Idrelle lay beside her, her face soft, one hand looped around her own branches for comfort, the other outstretched where her arms had been wrapped around Kalyth. She didn’t stir. Was she sleeping still? Kalyth wanted her to be. Because if Idrelle saw her now, feverish and full of bloodlust, she wouldn’t be able to hide any of it from her.
And what if she did know? the Bright One whispered.
Kalyth couldn’t seem to silence him now no matter how hard she tried, but the presence of him behind her thoughts was beautiful in its own way. Would sharing that beauty with Idrelle be so terrible?
Kalyth pictured holding Idrelle in her arms, her head against her breast. Maybe she’d be able to hear him, too. Maybe all the little ones would wrap their tiny hands around Idrelle’s fingers. Maybe the Bright One would flow into her.
All she had to do was open Idrelle up.
It wouldn’t be so hard.
She didn’t need an axe. Her claws were her weapons. One slice, one carefully placed swing, would do it. She could hack into all the fleshy, woody parts of Idrelle and the Bright One and all his brothers and sisters could rush into her. And if Idrelle didn’t want it, if she resisted, well then, her blood-sap would feed the little ones.
They were so very hungry.
Kalyth felt them jitter eagerly at the idea and the Bright One nudged Kalyth with a gentle hand. She leaned over Idrelle, one arm raised. Her claws glinted in the moonlight.
Idrelle stirred, frowning and fitful as she rolled onto her back, as if she could sense something was wrong. Idrelle was always so sensitive. How many times had she known something was wrong before Kalyth mentioned it? Idrelle cared for her, loved her.
She loved her so much.
The Bright One whispered how lovely it would feel, how warm. Idrelle’s blood would be like velvet running over her skin. All Kalyth had to do was drive her claws into the back of Idrelle’s head, crush her body between her fingers, pop legs from hips, arms from shoulders, tear into flesh with her teeth and–
Breath hitching, Kalyth jerked upright. She staggered away from Idrelle, horrified. She lost her footing. Tripped. Turned. Ran. She crashed through the forest, past the ash trees and the soulpods, through the copse of evergreens and into the field. Frost crackled beneath her feet as she sprinted across the snow and the little ones scampered into the warmer parts of her, coiled around her insides, fingers tugging, faces upturned and begging for heat and blood, blood and heat.
It wasn’t until Kalyth reached the western ridge, towering blue-grey and cold, that dead landscape leading to the outcasts’ camp, that she stopped. She collapsed against one of the boulders, her claws scraping against it, clenching and unclenching as she tried to gather herself together again, but she couldn’t feel where the parasites ended and she began anymore. Everything was shifting, squirming, moving.
She looked up.
The Bright One stood beside her.
‘You aren’t real,’ Kalyth whispered. She tried to believe it was true.
The Bright One chuckled. The little ones clustered around his feet, mewling as they wound between his legs. The Bright One reached out a hand. He stroked Kalyth’s face tenderly. What makes you say that?
Shivering, Kalyth reached, one last time, for the Spirit Song, but there was nothing left to bind her to Alarielle or her brothers and sisters. There was nothing but an emptiness that seemed to stretch on forever.
Kalyth sank into the snow. The Bright One sank with her. Her hands trembled. Her insides quivered.
You know what you have to do, he said.
Kalyth clenched her teeth. ‘You aren’t real.’
The little ones crawled over her legs, inched onto her arms, around her hands, up and down the length of her claws.
‘This isn’t real.’
Cut. Kill. Break. Kill. Kill.
Kill.
‘You aren’t real!’
Kalyth’s scream pierced the stillness. Claws whistling through the frozen air, shining, sharp, desperate, she raised her arm and swung. She struck her own body, pain razoring through her, searing, blinding, as she slashed at her branches, hacked into herself. The impacts shuddered through her and branch after branch fell into the snow at her feet. Cold snapped into the wounds. Sap and blood poured down her side and she swung again. Because the Bright One, the little ones, these things, whatever they were, weren’t really beside her. They were in her body, in her head. And she would bleed them out, cut them out, if it killed her.
Kalyth swung again, woody pulp and bone splitting. She braced her left arm against a boulder. Locked her elbow. Swung. Her claw sliced through skin, bark, bone. Agony flared, a deep heave of pain. She swung again, awkward for the angle. She needed to get him out. All of them out. She swung. Again and again and again.
Her arm snapped in two with a wet crack. Shock. Pain. She looked down at the severed limb in the snow, her hand, palm up, clenching and unclenching still. Blood gushed from the stump of her arm.
With a sudden flare of light, the Bright One and all the little ones disappeared from her field of vision.
For a moment, Kalyth thought it had worked, that she was finally rid of them, but something jolted deep in her chest. Her heart tripped over itself. The Bright One squeezed, dug his teeth into a thick artery. He swelled, pushed himself against her organs, thrust hate and rage outward as if he could stopper the wounds with it.
Kalyth felt life rushing away from her and still, the Bright One shouted for her to kill. Killkillkill!
‘Kalyth!’
Idrelle’s voice snapped through waves of pain and Kalyth turned, severed branches littering the snow around her, what was left of her arm swinging, sopping and limp, against her side.
Idrelle bolted up the hillside, her hands outstretched as if she wanted to embrace her.
The Bright One roared.
The Bright One surged.
The Bright One shoved Kalyth away from herself, sliced her from her own body as surely as she’d sliced her own arm away and Kalyth watched helplessly as her body charged, her legs pumping against her will. Kalyth screamed, tried to warn Idrelle, but the Bright One’s voice overtook her own. He flung her working arm back and leaped towards Idrelle. For a moment, Kalyth felt herself suspended, her body launched high into the air, and there was Idrelle below her, confused and terrified, as the Bright One sneered and swung Kalyth’s claw at Idrelle’s head.
Idrelle scrambled, skidding and sliding on the icy ground, narrowly avoiding the blow as Kalyth’s body crashed to the earth. The impact shoved blood from Kalyth’s mouth and nose. The claws of her hand lodged deep into the ground, wedged into ice and frozen soil. Kalyth bore down, trying to force her body to remain there, pinned to the earth so the Bright One couldn’t attack again. But he took hold of her arm, his grip like a vice and he yanked at her buried claws with all his strength, trying to pull free, trying to kill Idrelle.
