Point; Counterpoint

 Content warning: this text contains depictions of gender dysphoria and a non-graphic depiction of infernal torment. As such, I have placed it under a jump break. 

I. A nightmare

Agartu-Say was not born like other children were. There was a birth, yes, but the birth was of a single child, and yet when the birthing was complete there was a second child in the midwife's hands. One with a fringe of pale hair, and eyes so big and red and innocent. 

Agartu-Say grew quickly, their hair growing in white. But they were a child, living a child's life, wandering freely from mother to mother and father to father within the camp. They were innocent. Somehow, they knew things, before they were properly explained, but incompletely. But there was no consciousness in their manner that they knew what suffering was. 

And yet, evil and wickedness can be found anywhere and everywhere, and as they saw fights, and disputes, and saw the practice of cruelty, malice, fraud, and selfish violence, their hair and eyes darkened. By the time adulthood approached, they had hair of a pale grey and eyes still red, but almost burgundy. 

I say "they". You say "he", for he who overthrew your empire. And that is perhaps what you were instructed to say. But I say "they", for as Agartu-Say grew, none could be sure whether they would be a woman or a man. And they had no answer, either, not one they volunteered. 

But they knew well the ages of adulthood, and they knew their blood must flow before they could become a woman, and so when they were fifteen years of age they said, sorrowfully, "It seems I must be a man," and their hair darkened a shade, perhaps. 

As a man, they were a hunter, yes, and an outrider, and they practiced with the bow and the lance, and if they perhaps dreamily wondered at times, or stared off to the west, eyes distant, that was a mystery for them alone. Twenty-seven years of Agartu-Say in the world, and then the Red Moon rose. They swore, and I heard them, that one day they would ride on that Moon and feel its ruby ground and travel through its shadowed forests. And it was an oath powerful above all else, and I felt it, for all that it was sworn to no one but themself and on no one but themself. 

No god bound Agartu-Say, in the end. No god could ever bind them. You know this as well as I do.

They contended in the Great Contest and won the right to raid past the Iron Forts. It was always a risky thing to do. You can easily go around the forts, in either direction, but they shape your movements, make it easy to catch and pin you. Agartu-Say was pinned. I know little about whether their companions on the raid lived or died, but I know that they were enslaved by the Kralori and put into the mines. 

I know, too, that when they returned, their hair was darker than the night sky, and their eyes had only the faintest spark of red. They spoke, wild thunder and lightning beneath every word. 

I have seen the strings and the chains, they said. I have seen the bondage we are all kept in. I have known the ways in which I have bound my own life into a narrow path. Life is slavery, they said, their hands spread wide and welcoming. Life is slavery, but you can be free from it.

Always "you". Agartu-Say never said anything about liberation for themselves. Were they modest? Were they self-effacing? Did they believe themselves to be bound within the world for all time? I cannot answer those questions. All I know is that they took the monastic name, which is the one you know them by, Sheng Seleris, and that is the name that they used for everyone not of their clan. And that clan all died, early on. The Kralori made the earth swallow many, others, a frail remnant in the Heavenly Guard, were devoured by your spider monster and made slaves in her web. 

I lived on. I was all that was left, regalia kept in their tent and their ger, the last part of their clan. They never spoke to me, never acknowledged me, and I rarely learned any of their thought. But I was preserved and honored and fed appropriately. 

They hated your emperor on sight. Perhaps if they had stayed with revenge on Kralorela, on the liar dragon emperor, that would have been enough. Peace might have been had. But there was no peace. Even when their star rose, their eyes were firmly focused on something much further away. 

Of course, they lost. The Kralori, I am sure, say that their star fell because they pulled it down. I know that you believe it to be true that it was the weight of their evil which tore their star from the sky. 

But I will say this. There are worlds beyond this one, the mystics say, shells around shells we cannot see or touch, or even infer. These are the mystics' secret realms, beyond the Sky Dome. What do you think was left when the star of Sheng Seleris, when Agartu-Say's spiritual body, fell into Hell? An absence. A hole. A doorway, opened by their willing sacrifice. A gate through which we might pass. A little loose point in the chains. A sharp edge to cut our strings on, and then to pass outward and beyond. 

