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“I accept,” I said, appreciating the truth of his words.
Another surprise rose from beneath the burning debris as I
was about to strike. Two surprises, in fact.
My sisters broke through the remains of my old home,
riding the art-forms of my first family, inside of which they
had buried their glittering smiles. First came one sister in
the wondrous piece my father had created from my mother
and brother and sister, titled My Family, Divided. It was a
beautiful sight, my sister joined with my first family in death
and vengeance. Then, hands—sculpted from their original
shape by my father, well beyond the design nature had
reserved for them—reached up through the smoke that bore
the Prince and tore him from the sky.
Then came my other sister, piloting the masterwork I had
made from my own father—The Red Ouroboros. They rose
as a single creature, terrible and new, like the black dawn that
breaks upon the newborn monsters fresh from nightmare.
They might as well have been father and daughter. The Red
Ouroboros fell upon the struggling shape of my enemy. My
sister’s smile cut through the darkness, glowing with the
darkened crimson of deep sunset.
I watched my beautiful sisters, now joined with my first
family, throw the plump organs of The Prince of Smoke at
the yawning black sky. Smiles like sickle moons played
above the Prince’s screams, bobbing in his shrieks like
burning paper boats set upon rough red waters.
I walked to where my family, all of them, had gathered
around the still dying magician of murder. His bleeding eyes
met mine. I wrestled with my father’s mounting laughter,
trying to produce coherent speech. “My dear, dying prince.
You should never have crossed us so coarsely. To employ a
crude but appropriate phrase—you fucked with the wrong
family.”

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