Black Nerve

Anna of Three Lakes hatched on the grimy city streets, sooth‍-​black and infested with slug and mites, an orphan with nothing and no one.

She was one of the first kids to get sucked up into an inculcatorium, in the days when Immolata the Second Overscourge first introduced them.

(Perhaps she’d been caught in some crime born of desperation, only for it to be decided she had some potential as a vesperbane. Or perhaps this was just a possible sentence for a deliquent youth.)

Anna was decent at it‍ ‍—‍ she had all the cunning and survival instinct of a street urchin in a deathworld‍ ‍—‍ but she’s just a normal bug; even in an inculcatorium, lousy with pawns lacking clans to teach them, some nymphs are built different.

Still, it was clear to the adminstration that Anna had potential, lethal amounts of it, and she ends getting put on a squad with two prodigies wielding bloodline superpowers: Edu of Three Lakes and Uvema Asetari.

Those two squadmates means the team is extremely effective, so they get trusted with ever more important missions‍ ‍—‍ ever more dangerous missions.

Even at Wretch rank, Anna winds up pretty powerful‍ ‍—‍ that’s just what it takes to survive by the shell of her mandibles amid all the shit that gets thrown at the two prodigies.

For a long time, Anna has no special bullshit working in her favor. She barely keeps up

Here’s an interesting thought that struck me when writing later parts of this exposition, but it makes the most sense to insert here:

How, exactly, does she keep up? How desperate does she get? Perhaps she heard the myths, as every bane does, that vespers are sentient, with a will of their own that’s somehow deeper than blind animal instinct.

Perhaps she prays, begs her vespers to give her something, some edge. Perhaps she pleads for them to reveal to her what she needs to do to get stronger.

Like nearly every bane who listened, Anna hears only silence, and she realizes this was flight of foolishness‍ ‍—‍ it wouldn’t be that easy to win. (It was, you might say, a chimerical hope.)

But maybe it happens on a mission gone wrong. Anna’s weakness means she falters when her squadmates don’t, and she gets captured. She’s imprisoned cruelly alongside a couple other young banes. (Perhaps their mission had been to rescue them).

And maybe Anna knows a rescue is coming, but doesn’t it sting‍ ‍—‍ she’s always holding her squad back. It’s not a question of if they’ll come to rescue her, but whether they’ll get here in time. Maybe her and her cellmates are being tortured, starved, treated so carelessly that they left a rotting corpse in the cell with them.

(Maybe it’s not a question if they’ll come to rescue her, but if they should‍ ‍—‍ is Anna even worth saving?)

And maybe she feels something, then. Not a whisper, not a message, not a revelation, but an impulse. Her despair is tinged with an alien urge, a hunger. She looks at the corpse her captors left, one of the kids she was supposed to save and failed to. It doesn’t spoil her appetite, but deepens the hunger. She could ignore it; almost every bane does.

But maybe she doesnt. They say Aromethia, the first bane, was endowed with vespers when she consumed the entrails of a vesperbane. That was how it was done, before the practice was refined and modernized, and vesperbanes could eat cleanly prepared vespermala. Phagein is a dark, necromantic thing. If not forbidden, there’s an unmistakable patina of villainy to it.

And maybe the hunger doesn’t abate. And maybe it’s not just dead flesh that whets her appetite‍ ‍—‍ there’s live banes in the cell with her. She resists (almost every bane does), with qualms and guilt. but she’ll spend days in that cell, contemplating, watching more her cellmates die (and briefly sating the hunger, when they do). She’ll have days to reason that if her squad doesn’t save them in time, they’re dead anyway.

So maybe they fail the mission, and never rescue those poor kids. Maybe when her squad finally tracks her down, they find Anna starved and bloodsoaked with trauma in every facet of her eyes.

And maybe they never ask what exactly happened, what they failed to prevent.

But maybe anna doesn’t have quite as much trouble keeping up with them, after that.

By the time they’re in their 20s, the second vesperbane world war Second Grand Trial is in full swing. Anna’s team isn’t promising primwretches ranks anymore‍ ‍—‍ they’re full‍-​fledged archfiends leading squads of their own.

(It certainly helps that the Third Overscourge leading the war effort is none other than Deladora Brismati‍ ‍—‍ once the captain of their wretch squad, who’d taught them the basics a decade ago)

Suffice it to say, the second grand trial becomes their proving grounds, where all three of them establish themselves as the strongest banes the great western stronghold has to offer. It’s an accolade that would be refined to bitter certainty by the end of the trial. When Deladora’s forces surrounds the lair of the Antiscourge Synthia Shadowbane and an army descends for a final battle.

