Diana Dueyn - The Big Meow

Helen Walks Softly stepped out into that light, out onto what previously had been empty air but was now hot dry summer grassland. She lifted the condor-feather wands high on either side of her and began addressing the circles of the world in long, intricate words of song, not in the Speech, but in her own Chumash language. All around her, an impossibly deep echo of the words went up as if from the earth itself. “’Alchup’osh, White Serpent, Sky Serpent, Hutash speaks to you! Once more I’ve made the world from the Seeds of the World for our children – “

The power amassing around her, reinforcing Ith’s wizardry, was impossible not to feel. Helen didn’t stop her song or turn away from her regard of the West; but Rhiow heard her say silently, Rhi, this is as good as it’s going to get right now — !

Rhiow licked her nose one last time and spoke to the angry presence inside her. Elder Sister… let’s take this rat by the throat!

Yes, said sa’Rraah. Now. And if Rhiow had thought the Lone One’s presence in her before was difficult to take, now she knew better. It had taken sa’Rraah a few moments to consolidate her presence inside Rhiow properly and get Her teeth into the scruff of her soul. But now Rhiow felt as if she was simply being exploded from within. Her perspective on everything around her whited out, skewed, then resettled. Suddenly her eyes were on a level with the dark sphere and the pre-sentient un-stuff boiling out of it. She was larger than that, even; Rhiow found herself also seeing the world as if from a great height, and her mighty body crouched over the whole Los Angeles basin as if over some prey that she’d caught. There she towered up over the world, radiant with a pure and terrible darkness, the Fairest and Fallen indeed: but regardless of the Fall, she was still the Queen’s daughter, still in full possession of the glory of a God when She wanted or needed it. Now, in the face of the Outside One, sa’Rraah wore that glory for once not as a badge of insolence in her Dam’s face, but merely as identification, an ostensible mark of respect to a being more powerful than she. She bowed Her head humbly, for once playing the jackal instead of the outcast Queen of the Pride.

Above them the darkness continued boiling in through the incursion hypersphere’s surface from Outside, and Rhiow for the first time realized that only just now — when something with the power of a god manifested before It — had the Outside One’s attention actually been drawn to them. Even now It did not speak; it was the opposite of life and thought. But nonetheless It made Itself understood. Give me the gift You promised. Give me entry into matter, that I may abolish it, and end this rebellion from within, and be All.

“Here,” sa’Rraah said through Rhiow, and the hills around them shuddered with the power of Her words. “Here is the weak point, the way to the throat of the prey. Join with me and I will show you, and all this will be Yours.”

Everyone and everything seemed to hold its breath as the Outside One reached out to sa’Rraah discover the way into the world of matter. It meant holding still and allowing Oneself to be felt and fondled over by that terrible slithering touch, something that invaded her body’s matter in awful analysis. Away back in the core of herself that was still wholly a Person and a wizard, Rhiow turned her whole being to the purpose of holding still and letting the violation happen, horrified beyond all reason but still strangely satisfied. It and sa’Rraah are of one mind about matter, she thought. And It’ll share her blind spot. They see matter as contemptible, and this is why Its avatar Tepeyollotl always sought to shatter the Earth – because like sa’Rraah, It takes spirit to be superior.

We’ll see about that –

The violation seemed to go on and on, and Rhiow could do nothing but suffer it. But after endless time, the pain subsided, draining away and leaving her limp and wretched, wishing she could die though totally unable to, with hardly even a thought able to crawl across the pitch-black floor of her mind. For what seemed like forever, nothing happened, nothing at all, as the Outside One examined what It had learned.

And then It took the bait. It started pouring itself into sa’Rraah, and into Rhiow. As it began to manifest within them, the Outside One took the nature of matter to it, and wrapped that matter around itself, and started to become a physical thing inside the world.

Rhiow was now beyond any further reaction except a silent scream of pain and horror that bid fair to last forever. She had been afraid that sa’Rraah might not set her free again after their ploy succeeded, or at least allow her the mercy of death. Now she realized that sa’Rraah was screaming too, screaming along with Rhiow at a violation She found as horrifying as Rhiow had found the earlier one. She began to wonder whether even the Lone One had miscalculated, had overestimated her ability to beguile this force of unnature. Will we be trapped together like this forever? Or just cast aside and destroyed, both of us, when It’s got what It wants and we’re not needed any more —

There was no seeing anything in such a state; perception was all that was left, and even sa’Rraah’s perception was blurred by pain and terror now. But Rhiow knew that outside them, above them, the newly incarnated Outside One was taking on a shape like the Lone One’s, like Rhiow’s, but even huger and more terrible. The Black Leopard — Tepeyollotl no more Its mere avatar, but now truly containing its progenitor from Outside — loomed over Los Angeles, its great, hating, hungry eyes looking down at Earth, and beyond it, at the rest of Earth’s universe and all the worlds beyond, straight across the khiliocosm.

Everything cowered. Right across the planet, right across the worlds, the structure of space and the fabric of time themselves crouched down low in the darkness and looked up into it fearfully, hearing the long slow snarl of the Hunter as it bent low over them, about to open the jaws of its great yawning maw to snap them up at last and swallow them down into the dark.

