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Liliana dreams of a red storm.
It’s been a long time since her dreams brought her to the surface of Ruidus, away from the center – ribcage, womb – where Liliana’s heart lies dreaming, begging her to start it up again. The surface of Ruidus is for her waking life – that life she drags herself through, trying desperately to apply pressure to a thousand small bleeding wounds. Failing. Trying. Failing. Trying. Useless, always. That’s what the surface is. But the center is a promise: some day you will succeed, and then all of this will finally be over.
But this isn’t the surface of Ruidus, is it?
A child’s scribble of grass covers the ground; in the distance, Liliana can see the huddled shapes of buildings, shifting and stretching uneasily on their feet. Gelvaan? But no, not quite – she still knows the landscape there (does she?) (is she sure?) (of course she’s sure, she has to be sure, she knows it she would know it anywhere anywhere) and the craters here are a mismatch. It’s Gelvaan after – something. Ruidus before – something. The landscape flickering, shifting, impatient: a bronco trying to buck her off its back.
“Imogen,” she says.
No response.
There are other names that she could call, but she isn’t supposed to say them anymore. So there’s nothing for it: she holds her breath, she walks into the storm.
The winds howl at her, grab her coat in a thousand fists and shake. Please, the wind begs her – with Predathos’ voice, with Ludinus’, with Imogen’s, with Petrov and Jenny and Patience and Samuel and Xira and Swift-Wind and Genevieve and Kitty and Zrag’s voices howling in chorus: please. Please! Please, please. Save me. You have to save me. Be my anchor, be my lifejacket. Let me grab on to you, please! Please! I’m drowning!
And she passes them by. Gods! She pushes past them, she keeps pushing, and then – not that far into the storm, not that far at all – she finds Otohan.
Otohan Thull is standing like a stone pillar, wearily and disdainfully ignoring the ravages of time. Erosion has already started to take her: the winds are whipping away the skin of her face, the fabric of their cloak. Pieces of her blur into nothing and dust. But her face is the same. Eternally patient, hungry, furious.
“Otohan,” Liliana says.
“General Temult,” Otohan says. Her voice is its own small storm.
“I’m sorry,” Liliana says.
Otohan makes a rough, disdainful sound. “Pathetic.”
Liliana’s hands clench into fists, instantly; Otohan sees it, she knows Otohan sees it, and a smile crooks up the corner of their mouth. In Otohan’s eyes, Liliana is pathetic – has always been pathetic – Liliana the bleeding heart, Liliana the terrified, Liliana quick to anger and quicker to sputter out. Liliana, mother of Imogen. Otohan never forgave Liliana for that: for Relvin, for Imogen, for Gelvaan. Now she supposes they’ll never get the chance.
“Maybe,” Liliana says, too late in response. “Maybe it is.” (Maybe I am.) “But it’s true. I am sorry.”
“Your truth is nothing,” Otohan says. “What will it get me? Nothing. I want another truth. Swear to me that you will wake Predathos. That you’ll carry out this plan. Our life’s work. Tell me that. That’s a truth I’ll care about.”
“Of course I wi—”
A sword at Liliana’s throat. She doesn’t know which one; she has always been shitty at telling Otohan’s swords apart.
“Pathetic,” Otohan says again, and a third time: “Pathetic.” Around them, the wind slices the air to bits. The storm is whipping up faster; chunks of dirt and grass begin to rise, summoned by the sheer force of feeling. “And to think! That you’re the one who’s going to walk out of this. When it should be me. It always should have been me.” The storm howls, bestial, Otohan’s own voice shifting snarling matching: “I should have been the vessel. I should have been his right hand and his left. But he wanted you. Predathos wanted you. And now – and now—”
Otohan’s discipline has always been impeccable. Which makes it even worse, that her hand is shaking.
The skin on the back of their hand, lightning-marked: dissolving. Ribbons of skin-colored dust, red dust. Otohan blurs and blurs and blurs some more and part of it is because she is dying, here, in Liliana’s dream, and part of it is because Liliana has started to cry.
“And now,” Otohan says, “it is all lost.” She scoffs, goes to lower the sword – that blurred streak of silver light – but she can’t manage it, because Liliana has reached out and grabbed onto the blade.
She bleeds, obviously. And, obviously, this won’t accomplish anything; the sword will dissolve or it won’t and either way Liliana will wake up unbloodied and Otohan will still be dead. But she grabs on anyways. Blood drips into the storm and is whipped away again.
