Undated
Tale of Forsaken Soils, First Harvest

Something's eating the bayou. I must lead the Grounded in the hunt for its mouth.

The smell of its drool is in the air like a dew that clings to the fences, the trees, the trigger of a gun. I can feel its hunger. It's the same hunger I felt when eating the berries that grew from my mother's ribs, the turnips that bulged from her hips beneath the soft soil.

I wonder if she felt me eating her, like I feel the air eating me.

I followed the odor across the swamps to a clearing. The air quivered from whatever had uprooted the weeds and grass scoured the soil.

A wonderful silence was broken by a bundle of spines rising from the earth.

Some living altar wriggled from the ground with wet quills. It grew and heaved with breath from its many holes and dens. Barnacles sputtered, ripe with the stench of Rotjaw. At my feet, ash began to rise.

A man crawled out of the tall grass, steam wafting from his back.

"Need help getting off the ground?" I asked.

"No," he replied. "I'm afraid I'll never get to touch it again."

His skin ashed away. The altar breathed him in one gasp at a time.

"You're Mr. Chary, right?" I said. "Wish I'd met you sooner, so I could tell you some secrets are best left alone."

"Some secrets must come to know of me, no matter the cost." He spat tar, disappeared more.

"Does a fox know the name of the rabbit it eats?" I asked. "Do you think it wonders what the rabbit feels?"

He laughed. He laughed himself away and out into some other world. Not dead or even afraid of death, judging from the echoes he left behind. He'd stay a rabbit hunting foxes until the day he breathed his last.

Almanac of the Swarm
First Comb

Listen, little daughter, this tale will nest an egg inside your heart. Nurture it. Bless it with rotten mint and the bones of your enemies. You will need it hatched to go where I have gone.

Only then will I hold you and say that you are beautiful. Only if you ascend with me will I call you mine.

***Page Torn, Pasted with Black Honey to 1895 Almanac***

At the start of our ascension, we were a colony without direction. Hornets infiltrated our hive and like we should have, we attacked as one. But somewhere along the line, we lost sight of our true purpose: to ascend to become the purest of vessels of the Sculptor's power, the Targets, the Corrupted.

After Sofia's blood-bolt landed true on the Murmurstone, it yawned open. Rift light poured from the stone's mouth--blue--in curtains--divine. The first stage of our ascension was at hand. The Death Pact fled; appendages from our Lord erupted as altars from cracks in the soil.

Four Hunters more blessed by the Sculptor than we rose with them--bloated--alive--not alive. Four Drowned angels, full of mud. We shot and fired and bombed and pushed, but they paired off. They pushed back with filthy weapons and insects I would've held so close to me, so precious and holy, but they sacrificed them.

They shall not be forgiven. To see them set my heart on fire. It made me doubt my vows, and so I crushed my heart to pull the trigger of my gun and believe once more.

One of our Brothers leapt from an altar onto the Murmurstone, dynamite in his teeth. The explosion stilled the air, and the stone shrieked, opening up like a jaw before it caught one of our Sisters, diving away with her into the soil. It ripped her apart, smearing a long red line as it went.

I can feel it. Some queen is ready to descend from the fog and lay her larva with a quiet thorax. How I wish to go up such soft flesh and palpitate it like her. How I want to be the first thing seen by what's born from that womb.

How I wish I could birth anything other than a human.

Ink of Papyrus Scroll
Found at (illegible) Collection

Breathe water. Gulp tar. Pump mud through your heart, if you have one still.

Never was a fan of sunshine. The cloud cover is the only thing keeping me from losing my--

--Cold and violent, the Land of the Dead is with you. Let its tides taste your thoughts. Cradle your ambitions, your fingers as it strangles life from the living--

One moment, I'm back in the bayou, finding what I was sent here for. Then my sight splits in two. In four. In numbers I don't have the mind to count anymore. Like that damn Witch told us, the Land of the Dead has sown its Desolation here.