Only three of westhold’s banes can survive‍ ‍—‍ Anna and her team, fighting to a standstill against the villain who had slain the second overscourge and slaughtered armies.

They don’t win. They don’t even draw. They live because synthia claims they’d impressed her. The stories go on to say that Synthia would afterward open the table for peace negotiations purely out of respect for the three banes who could hold their own against her. (The truth is of course, negotiation is how Synthia got what she really wanted‍ ‍—‍ but it made for a good story, and Synthia was a master of rhetoric.)

Suffice it to say, the war was over, and the three are christened the Judges of the Second Grand Trial. They’re war heroes, pretty much, and people talk about them like they’d saved westhold, like they’d defeated Synthia.

This perception does mean that in the ensuing decades, the three of them pretty much get the latitude to do whatever the hell they want. Uvema founds her own stronghold with deladora’s blessing; Edu gets up to crazy mad science experiments.

If they can do whatever they want, well, what do they want? The private embarassment of what really happened with Synthia is motivation on its own.

After so many pograms, so much bloodshed and hate, Synthia’s reward is the luxury of sitting throned as a queen over a stronghold of her own.

None of them couldn’t rematch synthia, she was untouchable. Not physically. Sure, Shadehold doubtless had formiddable defenses and Synthia was no doubt devising even more bullshit to reinforce her isolation and immortality. But that wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t even that it would start another war grand trial.

No, the problem is that it wouldn’t. If the Judges tried to finally bring justice to Synthia, Greathold would be forced to act‍ ‍—‍ against them.

The foundation of the wardens, and thus every stronghold, is the Cicatrix Pact. Superceding all laws is the recogniction that the purpose of vesperbanes is to defend the Pantheca against world‍-​scars. Anything that profoundly furthers that end is permitted; anything that profoundly hinders it is forbidden. This is the first law and only aegis for defects.

The naive conclusion is that the Judges could only shrug in recognition of this, and thus contented themselves with more productive projects.

Uvema couldn’t challenge Synthia, so she founded her own stronghold, a refuge for exactly those minorities targeted by Synthia’s followers. instead of attacking the problem, she’ll build up a shield from it.

Edu couldn’t challenge Synthia, so he pursued apolitical science, leaning sealcraft from the euvespids. Instead of attacking the problem, he distracts himself with other possibilities.

But their true intent runs deeper. Edu confided his true plans in Uvema, and Uvema confided her true plans to Anna.

Uvema would gather a power base of their own, so she can one day defect. Declare war on shadehold, Cicatrix Pact or no, and ensure there is no place in this world for helpful bigots.

Edu learns seals, and his white whale is a theory of his own devising. He’s already achieved the first step, creating the hypermaterial banishment seal, capable of incapacitating any elemental, the most dangerous of the world‍-​scars. When there is no more world‍-​scars, there will be no more need for the Cicatrix Pact to shield anyone.

Once again, Anna is left behind. Her former squadmates wove plans decades in the making that would reshape geopolitics when enacted, whether they succeeded or went astray. And her? What ambition did she have? What vengence could she plot against Synthia?

The truth was, Synthia had wounded Anna far shallower than either of those two. Edu and Uvema were prodigies who could count their failures on one hand, and couldn’t name a single ostacle they didn’t eventually overcome. Synthia was their first true taste of being utterly outclassed.

But Anna? That had been her life since she was too young to remember.

So Anna wanders listless. She’s perhaps the fourth or fifth most powerful bane in the heartlands. Enough that she can go anywhere, do whatever she wants, but there’s a gulf between her level of power and the power that reshapes geopolitics.

She flicks villains that cross her path like errant ticks, and she rescues nymphs and larvae. Sometimes she clocks in for missions, but it’s hard to believe in this system‍ ‍—‍ between Uvema’s lectures on oppression and Edu’s rants about its inefficiencies, she didn’t know if being Westhold’s pawn was making things better or worse.

On her travels, she repeatedly encounters a girl who stalks her trail for months. Their first meeting was born of desperate frustration, and after that, it was incessent curiosity. The girl is Cinderel thimithi‍ ‍—‍ she’s Immolata’s daughter. She’s obsessed with the great judges, the only vesperbanes who could ever stand up to her father’s killer.

Here’s the rub. No clan that had a seat on the Third Dominion’s councils is welcome in Uvema’s stronghold, and that includes the Thimithi. And Edu is a busy mantis, juggling a dozen experiments and projects, and had no patience for the sentimentality of a daughter thirsting for vengence, or the mysticism of claiming the vespers will pass harsh judgment on Synthia.

