The Endless Solvent

The transformation took hours. Henri nearly passed out at the height of the pain and felt himself driven nearly to lunacy. For a wild minute, he thought of fishing out the small pen knife in his boot and ending it with a slash at his throat. But for most of the painful moments, he was unable to move.

Slowly the pain ebbed back to itching. The room was dimly lit by a single lantern on the table. The witch was still there, calmly watching him - he wasn’t sure if she moved. She must have as the lantern wasn’t there previously. Groaning, he forced his muscles to relax, then to orient himself so he could look down at his shaking body. From what he could tell in the lantern light, his skin had turned strangely more smooth. When he pushed himself up into a sitting position, his arms felt strange and heavy, as if they didn’t fit him very well.

“What have you done to me?” he was finally able to rasp out. His voice sounded deeper, distorted. It was like a whole other person was speaking.

“I didn’t do anything to you, I oversaw a transaction,” the witch said softly. “You now have the ability to do what you wish to do.”

Henri took a deep breath. His skin was finally starting to feel normal again, the itching ebbing away. He got to his feet and was briefly disoriented to find himself slightly taller. His clothes poorly fit him with the hem of his pants reaching mid-shin; his previously loose tunic now tight across his shoulders. He clenched his hands into fists and felt it.

The wind whooshed into the witch’s house. The wind chime crashed together harshly - the previously pleasant tinkling now changed to brash, jagged clangs. He thought the dreadful itching lingered but in fact the itching was no longer on his skin: it clawed at his soul, calling him to action.

Henri took off into the night without saying anything more to the damned witch. He found his steps light and furious as if the wind itself carried him on its back. The air howled through the trees as he ran through the forest, the darkness not hindering him in the slightest. The dim moonlight was enough for him and he instinctively knew he was to head north. The energy in his limbs clamored to be let out and he shot through the trees at an incredible speed.

The soldiers didn’t see him coming in the darkness. Any human would need a lantern of some sort to light the way - at night, such a lantern would be spotted before anyone could approach the camp. But Henri ran into their camp in pitch darkness. In the flickering light of the campfires, Henri met with the terrified faces of Sekrelli soldiers and murdered each and every one of them.

He needed the strength to break their necks with his hands - he received it. He wanted to feel the blood on his fingers - his nails grew into dark curved claws. He screamed at the night sky for vengeance and his face stretched and morphed into something that the Sekrelli soldiers didn’t seem to recognize. No longer did they look at him with apathy or cruelty, but they ran. How dare they run! How dare they not face him after everything they’ve done!

Henri breathed in the rage and killed the next man more cruelly than the last. More blood, more gore filled his hands. The itch at his soul burned at him to do more. Kill more. These dirt-eating corpse-fuckers needed to be purged from existence. He felt the itch so deeply that tears streamed down his misshapen face as hysteria consumed his mind and he found himself mindlessly punching the caved in face of the last soldier he caught running into the forest.

Shards of raw bone splintered out of a splatter of cranial matter. Henri staggered away from it, turned and vomited onto the forest floor. He walked shakily away from the decimated camp and headed back to the witch on the top of the hill. There was no more sound in the camp save for the crackle of a dying fire and the sluggish steps of his feet on the forest floor. No birds, no wind, no life.

When he reached the clearing of where the house was supposed to be, he found no house there. It was just a bare hill with long grass growing on it barely lit by the moonlight overhead. Not a single strange statue could be found either.

The witch on top of the hill had disappeared.

—

Eight years later

Henri of Alton slumped in his seat and peered up from under his wide-brimmed hat at the mage pacing on the other side of the campfire. It’s the mage’s third visit to him. He had tried to keep his whereabouts a secret, but it seems like the mage’s circle had bribed a few villagers from Ogith to lead them to him. He’s tried to act nonchalant about his presence, hoping apathy would dissuade his return - it was obviously not working.

He eyed the woman standing a little ways off. Shay was almost hiding behind a tree, nervously fidgeting with the basket handle in her hands. She occasionally dropped off food for him during the months he spent near Ogith. Henri couldn’t see anyone bribing Shay, so it must have been her father or another village elder who convinced her to lead the mage to him.