I? Why don't I take this road? Why am I so close to the world you could call me up? 

I failed. When Agartu-Say was born, and every day after that. Do you think you are the first of your people to search for me, to search for your Kazkurtum's origin? I have learned much. I know that we, their clan, failed. Utterly and completely. We didn't give them the tools, the weapons, the army they needed to bring about liberation. They fell into Hell, and where was I? Where were we? We had no Ram and Warrior, no Bridge for the Seeker. 

Oh, I know well why they never spoke to me. We were charged with a great task, a mighty responsibility, and we failed. And as I am the last, I cannot cut my own strings until they are finally free. However long that takes. 

You can read the lines of my spectra well enough. I have bit deep into those who have called me. But you I will leave unbitten. A harsh curse lies upon you, with hair so red and bow-case hanging at your side. Staked between two camps, yes. An unpleasant and torturous way to die. A foolish stratagem from both opponents. Take my blessing, then, if you will have it. For all that it is worth, a tattered banner disintegrating in the wind…

II. A dream

I passed through the House of Mutable Magnificence, as I often do, in my dreams. It is perhaps my port of entry to the realm of my goddess. Who can tell? The Moon is around and within us, and I might well wander within my soul and still be present there. 

Beyond, I found myself in a courtyard. My guide was there already, strumming on a pandoura. The rhythm pulled me in and I danced for her, clapping and swaying as she played, chords rippling, harmony blossoming. And then we both stopped, and she lay her instrument aside. 

"There is a place I wish to take you today," she said, her eyes closed. "It may seem pleasant to you, or it may seem grotesque. I will ask you not to tell me what you see and hear and taste in the air until we have left, for your own safety." I knelt.

"Is this necessary?" I asked. 

"No," she said. 

I nodded. "Then I will abide by this law," I said. She looked at me, eyes open and luminously vermilion. Her hand brushed my cheek, and I felt a little dusting across it, which faded in moments. I knew her name was written on me, as she did when we ventured into places where I might be challenged to prove that I belonged. 

I linked my fingers in hers, and we crossed to the far end of the courtyard, where a corridor sloped downwards. We entered. 

The corridor twisted and turned and curved, and I counted doors in the side as we walked. One, two, three… at last we were at the seventh. End of the line, I knew, even as I looked onward and saw an eighth, and the outline of a ninth- but I looked back. The seventh door was plain, bronze, panes embossed in a cast prism. Perhaps there were seven. Perhaps another. My guide reached out and pulled it open-

And we were in a garden. A bright, colorful garden, where people could be seen playing or napping or taking a meal or singing and playing music, anywhere you looked. Attendants wandered, offering little delectable things, slender scrolls for the eating, rich cyanic wines, all on trays of bone-white porcelain, glazed perfectly. One came towards us, her eyes covered by a blindfold. 

"Would madams like-" and a tray of little pastries filled with wires and chips of stone was waved at us. I shuddered involuntarily, and blinked. And when my eyes opened again, I saw something else.  

A vast space, reaching up into a silver glow. At our level, crimson and orange light, from pools and canals running freely with a burning liquid. And chains, and anvils, and strange engines, and workbenches, and all around there were people tangled up in these things, eyes intent on some task. Reaching for a flask just outside of their grasp. Hammering a blank of cast bronze. Polishing some kind of stone I couldn't see clearly. 

The attendants were gone, and in their place were women of metal. The one before us had eyes and lips and hair of solid brass, and teeth of black iron, and a body of silver, and nails and nipples of steel. She looked at me with her implacable eyes and smiled, raised one finger to her lips, and went on her way.

We wandered through this place, and I saw faces I knew and others I didn't, and I wondered at the intent purpose of so many, of those chained that worked calmly at filing through their chains without any of the metal women seeming to care.