Otohan’s eyes go wide, a mix of shock and disdain and surprised pleasure; Liliana reaches up with her other hand, grabs on to the blade again. She pulls. Like the sword is a rope, and Otohan is clinging to the end of it, and Liliana can somehow pull her up and out of the dream and into – into – what does she even think will – why would she – and she can’t stop crying – and she reels Otohan in, hand by bloody hand, up the blade and the hilt and Otohan’s hand (warm, dissolving) and their arm (still leather-clad) and their shoulder (firm, despite) and their neck (breakable) and then Otohan’s head, her face, her mouth, and Liliana yanks her close and kisses her.
She doesn’t know what she means by it. I love you, but she doesn’t know if that’s true; come back, but she can’t want that. I’ll miss you – will she? Will she? Oh: yes. Otohan’s mouth opening against hers, those unsheathed teeth: yes, yes. And Otohan at the Malleus Key. And Otohan in the teleportation circle, Otohan in the skyship. Otohan at the Omen Archive, her eyes alight, her mouth (gnawing and ripping and tearing at Liliana’s mouth) curled up at the corners in avaricious pleasure. And Otohan and Otohan and Otohan and Otohan and Otohan and Otohan, when their boots touched the surface of Ruidus for the first time: saying “Oh,” her face – for a moment – so sweetly and shockingly young.
And Liliana had loved her then, yes. Just for that moment. Before Otohan’s face slammed shut like shutters, and General Thull took charge again.
Maybe that’s what she means – with her bloody hands knotted in Otohan’s leathers, her bloody mouth smearing against Otohan’s mouth. She means a mess of incoherent sludge. The version of you I could have loved died before I even met you, and I’ve spent this whole time mourning her, and now you’re dead too, and you’re leaving me alone with General Temult, and I’m scared of her, and I don’t want to be her, and I don’t want you here either, but I want Otohan back. I wish this had never happened. I wish Predathos was dead, I wish Ludinus was dead, I wish you and I had both died years and years ago. I wish we’d never met. I would have liked to meet you then. I could have loved you then, I think. I can’t love you now. But if you had been—
The other sword (what the fuck is its name?) goes right through Liliana’s stomach.
She chokes; blood bubbles and froths on her tongue; her mouth falls like a new corpse away from Otohan’s mouth. The storm wails and beats fists of clumped earth against their backs. Otohan is unmoved. Otohan is always, always unmoved. Even as the wind strips her away from herself, piece by piece, she will not fucking move.
“I wish I could kill you,” Otohan rasps. “You would die in your sleep. Fitting.”
Liliana lets the blood stream out of her mouth, lets the wind take it. Mouth clean and copper-stripped, she says: “But you can’t. Sorry, General Thull. You’re already dead.”
Otohan’s mouth rips open and she laughs. She laughs and laughs and laughs. When she yanks the sword out of Liliana’s belly, she takes most of Liliana with her.
“Oh,” she says, “oh, Liliana, my greatest failure. I hope that daughter of yours kills you too.”
“She might.”
“I tried to take her there,” Otohan says. “But she takes after her mother, unfortunately.” She looks down at the blade, at its new pink scabbard of gore. Around the hilt, her fingers are dissolving: skin, then muscle, then bone. Exaltant lightning wraps around each knucklebone like red thread, tying her to nothing.
“Do you know,” they say, “I…”
And then silence. She is still looking at her hand – but Liliana isn’t looking at their hand, she’s watching her face. The sudden cracks in it. Something real and heartbroken is trying to squirm free from the cracks, but General Thull – even now – will not let it go.
One final mercy: “I’m scared,” Liliana says, so Otohan can scoff and say “You always are.”
“What, you aren’t?”
“No,” Otohan lies, “I’m not. I killed my fear a long time ago. You should have done the same.” She wipes her remaining fingers over the blade, catches a shred of Liliana’s heart, lifts it and puts it on her tongue. Swallows. “But instead,” she says, “you killed me. Well, good riddance.”
“Good riddance,” Liliana echoes. By now, her eyes are dry – so when she says that, it’s easy to believe in it.
But Otohan doesn’t. Believe in it. There are very few things in this world that Otohan believes – believed in. Instead she watches Liliana for a moment, two, and then turns on her heel and walks directly into the storm.
Liliana doesn’t look, can’t look, has to look. She keeps her eyes open, even as the sand lashes them back into tears. Oh, it’s so stupid to look – she can’t see jack shit, there’s nothing there, there’s nothing – but she does it anyways, because she always does. She watches the storm. She holds in her guts with her hands. She cries. She does a thousand useless, stupid things, and the storm rages on anyways, and Otohan tried to take her there, and failed, and they’re dead, and she’s alive, and she stands there – useless, crying – for a very long time, but she doesn’t see anything in the dream except herself.
When she wakes up, her hands and her belly are empty of wounds. Why wouldn’t they be?