But down on the terrace outside the Observatory, one patch of light remained, flowing to it from away westward in a narrow corridor where another dimension’s landscape still obtained, even under that world-ending regard. The substance and will of the World Serpent were sunk deep into that corridor of power. And though his body between Earth and the Old Downside was pulled unbearably taut, Ith’s radiant upper coils were cast around the whole fabric of the Observatory, anchoring and his jaws locked around the next coil down as his eyes blazed with an ebony fire of certainty and rage. I – shall not – be moved –!

Rhiow and sa’Rraah could feel Ith bunching every muscle to resist the abolishing power of the great hating eyes that hung in the heavens, all the length of his body rigid with the inconceivable strain of holding a world in place. Now – would be a good time! he said silently to Rhiow.

Not yet! sa’Rraah cried. It’s not finished becoming physical yet! Just a little more –

Yet the shattering that Tepeyollotl most desired, the precursor of the worse destruction to follow, was already beginning. Rhiow could hear it starting at the roots of things — a tremor in the earth that would build and build until all the land shattered and was overturned, until all the seas ran into the cracks and boiled away in the mantle-deep cracks that would burst open right across the planet. That shattering wave would run straight away from here through space and time, breaking everything it met, shattering it right down to the atoms; and even the particles of dust that remained would themselves be swallowed up into the fissures that would open in space’s own structure. In time those too would close, and there would simply be nothing… nothing but the Outside One, now Inside forever, Deity by default of a dead and empty cosmos.

Against that, though, Ith still strove. And Helen kept singing to the West as if the Old Downside was a frightened animal. “Sky Serpent, ’Alchup’osh,” she was singing, “once more give the children the gift you once gave them – “

The shaking didn’t stop, but at least it didn’t get any worse. It’s all that can be done right now! sa’Rraah said silently to Rhiow, though She too was writhing in anguish. No active attack until It’s all here, until the connection can’t be broken –

How much longer? Rhiow cried.

The earth under the Observatory rocked. Ith hung on, but Rhiow could feel the strain, feel him starting to slip –

Suddenly the earthquake broke out in full force, a roar that began to scale up and up to the point where nothing else could be heard, not even one’s own thoughts. In the sky over Los Angeles, the Leopard went jet-black and real, and Its eyes poured out a light that was itself destruction as that final roar of triumph and hatred rang out and filled the whole physical universe.

Now, something whispered in Rhiow’s ear: to her surprise, not sa’Rraah. And something Person-shaped and burning white went past her like lightning, and caught Tepeyollotl by the throat, knocking it onto the floor of Creation.

Rhiow, joined all against her will with a God, realized that she had now been caught up into that far more central level of being where the Gods have their dwelling, and their wars. With a yowling that broke even through the echo of the destruction trying to unleash itself on the planes below, Queen Iau in her full majesty, in lioness-shape and blinding as a star, roared and tore at the Outside One in its form of Black Leopard. To that fight too came Aaurh the Mighty with the untempered fires of creation wreathed about Her, and beside Her the Whisperer slender and deadly as an unsheathed claw, and with them even the Great Tom, black and scarred and one-eyed, the other Eye fully open and blazing now, and every claw alive with lightning from the birth of things. All of them attacked the Leopard together. Its scream, and their battle roars, went up until they seemed to fill the whole world. And sa’Rraah, dark-pelted like Rhiow now, flung herself into that fight as well, intent on tearing out the throat of the enemy before which She had been forced to humiliate herself.

Never before had all the Pride of Heaven gone into the fight together against a foe from outside. Now as one They attacked the monstrous horror from Outside, and tore it with teeth and claws.

But it was far bigger than They were. And Rhiow, carried along with sa’Rraah into the center of that battle, went cold with fear.

One more thing is needed, said the soft voice inside her brain. Let’s hope it’s enough —

Out beyond the Observatory terrace, Helen Walks Softly lifted the condor-feather wands over her head in the face of the awful black countenance staring down from the sky. A shadow fell even over the narrow corridor of light leading back to the Old Downside: the shadow of vast wings. Under their shadow, the wind started to rise, running down the canyons like the Santa Ana. Now let the Nine-Wind God come to the place of the Serpent Rope —

For just a flash those wings, half-seen in the sky, covered everything with a cleaner shadow than what streamed away from the Outside One. And in answer, lightning struck out of that shadow, lashing down like whips all over the high ridges and mountains surrounding the basin. Smoke began rising, and the dim red eyes of flame opened in the brush on the hillside, growing stronger and brighter with every breath.

And with those few breaths the lightning became more focused, more accurate, and did not strike the hillsides any more. A huge thick bolt like a whip braided of fire struck the Black Leopard right between the eyes. It yowled in pain and rage, and with the pain, surprise. Pain had apparently not occurred to It. More lightning leapt out of the air and began to strike it again and again. There’s a little distraction for you, cousins, Helen said. Make the most of it, because I don’t know how long it’s going to last!