Chapter 17: Sacrifice and Song

Mom’s POV

She had felt his song, her son’s song many times, and when she did, she stopped and smiled as she felt his power move through and change the world. His song was not her song, yet as he had been born from her, so too had his song been born from hers. His song moved alongside and within her own, touching it, changing it. Her song was the first song of creation, the song of beginnings, of making, of hope. His song was the song of the world, the song of death and rebirth, of suffering and growth, of predator and prey, of decay and reclamation. He sang it at war. She could feel the earth ring as he sang a song of death, danced death, and made of it a brighter thing. She wept, and she smiled, for she had not the heart to sing this song, and did not know the tread and measure of it, but she knew, knew, in her heart that her song had no place for endings, no place for death, no place for mortality, and all that trod this world today were bound to death. His was the song of tomorrow, and hers the song of yesterday. He wove brightness from the blood, and that gave her hope.

She had felt him sing her song, the song of creation, and she felt him burn with it. He burned too bright. There was no shadow in her song, no darkness. There was in her son. Clover was a boy, she supposed she should admit a man, now. He was woven of light and shadow both, the song of creation was not his, could not make room for all of him and would burn away what it could not permit. Would burn away his darkness, and kill him in the doing. She began to pack. She did not know where he went, but she would go to him. Then the song changed again, and she blushed. THIS song she knew, yet had only danced once. The night she conceived Clover. He had grounded himself in another. He would not be consumed in the fires of creation, but use them to create. So. She would have a grandchild. She wept in memory of Him Who Was Hers, never and always, for one night and forever. She hoped Clover knew more. She was still packed, still ready to go, but she supposed she had months until she was needed. Months in which Clover would need space to be with a woman other than Mom.

The storm rose, and she rose to dance with it, but there was fear in her heart. This was not her song, this was Clover’s song, and what fell upon the earth was not rain, but blood. The sky wept, the lightning raged at what was done this day, and she danced to weave her song into what was wrought this day, to weave a thread of light into the song Clover sang. A song whose steps were not the heavy tread of armoured foot and thrusting spear, but the bright hot iron spray of cut throats, the screaming of souls reaped and bound, not given to death or rebirth, but bound screaming into the song. Into Clover’s song. Tears in her eyes, she danced, and felt the world sing as an ancient wrong was ended, as the scream that had sounded since the first human drew breath and before finally ended. Ended everywhere but Clover’s song. That which was bound was free. That which Clover bound was not.

Falling to her knees naked in the mud, tears streaming down her face, she felt the screams woven into her Clover’s song and knew that he had bound them to it. Knew that those souls were bound in agony, and they would scream it into his song, into his soul. Twisting his dance. The song of creation and destruction was a thing of darkness and light, of beauty and terror, but it was, as hers was, clean. No more. There were footsteps around her, she looked up and saw green figures, shorter than her, half the height of Clover, bronze weapons in their hands, they ringed her in silence. Goblins.

“Take me to him.” She spoke, rising, stalking to where her dress had been abandoned, and the goblins grabbed her into her farm wagon, a dozen of them taking up its traces, and began to run tirelessly through the night.

Gracie POV

There had been a lot to process. Gracie had known she was going to die. Runt of her litter, she had her back broken by one of her siblings, and it had never healed right. Sent to the Dread Empire as a war troll, she knew her fate was to die. Her power as a tree singer was not anything compared to the cultivation of the Dread Empires soldiers, which was why her people no longer valued it or the wise women who practiced it. Now trolls were little more than brutes used to lift heavy things for the legion, and to soak up the spears when a shield wall or city gate needed breaking. She knew she was going to die and had made peace with it.

Then came Clover. A too tall boy from the Holy Land, he had literal tentacles of darkness flowing out of his shadows, but his eyes and voice blazed with light that the sunlight alone could not explain. He freaked the fuck out of her. Fuckhead had been casually slapping her around, not really out of any malice, just because he had been whipped again, and in the Legions, shit and whippings rolled downhill and in the trolls of their century, Gracie was downhill of Fuckhead. Gracie had cowered, which put her knees between Fuckheads feet and her ribs, her arms between her face and his fists and settled in to just another beating (troll regeneration being what it was, by morning she would be better), when Clover happened.

