gentle sleep the sleep of death

Ah! gentle may I lay me down, and gentle rest my head,

And gentle sleep the sleep of death, and gentle hear the voice

Of him that walketh in the garden in the evening time.

The Book of Thel, William Blake

      When she has made ten thousand cuts, and drunk the blood of ten thousand enemies, she grows alive.       Her body was created long before, of course. The ore for her blade was mined in the outer circle, where fabric of existence is so thin, it leaks power, saturating every speck of dust. The gold for her guard was a cursed treasure, traded by a mortal for the death of his enemies, melted, then traded again. The cord wrapped around her handle was woven from a siren’s hair, brought by the merciless Styx to the walls of Dis where Mulciber the blacksmith was just looking for a finishing touch.       However, it’s not until ten thousand cuts later that she gains a mind, and had the last of them been made a day, an hour later—who knows? That very day, as fate would have it, just as the rest of blood is drying on her blade, a vast and terrifying power pours into her, filling up the space between the molecules of steel. The matter is, she should have been rendered alive by that power if she hadn’t but a moment earlier already grown alive… A curious coincidence indeed.       There is a hand, when she first comes to. It’s hard and strong, broad on her grip. The hand has granted her the power but, though it’s an unbelievably generous gift, it is the fact that the hand has made ten thousand cuts which have fed her the blood of ten thousand enemies, which makes it, and its owner, her Master.       When she first comes to, she’s in the bowels of Temen-ni-gru. She does not hear the name, as such, for she does not have ears, but the sound of it echoes landing on her like a heavy coating of sin.       When she first comes to, when she has learnt her benefactor and her place of birth, there comes, unbidden, a newborn cry of steel. A sudden explosion, it swallows the whole of the room. Rebellion—sounds like the struggle, the pain and the terror. Unexpectedly, another blade replies—it matches the intensity, the wavelength but it is something else—Force Edge, the energy with no constraints.       She answers, too, of course. Whenever there’s a roar before the strike, there must be silence after. Wherever there is life, there must be death. She is Yamato: the judgment, the void and the end.       Though gratifying as it is to know that in this world there are at least two other decent tools, and as short-sighted as it seems that Master’s leaving one such tool behind, it doesn’t matter. Even if she were alone, she wouldn’t care: she’s born into a war—no time to waste.       There is no unity in Master’s movement, no style. His fight is a deadly patchwork of that which works best. One moment, it’s her sister cleaving opponents in halves and quarters, the next, it’s her—with a cut so precise it leaves them gasping and twitching and struggling never to succeed. Master moves on.       It’s almost primitive: he twists—and she cuts, he thrusts—and she pierces. But the power he holds, the skill he possesses and the conviction he wields make her drunk on the infinite pleasure of serving. One day, he has her learn to seal dimensional rift, and she does–for the sole reason that it is asked of her, and hums, afterwards, self-satisfied.       Usually, he doesn't require much. Why would she care, though, when what he does require is to deliver death?       Every day there's new blood on her blade, and every day is a victory.       Those are simple times.       They must, as all things, come to an end.       Weeks go by without a creature to slaughter, an opponent to face. What Master does with his time, she’s hard pressed to say. She wouldn't waste a moment when a moment is all it takes to strike a blow, but she’s the guillotine and not the executioner, so she defers to his judgement.       There’s more then.       Whenever there’s a spark of violence, instead of taking a stance, Master’s chest rumbles, the vocal cords vibrate. He talks. On the receiving end of his words are ‘humans’. The first hundred years she had trouble distinguishing them from the local fauna: bags of meat and bone, not a lick of power. All too average, medium-sized. The blood might have served a landmark but how was she to know? Her blade never came close.       At first she thought that Master deemed them too weak to fight, cowering before him, making noises, but now…       The pinnacle of her humiliation is a long time coming, and come it does, inevitable as her blade. She’s placed on—hooks?