Honestly, I always hated the bayou. Was almost happy to see it--

--Sink. Sink so far it feels like rising. At the bottom of the world is the sky, where our Moon makes her knives so sharp they--

Was almost happy to see it dying.
Found the Helmsman with two Smugglers. Still had that awful metal around his face. When he saw us, he tried to shoot me with an empty gun.
"What are you sailors more afraid of?" I asked. "Ghosts, or captains?"

Laffite stepped out to join me. The Helmsman ran, but--

--Stab. Bite. Their eyes, remove them. The things they've seen, remove them. Feed them to the many thousand mouths that gasp, swallow, funnel to the Land--

I came to my senses holding one of the Smugglers' heads, and an arm too. Oh well. The Witch told us this might happen. That even if our Drowned-selves lost control sometimes, we were doing the right thing.

Every blessing rides on the back of a curse--

--every shadow laughs on the back side of blood.

Undated
Tale of Forsaken Soils, Second Harvest

My introduction to the Drowned was seeing The Delphine's captain and the Rat rip two Hunters in half.

At first, I'd judged the amount of blood in the air as signs of Rotjaw. I was wrong.

Death seemed the only conversation to be had with these Drowned creatures, but a stranger's hand stayed my rifle, tipping the barrel down. When I looked up, there stood a man in a suit with long coat tails.

He offered me a cup of steaming tea. "May we speak somewhere less...ghastly?"

He had my respect for sneaking so quietly through the bramble, so I obliged. We went to a train car made into a small outpost. The man smelled of earthen depths that should never be touched, covered up with perfume. He was an animal if animals sought to mate with money.

"Pretty country down here," he said.

I eyed my tea, was afraid to drink it.

"Now, I know Finch departed this world with somewhat of a shaky reputation," he went on. "But the operation you Hunters are set upon extends far and wide. So, I've come down to offer assurances. Bounties will still be paid. The parties I represent would hate for harvesting to diminish."

"I don't care about money, I care about keeping the soil free of curses. These Drowned poison it with altars, with ash."

"Ah yes," he said. "These Drowned folks. I beg you to speak with them. Show compassion, even." "They rip Hunters in half for fun," I replied.

"Did you consider they may be horrified by that?" He rolled a Bounty Token across his knuckles.

"Like you are horrified of losing money?" I asked.

"No," he said, inhaling steam. "More like the horror your mother felt when you ate the berries from her ribs. When you chewed the turnips bulging from her hips beneath that soft, soft soil.

Almanac of the Swarm
Second Comb

When you were a baby, I placed you in a beehive. The bees did not sting you, but you cried and soiled yourself. Even then the bees forgave you--crawled down your throat to let you know--but you couldn't accept their forgiveness. I am earning that forgiveness for you. Everything I do is for you.

***Page Torn, Pasted with Black Honey to 1895 Almanac***

Butcher's Cleaver failed us. Brothers and Sisters gathered at the sawmill for his sentencing. The Cowl had bound the Cleaver to the base of a log flume.

We were forbidden to chant. We were instructed to think.

"I am thankful for our leader bringing us together," the Cowl said. "But I am ashamed of his failure in securing the Murmurstone's Graven Path--the passage to our Lords."

A Brother hooted. A Sister slid a katana through his throat.

At the flume top, Morrigan and Midian poured out a large trough. Beetles glistened in torchlight as they rushed in a black flash of abdomens. I spooned blood honey onto Butcher's Cleaver, and it drew in the swarm to envelop him.

The sounds of insect ecstasy were broken by the crack of a rifle. The Cowl worked the action of his Krag, and another shot rang out. The swarm of beetles took each bullet, shredding in a spray of mandibles--feelers--exoskeletons.

"We must imagine a new kind of violence," the Cowl continued. "The way one creature does not stop eating another until its body is gone."

More shots. More holy carnage. More beetles pouring down the flume to replace their fallen.

"See how they move? No leaders, no weak points, just purpose. Pure and noble."

We listened to the Cleaver's muffled squeals as the beetles continued to feast on the honey, on him.

"We shall become like the swarm," he concluded. "Find your own way. Deceive. Lie. Incinerate. Surge until the Graven Path is found. If you fail, the other Pacts will ascend. Punishment is all that will await you."