(That was her idea for defeating Synthia: invoking vespertine judgment – she’d surely done something horribly crooked, right?)

Like all the banes in westhold, Cinderel thought the judges were heroes. She’d sung the songs of their glories. Then she met them. She wanted to like them, but Edu and Uvema are both kind of just assholes.

Anna, though? She wasn’t an easy bane to track down, but she was always willing to have a drink with Cinderel. She’s the only one of the judges who still practices the kind of heroism they sing about, not nation‍-​building or research programs.

(She’s also not bad looking, wiht more than a small amount of charm.)

Attitudewise, they’ve got a lot in common. They share an inferiority complex born of growing up around monsters of technique. (The only reason Immolata isn’t remembered as the prolific author of technique he was that most of his creations are forbidden and deeply classified.)

But for all that Cinderel was personally tutored by the Second Overscourge, she just didn’t have the mad, passionate inspiration that haunted the true prodigies. She plateued as a simply very competent vesperbane, a career fiend.

Staring into ritual flames in a dark room, Cinderel confesses that she’s sure Immolata died disappointed in her.

All of this is to say, Cinderel has an ambition beyond her grasp, a hope made chimerical not because of the dream, but the dreamer. Cinderel wants revenge against Synthia. And for once, Anna listens, and her heart aches with sympathy.

In her time, she’d heard many westhold natives rage against synthia, but the Shadow Court’s atrocities were inflicted on the east. Here, for once, Anna hears someone inceased, not because of injured national pride, not because Synthia stands in the way of their need to always win‍ ‍—‍ but because of simple pain and loss.

Cinderel always looked up to the Judges, but she just couldn’t understand why saving the world was a one‍-​time thing for them, why they didn’t finish the job. The Cicatrix Pact felt like an excuse‍ ‍—‍ sure, strongholds were supposed to uphold it, but could the Pantheca really afford to make antiscourges of all three Judges? Nevermind if anyone could win the fight‍ ‍—‍ only Synthia herself was above their level‍ ‍—‍ who would want to stand and fight against them?

Cinderel knew which side of that fight she’d end up on.

But Edu and Uvema cited the pact and told Cinderel to get lost, essentially. They didn’t seem to care‍ ‍—‍ but Anna listened to her. And when Cinderel begged her to help her finally take down Synthia, Anna said yes.

(In a way, Cinderel and Anna are opposites; Cinderel has a will without the power to achieve it, while Anna has power and nothing to do with it.)

Of course “Anna said yes” has two meaning‍ ‍—‍ within a year of their partnership, Anna becomes a part of the Thimithi clan.

The Thimithi clan are famous haruspices, and Cinderel’s excited to discover Anna has a deep affinity for her vespers. It doesn’t take long before Cinder is bending the rules to teach Anna their secret traditions.

Anna’s preferred elemental affinity is earth, though, not the Thimithi clan’s fire. It just means she has to devise her own techniques with the principles she learns. Anna doesn’t have a mind for it, and neither does Cinderel, but luckily Anna is friends with two banes who had pioneered entire new fields of techniques.

Their relationship had cooled over the decades, barely deigning to squeeze Anna into their schedule and treating her with impatience‍ ‍—‍ but such treatment is a privilege coming from banes with no time for almost anyone else.

With their guidance (and not a small amount of the talent Anna had needed to survive and stand beside those two), Anna quickly overtakes Cinderel in understanding and practice of their family’s techniques. Cinderel doesn’t mind; her reaction to Anna’s growth is adoring, vicarious, possessive pride.

So while Edu is inventing revolutionary new seals, and Uvema is constructing the astral plane, Anna finally gains a bullshit technique all her own. It comes in the late 1780s, fifteen or so years after the high point of her career, but better late than never.

Her signature art is sacrophagy.

It’s the sand coffin, sand burial bullshit‍ ‍—‍ but with the twist that what makes it so special is that sacrophage doesn’t just kill bugs. A vesperbane entombed with their enchanted earth will be subject to phagein. Which is to say, the ritual consumption of entrails, the haruspex’s darkest technique.

When anna finally masters it and shows it to Cinderel, her reaction for once isn’t pride, but horror. She tries to hide it, but they’ve been in a relationship for years, Anna knows something is up. So Cinderel admits it‍ ‍—‍ phagein, ripping a vesper out of its host to be imprisoned within a new one… it’s not right. She can’t accept this. It’s not heroic at all.

And then, for the first time, Anna tells the story of what happened, that month almost twenty years ago that she’d spent tortured and imprisoned. How phagein was what let her free herself, was what gave her the power to keep up with her squadmates.