“You must reconsider,” the mage continued his lecture. “Your talents should be optimized in a strategic way and the mages of the circle have the best perspectives to know where that is. Sure you see the sense in joining us for that reason?”

The irony of the situation was not lost on Henri. He’s thought of the witch every day since that cursed day - today he wondered if she felt the way he did with the mage demanding his fealty to a circle of mages that would not look at Alton or Ogith as anything more than dots on a map. She had called it ‘games with morality’.

“You have protected your village and neighboring villages well. You are a hero,” the mage pressed on. He was laying on the compliments thick today. “Think of how much more good you can do in the front lines of the war, how much more of a hero you could become. This is your fate calling.”

Henri gave a dry laugh, his voice coming out raspy and grating. Almost nothing about him was like what it was before the transformation. “You know nothing of fate, mage,” he spat.

“I know of the consequences of losing this war,” the mage said, voice rising heatedly. “You obviously love this village. What would you do if the war was lost and this village suffered with the rest of the country? You must answer the call to war, Henri, especially with the gift given to you.”

Henri rose to his feet. He towered over the mage (who wasn’t a small man by any means) and pulled his hat off his head to reveal his malformed face in all its glory. The mage recoiled. His skin was smooth, grayish and had a kind of abnormal elasticity to it. It was able to heal over at an astounding rate, except it left behind coarse scars. The characteristic of his strange skin allowed for the bones in his body to grow and contract, except the ones in his face always stretched the skin beyond their limits. Frequent tears mangled his face beyond recognition.

“I need not answer any of your calls, mage,” Henri gritted out. The fury was taking shape and pulling his face into its monstrous shape. He had seen himself in the reflection of water once and became revolted. His nose and mouth jutted out almost like a snout, his teeth grew from the gums and shone with blood. Bone spiked out from his cheekbones and temples. The mage watched as his face tore to reveal the monster within. “Because if the Sekrelli come here, I will kill them as I have for all these years. If they send more people, I will kill more people. If your war is lost and more soldiers come, I will kill them all the same.”

“And what of the rest of the country?” the mage demanded. He continued to sound indignant despite trembling with fear. “What of the people outside of this village?”

“Fuck them,” Henri breathed. The mage’s eyes widened. “Fuck them to hell. Let me ask you, mage. Where were you when Alton burned eight years ago? Where was the circle of mages when we needed them the most?”

The mage was silent, his face pale as he struggled not to shake.

“Where was the love for your country when my neighbors died at the hands of a wandering Sekrelli army?” Henri roared. “The war was lost to me back then, mage. Back when I buried countless bodies of people I knew, when you and yours turned a deaf ear to our pleas. I do not need to answer your call to war because I will defend the people here. That is the purpose of my talents.”

A silence fell, only the lonely crackle of the campfire making noise. Henri found that ever since his transformation he’s heard less birds. Perhaps the occasional screech of a hawk far away but that was it. Silence followed him around for eight years. The mage turned and marched back to Ogith without another word to him. Henri noticed Shay lingered, stalling as if she had something to say to him. But she met his gaze and she paled at his appearance and she scampered off after the mage.

It was all the same to him. She should not be out around the forest anyway. After months of bringing him food, she had the right to see what he really looked like. Henri sat back down on his seat, feeling his body reassembling back to the less horrible form. He irritably threw another piece of firewood into the campfire, trying not to think of Shay’s drawn, terrified expression.

The mage returned the very next day. Henri didn’t allow him the chance to explain and immediately grew out his claws and had the man’s throat in his grip. The mage was alone this time. It would be all the easier to end him without Shay watching.

“I understand the hypocrisy of my actions,” the mage quickly said. Henri could feel his throat bob as the mage swallowed nervously. “But I feel that you, of all people, understand my predicament. My desperation. So I ask for your forgiveness and patience with me as I was tasked to parlay with you and I have an obligation to my duty, even if it costs me my life.”

Henri wordlessly studied the mage.

“If I cannot appeal to your patriotism, then perhaps you would be willing to bargain?” The mage took his silence as an invitation to continue. “That is something you’re familiar with. The Head Mage is willing to give you whatever you require as long as you help us fight.”

Irony of the situation indeed. “What can your Head Mage possibly offer me?” Henri said quietly.