Ink of Papyrus Scroll
Found at (illegible) Collection

--Let us drink from the fountain of death. Here's to the Hunter. Here's to--

The Kid whistled as he dug. Water poured from a hole in his cheek. Thirteenth Mate tracked some Demented who were rounding up unpledged Hunters with ropes.

"Try digging quietly," I told him. "Like the captain."

We'd lifted a map from the Helmsman's friends. All the Smugglers' weapons were cached, ripe for the pickin'.

"Do you still see it?" The Kid gurgled, digging out more weapons.
"What you mean--"

--You can never unsee the Mound. It towers. Always looms. Runs the rain silver. Blows ash that seeps through worlds. Its weight is the weight that makes all things sink--

"Oh. You mean that Altar Mound as tall as a mountain? Yeah, I still see it. Gonna be seeing it forever, I bet."

Captain and the Kid handed me guns and dynamite bundles. The weapons were mud-caked. Holding them was the first time I realized I'd never be clean again.

"Kid, you ever just want to give up?" I asked without meaning to.

"Sure, 'course I do," he said. "Then I remember we're lucky."

What a brat. A brat with enthusiasm. Guess I admired him for that. He was right, we could have been trapped in the Land of the Dead's Desolation. Turned into strange statues. Devoured alive by myths we never heard of, which now roamed the dead swamps.

Thirteenth Mate fired off a flare. The other Pacts had found us. It was time to drag all our fates underwater to drown hand in hand.

Undated
Tale of Forsaken Soils, Third Harvest

The four Drowned reeked. Dead fish smell misted out their mouths as they panted. They huddled in shame around weapons and a weeping altar. I felt bad for them.

I stood with the other Pacts who were gathered. This was more people than I'd ever seen before. Felis and her Primal friends, sad folks from the Death Pact, my fellow Grounded and even Smugglers showed up.

With all our guns drawn, the Drowned spoke first.

"Place your ear to the earth," they said. "Listen."

I was the only one to do as they said. Ear to the ground, I heard many hearts beating. They beat deep and rooted. I didn't need to listen long to know one of them was mine.

"The Sculptor's gifts aren't free," the Drowned Rat told me. "Every time you touch an altar, something is taken from you. A knowing. A truth. It has grown in the Land of the Dead, returned with teeth to eat us all." She shot the altar and it screeched.

"That's lunacy," Felis said. I hushed her.

"Soon you'll not belong to yourself anymore," the Thirteenth Mate said. "The blood in your body will marble. You'll be trapped inside the worst thing you've ever done, and the Sculptor will feed on it. It'll swallow this place whole."

"Doesn't matter," the Drowned Rat said. "We're being collected, eaten--here's the point. If you want to stay yourselves, follow us. Or don't. We all got our own problems."

"Go where?" a strange solo Hunter asked. I smelled a sickly honey behind her mask of branches. She scribbled notes in a large almanac.

"Down in Kingsnake Mine, there is a passage made by the Murmurstone: the Graven Path. We'll make for it at dawn."

Tears stained my mask. I'd heard more than my own heart in the ground. I heard my family's. I heard a last chance to say goodbye to them.

Almanac of the Swarm
Third Comb

The only way to split my soul was to have you. With you, I could feel twice as much. See twice as far. You were to be a queen in a queen-less land. You were to be a miracle of a daughter, not a curse.

***Page Torn, Pasted with Black Honey to 1895 Almanac***

We Demented got to the mine first and uncovered the passage. The Cowl was pleased--he spared me. My Brothers and Sisters had gathered plenty of others to bless the Graven Path for our ceremony.

"Bleed the path wider for us," he commanded.

Deep underground, all sounds were amplified. Five unpledged Hunters were pinned by lances in a circle around the rift passage. Their blood leaked into the Graven Path and made it pulse with waters from the Land of the Dead. We tossed Mr. Chary's equipment in--knives--brackets--jars of organs--more knives and restraints. The hole widened.

"We've worshiped our Targets as devotees, acolytes," the Cowl told us. "But perhaps it is the Targets who worship us. We will seek them out. It is time to give them our blessings."

We forced groups of unpledged through the Graven Path and stormed forth in their wake. A thousand ship bells rang, and through their echoes we sank.