And this? Her sacrophagy technique could let her enact phagein from as far as her control of earth extended (which was quite far). Think of how quickly Anna could consume banes, and how quickly her power could grow. If anything could let her scale up to challenge Synthia, it would be this.

But Cinderel shakes her head, and asks for her to promise, just as she’d asked for Anna to help her, that Anna will not use this technique, will not brand untold numbers of vespers as the conquest‍-​spoils of a cannibal.

Anna accepts. But this had been Anna’s best and only idea for how could could break through into the highest tiers of power.

But Cinderel rebukes this line of reasoning. Immolata died facing Synthia alone. Synthia is the puppet mistress, a one mantis army. you wouldn’t beat her alone, you’d need an army.

Of course, they couldn’t just recruit banes by out and saying, “We’re amassing an army to break the Cicatrix Pact and plunge the heatlands into a new decade of bloodshed and nightmare.”

They’d need followers so loyal that when the truth was revealed to them, they wouldn’t refuse or betray them.

And for that, they’d need to believe in something‍ ‍—‍ but what?

Anna hopes to find the answer in the Thimithi clan’s archives. (It’s strange and amusing for Anna to find herself in library, when she’d famously spent her early years as a vesperbane illiterate and opposed to the very idea of impractical, theorical learning. She’s still a slow reader, and it’s still dreadfully boring to her, but she’s got nothing better to do, these day.)

In the writing and readings of the most powerful of the ancient Thimithi, Anna senses an idea so profound she could find no mention of its existence, let alone confirmation, only fleeting allusions scrawled and fading in the margins of old book, a suggestive pattern in the negative space of implication.

Even figuring out a placeholder name for the concept required piecing together clues, making leaps. Various haruspices have spoken of “the image”, or “the beautiful technique.” There was a story‍ ‍—‍ she can’t find it ever recounting, but authors allude to having read it, of it being retold‍ ‍—‍ of a haruspex who made a wish with their dying breath.

It’s not enough to even be sure they’re connected, so Anna is frustrated.

While anna hopes to find the answer in honing technique, Cinderel hopes to find the answer in faith. She prays to the Chimerical Nymphs of the Kindling Dream. She reads scripture. She gives and recieves vesper‍-​readings, gives and recieves sermons. She eventually bothers Anna into pausing her descent into the esoteric to read about the Nymphs instead.

The night after she does, she has a dream.

In the dream, she is a bat alighting upon a cliff face and climbing into a hole like a wound in the earth. She climbs in, and the walls undulate and squish around her. Upon closer inspection, the shadows resolve to cold weaves of black nerve. She stares into them, and the black resolves to light. She walks on throughout the intermitten peristalsis of the halls. The cold weaves of black nerve are illuminating paintings. Then she stops suddenly, staring at one painting. She sees her reflection, a self‍-​portraint. She leans closer, a breath escapes her chiropteran muzzle and she touches the quivering walls of the cave. The painting breaths back. The insect in the painting shifts her eyes, and it meets gaze with the bat.

Ann wakes up, and the truth is on her palps.

dream into breath

She writes it down, quickly, before it’s forgotten. She doesn’t keep writing utensils anywhere in her room, so scratching with the knife under her pillow will have to do.

When she stumbles to her desk, blearily, deliriously awake, Anna gets out a sheet of paper to properly transcribe it. Droplets of blood spilled from the carvings on her arm. It’s a perfectly normal splatter of blood, yet somehow Anna reads the rest of the truth there, as if letters were soaked into the pages.

The name of the technique is ⸢Ad Imago Venerum⸥.

It took a long time for Anna to understand it, and even longer for her to have any ability to explain it. One explanation might go like this.

Every vespertine technique required things. There are ways of classifying these requirement‍ ‍—‍ material components, technical components, and esoteric components.

Material components are what a spell physically needs to be able to take place. Technical components are what you need to do, the actions that cause the effect to come about.

Esoteric components are different, seeming to break the rules. The vespertine arts are physical, explainable process‍ ‍—‍ most of the time. Vespers weren’t supposed to care about intent. But sometimes, intent makes a difference. Sometimes, you can eventually pin down the intent as a material or technical component disguised‍ ‍—‍ usually technical, but certain mental states had physical by products due to the parachemistry of the nous.

Technical components, importantly, are what determine what the technique even does. Even when there are esoteric components, they tend to make or break your ability to perform the technique. Ultimately, technique is a recipe, and no thought is going to change what you bake unless the thought makes you act different.

