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shouted above the roaring flames, pointing to the slim killer
who once vanished like smoke. The army’s loyalty began to
crack. I could see gun barrels and knives begin to consider
the emaciated killer. Yet before the revolution was complete,
another explosion belched fire and force from behind,
smashing me into the marble archway. Still I drew up, even
as my broken bones ground against each other while others
tried to flee through my skin. Before I could properly right
myself, the mutiny collapsed, and they fell upon me with all
their numbers.
As I slowly began to lift their combined mass from my
body, the thin man walked through the flames toward me
carrying the hammer my father would often use to drive
his massive chisel. He rained blows down upon my skull. I
caught a glimpse of my sisters strewn across the floor, all but
buried in debris. I could hear them weeping. With one last
blow from my father’s hammer, I heard no more.
There was no dream, only nullity of time and space. Yet
there was experience, if only the rawest and least imprinted
type. It was an almost ephemeral means by which I could
deduce the passage of events, the inexorable movement of
cause and effect—dragging my body from the burning house
of my youth, where my first family smiled through fire, long
dead but forever vital.
My body had been reduced to a smoking ruin, yet it
lived—as did my attackers’ intent. Another fire, well-fed
and ever-fattening, bellowed in my wrecked guts, waiting
to burn the world for what had been done to my family—
both of them. Still, there would come a time for burning,
but it was not now. Now was the time for waiting, reveling,
wondering.
In this minimally vital state of mind that clung to the
dimmest of lights, there was a presence, coiled and lethal,
previously unknown to me. I held out my mind to it as an
offering. Nothing. Only the coldest sleep, taking in the
ages with nary an upward glance, touched my damaged
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