—in a room where not a rat has ever died, not even naturally, let alone been killed.       There is a strange unpleasant warmth to her left that’s seeping through a small door made of glass. It is too meek, and yet not meek enough at once.       Rebellion is right above her, going mad in silence.       When Master returns, he had better give her a feast.       When he returns, he takes her… and hands her to someone else.       There are two palms on her scabbard, two tiny palms, sweaty and trembling. The blood is rushing underneath the delicate skin, half her Master’s, power and sulfur, and half—salt.       Then, just like that, he leaves. She wonders if his offspring, too, realizes their Master is not coming back.       There are, as it turns out, two of the offspring. Not that it changes matters much. The one she was abandoned to does not yank her, spin her, throw her. He does not ever, ever draw her blade. A shaky little hand on her grip, he lifts her in the air, always in her scabbard, and goes through sword forms, one by one, until she trembles in his weak and stubborn clutch.       It is meaningless. Purposeless. At least, it’s endurable: a toy is better than a trinket. A toy is still a tool, after all.       He does it every day, too—for hours. And anyway, shouldn’t he and his copy be busy procreating further—or whatever it is younglings are supposed to do with their time? Though seeing their progenitor has left, perhaps it’s not at all surprising they should be out of line.       She amuses herself by finding other ways to tell the two of them apart. She knows hers by touch now, by the pressure of his fingertips, by the current of his breath and by the rate of his heartbeat.       The time drags on.       The day things change, she’s indoors. Too busy being angry at his copy, the offspring hasn’t brought her out to play. When arrives the wave of violence and ill intent, she thinks: there will be death here at last.       The heat is nothing to her who has been forged in hellfire. She wouldn't even notice terror in the air—it is Rebellion who revels in such things—unless, with mild surprise, she didn't recognize it, too. That day, she learns the call of his despair.       She comes, as bidden.       He draws her blade; the blade draws blood. It seems that, after all, the little weakling is to be her master. Very well. It won’t be for long, anyway.       He has forgotten all his forms. He's lacking strength, and speed, and experience. The one remotely useful skill—a trick of some sort, changing shape—is clearly wasted on him. He screams so hard the first time he does it, his insides twisting and rearranging themselves, that she rattles to the ground. For all that he is stronger, he is clumsy. For all that he is sturdy, he’s afraid. He’s tripping on his own tail, stumbling backwards, and in an instant a disgusting lump of primitive hunger pounces, ready to rip him apart—       Luckily, he didn’t drop her far. Luckily, he’s smart enough to let the stupid creature impale itself on her blade.       And it is lucky that he managed to summon her that Day. Who’s to tell how long she would have had to stay beneath the rubble—wait, and wait, and wait until a powerful creature came by? Now, when he dies, there is a decent chance his killer will just be good enough, and if they’re not, they’ll take her with. They won’t resist. Whoever kills them, then, will be a little better. She’ll make her way yet to somebody capable of waging war.       Meanwhile, she fights for her current wielder. The tougher his murderer is, the shorter her path will be, certainly. It is also a matter of principle. He’ll die—that is just fact, but the little she can do to delay it, she will.       She waits and waits. Yet Little Master lives.       Her sharpness is his only power—he knows it now, and knows it well. He starts aiming her better, going for the weak spots, wasting fewer moves. He tries tactics, these days. Allowing the creatures to tear each other's throats while their prey-not-to-be observes from aside.       He’s learnt another thing. Never, ever letting her go from his arms. He hunts for food—it’s with her blade; he tries to skin the catch, then chop it—she’s his tool; he eats the meat—she lies across his lap. He bathes, he climbs a tree, he nearly suffocates while crying, and all the while she’s there. In the dark, he wraps himself around her, still warm with the excitement of a recent kill, and goes to sleep. Just as the light breaks out, she shudders, anticipating enemies, and wakes him.       