“Perhaps,” the mage whispered nervously, licking his lips. “The whereabouts of the Part that… changed you?”

“What do you mean ‘Part’?”

“It’s the being that the people here call a witch,” the mage said. Henri’s eyes widened. “We refer to her and her brethren as the Parts. We’re not quite sure which Part you made a deal with - “

“Your Head Mage knows where she is?” Henri demanded.

Henri could feel the fear ebb away from the mage still captured in his clawed hand. The man visibly steeled himself and met his gaze. “Yes. But if you wish to speak with him, you must answer our summons to war.”

Henri snorted. The sound seemed to evaporate whatever confidence the mage scraped up. He had sought out the witch on the hill - obsessively during his first year of transformation but only infrequently now. Years ago he had come to the conclusion that the witch was done with him and had moved on to a place where he cannot reach her. She was a being beyond the control of any man, only beholden to some power unknown to them.

“I refuse your offer,” Henri said. He retracted his claws and returned to his seat by the fire.

“Then I will return with another. And another.” The mage straightened. “And another until - “

“Until you make me an offer I cannot refuse?” Henri smiled without humor, feeling his face stiffly move with the expression. “I apologize, I have already accepted one of those long ago. I’m afraid I’ve had my fill.”

The mage opened his mouth to protest again but Henri stopped him with a gesture.

“No more, mage. The next time you show your face to me I will not give you the courtesy of listening to you anymore. I suggest you find another beast to fight your war for you. It’ll be a better use of our time.”

—

A few months later

As the mage foretold, more Sekrelli soldiers came to their lands. Henri was unsure if it was because of the ongoing war, or if the war was lost. But as he had promised, it mattered not because he prowled the forest surrounding the villages and defended them.

The Sekrelli had learned the area was dangerous for them and avoided them for the most part. How would Sekrelli parents tell the tale to their children? Don’t wander into the woods or the monster of Alton would come and hunt you down. Although some groups seem to scoff at the notion - the Sekrelli see the small villages as primitive and backwater, the tales of a monster in the forest as superstition. So the soldiers would infringe on their land and Henri would hunt them down.

But that evening was different. The sounds of movement didn’t come from outside the forests he protected but from the direction of Ogith. Henri was silent as he scaled a tree to hide in the dark shadows of leaves and branches and looked down at a handful of villagers pulling a cart eastwards into the forest. He spotted Shay and her father both carrying sizable packs on their backs and travel cloaks around their shoulders.

The men in the group cast fearful glances into the growing shadows of the forest while the women huddled near the carts. They spoke to one another in hushed voices. Only the rickety sound of the wagon pulling their belongings made any notable noise. Henri could see a little of the contents of the wagon and it looked like a week’s worth of supplies for the group surrounding it.

Still without making a sound, Henri followed them. It was easy after the sun went down since he could get quite close in the dark. Twice he considered stopping them and asking why they were doing this. Twice he convinced himself not to. They were not prisoners in their own homes and were allowed to do as they pleased. If they felt Ogith was no longer safe, then they had the right to leave. Perhaps the war was going poorly.

Henri heard a soft crunch at a distance and he snapped his head to the direction. It was the sound of boots stepping on dry leaves. The villagers did not hear the sound and continued their slow pace through the night. Henri stalked through the trees until he had visuals on the intruder: the young man about three miles away but he caught a glimpse of the shoulder of the scout’s gray and red uniform, something Henri’s able to see in near darkness now that he wasn’t quite human. The scout was watching the villagers.

Henri wanted to give the young man a chance to change his mind - he knew the man wouldn’t. So when the scout turned to return back to his Sekrelli camp, Henri quickly closed the distance between them and prepared to pounce.

The scout, in all his training in reconnaissance, heard him approaching and broke into a run. The young man was trained to escape capture and the dense forest made the chase more difficult. Henri could hear the scout’s ragged breathing rising in pitch and frequency as he weaved between trees, crashing through bushes and changing direction frequently to evade his grasp. It would have worked if Henri was still human and pursuing him on foot and not like an animal leaping through the trees .

With his face elongated, flesh dripping and claws extended, Henri caught the scout and brought him crashing to the forest floor. The scout twisted violently and Henri barely caught the glint of the dagger before knocking it out of the scout’s hand. Out of the corner of his eye he saw glowing runes were etched onto the small blade. The blade did not slice him but his skin hissed at the place where the metal of the hilt came into contact with.