Fuckhead weighed maybe three times what Clover did, and while humans were generally faster than trolls, trolls were built to apply large amounts of force, even more than their mass implied. This made it all the stranger when Clover caught Fuckhead’s descending fist, held it casually, and slapped the shit out of fuckhead with his left hand as the tentacles of darkness that flowed out of him casually held Fuckhead pinned in mid air as Clover explained why hitting girls was wrong, how squad mates needed to be loyal to each other first, and how this wasn’t the way to make friends. Each bizarre statement was punctuated by a casual slap that broke a bone in Fuckhead. When Fuckhead lost consciousness, Clover let him fall and whispered “I really need to work on my troll. Do you think my accent is why I am not getting through to him?” Clover asked in trollish perfect enough to qualify for skald or bard. Gracie just shook her head in amazement. When he had then sat down beside her, and stared into her with those blazing golden eyes and began to explain how to heal like he did, how to become stronger in the broken places, she felt him cut away at something inside her, cutting something important, something critical. As he did, the song she learned as a tree singer heard the echo of the song that was contained in the fire pouring out of his eyes, and she began to sing it. Inside her, the darkness that he had cut that song from stirred within her. It ate away at the scar tissue, and the miss healed bone, and it unmade them. The song filled the gap, and she sang her bones into whole the way she would sing a spear shaft or bow free of a tree. Like tree singing, she sang it stronger, as a sung spearshaft or bowshaft was harder than forged steel. Yet the song Clover taught her did more, the muscle too, and connective tissue, all the broken things came whole in the song, whole and stronger. That is when she knew, absolutely knew, she would follow Clover forever. His was the song from which her own peoples was just a part of. If she followed him, she could learn it.

All that first meeting had promised had come true. Gracie had grown in power beyond the dreams of a Dread Empire soldier, beyond a troll warrior chieftain, and when she faced the World Tree, she sang the song she had learned, and the world tree and given forth spear shafts for Clover, Lvov, Giorgi, Reinhart, Brencis, and Liao, it had given forth bow staves for Janice and Vong, and it had given forth halberd shafts for both herself and Fuckhead. She had sang, and the World Tree itself, source of the first tree song had answered. It had been the most perfect day of her life. Then Clover had bound the spirits of the goblins they slaughtered into that spearhead of his, the God Killer, and the song had changed. She felt a cold sickness fill her, a sickness that didn’t really go away when Clover killed the phoenix and made the King of the Gods run back to Olympus like the terrified bitch he was, rather than face Clover and God Killer. She felt pretty good about that part, but the sickness remained. The screaming was in the song, and it ached. It ate at her.

She looked over at Clover and shuddered. He sat brooding in the hall, stroking the spear, and even his tentacle friends shied away from it, glaring and hissing, but not daring to touch it. That thing was wrong, and she could see Clover’s face growing hard and cold as a mask as he strove to shut it out. She decided to take a patrol out, anything to get away from here. Besides, if she left Fuckhead alone too long, he would get an idea, and that was bad. Growling at Janice, she suggested a patrol, and Janice, equally as uncomfortable in the hall with Dark Clover the broody, decided a route march in the Savage Lands was Good Training, and ordered her century to stand to.

It was more than a little freaky. The goblins were everywhere in the Orc lands and in their own. Their spears and swords were traded for hoes and pitchforks as they worked the land singing. The land answered. Not exactly like tree singing, but part of the same song. Part of the song Clover taught, yet different. There was no darkness in their song, no violence. Gracie grinned, well the little green buggers sucked at violence, so maybe they should stick to what they know, singing wise. Yet watching them sing wheat out of the Savage Land soil was pretty disturbing. A land that had only known privation and struggle now knew plenty. The tribes would not cull themselves fighting over what scraps of food could be grown, but would grow strong and many in the lands where they had been cast to die. Gracie grinned. That would end well for someone.

The century ran fast, in full heavy celestial bronze armour, with shields made of the same heavy metal and great long celestial bronze tipped spears they should have struggled even to walk, given that Celestial bronze was about three times heavier than a given volume of steel, but the mortal cultivation that Clover had given them had allowed them to reshape their muscles and bones at every injury, remaking and reshaping them until they ran fast as any horse, tirelessly as they joked laughed and sang obscene songs as they ran through the heat of the Savage Land days. The human’s of the century were clearly naturally so far beyond what a Dread Empire Legionnaire was supposed to be able to do (for a short burst, a few times a day), even beyond what the Shadow Knights of the Dread Empire or the Holy Knights of the Holy Land were capable of that they couldn’t be considered human. Superhuman? Gracie was as far beyond a normal troll as they were beyond a normal human. Did that make her and Fuckhead supertrollish maybe even a divine troll?

