives were lost. Ymir and the Molek, maker and

creation, fought long and hard. What one had,

the other had also, in equal and opposite

measure.

Total victory was never possible.

All felt betrayed, in time, by those to whom they

had offered fealty.

Finally, when all the combatants were spent, a

great silence fell across the universe. Not the

silence of death or emptiness, but the silence of an

indrawn breath before someone speaks.

And so the story continues. The names may

change, the rules may change, the nature of the

battlefield itself may change
—
but the story is

the same. Sometimes the light shines. Other times

the shadow falls.

Ymir’s legacy, the elohim came to understand, is

not death and mayhem, but change itself.

THE BOOK OF TOWERS,
FRAGMENTS 152-158

* * * *

BEFORE

‘Great works require great sacrifice.’

THE BOOK OF TOWERS,
EXEGESIS 13:13

adrian forced his eyes open. The world shimmered in front of him. Seth was an indistinct shape moving arrow-straight between leafless trees, out of the frigid park. Hadrian made a sound like a growl and got his legs working. His balance was shot. Staggering a little at first, then with more determination, he resumed his chase. Pain fuelled his anger, and anger fuelled his strength. Exhalations exploded from him in clouds. He didn’t know what he planned to do once he caught up with his brother, but that he did catch up was vitally important. The rest of his life faded into the background as this single instant loomed in significance. His hands curled into claws. The taste of blood mingled with the iciness of the city on his exposed teeth, setting them on edge. His breathing sounded like a long, sustained roar in his ears.

Buildings rose around him, growing taller and darker as though glaciers were sliding vertically from trampled soil. His determination grew. Seth was acting like he was to blame — and that was so ludicrous it almost didn’t bear challenging. But he had to challenge it, or his brother would have things his way again. Hadrian had spent his entire life in the shadow of someone who didn’t play by the rules. The time had come to stand up for himself.

Seth vanished precipitously down a flight of steps. Hadrian was about to follow when a hand grabbed his coat from behind. He jerked to a halt, startled, and rounded to push his assailant away.

‘Hadrian. Jesus!’ It was Ellis. He lowered his hands at the fright in her hazel eyes. ‘What the hell’s going on? Have you two been fighting?’

‘He went down there.’ All thoughts had been focussed on catching his brother, but her presence penetrated his obsession. His words were muffled, nasal. He realised for the first time how he must look to others, with blood all down his face and T-shirt, running like a madman or a murderer on some horrible mission. He felt like a monster.

‘Jesus.’ There was no sympathy in her stare, just alarm. She took his arm, not to comfort him but to contain him. He was shaking. His eyes felt swollen, full of hot tears. ‘He hit you! Did you hit him? Do you want to hit him?’

‘I —’ What had seemed so clear a moment ago was falling apart like gossamer. He shook his head in confusion. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Fucking boys.’ She softened slightly. ‘I should get you to the hotel, clean you up. He’ll come back when he’s ready.’ Her stare shifted to something behind him, and her face tightened. ‘No, let’s keep moving. Down there.’ She tugged him in the direction Hadrian had gone. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes.’ He was far from sure of it. ‘Do you think we’re being followed again?’ he asked, although behind him he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

She pulled him down the stairs. His legs threatened to buckle, and he kept up as best he could. Fluorescent lights cast surreal shadows as they hurried underground. Signs in foreign languages slid by. An escalator whirred at the end of a long tiled tunnel, and they took it deeper into the earth, to a subway. There, the air was dank and thick with fumes. People converged on either side of a row of turnstiles, jostling, blank faced. Hadrian tightened his coat around himself to hide the blood on his T-shirt, but his nose was still bleeding. Some of the commuters noticed and their faces came alive for a moment with surprise.

Ellis moved him quickly through the crowd, pushing through open turnstiles against the flow to avoid buying a ticket, ignoring complaints levelled in their wake. A train waited impatiently at the platform, doors open, half-full. She shouldered her way to the first of the seven carriages and bundled Hadrian in ahead of her. He didn’t protest. There was nowhere else Seth could have gone but onto the train. Hadrian felt his brother nearby, tugging at him like a caught thread.

Ellis took him into the carriage without really watching where she was going. Her attention was outside, on the people on the platform. Hadrian scanned the passengers in the carriage and, once certain that Seth wasn’t among them, lost interest. His reflection in a window was frightening: skin washed white under fluorescent light, mouth and chin splattered with blood; stubbled scalp gleaming as though covered in oil; eyes wide and full of desperation.

Everything had gone wrong. It seemed inconceivable that, in the space of a few hours, so much could change. But it had. The world had shattered into a million pieces, and he didn’t know if he could ever put it back together again ...

The doors hissed shut. The floor moved beneath him.

‘I have to find Seth.’

‘All right, all right.’ Ellis looked bedraggled and weary. Her long brown hair, normally so sleek and tidy, was greasy and tangled. People were staring at them, these bloody creatures from another world. Hadrian wondered what they would do if he jumped on a seat and mooned them; for a wild moment, he was seriously tempted.

Ellis’s hand was a rope pulling him back to the real world. He clutched it and fought another flood of tears as she led him up the aisle. She was still with him. That was something. They reached the end of the first carriage and passed through sliding doors and a loud clamour of metal wheels on rails into the second. They weren’t a focus of attention here; the commuters in this section hadn’t witnessed their sudden arrival, and Hadrian had managed to clean up some of the blood with his shirt. Newspapers stayed up, eyes down. He and Ellis might not have existed.

There was no sign of Seth in the second carriage, or the third. The moment they entered the fourth, Hadrian saw him immediately. His brother was standing in a relatively clear space by the doors at the far end, steadying himself with one hand against the swaying of the train.

Hadrian pushed past Ellis to get at him. Defiance was no longer his sole objective. He just wanted to be closer, as though by reducing the physical separation he could make inroads on the mental gulf between them.

Seth looked up with red eyes and visibly winced. He turned away and opened the doors to the fifth carriage. Hadrian lunged after him, stopping the door sliding shut with one hand and grabbing at his brother’s coat with the other. Seth tried to shrug him off, but Hadrian scrambled with him into the next swaying carriage.

‘I told you to fuck off, Hade.’

You can’t get rid of me that easily.’

‘Why are you doing this to me? What do you want?’

‘I want —’
Ellie.
His throat closed on the word.

She was between them, forcing them apart. ‘Will you two calm down? You’re acting like a couple of kids.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Hadrian, looking at her then down at his feet, genuinely appalled at the way things were turning out. ‘This isn’t the way it’s supposed to go.’

‘No?’ Seth’s sarcasm was harsh. ‘This is the way it always goes. If we’re acting like kids it’s because you’re dragging us down to your level.’