A scout was carrying an enchanted dagger. The detail nagged at Henri and the scout managed to struggle free, twisting desperately to the weapon again. Henri grasped the front of his leathered front and threw him a few feet away. The force knocked the wind out of the young man, but he kept trying to escape under Henri’s oppressive strength. The scout was strangely calm, even if his movements were frantic and desperate. Henri saw it in his face as he reared up to deal a killing blow. Grim. Calm. Measured. As if this was supposed to happen.

Very slightly, he saw the scout’s eyes glimpse to his right in the direction of the villager’s cart. Then there was a very small crackling sound that Henri couldn’t quite place. In case it was a distraction, Henri quickly struck his face so hard his skull cracked against the forest floor. Terrible silence and stillness filled the moment following the scout’s death. Then he heard clamors in the direction of the cart and what he thought was a muffled scream. Henri glanced down at the scout’s hand and noticed a small wooden token with a rune burned on to it. The scout had cracked it between his fingers just before he died.

Cursing, Henri pelted back towards the path the cart was on. He spotted two, three bodies of men lying on the ground beside the cart before an eerie glow lit the forest floor alight. Large runes the width and length of his feet in size blazed in the dirt in a gray-blue tone and suddenly he no longer could hide in the shadows. An arrow suddenly thwacked into his shoulder, the tip burying into his twisted flesh and finding bone.

He roared in pain and instinctively dove to cover as a scattering of arrows followed, two narrowly missing his head and one skimming the skin of his thigh. This was a carefully set trap, he realized. The first scout was a decoy. The wooden token was a signal. He was their prey.

He could vaguely hear sounds of scuffles breaking out. The villagers were trying to escape the chaos breaking out around the cart while the soldiers were trying to rain more arrows to kill him. Henri watched an arrow bury into the throat of an escaping man. He gurgled blood as he hit the ground, eyes bugging out and staring at Henri as he died.

Henri lunged towards the direction of the arrows and found steel-eyed archers there awaiting his appearance. If he directed their arrows in a different direction, then the villagers would have a chance to escape. His limbs strained to their limits as he moved as fast as he could to engage the archers, trying to get to them before they could fire more deadly arrows at him or anyone else. Almost all of them were young men, almost boys, as they had the best eyesight. But all the same they emptied their quivers at him and so all the same, Henri killed them. If it was a hunt they wanted, a hunt they’ll get.

A muffled scream reached his ears. Henri started and the hesitation allowed another arrow to strike his back. Through the rune-lit forest he could see armored soldiers at the edge of where the lit area shone. He spotted a soldier shoving an unarmed man down onto the floor and driving a sword into his gut. A woman screamed. Snarling, Henri left the archers. He crashed through the forest to try to reach the trapped villagers, his limbs and arrow wounds howling as he tried to move faster. He wanted to be there instantaneously by their side, to protect them. Henri could hear every raspy breath, every terrified gasp the villagers made - painfully he could hear every breath that stopped.

Why were they killing the villagers? Were they not trying to hunt him down? He was here, dammit! He reached the closest Sekrelli soldier and smashed his face into a tree. He was here! He willed them to turn their swords and arrows to him instead. This was his duty, that was what his life was reduced to!

A ways off, the sound of begging sounded out. Crying. Henri thought he heard Cilly’s voice. Then nothing. Henri shot off into that direction through the forest, the taste of bile rising in his throat. He saw the backs of the Sekrelli soldiers first and he crashed into them, twisting necks to kill them. A few tried to fight back, swinging swords blindly in the poorly lit area of the forest, but they all fell. After Henri won the fight against the soldiers as he always did he found himself standing over Cilly’s sleeping corpse on the forest floor. Someone had run a sword through her.

Dazed, Henri thought that Cilly was well and buried in the Alton cemetery. Was it the left plot or the right? He could never remember. He also thought Cilly had her eyes closed in death, as if in slumber. This corpse had her eyes wide open in terror. They stared right at him .

No this wasn’t Cilly. This was Shay.