Little Master does unnecessary things, too. He tries to clean her, for one. She does not dull or dirty: she drinks the blood that touches her surface, always, without a single drop left. He must have noticed it, surely. If he were inattentive on top of everything else, then he would really, really, be dead. Still, every night before going to sleep, he lowers himself into a seiza and runs a cloth along her steel.       He talks, and seeing no one is around, his words must be for her. What those are, she couldn’t say, of course. Still, the action rings of respect, and that…       Her previous Master treated her as a skilled artisan would treat his intricate and oft-used tool. He never bothered with unnecessary things.       Every day there's new blood on her blade, and he still doesn’t die. She’s starting to get used to that.       That is, until one day, she tastes salt. He’s ventured into a human settlement, again. Sometimes it’s to steal—and sure, procuring items is an understandable motive, even though she doesn’t see why he can’t just kill and take what he needs; sometimes, she swears, it’s to do nothing at all. To wander around for hours and hours, with no discernible purpose in mind.       This time it is like that. The space is narrow: the echo of his footsteps returns shortly to her steel. The quiet rhythms of his body are lulling her into a hazy trance.       From behind, another set of footsteps appears. Meandering and clumsy, they try to mimic Little Master’s—and fail.       No power, she muses. Quite large, for a human, which it certainly is—but then again, almost anything is larger than Little Master… One way or another, though, it is no matter, for he has faced opponents twice as large and won. Now, he has noticed the tail: the current of his blood is now a hasty river, spicy with alarm.       It seems he’s not in the mood, though. She quells her disappointment as he quickens the pace. The footsteps quicken in turn.       The grip on her scabbard tightens, unexpectedly— he dives for the left, hoping, perhaps, to lose the pursuer, but when the footsteps follow after, he breaks into a run.       No other creature is around, not that she can sense it, and the space is no wider here—he runs with nothing to block his path. But he hasn’t had a meal today, and hasn’t rested well the night prior. The footsteps, thundering, catch up.       Her scabbard scratches stone as Little Master’s slammed into a wall. Now, it's time to fight, surely—       He doesn’t draw her blade. She cannot tell what's happening but he doesn’t, and she has lost any understanding of the situation, it seems.       Is he feeling particularly pathetic today or does he secretly wish to die? Because if that’s the case—       The human must be equally as idiotic as he is large. He’s doing something: she knows not what, and neither does she care, for Little Master’s heartbeat, rabbit-quick as it already was, starts going faster, faster, faster and—finally—he’s putting her to work.       The muscle she has pierced spasms once, then stops: oh, must have been a heart. The taste is… strange, and quite more salt than she’s accustomed to, but she wouldn’t necessarily mind drinking something of the kind again. There goes her first human.       Only the grip on her handle disappears, gone as a wisp of smoke. Stuck into a corpse, she goes down. Little Master, stumbling backwards, lets her.       …The gall he has to be disappointed. What did the child expect? What did he think aiming her, the sharpest sword there is, into an enemy’s chest would do? She has been little more than a toy, in the end. She has been entertainment. She has been right, about him, weak and only good for dying and—       The next several hours they spend apart. He doesn’t crawl away—his measly little heart is hiccuping nearby—as she half expects him to. He doesn’t try to take her, either, not for the longest time. He’s certainly fortunate: she’d turn his rosy hand a chunk of coal if he had. When he does reach out, at long last, she’s mute and cold. Falling asleep that night, he shivers; it serves him right.       But after that, sleep-visions start to plague his rest. In of itself, it’s nothing new: it’s been a semi-regular occurrence ever since the Day Things Changed. The whole ordeal’s very much bizarre, of course—the notion that a younging’s mind would trick itself while resting—is that a matter of his size, or race? At any rate, she would, as always, and especially tonight, ignore the folly, except tonight, tonight the visions leave him no reprieve.       Creatures circling him are laughing, the heat of a burning house is blazing, a human female is running away with a child.       He wakes, in panic, clutching her tighter than a hunter his elusive prey. Falls back asleep.       The creatures laughing, the heat blazing, the female running away.       