Abolisher

Power.

Light.

Life.

Death.

Beginning.

Ending.

Healing.

Breaking.

World was rebuilding.

Hers was crumpling.

She was on fire.

She was frozen.

She was buried beneath the soil.

She was souring above the clouds.

She saw nothing beyond, nothing within.

She was everything beyond, everything within.

She saw the world as whole.

The brutality for the slaves, the delights for the rich. The abuse, the rape, the discrimination. Heard the moans of pleasure, and screams of pain and confinement. Saw the horrors of humans, worse than those of baeselk. Saw the corrupt ways of those in power, and the suffering of the helpless. Saw the wrong—but the right was nowhere to be found.

She felt suffocated. She felt wrong and full. She wanted to shrink back and melt into the light and disappear. She was screaming as evils all around overtook her. Sorrow and rage and utter hopelessness like she’d never known existed coursed through her. She was crying and begging.

Is your world worth saving? that voice asked. Is your world worth the struggle?

She screamed louder. She wanted to run—she wanted to escape—she wanted to—

See, Syrene. Look at the exploitation. Feel their pain.

It was too much. It was too much to bear. She wanted to die.

This is your world—the one you wish to save.

She’d always been too busy—learning how to control the power, preparing to sacrifice herself for when the time came. Then she’d been locked away in Jegvr, thwarted from seeing the world outside. She’d shut her eyes, she’d been too busy ruing her own pain. She’d stopped caring—she’d thought if the world was so wrong, and so uncaring, then why bother wishing good on it?

She’d failed to notice the brutality caused by humans. She’d failed to notice the pain that wasn’t hers, the pain bestowed on the helpless. Failed to notice the absolute wrong.

Answer me, Heir of Grinon, do you wish to see it thriving?

No, she said, wrath and abhorrence ruling her. She wanted it to end, she wanted it to tear apart.

The thing inside her grinned. Do you wish it dead?

Yes, she wanted to say. Yes, end it. Now. But she didn’t. Not as she saw the faces of children, not as she saw the victims of the felony. What had they done to deserve the end Drothiker wished to give? Did they not deserve a life?

The question you should be asking yourself, Syrene, the voice spoke with a careful calm, is whether they deserve this world—this life, where only pain is waiting.

No, she said. But they do not deserve death—not those who wish to survive.

You wish to offer them freedom from pain, Syrene. There is no freedom sweeter than death.

There is a freedom in breathing, I just need to drive the poison from the air they breathe.

And how will you do it?

Syrene Alpenstride, she remembered. Her name was Syrene Alpenstride, she repeated to herself, lest the name slide from her mind again, and she gripped all the light, all the power in both her hands.

She was no otsatya. But she had the power. Perhaps more.

She was no ruler, she was barely learning the ways of the world. But she happened to know someone who could shape this world anew. Someone who knew how to—someone she’d learned to trust. Someone who’d seen the horrors, and knew how to dissipate them—had already begun.

She had the power.

She’d shape the ruler.

She breathed, With your help, Drothiker.

Then Syrene yanked the power.

Drothiker roared a bleeding song, and attempted to jerk away from her grip.

But Syrene held on with the might of all the otsatyas.

You’re Destined to me, she said. You might hold the power, but I am your source to wielding it. You think I’m yours … She laughed. Oh, but you’re the one in my clutches.

Syrene pulled on the force until her veins were burning, until white appeared behind her lids too.

She pulled it until she rose above, separating from the world and its bounds, higher than the skies, and beyond the ground.

She pulled it until she became the world.

Pain pierced her with the whole world’s might, it took over her. Syrene didn’t know whether she was screaming. She didn’t know if she would survive this. She only knew what she had to do.

Syrene rewrote herself.

She plunged into the history, the future. She plunged into the roots of the ground, and depth of the seas. She was the existence. She was immortal like nothing else was.

What was made was broken. She’d never been made.

She was beyond human ken, beyond their fears.

She was a monster.

Syrene gave one last pull and the light all around her enfolded like a sheet, and daggered through her chest.

Pain. Blistering, and ripping. Extirpating.

And then Syrene was falling.