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crawling across my spirit, the sour of failed dreams rotting
from within hollow skulls, the sterile collective indifference
of the entire world—all soldered together to form a solid,
breathless void. I fell to my knees.
I turned to see what had destroyed me and beheld a
bloodied white claw retreating behind the wall of dead
trees. The White Gaia had touched me, drawn my blood,
felled me. I was sick beyond flesh and bone and blood and
bile—she had deadened the rushing pulse of my soul. I
watched the Eater of Idols lick my blood from its mother’s
hooked fingertips. I saw the creature change, assuming a
shape not unlike a man’s, but decorated with the darkest
ornaments—horns and fangs and glowering eyes, dank with
the perspiration of fresh rot. Most terrible of all, it bore a
striking, if distorted, likeness to me.
Her last words to me were spoken upon winds colder than
conscience. “Let wither the Shepherd’s dogs, for the Game
is coming to an end. And it was you, dear Vincent, who
made it all possible.”
As I tumbled into death, I passed the dreams of my fellow
hunters and heard the din of their dying. I saw the Eater
of Idols, red with the blood of Wolves, tearing, rending,
killing—clutched in his hand, a kill list filled with the
names of every surviving member of the Game. I saw the
names drenched in blood, crossed-out, destroyed. I saw the
Prince of the Deadworld wading through crowds of wincing
shadows, seeking out his prey, roaring over the ruined
bodies of hunters, Wolves, and artists. I saw months fall into
the span of seconds, each compressed day that passed only
a momentary glimpse into the slaughter I had fathered, the
death I had loosed, the dreams I had failed.
I saw my family looking down at me, cursing me for
a failure, dying as surely as I was. My sisters’ smiles had
dimmed to cold, unliving steel. My father’s eyes filled with
impotent rage, his laughter frozen into silence.

270 | Mark Anzalone