Again, on a loop, neverending, and all the while she’s sticking out his chest. That’s the only reason, really, she privy to any of it: he imagines her there, in his fantasy, and so she is. Which is excruciatingly dull but that’s not the issue. The important part is: when he jumps awake for the final time, throughout the day he’s clumsier and slower still.       And she… unfortunately, she’s a little too used to Little Master not being dead.       She waits for the visions to stop, for waiting is apparently what she does best, discounting murder. They don’t. They attack consistently, with no respite but plenty of vigour, so much, in fact, that if she didn’t know better she’d say they were alive.       The issue is: she is a tool of carnage. The extent of her perception is bloodshed. Conjuring idyllic pictures, soothing sorrows and regrets, is not her function. Now, even if it were… How would she go about it? She has no eyes. No ears.       She sings.       The steel, now softly, gently aglow, fills with her memories, such as they are, and vibrates, vibrates…       She sings of void. The emptiness of the room with no death in it. The darkness, cool and thick, when the strange warmth has retreated for the night. The stillness of the air around her, and the tightness of her scabbard, constant, familiar, always there. What she manages to give him is nothing, but nothing is better than torture of a hullucinating mind.       And while his chest is heaving steadily, slowly, she wonders: does her sister sing to Little Master's Copy, too? Is she with him at all, or has someone else taken his life and place? It must be so. A creature so unbearably small yet so good at survival—her Little Master must be exceptional indeed.       Time barely passes, and he’s no longer little.       His grip is strong on her handle, and sure; his movements fast.       He has her cut the space in half, then time, then both at once. They travel. First, as far as his eye can take him, and then as far as his imagination. That, she learns, is far indeed. A strike three feet ahead, he imagines, a storm of blades and shards. A snail-pace world, he imagines, so frail and weak it’s cracking at the seems. An opponent so unworthy, he imagines, she won’t even need to show her blade. He imagines, and she makes it so.       With confused delight, she realizes she’ll never have to leave. He is the strongest one, or very soon will be. For her Master, who is no longer little, she’d fall an army in a single strike, if that were what he asked.       It isn't.       Master spends a lot of time indoors, where death is but a whispered promise brought by a word and not a blade. The air is thick with dust and knowledge there. And when they travel, he crosses half the world only to close himself in a similar room.       He associates with strange creatures, stranger humans. He kills them, more often than not, but first—he talks. He searches, and searches, and does not find. What, she cannot tell.       He finds his Copy, though. For a moment, before his anger rises, incandescent, boiling over, before the sudden rage takes upper hand, before, for but a moment, between one heartbeat and the next, she thinks: it can’t be that easy.       She will admit it’s pleasing, after such a long time, to hear her sister’s battle cry again.       But that’s just it. For every day, and every hour since Master and his Copy parted, she has been in his arms. She’s learnt, if not his thoughts, at least the way he thinks.       And the twisted knot of annoyed amusement and amused annoyance, of gutted affection and furious grief, which, so persistently distinct, unmistakably marked his Copy, has never once appeared in his waking mind—       No. But surely?..       The void she sang into his heart seems to have done more harm than good. She did always wonder if there was a reason a sleeping mind would trick itself. Perhaps, this is it.       She thinks it’s too easy—until the void in Master’s heart swells and explodes.       She never sings to him, after that.       Then, Temen-ni-gru is upon them, the vice enough to heat hellfire-tempered steel. It is too late.       She’s at his hip, as always, but he hardly reaches for her. He ventures to acquire a new weapon, inferior in every way: she feels its tug, a pathetic attempt to assert dominance, and ignores it altogether. She has bigger concerns. It’s almost like—It's like her Master doesn’t trust her anymore.       