Shame

> "And He walked into the storm, a wailing, singing myriad of crystallised glass and baking grains of sand, Distantly, He felt, rather than saw the ocean shift in patterns long-forgotten. He opened his mouth, battered shawls shifting, and screamed; a guttering, primal sound. For a split second it felt like every grain, every shard, stood still. It froze, choking, staggering, stifling. Distantly, a great roar was heard- as if in agreement."
>
>

 **I**t was the first time Cassius had heard the No-Eyed ones.

### Background

The first son of a lineage of first sons, Cassius was the sole heir to The Caeruleus Empire; a kingdom known for bringing destruction. To Cassius, this was simply the other kingdoms faults. If they couldn’t withstand the military might of his family’s kingdom, they deserved whatever was happening to them in the Below; Natural Selection, after all. His fathers increasing paranoia and his mother’s refusal to meet his eyes (so like his fathers) and her halting silences whenever he entered a room was simply another problem to be solved.

One night, when his footsteps left imprints in the azure grass around the courtyard, when his mothers flock of birds released sermons of haunting cries, when he hurried to his parents room…When he saw his father crying (hysteria) over his mothers pale body, he learnt of his family’s madness. His ancestors eyes weren’t the only thing he shared.

There was a reason only one son survived past childbirth.

(**The Hollow screamed, and Cassius screamed back**)

His father’s increasing zealously, his sought for might- for power- resulted in Cassius being trained to strategize. To grow and experiment, regardless of moral dubiety. His first conquest? The underwater city of Thallasia.

Too easily snuffed out. Eons of technological advancements stolen through siege and large, arching bolts of lightning. Cassius thought it was poetic. The dawn of a new age, brought upon by sheer power, ridding the world of the folly of the Thalassic People. It was their own faults, really.

It was once a beautiful city. A myriad of glass and technology, unfettered life cast through the sea. Small, glimmering figures glided across the streets, each colourful blur an entire life; an entire culture. Cassius supposed it was pretty, in a strange sort of way. His tutors had told him of their slow evolution from seafaring savages, to wonders of technological advancement. In small alcoves, hidden from the surveillance of his father and guards, they had also told him of the rising tensions between the creatures kingdom and his. He should have known it would come to this. The Thallasic People should have known it would come to this.

Moving through the kingdoms castle, ripples being cast from his armour, Cassius spied the hurried glide of a finely-dressed boy. The amalgamation of flesh and machine dubbed it a Thallasin. Following at a steady pace, swimming deeper into the catacombs of the city, he belatedly realised that the boy had dissapeared. The theatrics and open awnings of the city above had been swapped for a closed off chamber; brackish water filled the room, tasting of iron as it passed through his mouthgard. Statues adorned the walls; they made the walls seem clean in comparison. Pausing at the feet of one, Cassius spied a small silver ring. The glint of silver had caught his eye; a small ring, burnished and unmarred, lay at the feet of one of the statues It wouldn't do to loot what wasn't needed; he was no pirate, but it would serve as a reminder. Small refractions of light were cast throughout the water as he picked it up, blistering heat scalding his hands. Shadows swarmed in the corners of his eyes, great stone hands moving towards him, moving to *take* him.

There was a reason no other nation had conquered the Thallasic people. There was a reason only one son ever survived.

"So close.”

A snarl.

Cassius drifts, water pressing at his skin, tugging at his hair, creeping through his lips, catching on bubbles.

Weight, pulling him down, pulling him down-

The brackish water tasted of the blood of a nation.

These maligiant beings stare down at humanity.

He is flying

Over a desert. And dotting the wasteland

Are oasis.

A thousand upon a thousand verdant springs

But all

The wretched creatures drink

from a single well.

He falls.

Dropping from the sky like an end.

Into the well,

and watches

The water swirl over and over him, turning

Black.

He drowns.

And they drink, and they drink, and they are poisoned.

Because it is only from the well that they drink.

And not the thousand upon a thousand verdant springs.

Disdain, displeasure, like claws raking over his skull.

*The Chains must hold.*

### The Wasps Nest

When he was a child, there was a wasps nest outside the greenhouse.

A fat, sprawling thing; the containment of the cold light of knowledge, the anathema of the things that crawl and buzz and swarm in the pulpy corners and cracks. In the porous holes of the hive. It used to be a dare, for noble children, breaching the walls of their consistently constructed world. It was a common sight to see finely-dressed fugitives sneaking closer and closer, until their own fear or the fear of their dogged servants brought them back. It thrums with life and malice. It hates them, and because of that it can’t be helped. It sings sweetly, but the golden jackets of those swarming fiends belie the fractals etched onto the swirling, pulpy mess of its surface.