Fuckhead at that point gave the Legion trumpet call for “Full charge” with his ass as he farted something so foul his own darkness tentacles reached ahead of him to full extension in a desperate attempt to get away from the stench. Whatever they had become, Fuckhead was still Fuckhead. It was reassuring in a way Gracie supposed. There was no way Fuckhead could be any sort of divine anything, so that was that. It was good to stay grounded. There was a storm gathering at the border to the Savage Lands, where it bordered the Holy Land. The lightning was playing down like whips, lashing the hills with an intensity that spoke of purpose. She felt the land shudder, as the song reached her feet.

Shouting to Janice “The song. Not ours, but close. Someone is singing it at the border. The lightning answers.” Gracie shouted in troll, and Janice swore loudly in human.

“First Century, move to skirmish order. Trolls to the flanks. Archers, wait for the fire order. Advance” Janice called as they shook down into skirmish order, dropping to a jog as they approached. The song was in the air now, beating at it like the wings of a dragon. Their blood stirred and Gracie felt her bones begin to vibrate as it rang in her like the first time she danced with Clover in the storm. This was it, this was the song that Clover had learned to dance to. Gracie couldn’t tell you how she knew, but she knew.

There were goblins, perhaps a hundred of them. They drew up around a wagon in a half circle. There were a dozen Holy Knights and perhaps three hundred mounted men at arms, horse archers and lancers of the Holy Land trying to control rearing horses in the sudden and unnatural downpour, but what caught Gracie’s attention was the figure that danced in the storm between the goblins and the knights.

“Centurion, permission for a three day pass. I am in love!” Shouted Giorgi
“Fuck you Giorgi, I saw her first!” Shouted Brencis
“Sweet mother of fuck!” Muttered Reinhart.
“I don’t even swing that way, and outrank all of you, but I’m calling dibs” Shouted Janice.

Dancing naked in the storm was the first human woman Gracie could admit looked beautiful. She wasn’t sure exactly what humans found attractive in each other, and she couldn’t exactly say how it was that this woman was attractive to a troll, even a female troll that didn’t swing that way, but this woman’s entire body was sensuality. Her motions were the universes call to love. And the Universe answered. She sang and a hundred arrows were shattered in mid air. She danced and as her feet struck the ground lightning struck between charging horses, causing them to rear and throw their riders. She raised her arms to the sky in a call of love and the earth split to spill forth vines of flowers that bound the charging soldiers, yet harmed none.

Gracie felt the century stumble to a halt, yet the squad kept running. As the woman danced, they felt themselves captured by it. Her song rang in their bones, burned in their blood, the storm she sang to raged in each of them. Her foot stamped the earth, and they raised their weapons and screamed in reply. They danced faster and faster, as the wind whipped into a hurricane, yet they danced in the eye of it in eerie peace as she sang a song of love and healing, of creation and hope. She danced until the unnatural strength that drove all of them was spent and they fell to the ground around the dancing woman.

Gracie fell not to her face, but to her knees. As a tree singer, she drew strength from the song, and the strength of this one had her drunk off her ass, but not weak. She reached out a clawed hand to touch the woman’s cheek and felt the tentacles of her darkness reach out to caress the woman’s hair as well. Gracie shaped the word in the human tongue with care. “Mom?” For that is all Clover had ever named her.

The woman reached out and touched Gracie’s cheek in return. “You must be Clover’s friends. Can you take me to him? I heard his song, and know he needs me.”

The goblins held out her dress, and she put it back on as if dancing naked in front of several hundred soldiers, two thirds of which were trying to kill you, was just the way one took a shower normally, and proceeded to try to pry everyone’s life story as they marched at a much more goblin-pulling-wagon-friendly pace back to camp. Gracie laughed as the soldiers trailed after her with their tongues hanging on the ground like so many virgins in the presence of their first woman, yet clearly so deeply intimidated by who she was that none dared actually meet her gaze. She had always wondered exactly how a human like Clover came to be. Seeing his mother, arriving in a wagon pulled by goblins, having danced naked to destroy an army of Holy Knights, Gracie could see Clover almost naturally followed.

Mom looked over at Gracie, reaching out from the wagon to touch her halberd. “Tree sung wood. Your song. You are one of my Clover’s friends. Can you tell me what happened? Why is there screaming in my Clover’s song?” Mom asked.

Gracie knew she shouldn’t, but the song’s change scared her. Clover had forged God Killer, had faced down the King of Gods, slain the Phoenix, freed a slain goddess and unmade the curse of the Goblins. He hadn’t smiled since. Hadn’t touched his wife, hadn’t picked up baby Goo, hadn’t danced when the storm came. Even his tentacle friends seemed terrified of drawing his attention now. Gracie looked over at Mom, for she was Mom, it sort of seemed the only possible name for her, and she began to talk.