Before, when he was only himself, he would have gasped in horror at the way the lapis tip of the scepter opens a gash across Thana’s body as neatly as cutting a seam. Instead, as blood begins to bloom red red red, his breath only quickens through his clenched teeth.
At first the floor at the base of the throne is only wet and slick with unicorn blood. But already there is water swirling around Asterion’s ankles, and it washes like a wave over the beach, carrying a foam of decay and the jetsam of the castle. Soon, seconds later, it is scouring the floor below the throne. Soon it is at the bay stallion’s knees, rising toward his belly, and he doesn’t know how much more of the flood is coming but oh, he knows it is. The new current tugs at his legs, urges him away. Tapestries and pictures in gilded frames and things he doesn’t take the time to recognize whirl past him to be pulled into a whirlpool that is forming around the dais.
And still Thana is doing her death-work. It is clear now that she was created for nothing else. If Calliope was made to avenge, to inspire, to ring a bell deep in his heart that said Rise and be brave, Thana is a god only unto herself and her name is Ruin.
He wonders if they are killing each other. He heard the sound, the sound the thing on the throne made when her horn pierced its belly. It was as though the castle was crumbling. And now there is only the sound of a rising sea (rising too quickly) and a pack of beasts devouring, and Asterion’s stomach turns sickly even as his heart is hollow and black, without even seawater to fill it.
But they are taking too long in their struggle. Soon they will all drown. He is certain the god-king is dying, is dead and doesn’t know it yet, but still he swings his claws, each blow more feeble than the rest, against Thana’s hide. Asterion wonders if there will be enough of her left to put back together.
The whirlpool is a charybdis, moaning. If anyone else was coming they have all been swept away from the hallways and the courtyard by the inside-out sea. And as Asterion steps forward the waters part around him, leaving gleaming floor, as though just laid by seraphim for the hallway of god. He steps up toward the throne, and the whirlpool rises until it hovers above the now-still surface of the other waters, and flows and flows in the shape of infinity.
And then the whirlpool drives itself into the king-beast’s throat. It drives him back against his monstrous throne. It runs out his eye sockets like weeping tears, pours out his mouth, cleans the blood from his chest in patterns, and he is still, and quiet, and gone.
Asterion says, just over the sound of the water, “Thana. We must go.” Because the water is still rising, and the city is waking up.
the way upward and the way downward
is one and the same.
is one and the same.