We worked closer to the center, and went by a woman working at a desk, all eight of her faces neatly laid out before her, and then we came to it. A great counterweight for a massive pitcher that poured molten bronze and silver and gold and steel and tin and copper and lead and aluminium and other metals I did not know, which moved up and down with the aid of a great spring.

And under the weight was a figure. Powerful, and grand, and yet clearly resisting with all their might against the counterweight as it descended, arms and legs straining, cords of muscle taut. I say "they", for I saw the way their nude body shifted and twisted with each stroke, changing shape again and again and never able to break free.

Their hair was black, and tied up in a bun, and I realized that it was made of iron and lead, and their body was flesh, but bronze broke through beneath, with flashes of gold and silver. I wept for them, seeing how the spring actually drove the counterweight down harder. I looked around for my guide, and couldn't find her. I was at the edge of this central pour. Did I…?

I stepped in. I saw how parched their lips were. Water. Where was water? I looked about. The attendants here were made of glass, slender and tall and horned, filled with clouds that glowed from within, and they met my gaze as I looked.

I thought perhaps to slake their thirst with my tears, but my tears dried as soon as they were shed. I contemplated my blood, but when I sliced my flesh open with a claw-like knife of obsidian that hung casually from a peg, my skin sealed back up as fast as I cut. I searched wildly, thinking that this was a forge and a foundry, surely there must be- there they were. Vats and jars for quenching.

I took a step-

And all the glass women stopped what they were doing, and turned to look at me. None of them moved.

I took another step- 

And I knew who was in the guts of the casting engine. I knew who they were. What they had done. The full range of their acts and deeds. Plunderer and scarrer of our Goddess. The Emperor of Emptiness. The Other. The Void Made Flesh. Kazkurtum. Sheng. There were other names. I heard them all. I shook my head.

I took a third step anyways. I heard the eight-faced woman stand up, her chair scraping. I was at the vat, then, all of a sudden. All was silence. The whole foundry had stopped. A million eyes were upon me. I gathered some water in my hands, cupped them together, and took a fourth step.

A fifth.

I was at the figure. I could hear bells jingling from far away. I put them out of my mind, let myself slip away for a moment, as my hands reached Kazkurtum's mouth and poured water in.

They came to a halt too. Their eyes closed for a moment as they lapped up the last of the water I brought. Their flesh was flesh, no metal peeking through. Their hair was hair. Their eyes opened again, and they were soft and red and human.

They focused on me, and I heard a faint whisper- "Why?" I shrugged. My tongue felt fused to my mouth, but I mimed taking a drink. You needed water, I tried to say. They nodded. "Thanks," I heard, and they closed their eyes again and lay limp, sleeping.

I looked them over and realized no chains bound them. They could get up and leave at any time…

My guide tapped me on the shoulder. "Having fun?" she asked. "Because it's time to go."

"Yes and yes," I said, hearing the bells grow louder, realizing the attention that was directing itself towards me. I took another step, and I was before the eight-faced woman.

She was wearing all eight faces, and they all looked at me, expressions fierce or gentle or amused or saddened, and she raised one hand, claws like garnet, and with one finger carved into my unmarked cheek. The heat flashed over me for a moment, and then it was gone, only the light ache of the lines of another name, not hers, not my guide's, of unsure application, as I took a final step.

We were at the door. The spell broke. The foundry returned to work, except in the center, where the peace remained. I looked back, unheeding of the bells, for a long moment, and so when I turned back to the door at the insistent urging of my guide, I was face-to-face with our Goddess.

One of her Masks.

Natha. The Balancer. Half crimson, half shadows, she billowed like smoke as I stared at her. I dropped to my knees, and the bells all over her jingled merrily as she raised her scimitar-

And it passed through me. She hauled me to my feet, then higher. My eyes were level with hers. She examined my cheeks, then read aloud both names. I knew then that the name was mine, and a secret to keep. And then Natha dissolved, and I fell onto the pavement in the courtyard of the House of Mutable Magnificence, and my guide fell atop me a second later.

I stared at her, and she at me, and then wakefulness pulled us apart. And I, left with knowledge, regarded the ceiling in detail until the sun rose.