The beautiful technique is different. It’s wholly unique.

⸢Ad Imago Venerum⸥ has no material component. It has no technical component. It’s complete and entire esotericism.

The image of the vespers breaks the rules. Every rule. The most beatiful technique can do anything.

The principle is simple. The requirements are simple. In a way, does it truly break the rules, or simply obeys the same fundamental principle of every vespertine art?

That is: make a wish, and pay the price.

Immediately, Anna is grateful she had listened to Cinderel; this is so many better than sacrophagy.

Indeed, wielding ⸢Ad Imago Venerum⸥, Anna could do more than merely stop one tyrant‍ ‍—‍ it was a technique that could do anything.

Dream into breath‍ ‍—‍ she could finally realize the nymphs’ vision of a better world. She would finally exceed Edu and Uvema.

Anna feels a hunger she hasn’t felt in many, many years.

Cinderel is excited too. Anna hadn’t just found the answer to her own question; she’d found the answer to Cinderel’s. The most beautiful technique is something people could believe in. They had a goal, something they could preach and rally followers around.

It was time to start a cult.

They didn’t call it that out of ill intent, but caution, awareness of the trecherous slope they descended. They wanted people utterly devoted‍ ‍—‍ they wanted to people who would die for their cause, who would take their secrets to that same grave.

There’s a reason, Anna realizes, that it was so hard to discover the beautiful technique. Because it can do anything, ensuring that it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands is even more important.

So the two of them devise a doctrine which is mostly a trap. There were secrets that, if revealed, mainly informed them if members were less than totally devoted. It’s something punishable by death. (This is the heartlands, after all; Anna didn’t become one of the most powerful banes by not being a ruthless killer.)

In creating this cult, Anna is animated by the resurgence of that hunger tinged with alien desire. So when she executed defects, there was the urge to do more than kill them. And, she realized, the most beautiful technique was a revelation from the same source as the hunger! Would it not be a sorry thanks for the revelation, to deny it?

Cinderel had made Anna promise not to use sacrophagy‍ ‍—‍ but she also wanted her to use the most beautiful technique. That promise was a more recent. So she wasn’t breaking her promise, she was doing what she’d agreed to.

Eventually, an inner circle of the most trusted members of the cult materializes. A consequence of their advocacy is that so many of the people they recruit share the enthusiasm for the great judges that Cinderel once had.

One particular member of the inner circle, Illita, bears a resembles down to the point of outright stalking Anna in the same manner Cinderel once did. They differed in one crucial regard, though.

WhilenCinderel didn’t object to executing those who betrayed the cult (she was just as much a ruthless killer as anna), she didn’t like doing it, personally; it didn’t feel very heroic to her.

Illita, though, relished the prospect of punishing traitors. She’d inquired about the technique, sensing the phagein ritual, and at length, becomes the second person hear the story of Anna’s first time committing phagein. And Illita doesn’t judge Anna for using sacrophagy‍ ‍—‍ indeed, she seems almost disappointed she didn’t make heavier use of it once Cinderel told her off.

Illita becomes the second person to know about the true plan of the cult‍ ‍—‍ the most beautiful technique‍ ‍—‍ and she becomes the first person Anna tells about the true hunger that drives her. This hunger she credits her salvation to, the inspiration for sacrophagy, and revelation of the Image.

Illita is the first person to tell Anna that she’s doing the right thing, and it will be worth it. Cinderel is wracked by doubts, and Anna’s squadmates dont respond to her letters anymore.

Years ago, Anna had made a promise to Cinder that they would be bound together forever‍ ‍—‍ that her heart and her body would know the love of one and only one mantis until death parted them. Anna doesn’t break this promise, either; Illita did all the work.

Illita overtakes Cinderel, when it comes to understanding, theorizing, and planning the use of the most beautiful technique.

Here’s Illita’s theory: the reason esoteric components are so poorly understood and tricky to make use of it, is for the same reason vesper communication is so arcane. Esoteric components are simply communication with the vespers.

The most beautiful technique, she says, is simply nothing more than asking the vespers to do something. Most techniques are a cooperation between vesper and bane, but the Image makes vespers do all the work.

You see, despite building an entire cult and future army with the goal of one day casting the Image, they still haven’t even figured out how. But Illita has the first actual theory. What would it take to successfully cast it? Well, what would it take to convince the vespers to do anything? What could they trade?

The hunger is a hint, Illita concludes. Anna’s vespers crave sacrifice. Illita flashes the same smile she wore when watching traitors be executed. It seems our perfect world will be paid for with corpses.