At the Graven Path's end, I slid into a fountain. In the distance, a great Mound loomed, spiraled and kinked and made by giants of insect-kind. Lightning flashed, and monsters hunched and furrowed in the distant mists.

Legends unknown blocked me from this throne. So a legend myself I set to become.

Ink of Papyrus Scroll
Found at (illegible) Collection

Those Demented breached the Graven Path, went through before us. The Drowned and I felt it in our lungs when it happened. We puked. It hurt us. It took everything we had to gather our supplies and lead just a handful of Pact members to Kingsnake Mine. It wasn't much, but it'd have to do.

We put the five Hunters impaled around the Path out of their misery. I asked for their names before we passed through, but the insane ringing of ship bells cleared them from my mind. We got spat out, and the swampland mazes of the Land of the Dead stretched before us. Every gooseneck bend and turn changed, distorted. Each step of the way, some new and horrible sculpture blocked our path.

The first statue was a man making a fire. Then a herd of white bison, followed by a one-legged woman nailed to a cypress tree. In a switchback of reeds, a priest screamed, frozen in white marble flames. A Meathead impaled a man against the beam of some ceiling that wasn't there. Another man with a katana held back, ready to swing.

We stopped at the statue of a train bent over a hill. Marching out of it were stone children holding guns. A moon-white Sheriff Hardin pointed them towards the Mound.

"What are all these statues?" Daughter of Decay asked.

"They're sculptures. Stories. Legends and tales brought here by the Murmurstone," I told her.

"Why?" the Kid asked. "What's the point in having all these stories?"

He placed his hand on one of the children's guns, opened his mouth to swallow the rain.

"They've come here," I told him, "so that the Sculptor can figure out how all of 'em end."

Undated
Tale of Forsaken Soils, Fourth Harvest

Down here, we were fruit that didn't need the sun to grow. No thirst, no hunger. Overhead was a Moon with a rotten black scar like a goat's eye. Ash drifted up from the dead land and gathered there in piles. I heard echoes of Mr. Chary laughing in its soot. It sounded like he was fighting the Moon.

A great Mound rose from the south. When the fog cleared it seemed to be a mountain, a tower, a volcano and insect nest all in one. We climbed up a marsh bank for a better view and came across a ship, or the skeleton of one. It looked brittle, like a dandelion, ready to fall apart if you made a wish and blew on it.

"Welcome to the Delphine's Ghost, the Drowned Rat said.

We boarded. She said this ship began the story we were in. Sculptures were all over the boat. A statue of the captain jumping over the railing. An eyeless man at the ship's wheel. Dead statues grew all over the deck, and in the hold was a Rotjaw statue absorbing a stone woman.

"Get on, Laffite," the Drowned Kid said, and pulled him in. The captain's arm burst into black fire when he crossed the threshold. The boat didn't want him on board. He stood ashamed on the shore and watched us leave.

The paddle wheel groaned on its own, and the rudder twitched like a horse tail. This boat needed no captain. It steered itself toward the Mound and steamed ahead. Sculptures were everywhere: an old soldier with his legs sawn off and a bird on his shoulder, someone trapped underwater in a rope nest weighed down by cannonballs. We almost sunk the ship on the statue of a woman split open from giving birth to a Meathead.

I knew somewhere out there was a sculpture of me. I felt myself growing there in stone. I felt shadows stalking me. They were waiting for me to find myself.

Almanac of the Swarm
Fourth Comb

The first time I was stung, I cried with joy. The blessing of the stinger is holy. The spreading of venom in blood makes openings in your soul. From there our Lord's thoughts emerge. But some thoughts you must be wary of, child. Some thoughts must be killed before they kill you.

***Page Torn, Pasted with Black Honey to 1895 Almanac***

We pushed groups of unpledged Hunters in front of us, blindfolded and tied to ropes. We shot them if they slowed. The landscape reacted to our swarm--Armoreds hulked from the fog--sheared limbs--the air filled with Hive screeches--and we fired and impaled and reveled in the mud and bile we spilled.