“I… I didn’t want her,” he said weakly to no one in particular. He said it louder, trying to make it sound more convincing. “I never wanted her!”

The forest was quiet. Shay did not rise with his words. His lies. Shaking, he fell to his knees beside her, gathered up her body into his arms and cried.

—

The Part called the Hand lay on her rug on the top floor of the mage’s keep. On that circular floor, no windows hindered her and the chilly mountain air seeped right through. The stone floor was markedly less comfortable than the wooden floors she’s used to, but the location of the keep was so very good at picking up sounds.

Beside her, the knee-height table held an abandoned book and a small table mirror on a metal stand. It stood right at the edge and tilted down slightly so the Hand could see its reflective surface from where she lay. In the mirror her brother’s face filled the glass.

“There must have been something you could have taken as a trinket,” he said, black liquid eyes that filled the eye sockets glinting with annoyance. “A full grown man with absolutely nothing in his possession?”

“For the last time, Body, he only had the clothes on his back. I wasn’t going to demand that he take his pants off so you have something for your little museum.”

“It’s not a museum, it’s an inventory,” Body said indignantly. “How else are we going to remember all the favors and offers everyone makes to every John and Jane they meet?”

Hand opened her mouth to argue that memory wasn’t the responsibility of either of them, but then again she was no longer sure if that was true or not. Even if they were to take responsibility for the memory of those they served, Body’s stupid little collection wasn’t going to cut it anyway. “You gotta find a better system, brother,” she finally said. “Like taking inventory. In some places that’s an actual job. Also you know that a Part can’t refuse an exchange proposed to them.”

“I know and I know. Why can’t the Hands and Feet just come home with me,” Body complained. “Stay where I am. Nobody bothers us here, we can choose who we help.”

Again, Hand wanted to argue that that wasn’t true at all, as someone had found a way into the little vestibule between worlds where Body resided. It was the whole reason why they were in this debacle in the first place. Of course, Body had forgotten this - memory was definitely not his forte. It’s only gotten worse with his bouts of depression and mania.

Not only that but his proposal to have everyone together - to have to live with the Other Hand and Body in literally the middle of nowhere? Hand shuddered.

“No, Body. Remember that we have to be out here to fix things,” Hand said. “Maybe you could join us sometime?”

Body firmly refused.

“Will you continue to just watch if something happens to me?” Hand asked. She sat up from her rug and adjusted the mirror. “Along with the Other Hand and the Feet? Will you stay there feeling sorry for yourself even if you are the only Part left? You have to do something eventually.”

“You are sounding a lot like your monster from Alton,” Body said. There was a slight shift in his posture and Hand knew that his mood had shifted along with it. Long ago, Body was the rock that anchored all the Parts together, back where there were more of them. Now, Hand was worried about saying anything that would set him off. His completely black liquid eyes studied her coolly through the mirror like twin pools of cold void. "Do you regret doing what you're meant to do?"

“It’s called empathy, brother,” Hand said softly. “You have felt and I have heard what we’ve done to him.”

“We’ve done nothing to him,” Body said coldly. “He asked, he paid and he received, even if it isn’t exactly what he expected.”

“It didn’t used to be this way,” Hand flopped back down onto the rug. Her wind chime jingled an irritated tune in the harsh breeze.

“How it used to be is irrelevant,” Body said.

“You’re a real bastard, you know?” Hand said. “It wasn’t like that before either.”

Body was silent. She didn’t bother adjusting her mirror again so she couldn’t see his face as she lay on her rug. Hand couldn’t decide if she regretted her barbed words to her brother even if he deserved them. She briefly wondered if he could still feel shame and remorse.

She lay there for a very long time, not caring if Body ended their communications via her mirror. She listened to both the rustling of the wind over rough stone and the echoes through the Solvent. She could hear the panting breaths of the monster - no, of Henri of Alton butchering his way through enemies in some battle. He had resisted fighting this way for so long; he lurked in the forests near his village of birth and protected it for years. But now all he ever does is kill Sekrelli soldiers on the battlefield.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered into the wind, into the Great Solvent. She felt a ripple, like an indication that Henri had heard her. Would he forgive her? For a moment, Hand could understand the coldness that’s overtaken her brother. It was better not to care. She had a role to fill and this was the only way she knew how to fill it.