Anna could feel her hunger deepen at the prospect, but for once, Anna wasn’t just hesitant, she was opposed. She understood, now, why Cinderel had looked at her with horror.

She cant decide if what Illita says next makes it better or worse. She says: start with me.

Illita wouldn’t be the first, not really, but she would be the first bug Anna had knowingly sacrificed to fuel the most beautiful technique.

And Anna doesn’t want to do it. But just like when another line had been crossed, Illita does the work. She deftly moves Anna’s hands into the tarsigns for her sand burial technique, and lets herself be immersed in Anna’s earth.

A conversation might go something like this:

“What do i tell cinder?”

“Did you want to kill me?”

“No. Never.”

“Tell me to stop. Order me to stop.”

“Illita, please,” Anna says. “I don’t want to lose–”

“This is my betrayal,” Illita whispers. “That’s what you tell her.”

The thing about phagein, what made it so horrible to Anna, is that no bane wants to be consumed. It’s a special contract, a binding, placed on vespers when they are taken into another host as objects of phagein. Conquest‍-​spoils.

It means what happens to Illita, in a meaningful sense, isn’t actually phagein. She doesn’t resist. She gives her life, her vespers, freely.

Each bane consumed through sacrophagy made her a bit more powerful, but consuming Illita was different. It’s almost as if, by submitting more completely than any other, Illita’s vespers were not subsumed into her will.

Her entrails everted from her body, and swam through the earth as a snake moves through water. This is the familiar outcome of sacrophagy, but Anna didn’t control this earth‍-​snake; at best, her input seemed like a suggestion it eagerly accepted.

Except for one, the most important: Illita’s guts were not content to be buried in the cult’s pharmacium with the rest of Anna’s victims. (After all, Cinderel couldn’t be allowed to see Anna using the fruits of sacrophagy.)

So Anna allowed Illita’s vespers to accompany her, and tried to hide them. Anna soon felt something else from Illita’s guts: hunger. Familiar, yet distinct, deeper, and Anna… didn’t have authority to overrule it.

It was that hunger for finally achieving the Image, and Anna can’t say she didn’t still feel it too, deep down. Anna couldn’t control the guts, anyway, so if she let it crawl through the earth on its own, if it hunted vesperbanes and committed recursive phagein? Anna didn’t have the authority to overrule it.

And if it helped them eventually cast the most beautiful technique, wasn’t it worth it? Wasn’t anything worth that?

There are other members of the inner circle, other people anna confides in. (At length, cinderel notices the difference in their relationship. The gulf that now yawns between Anna and her. She asks her, confronts her, pleads with her. Anna’s hiding things, but what? Talk to me. Please.)

None of the other inner circle members are quite like Illita‍ ‍—‍ none test her oaths quite as deeply‍ ‍—‍ but it’s a cult, and the devotion required to sacrifice yourself in totality for sake of bringing about the greatest good conceivable? It can be found in others.

Illita’s guts are soon joined, eagerly, by other guts, who are just as able to perform recursive phagein.

At a certain point, the scale of it all is impossible to hide.

Too many supposedly trustworthy inner circle members had disappeared. Westhold was now investigating a strange serial killer that left banes buried gutless underground. Anna had stopped talking to Cinderel entirely.

Cinderel finds her in the inner chamber, now swamped with bloody sand, guts squirming all throughout the room, the unmistakable byproduct of sacrophagy.

They both knew how this conversation would go, but like puppets, couldn’t help but act it out.

“Why?”

“For the most beautiful technique. Didn’t you want to finally defeat Synthia?”

“What’s the point, if we’re no better than her in the end?”

“When we started this,”‍ ‍—‍ anna gestures around them, vaguely‍ ‍—‍ “we called it a cult outright, to remind ourselves how close to the edge we were. That’s the difference between good and evil. Awareness, intention, outcome.”

“Not the acts?”

Anna moved her palps, but it seemed any words would trigger the trap.

Cinderel continued. “The acts are also outcomes. Dead banes are dead, chained vespers are chained. And intent? Intent? No predator has a good intent for their prey, and you called a hunger.”

“The most beautiful technique–”

“Isn’t worth this!”

“–could erase anything I do to cast it. It can do anything.”

“From the beginning, I wondered if this was a trap. I trusted you. somehow, you always seemed to understand my clan’s teaching better than I did. Ha. But a technique that could do anything? Too good to be true. But, I thought, maybe you saw something I didn’t. Maybe it all made sense and it would make sense to me too if I was as smart as the greatest vesperbane in Westhold. Ha, ha. I trusted you, Anna, But who are you? Do you even know you? When was the last time we… we were anything more than architects of this”‍ ‍—‍ now she, too, gesturing vaguely at the blood and guts –“this Image of Beauty?”