Statues of monsters forgotten by books and time blocked our way: herds of decayed horses frozen mid-gallop, fleeing a skeletal giant--a tree-high horse to rule all horses, its ribs split open and sucking in the old soldiers and the equine alike to mash them with its bones.

The closer we came to the Mound, the more deranged the fights became. Our crusade pushed through herds of leeches and waves of Grunts that set off old ship mines buried in the mud. Every hunk of shell lodged in our flesh only affirmed our vows. Bite wounds and poisoned spines became the language of our story.

We were chosen to rule over this endless place--chosen we had to be chosen. We would prove it at the Mound under a dying moon.

Ink of Papyrus Scroll
Found at (illegible) Collection

--Myths and curses from Desolation's past roam under an injured Moon. Fables cannot die. Fables can only seek the blood of those who made them.--

Got pinned in a ravine. Something huge came for the Delphine's Ghost, seemed to give everyone a different vision.

Felis called it a landslide full of bones. Kid thought it was a giant serpent. That Worm Bite fella saw it to be a legion of knights with tombstones for heads.

I called it something to shoot, and shoot it to sunken hell we did.

Each time some new horror struck at the ship, the landscape closed up and trapped us. We shot and stabbed our way through it all. And at the ever-wandering center of the Land of the Dead, we found her: the creatore of us four Drowned.

That white-haired Witch who calls herself Lynch.

She sat on a sculpture of Rotjaw. In the gator's mouth, that Gar woman was nestled with a little girl on the tongue. They held a bundle of wilted lilies between 'em and laid fast asleep in the cradle of teeth.

"Strange sitting place you got there," I told her.

"--It's a promise I've kept,--" Lynch said. Her voice still spoke only in my head, just as always.

"Great," I told her, jumping off the bow. "You promised a plan if we brought the Pacts. Give it now."

"--The Lord of the Dead is anxious. He knows I am to win our wager.--"

A walkway of pillars and columns stretched away from us. There stood the Lord of the Dead. Was hard to make out its shape. Something like a man stabbed with a thousand knives. Maybe just some unnamed thing you miss every time you blink.

"Let's hear it. The bet, the plan."

"--Erase the bayou's history. Wash clean its transgressions and sins. I've channeled all I could manage into you four. Drain the rest from the Mound, and your Drowning will end.--"

"Sounds like a trap. What'll you gain from it?"

Lynch looked to the sky. Flicked a knife at the Moon.

"--I will have a mouth as wide as the Sculptor. I will learn to hunt as it hunts, and take what it cannot.--"

Undated
Tale of Forsaken Soils, Fifth Harvest

I made the ship stop, in a pale glade where a statue of myself stood. It was of me as a little girl, sowing seeds into my mother's fingers. Sculpted bits of my cousins, siblings, aunts and uncles stuck through the soil too. I stood a minute, a year, ten dozen seasons of fog.

"I came all this way," I finally said, "to share my harvest with you."

I shot a hole in my statue. It bled over the garden. If I had tasted of them, it was only fair for them to taste of me. My life was theirs too. The shadows following me bowed in respect.

Weeds must be pulled with a cold heart, and so we pushed onward to the Mound.

We crept up on the Demented horde as they crashed upon the Mound's slope in horrible shrieks and waves. The entrance to the Mound's center was barred by a goliath gate of beetle wings. We wouldn't be able to pass through the elytra shells sunk into the rock. The Demented pounded upon the barricade and fought off every terror the bayou has ever known as rows of Meatheads pushed them into the channel, piled upon them to drown.

Everyone but the Drowned jumped ship and left to fight off the monsters and Demented, but the shadows which had followed me drew in close. I crept in their shade as they guided me through body piles and rows of traps.

I ducked, waited. Shot who and what I could.

The shadows pointed to a gathering of Immolators at the gate. One bullet was all I needed. They erupted in a chain-inferno and set the gate aflame, revealing it to be alive. Pus and insect blood hissed from the cracks in the wings, and the Delphine's Ghost churned ahead and rammed the injured gate.

The entry tore open, and a tremor shook the Mound. Hosts of shadows escaped from within the gate, free to roam whatever land they chose.

