Are you a part of me? Am I a part of you?
Something nuzzles at her thoughts, something curious and yet welcoming. It is perhaps the strangest sensation she’s ever felt, but she can tell there is some mind or entity reaching out to her—and she has the unshakable feeling that this entity is speaking from her right pocket.
She reaches in and pulls out the sword of Voortya.
***
The atmosphere in the westernmost watchtower grows grim and desperate as the technicians rattle off positions and coordinates to the coastal cannons, though the ships are now so close and so thick that it would be difficult to miss them. Captain Sakthi watches, gripping his spyglass so hard he’s vaguely concerned it may shatter, as the bay of Voortyashtan lights up again and again as shells strike their targets. The bay now appears to be littered with giant prayer lanterns, the seas dotted with flaming, burning wrecks. Ordinarily this would be enough to stave off any coastal attack, but the other Voortyashtani ships simply shove them aside as they plow toward the coast, limitless and indomitable.
The city of Voortyashtan itself is in a complete uproar as citizens stampede up the cliff roads, led by SDC workers. Major Hukkeri’s battered, exhausted battalion is taking up positions on the southern cliffs, desperately trying to prepare for the impending invasion, but the flood of citizens out of the city has turned her work into utter chaos.
In his head, Sakthi rifles through all the scenarios that were taught to him during training, all the strategies and cunning feints and clever tactics he might employ in the battlefield to turn situations to his favor.
He considers his options, and realizes with a sinking heart that he has none.
Then one of the technicians says, “Who the hells is that on the western cliffs?”
Captain Sakthi wheels around, frowning. He glasses the cliffs and sees two figures just to the northwest of them, on the very point of the rock. It’s hard to make anything out, but one of them has a hand that shines very curiously, as if made of metal.
His mouth opens, surprised. “General Mulaghesh?”
***
Mulaghesh listens to the sword.
It begins to show her things: sensations, concepts, avenues of reality and emotion that were never accessible to her before, aspects of existence hidden to the mortal mind.
The world flickers around her: for one instant she is back in the City of Blades; in another she is on the cold, damp mountains along the Solda; and in yet another she stands at the bottom of a mass grave, watching as a never-ending cascade of bones pours over the lip, indescribable casualties from an endless war.
Not one war, she realizes—every war, all wars ever fought by humanity. Never one side prevailing over the other, never separate and disparate groups, but a blazing, monstrous act of self-mutilation, as if humanity itself was cutting open its own belly to send its intestines spilling into its lap.
The sword speaks to her: Are you these things? Is this you?
It shows her an image then: a solitary silhouette of a person standing on a hilltop, looking out upon a burning countryside.
She knows, in some wordless, instantaneous fashion, that this figure has not struck every blow in the war it watches, yet it is still responsible for all of them: this person, this entity, has created every battle of this war, caused every scream and every drop of blood. And in its hand the figure holds…
A sword. Not a sword, the sword: bound up in that blade is the soul of every sword and every weapon that has ever been, every bullet and every bolt and every arrow and every knife. When the first human raised a stone and used it to strike down its kin this sword was there, waiting to be born: not a weapon, but the spirit of all weaponry, harm and cruelty both endless and everlasting.
Do I, the sword asks her, belong to you?
The cannons flare around her. Pandey is now pale and cold, just like Signe Harkvaldsson, and long before them Sankhar and Bansa.
Woresk, Moatar, Utusk, Tambovohar, Sarashtov, Shoveyn, Dzermir, and Kauzir.
Weeping, she bends her mind to the sword, and says:
Yes. Yes, you do.
The blade of the sword flickers to life, greedily accepting her, embracing her. And the world begins to change.
***
Sigrud frowns as Mulaghesh stares down at the black handle of the sword, seemingly in a trance. He begins to say, “What are you doing?” when suddenly something is…different.
Is he going mad, or does the hilt now have a blade? Faint and luminescent, like the flame of a candle just where it touches the wick?
Then there is a blast as if a shell has struck the coast. Sigrud is thrown back, his broken arm howling in pain. A wave of cold air rushes over him. Once it passes he sits up, blinking, and looks to find Mulaghesh, assuming that she is dead.
But she is not dead. He watches as she tears off her false hand and walks to the very edge of the cliff, stalking forward with a curious, menacing swagger, the movements of someone who intends to do violence and do it soon. The strange blade flickers in her hand, its muddy yellow light spilling over the stones.
Yet as she moves he sees something…behind her. Or perhaps over her, as if she is a drawing in a book and someone has laid down a piece of wax paper with something sketched on it, so both images are separate yet visible at the same time….
A figure, huge and tall, arrayed in darkly glittering plate mail.
Mulaghesh stops at the cliffs just over the thousands upon thousands of ships, looks out upon the fleet, raises the sword, and begins to speak to them.
***
She can feel them now, all of them: her children, her followers, those whom she wrought and yet wrought her in turn. She can feel them on the countless ships: bright, hard diamonds of battle. They are not as they were once, she can tell: they are shadows of themselves, the barest shade of souls. They lost themselves just as the city fell apart in the great cataclysm that brought this nation to its knees. But they are still hers. They are doing what she promised them they would do. And even now they seek her.
She calls to them: “Children of warfare!”
The cannons roar and rage. The ships burn and the people scream. They do not hear her over these joyous sounds.
Again: “Children of warfare!”
The slap of the oars. The howl of the wind. The shriek of the shells. Still they do not hear her.
She takes in a huge breath, the cold, smoky air reaching every inch of her lungs, and howls to them, “Children of warfare! Children of Voortya!”
The call echoes out, out, out, over the seas, through the flames, through the smoke, over the dark waves, until it finally, finally reaches the warriors aboard one single ship.
They stop rowing. They turn to look at the cliffs.
A single thought goes trickling through the vast army below her:
Mother?