“Cinder,” Anna starts.

“But there wasn’t anything I was missing. There wasn’t anything hidden from me. I knew all of it, you knew all of it, and we both didn’t see the whole picture! A technique that can do anything‍ ‍—‍ make a wish, and pay the price. You’re wrong, anna. The image can’t erase everything you do to cast it. It mathematically can’t! why would you ever get anything but exactly what you pay for?”

Anna was silent. Even the guts had stopped quivering.

“It’s not worth it. It can never be worth it!”

At length, anna ventures a rebuttal. “Some things, are worth more than they cost. What would it be worth, to finally make your father proud?”

But it was the wrong thing to say.

Cinderel’s face sets. “I’ve heard enough.” And the next words she speaks are invocation of a technique.

Anna recognizes the technique‍ ‍—‍ it was Cinder’s original, ill‍-​conceived plan for taking down Synthia.

⸢Certiorari Septem⸥

This is the last recourse of a spellbinder‍ ‍—‍ the invocation of chimerical arbitration. A technique for passing judgment in cases where a bane’s vespers did not recognize the trespass committed, and there was no other authority to appeal to. Very few oaths short of the septagrammaton itself could merit casting this technique when broken.

If it was ever casted, a judgment would be passed, no matter what‍ ‍—‍ because for friviously invocation was itself a crime.

Had Anna violated the septagrammaton, in her reckless hungry? Had she truly been corrupted beyond what even the vespers could contenance?

The vespers had eagerly aided anna in this mad venture‍ ‍—‍ even inspired it. Or had they? Was the Image any more than a terrible, impossible dream? Had she any proof such ridiculous thing was more than an paranoid hallucination she had imagined between pages?

Was there no source of this hunger than herself?

Anna spoke with defeated lucitiy. “Perhaps… I’ve done enough. I… will accept my judgment.”

It was dark, in the inner sactum. Between one heartbeat and the next the darkness is absolute. Their minds, too, are dark. If anything can be seen, the only image is a brief, dreamlike vista‍ ‍—‍ roots that crawl across flesh, across earth, across nations, across the sky, across minds. Rousing beings that are the roots and the crawling and the alphabet invented by their shape. Words that are whole manuscripts or just words.

Now the images are gone, if they were ever there. Anna feels nothing, but Cinderel hisses, falling to the ground clutching her abdomen.

The finely honed metaintrospective senses of a haruspex mean they feel keenly when their vespers are agitated. When they grow roots, Cinderel can feel them, and there are many roots growing within her, throughout her.

At once, Cinderel determines what judgment the vesper’s arbitrarion yielded. Forelegs went from clutching her aching abdomen to touching eyes that have paled in horror. At every joint of her head, Cinderel feels for the telltale fuzzy of caps bursting from her capsule, the ghastly golden fingers of an pharmakon initiate who falls short of the vespers’ judgment‍ ‍—‍ or in her case, who invoke the arbitrarion of the seven chimerae without due cause.

“Anna–”

Cinder’s palps are shaking; she’s clearly planning on saying something, but it’s unclear if she’ll have time finish.

“Cinder. I’m sorry. I wish… if I had told you sooner, you could have understood.”

“I would have stopped you.”

“Maybe.” Anna accepts it. “Maybe that would have been better. But now…”

“Don’t patronize me. I can feel the vespers forsaking me. I cast Certiorari and there was nothing to judge. I know what happens now.”

Anna glances down to her abdomen. Behind her, the muddy guts twitch, and seem to slither close. Cinderel flinches.

Anna eventually says, “If… your vespers do forsake you. It would… stain them, should the arete record you as a defective host. There is an alternative. Phagein requires an unwilling host.” Anna gestures behind him. “But our inner circle… they were willing sacrifices. Illita said… they have become the brushes that will paint the most beautiful image.”

“I dont care what that bitch told you. Anna, listen to me—”

“No, please listen to me, Cinder. You don’t have much time. I dont want you go. I dont want you to just… be a corpse in the ground. I call this technique… apophis.” Anna reaches down, laying a hand on one entrail that had slithered close. “They have minds of their own. It’s almost like an afterlife. Sometimes… sometimes I still hear her voice. Illita. But the truth is… I’d rather hear your voice, Cinderel.”

“Are you done? Now listen to me, Anna. This is important.” Cinderel pauses to still her palps, then, “I, Cinder Thimithi, head of the eldritch and most angelic clan of Thimithi, daughter of Immolata, hereby expel and excise your name from the unbroken record. From this day henceforth, you are Anna No‍-​name.”