As if it’s not enough, the Copy is also there. Can’t he see? He’s like a catalyst, a fuse to the powder, he’s just making it worse! Once, twice they fight, against each other, then side by side (Master tosses her over, as though that means nothing at all), the battle leading them to—       She does not recognise it, not immediately. She had never felt the place with a conscious mind, after all. The ore for her blade was mined a day’s walk to the south, the miners trudging these bloody waters, under the same malicious sky, choking on the air which shimmered then, as now, with primordial strength. She’s Home.       Here, on the doorstep of the world, from whence came the power, she would end this fight for him, she would—       But Master does not draw her blade. He’s clutching Force Edge—who’s neither fight nor fighting’s end, but energy, untamed. He falls.       But maybe, maybe… it’s not that bad at all.       There’s nothing complicated here. No one to love, no one to cry over; not a human soul to make him feel. When he screams it’ll be with battle frenzy, and when he rejoices it’ll be at an enemy’s defeat. She will ensure the said defeat. If it’s for strength he hungers, for a challenge, she’ll steer him there where evil rules.       Master will get better. First, he will rest, and heal. She will no longer sing of void.       Before she knows it, Master is standing up, leaning bodily on her blade. The Evil has found them. And Master’s mind, his sharp and clever mind, is holding on to Force Edge.       She’d fall an army in a single strike, if that were what he asked. It isn’t.       She’s not there in the torture chamber. If only a river can regret rushing downhill, and if only a tree can regret growing tall but not deep, and if only the past can regret dissolving into the future, then she, forever and always, regrets not piercing the Evil’s rotten heart. She’s not with her Master. In the end, that's all there is to that.       They bring her remains to the Evil to gloat at, and revel, but the blade sits lifelessly in his hand, the power unusable, inaccessible until such a time that Master returns to her. They carry her away. She remains.       They put her on display in a vast room where creatures come and go, grovel and whine, but all it takes is one look for the lesser ones to go mad from her impotent rage. They hide her away. She remains.       They try to melt her and forge her anew but it would take a hellfire stoked with as many as she has killed. They throw her away. She remains.       She lies there, useless, for a very long time. Someone stumbles upon her and dies. Someone manages to survive long enough to carry her off somewhere else. Somewhere, someone grinds a part of her into dust. And yet, she remains.       And then…       Something is calling her. Something that feels like her Master.       The blood, strange, boiling, invigoratingly imperfect blood is trickling to the floor—drip-drop, drip-drop—so disproportionately staggering, deafening as an avalanche can never be. Be whole again, it demands. She trembles. The broken steel knits itself together; the rust evaporates as if it wasn’t there. Be strong. The threads of someone else’s power snap as easily as corroded iron, and melt—melt faster than flesh submerged in Phlegethon. Protect what’s mine. The force she couldn’t possibly resist even if she had a mind to pulls her closer, closer–and she’s in Master’s hands again.       …Or would be, if they were his.       The blood stains the skin: one quarter power and sulfur. Three quarters salt.       She’s deadly tired. It’s been so very, very long.       The arm, the knot of his power, accepts her easily but not hungrily. Dissolved along the energy veins, she sits there, doesn’t mingle and doesn’t stir.       A flash of anger brings her out. Master’s heir is battling his Copy.       One quarter sulfur. Three quarters salt.       He loses her, of course he does. Someone unfamiliar is holding her, not that she cares. She opens up a rift, then closes it. Copy’s hand is on her grip.       Half sulfur, half salt, and wrong, wrong, wrong.       He’s spinning her, throwing her, wielding her in a mockery of Master’s moves, a mimicry so insultingly flawless, one had to care first.       She used to hate him so. She’d hate him now, if she wasn’t indifferent anymore. Without glee nor dread, she thinks: if he’s the one to keep her, before the year’s end she’ll drive them both mad. Whether he understands it or not, he gives her back to Master’s heir.       That… that she can try.       A bottomless well of unused energy, brimming and quietly roiling, and though it’s stuffed inside and away, almost shamefully, there’s no hiding it—that’s what he is. Force Edge would have enjoyed him, she thinks. What has become of her, anyway? Of Rebellion? Those are the thoughts she thinks, sluggishly, rarely, for mostly she doesn’t think at all, just exists.       