Them

The experiments pile up, over time. Disorganized jars, tools everywhere. It’s almost comforting. You pile irons into the fire until the furnace can fit no more, each one reassuring you that there is still somewhere to go, something to be tried. But at some point, every now and then, you must gather your thoughts again, clear out the failures and make room for future successes.

You lose yourself in this grim work, again and again. Were it not for the eternal glow of your family’s tanks, their imprints suspended still within, you might just forget forever. Maybe, you ponder, you have already forgotten. You have to clear out your space, both mentally and physically, to stay your path.

Their shadows cast like threats over your workspace. You move around their impressions in the floor as if they were sacred spaces. You have to clean quickly and thoughtlessly, because if you think too hard about exactly what you’re dealing with, you might just crack. Each tool not in its rightful place is the remains of a failure. Every exhausted soul is another opportunity squandered.

And when the sanctum is cleared, and the tables lie all but empty, you stand there in their shadows… no closer than you were a month, a year, a century ago. Another year of dead-ends, what must be a hundred souls past by now, and the colors that bleed from your family are no more familiar. You stare down the barrel of another stretch of experimentation and yet, unlike all those times before, you can’t… think of where to start. There are no more loose threads, no more paths to follow. You have tested every boundary of the Astral Wild, and you have found nothing at all.

How much failure and death they must have seen by now. You swear that when you turn from another fruitless endeavor, you catch their disapproving eyes outlined against their forms, if only for a moment. You can feel their judgment bearing down on you. Are you just not good enough yet? How much more can you study? How much more is there to study? Is there something you’ve missed?

By now, you had resigned to making magical cuts just like theirs, or at least that you hope will be just like theirs. Different mixtures of magic, different applications, you score these souls and watch the colors that bleed from them… and they’re never quite like that.

You’re just a butcher. An insane, lonely butcher. Cutting souls apart to try and make them bleed the same shades as your loved ones.

You throw yourself onto your knees, eyes burning as you scream at the top of your lungs! You beg them, you beg the fates, you beg the Gods, as tears flow freely and your chest wracks with sobs. For forgiveness; for some hint of success; for mercy! For anything at all, but this endless cycle of madness!

And as you raise your head again, staring into the negative-space of your family in their tanks as if to wait for some kind of reply…

Your eyes are drawn down, to them.

They are arrayed around you as if a ritual circle. They hang in the rafters and cling to the tanks. Dark, motionless, sharp forms with empty eyes and jagged crowns.

You raise to your feet, hesitantly, your chaotic breathing resolving into a completely bewildered hush. You reach out…

And they’re gone. The room is again empty, but when you look up, you see Her eyes. You see them for real this time. They’re open, and looking at you, and then they’re not.

You know, now. You can’t avoid it any longer.