The waking world belonged to the Mouth.
And the Mouth belonged to Ulbecetonth, as did the city.
“Take me to them,” he said.
The Sermonics turned about slowly, pressing their withered bellies to the wood and clawing their way toward the city on thin, gray nails. Their eel tails dragged behind them, their blue lantern lights bobbed before them. These were the angels that heralded his arrival, their whispers were the trumpets that announced his coming.
The Mouth of Ulbecetonth, Her will in mortal flesh, strode through the ruins of Port Yonder.
“Ruins” might have been too dramatic a word for the empty streets that greeted him, though. The buildings stood undisturbed, witnessing his procession with as much silence as they had witnessed the horrors hours ago. The cobblestones were clean of corpses, such valuable commodities having long been taken for more practical uses than decoration. The people and all their noise and fears and tears were gone and the stones weren’t telling where they went.
The Mouth closed his eyes as he walked and pretended that nothing had ever happened here.
It was easy. Until a pungent, coppery perfume filled his nostrils and he felt his foot settle in a cloying pool of something sticky and thick. He winced, tugging at his foot. It came free with a long, slow slurping sound that resonated in the silence, like a thick, wet piece of paper being slowly ripped in half.
It followed his every step.
It followed him to the temple, and the cluster of fear and quivering flesh assembled within its shattered walls.
The people of Port Yonder were massed within the former prison. And with its captive fled, they joined between the gaping cracks, beneath the sky of shattered stone, a sea of skin and tears that roiled with every wail, rippled with every sob, heaved with every plea offered to anything. To the godless sky, to the pitiless stone, to the creatures that guarded them.
The frogmen did not seem to hear. Packed into the cracks of crumbling stone, perched upon the smashed pillars, leering out from the darkness, they paid no mind to their mass captives. They showed no fear. Even if they could feel such a thing anymore, they would have had none of it. For even if their prisoners could rise up and break free of them, there was nowhere to run.
Beyond the prison, there was water and darkness. In water, in darkness, there were things for which there were no tears.
Out of the corners of his eyes, he could see their lights. And from the corners of his skull, in whispers, he could hear them speak.
Seethemyearningbeggingpleadingwailing.
Weepinggnashingcryingscreaming.
TalktothemtellthemsoothethembethereforthemHerwordsHerwordsHerwords.
NoliesnogodsnonothingHerwordsHerwordsHerwordsonly.
He ignored them, or tried to. He didn’t need to be told what was expected of him.
The whispers followed him into the temple, too loud to ignore, not nearly loud enough to drown out the sounds of the people.
The crying, the wailing, the weeping, the pleading, the cursing, and the silent people. All gathered together in a trembling pond of glassy eyes and gaping mouths, each one a little fish staring dumbly at the sky.
They didn’t seem aware of him, the man that had walked amongst them as neighbor a few days ago, the man that walked amongst them now as prophet. Their eyes were fixed on the heavens or staring back up at them from bitter puddles beneath their feet.
Only one bothered to look up at him, to scowl at him. Two men who shared neither gaze nor knowledge of each other. Two men who might not ever exchange more than a single word.
“Betrayer.”
And at that single word, the Mouth stopped. The Mouth turned and met the man’s scowl.
He tore the blade from his belt, the jagged sliver of bone clenched in one trembling fist, the scruff of the man’s tunic clenched in another. He pulled the man to his feet, tore him from the pond that wailed as though a finger had been torn from them each collectively.
Amidst the wailing, amidst the shrieking, amidst the many, many more words that the man shared with him, the Mouth pulled him to the edge of the pool, the liquid prison.
The waters stirred, black as pitch. And within, things blacker than pitch moved.
The Mouth shoved the man to the edge, sent him teetering upon it. The man craned his neck to turn a face, one that was just as indistinct and useless as the rest of them, upon the Mouth. And he shared one more word.
“Please.”
The knife moved with mechanical precision. One thrust in, one yank out. A moment’s exertion. The measure of a man, bleeding from the throat and falling, vanishing into water without a splash.
There was shrieking, there was wailing, there were hundreds of voices crying hundreds of names. None spoke louder than the Mouth’s, his hands thrown out wide and his face turned to heaven.
“SAVE HIM!”
The oddity of the statement turned their wailing to a burbling mutter. Or perhaps they wished to save the screaming for something more astonishing.
“Save any of us,” he cried again to heaven.
The skies remained still, without blood and without tears. He looked around at the silence, turned around, as though checking to see if he had missed something.
“Strike down this vile betrayer,” his voice lowered with his gaze, both sweeping over the crowd assembled before him. “Deliver justice to us, as we are promised. Deliver to us.” He lowered his arms to his sides. “Deliver us from the betrayer.”
He dropped the blade. It clattered on the floor, echoing in the silence, droplets of blood staining the floor.
“No one is answering,” he said. “No one is coming. No one will save us.” He smiled, bemused. “And I am the betrayer?”
They were staring now, eyes torn from the sky. Their mouths hung open, a glimpse of the emptiness within their bodies.
“I am the betrayer,” he continued, “yet you placed no faith in me. I am the betrayer, yet I never claimed to be your salvation. I am the betrayer. .” He shook his head. “And I never asked of you anything.
“And them?” He pointed a finger to the sky. “They, who have promised you everything, demanded everything and given you nothing? They, who claim to be salvation and enlightenment and truth? They who let that man die? Who let you die? They are offered deals and promises and praise if only they come down and deliver you?
“I am standing in their house. I am speaking for their foes. I am speaking to their flocks. And they do as they have done when your coin ran dry, as they have done when your family went hungry, as they have done-” he choked on something, cleared it with a cough, “when your daughters died.
“Nothing. Your temple was too small. Your sacrifices were too meager. All that you gave was not enough. And after everything you’ve given, in your hour of need, they are not here.” He shook his head. “They were never here. No one is here but me.
“And Her.”
He turned, knelt beside the pool, stared into the darkness.
“And She is there, listening. And She is there, weeping for you.” He thrust his hand into the water and it rose up to meet him like a living thing, liquid tendrils rising up to caress his flesh, liquid lips suckling upon his fingers. “And She is there. . for him, as well.”
He tore the man free from the waters, cast him silent and naked upon the stones. The man lay there, limbs trembling with infantile weakness, wailing through the words of a newborn. Arched upon his back and staring up at the world through eyes made of obsidian, drawing in breath between needlelike teeth. He reached his hands up to clutch his throat, healed of the wound that had been there and colored like bone.
“Someone listened to me,” the Mouth said, kneeling beside him, easing his hand away from his throat. “Someone saved him.”