Her keeper doesn't know what she’s capable of, none of the forms, not techniques. When he fights, he’s a deadly patchwork of slashes, punches and kicks. The rare instances he reaches for her, it’s for raw power he wishes. She gives it to him, of course. A supplement. It might as well be her sort.       He treats her with impeccable care, like an artisan would an intricate tool—he just doesn’t want her. She might as well be any piece of metal. Let it rest at that. He’s not the one she longs for, either.       Oh, but the irony of it, if she could die, might just kill her dead. How he reminds her of the first master she had. How perfectly content she was to serve him, but when he’d gone she didn’t waste a thought. Today she thinks: her Master’s gone, and when it suddenly, painfully, rings true, she knows another thing. She will have wielders, holders, keepers, certainly. Her only Master is forever gone. If all those years ago she had made the last of ten thousand cuts a day, an hour later—would she be able to choose today?       So, they will keep each other as a consolation prize, Heir and her. But not for long.       Master returns for her. For her power. For the feeling of her in his hand. It’s bliss, even though it’s a terrible thing her Master is making her do. He has devised a clever plan, no doubt, but the blood doesn’t lie. He’s dying. He’s dying. Splitting him in two won’t help: the stronger part, the sulfur, may yet live to find a cure, but the other one…       She has been a terrible tool, hasn’t she? All these years, and she never understood.       Just as she separates salt from sulfur, she apologizes, silently, that she won’t have a chance to right that wrong. She has, after all, long been a part of him—she’s breaking herself, too. Her last, well-meaning but horribly insufficient, gift: just as she separates salt from sulfur, so she separates suffering from salt—without destruction, suppression or damage but with a chance to merge on his own terms. All so that maybe, hopefully, the man who will no longer be her Master, is just a little happier, however long he lives.       She should have known that her Master is so very wonderful at survival.       A blur.       A joyless crimson.       A dimming heart.       A caress, familiar on her handle (though neither hands, nor handle are familiar at all).       When she has made ten thousand cuts, and drank the blood of ten thousand enemies, she grows awake. And when she does, she’s Home and with her Master.       A sword is cutting through the air. She flies to block it, and the screech of metal, the mounting pressure, the firework of sparks—they tell it all. It’s both her sisters, two in one. The sword is not alive but soon it will be; she sings her own name, joyfully, so that one day there might be a reply.       Its wielder is Copy. Her Master takes a breath, falls back and, smiling, dives right in.       His heart is void of thought, and feeling, and desire, but it’s because their presence no longer hurts him, that he can safely choose to set them all aside.       With every parry and with every strike, each millimeter of his body, every strand of hair, resonates in her as he moves to the beat of her clashing steel. He’s clear and confident aggression. He’s perfect and he’s free.       They are perfect: him, her, and the dance of perpetual violence.       A perfect mistake.       She’s made of ancient steel and forged in hellfire. She is a tool of carnage, and carnage is her goal. Master is something other, and carnage is a means to an end. Her manner of existence, for him, is torture.       She knows, at last, they’re not the same. Perhaps she hasn’t been the best of tools, but Master is alive and well, and she’ll give him another gift because she can.       That is why, when Master has her open a rift, his brother disappearing on the other side, she doesn’t close it right away.       Somewhere, a demon lord thirsts for but a fraction of this power. Somewhere, a star burns out. Somewhere, a little boy cries himself to sleep.       She holds the rift.       Her body warms. Master’s mind fills with bitterness, his muscles lock in stubborn denial. He imagines her close the rift.       She does not.       Yamato, he furiously whispers, and it sounds like the judgment, the void and the end.       She hasn’t been the best of tools but she’s been loyal, and so here comes her greatest gift: she disobeys.       At last, her Master follows.       The old unpleasant warmth is back on her scabbard, too meek and yet not meek enough all at once. For her Master, she will learn to love that deathless space.