The only expression anna has is wordless shock.

“Cinder…”

She looks back defiantly, and it’s Anna who breaks eye contact first.

“Please don’t resist. I dont want you to stay buried.”

“Thimithi don’t get buried,” she says. “If you love me, if you care at all for our teaching… burn me. And don’t you dare touch the ashes.”

Cinder is crushed to a pulp by Anna’s sand before the golden fingers of her vesper’s judgment tear her eyes from her skull. Before her vespers’ descendents record her as a forsaken host, the ritual of sacrophagein is compete and their host is now anna by right of conquest.

Their host is Anna. Not Apophis. In the end, even as Anna tried to save her, Cinderel resisted.

Anna could almost sense what Illita would say. She would not be a brush for the most beautiful technique‍ ‍—‍ she would be mere paint.

Cinderel was a powerful bane‍ ‍—‍ stronger than what the apophis were able to hunt on their own, stronger than any of the cult members. Clan banes always had more to offer them. Thimithi was one of the angelic seventeen, and Cinderel was the clan head.

With her death, Anna was closer than she had ever been to witnessing the Image, and giving breath to her dream.

Closer, not just in position, but in velocity. Each of the apophis, after all, had to hide themselves from Cinderel’s notice, but she’s out of the picture now. They could hunt in the open, so why not?

Indeed, why even keep up this pretense of a cult? Why not consume every remaining member of the Dreamers of the Glass Dragon, now, and metamorphize into a new, unashamed form? They would be paint‍ ‍—‍ did Anna even need more brushes, now? Illita alone would have sufficed, a part of her thinks.

Why not, why not, why not? There’s no reason they can’t. They can do anything now,‍ ‍—‍ the most beautiful technique can do anything.

What was the image was Anna painting, again? She was going to kill Synthia, right?

But that wasn’t her dream to give breath. It was cinder’s. What was the point?

It could do anything. It could bring Cinderel back to life, couldn’t it?

(Anna knows what Cinder would say, thought she can’t actually hear it. Just an echo. “It’s not worth it, it can never be worth it.”)

She’s not worth it, a part of her notes. It was the part that always sounded like Illita.

And… it’s true. All of this wasn’t for Cinder, and it hadn’t been so for a long time. The hunger that animates her wasn’t hunger for Cinderel, nor her dream.

What was it that Anna thought, when she grasped the possibility inherent in the most beautiful technique?

She would finally exceed Edu and Uvema.

It was something neither of them could do, she knows. None of them had Anna’s same intimate connection with the vespers, none of them were credulous enough, open minded enough, to listen when the vespers whisper to them.

(Anna couldn’t help but envy that.)

Anna had spent all her life in the shadows, an unremarkable bug pushed Around by forces greater than her. Even at heights of the world, her teammates rose so far above her.

It would be beautiful to finally rise to the top. She envied her squad’s ability to make plans that reshaped the pantheca.

But Anna could paint with the whole world as her canvas.

And what, precisely, would she paint?

What could pour out of her heart? What was left to express?

Endless hunger and ultimate sacrifice?

The whispers chorus an affirmative answer, and Anna ignores it.

Then her shoulders sagged. Shouldn’t she listen? What else did she have? Her squadmates doesn’t respond to her letters. Her wife is dead, and she was the last one who made an effort to connect with Anna.

Somehow, the apophis, who would kill banes even as anna protested, felt the most real people in the world anymore. Her cult? They’d do anything mother anna asked of them. if she returned to civilization, normal vesperbanes would likewise bend over backwards for a living legend, and the brass would say almost anything to please the fifth most powerful…

Was Anna the fifth most powerful vesperbane?

She was more powerful now, surely. Had she already eclipsed her squadmates? How would she find out?

Did she want to find out?

What did she want? Last time Anna had nowhere to go, Cinder stalked her and wore her down till they were married. Somehow, Anna didn’t think anyone else was coming to save her.

Anna didn’t think anyone else could.

Bugs were no more than fragile toys to her, now. Anna could kill them just by being near them. Their lives meant about as much as dust on the wind.

Maybe they would be more beautiful in death. Maybe they were nothing but paint to be strew across the canvas.

(Anna didn’t always feel this way. But did she ever truly care, or did she never have any choice but to submit to a world more powerful than her?)

Anna traces back her memories, and wants to find the line where it all went wrong. It’s no less lonely at the top of the world than the bottom.

Whenever is a song is played, there’s silence before and after.

Anna hears nothing.