But my shadows stayed with me. For there was still a season of harvest my family wished to guide me through.

Almanac of the Swarm
Fifth Comb

Little one, I've seen the hive where all souls converge. Sky high and stretched with star larvae. Lords quivered from those constellations and combs. Their eyes wept with all the love we waste, and there--in the black rain--I tasted all I've wasted on you.

When I recall the flavor and spice of it, I almost remember how to forgive you for leaving me.

***Page Torn, Pasted with Black Honey to 1895 Almanac***

Cracks from the steamship's impact broke open the slope of the Mound. Inside were layers upon layers of the Target's pupae. They spilled out--goo slick--tarnished and black in the fertilizer of banishment. My Demented guzzled in their rawness. They slurped and burrowed into the pulsing nursery until they were out of sight.

I didn't join them. They ignored the Delphine's Ghost but the ship's journey had not ended. It struggled against wind and the ichor gushing out the gate, so I boarded in secret. I knew there was a greater miracle to behold beyond these gestating Targets, and so I left my kin behind to journey into the Mound.

Only the Drowned were left aboard the ship, dead quiet and still.

The paddle churned for years, decades.

Sculpted combs spiraled along the walls into the sky. Each glowed with stars--eggs--larvae--promises from beyond.

After an eternity, we beached onto an island at the core. Every altar ever made was stacking in a maddening pile. To see it in Dark Sight was to stare at the sun. At the pile's peak was a platform for a statue, but it was empty.

I abandoned ship, dodging gunfire from the Drowned until at last I climbed upon the platform and made myself a legend above all others. A black rain poured from the high combs. I opened my mouth to taste it.

As the first drop touched my tongue, I felt the rumbling of a queen about to descend.

Energy flowed from the altars and swirled overhead. The walls burst and caved. An egg spiracle winded down from the center of the rift storm and the fools fired their guns, their lances, tossed flaming jars and explosives that lit the cavern. All useless.

I was to witness the molting of our Desolation's Lord. I was to be a child to it, the kind of child my daughter was never brave enough to be.

Ink of Papyrus Scroll
Found at (illegible) Collection

Lynch lied. Figured as much. She meant to feed us to this thing being hatched, this monster born of Desolation. I fired all my rounds anyhow, tossed some Depth Markers for fun. Then I smelled a life bursting into flames.

Laffite finally made it to us. Came on an old rowboat. Rowed so hard one of his hands fell off.

He flopped aboard and the Delphine's Ghost blew its whistle in disgust. Whatever long-sowed punishment he earned scorched him with blue heat, orange embers. He looked ashamed and at peace at the same time.

This is what atonement must be, I thought. Don't think I'll ever seek it out myself.

He burned and crawled into the engine room to open the boiler. Inside was a navigator's hell no artist could describe. Whatever its shape, he accepted it. Hugged it, even.

Lightning and smoke roared from the smokestack. We abandoned ship as the Delphine's Ghost said goodbye to the Land of the Dead and the Land of the Living, and banished as a summer thundercloud rising around the madness that throbbed from above. Her bow crashed upon the hatchling and tore open its gulping throat. Black steam ballooned its gut and burst. Rest of our dynamite went off, and if this thing had a mind, it was blown apart with the force of a volcano.

--Your sins may be forgiven, though you will carry them always. May their scars live on forever. May you live to feel the unfeelable.--

Storm bolts struck the altars, and we heard every statue across the land shatter. The Graven Path flooded in on a surge of light. Brain chunks glowed in constellations upon the walls, think some last thought. The Path spread a cover between us and Desolation and splashed over the cave. It drank us in. Spat us out all across the bayou, in trees, creeks, and on roofs and walkways.

Wherever our stories end, it wasn't down there.

Lynch said we four Drowned hold all the bayou's sins now. I don't feel much different than before though. Rain feels cool. Bullets cause pain, and pain reminds me I'm alive, or alive enough. A mosquito finds the sunlight warm on my cheek and drinks. I wonder what desolate plain it feels itself upon as the shadow of my hand covers it.

I wonder if I'll be fast enough to pull my gun when that shadow comes for me.

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