Even then, Cassius knew how the world worked. There were things in the world, rare, unspoken of- isolated and exaggerated, vastly outnumbered by wild tales and drunken imaginings. His mother had warned him about not going into the woods at night, due to the “grasping, diseased hands of the unknown”. For the eight-year-old, this was overexaggerating. Disturbing. His mother so often got that far-off look in her eyes when he tried to speak to her about it, and her handmaidens gave him thinly-veiled looks of discomfort every time he brought it up.

Cassius was hardly an easy child to deal with. While he may not have shared the inclinations of his peers towards active mischief, he was impatient and precocious; quick to make snide remarks, even quicker to wander off whenever he grew bored. By the time he was eight, his keepers had to return him from his explorations at least three times.

His main keeper, Aliana, discovered that the one thing that could keep him rooted to his spot were books. For all the voracity of his reading, he was never that fast, lingering on pages that caught his curiosity. In this, there seemed to be a clear solution. The only difficulty was that there was no rhyme or reason to the books he did enjoy. Fantasy seemed to hold his interest better than the dry, cracking tombs of the library, but there was no concrete style or topic, no easily-defined subjects. Any author with a distinctive enough style would only ever afford him a single books worth of reading before losing interest.

In the end, Aliana discovered a solution. The castles library was unsuitable for a young child. But the towns weren’t. So down on Occident Avenue, in between visits to the castle, she would borrow every book that caught her eye, in the hopes that they would catch his. She would present Cassius the pile, and he would look through it until he found something he liked, or at least tolerated. It was shortly after this cyclical system began, that he found his first book that spoke of the supernatural.

The thing was, the unnatural seemed to be drawn to him, and he to them. Once, on one of his rare voyages to the dreaded woods, small blue whisps of flame whispered to him, guiding him past his parents camp, through the grasping branches of the pale trees, across the azure grass of the meadows. When he grew frightened of his new surroundings, as if drawn from a chance, they guided him back.

Its cover was garish yet faded. Small emblematic, artistic arrays of eyes covered its cover, with its title declaring it as *“The Buzzing”.* On the back there was no blurb, just a crudely sketched image of some trailing bees. They flew around on gossamer wings, attached to disproportionately swollen bodies. They flew at odd angles, as though in the middle of some strange dance.  Upon discussing the tomb with Aliana, she took the book off him, hurried the books back to the library, and seemed to distance herself. And so Cassius returned to his exploits.

It should come as to no surprise then, that he stumbled upon the nest during one of his exploits. Book satchel clutched in one hand, the other pulling back the ragged branches bordering the yard, he stepped into the glade. The greenhouse was an old thing. It’s glass was spread evenly across the tall grass and along its skeletal, metal frame. What little that was left behind was opaque, small vines scurrying their way through borders, creaks and cracks.

*Clear any target on your back.*

The wasps nest is a fat, sprawling think that crouches in a shadowed corner. It’s bordered by thriving plants, strangling weeds and domesticated flowers alike. Cassius found it near the back. Frightened at first, he had decided to try and catch a scrap- to prove his bravery. He could’ve sat there for hours, book satchel by his side, the sleepy buzzing of the wasps inside a quiet warning. It thrums with life and malice. Paper and pulp swirls on its surface, and there is a song behind its patterns. Sings that he is safe. Sings that his mother will be okay. He could have been consumed by it. But he wasn’t. Instead he was disgusted; at its irregular honeycombed holes, leaving an itch in the back of his mind (like the holes are there too, in his own brain, rotten and hollow and swarming).

Is that real?

He’d heard the song before, in that tomb, and swarming around his father on the few times he did meet him. The face of the one who sang to him hid in that nest. There were no wasps, not really. There were no swarming golden bodies, but there was still that hum.  It wasn’t the nest itself that sung. It was simply the face. Not the whole face (for the whole of the hive is infinite- a staring grave, the creaking of ships as they sank into the sea). Its an unending plane of waiving forms dipping in and out of the waves, distended pores, honeycombed flesh, bloated flesh. They’re the same, aren’t they?

Cassius didn’t know how long he had sat there, watching the stillness of the nest. He only moved, as if waking from a dream, when he heard his name being called. Scrambling from his seat, legs cramping, unfeeling, he stumbled his way out, running as if from a beast. Running from the rapture itself. He knew now why the hive hated, because for all that ignorance in the city, its lauding power over the world, it could not stretch to consume it whole. It is robbed of its fear by children reaching to grasp its surface, and so faces how far its fallen.

He didn’t know why the hive sung to him so freely, perhaps because of his standing, perhaps because of convenience. Its song is loud and ugly and tearing, and he should be so very afraid. There is a wasps nest inside the greenhouse, and its song reminds him of the ocean.

He didn't know why his father had killed her. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know.