That night, the changeling that had murdered ‘Elijah’ dreamt. First, he dreamt of a tear in his stomach that was syncopated with a feeling of falling - falling deeper into cold and into darkness. He dreamt that that his eyes bled and that his mouth was filled with grit. He found his feet stuck in a scorching sand that stretched on and on before a great pillar. Changelings - the assets, the runaways he’d retrieved, that he’d murdered - pulled themselves up from the scorching sand and screamed at him. Their shrill cries pierced the soundscape and cracked open the sky, which went the deep orange of fire then the dark red of blood.
The thralls, all alight and missing a front tooth - the tooth he’d pulled from them upon their retrieval… upon their murder - trembled and shook as the sand cracked and blistered their skin. They ran at him as his eyes bled, screaming… screaming. Their bodies dissolved to bone and then to dust as they neared him, as he felt the stinging hot sand dig into his hooves like claws and wrap their talons upon his bones. He tried to shut his eyes and shut his ears but could not.
The dust of the murdered now covered his face and his back. The residue sand that had engulfed them and dissolved them then caught in his eyes and in his mouth. He tried to spit or cough, but could not. He choked sand down and it settled and burned his stomach and his lungs. The wind howled with screams and kicked more sand into his face.
He began to move forward towards the pillar, weeping blood and leaving blood in the sand from his cracked hooves. He winched from the pain of pressing his raw hooves into the sand. More and more dead changelings, dead brothers, pulled themselves from the sand, crying and fleeing. Two walls of fire rose up from the skulls of the dead on either side of him. He walked towards the pillar, weeping and slobbering as the sand bombarded his face and the shrieks of the dead split his eardrums. Soon, the pillar began to fill with names - names of the dead, of the broken, the lost. Those he’d murdered, those murdered by other retrievers - the endless terrible changeling dead.
Then the pillar too burst into flame and cracked. It splintered and fell in upon itself. Then the sand began to fall away, and the changeling that had murdered ‘Elijah’ and countless others fell again, into the sand. The legions of dead were packed underneath, and they screamed and clawed at him as he fell. The hot sand poured down after them as the changeling fell and as the dead pulled themselves up towards the surface. They arouse and he fell.
He felt his flesh rip away, then he hit rock and tumbled down a mountainside towards brimstone. The steep cliffs dropped off and he hit a murky, black water that ran thick as if it had been diluted with tar. The water burned into his raw flesh - the lacerations he bore from the sand and the rock stung. He pulled his head up from the thick water and saw the swamp. More changelings were there, screaming and clawing at each other for air and for small clusters of land that sprang up. He felt himself get pulled down then forward, like a current was picking up. He clawed his way to the surface again, and he saw a great circular precipice to a pit. In the distance, he saw a river of blood and a river of tears each fall on the far side of the pit, mixing with the river of tar he found himself in.
He struggled for land, but it proved useless. He was thrown into the deep pit where the three rivers mixed. As he fell, he saw the cavernous roof before him crack open and the scorching sand above poured in. The pillar with the names of the murdered and the skulls buried inside of it fell in after him. He turned and saw the bottom. There, the three rivers froze and he saw, buried in the ice, himself.
The changeling that had murdered ‘Elijah’ woke screaming.
He struggled to catch his breath. He felt the cold dirt beneath and listened for the calm flow of the river and the chirping of morning birds. He pulled himself up. His shoulder ached from where he had slept and his eyes stung when he turned to stare up at the sunlight gleaming in from the cracks in the canopy. He stood there for a moment, panting. He wiped dirt from his face and looked for his pack. He found it leaning against the headstone that marked the grave of ‘Elijah’. He opened it and checked for his equipment. It was there. He checked for the bag that held his former bounty’s took. It was there also.
The changeling stared at the headstone awhile. He admired the craftsmanship. It was made with care and precision - two words that did not describe his retrieval… his murder of ‘Elijah’. He swallowed and hoped such would not lead to his decommission… no… to his death. The thought of death wrapped around him like a pale shroud and he shivered as he felt the winds change. The leaves rustled and dirt blew over the headstone that read ‘Elijah’.
The changeling collected his pack and, forgetting to change into a skin, started to follow the river out of the forest. He traveled with heavy thoughts until his ears caught a buzzing. He stopped.
To his right lay a broken beehive that had split when it fell from the tree. He watched as ten hornets attacked the exposed beehive. The hornets were at least ten times larger and ten times out numbered by the honey bees that buzzed around their broken home violently. One by one, the hornets, unaffected by the stings of the bees that crawled around them, grasped a bee with their front limbs and tore their head off. The headless carcasses of bee drones littered the grass and the outside shell of the broken beehive. It was a mass grave, a genocide - violence one such a scale.
The changeling's heart broke and his mouth hung open as he watched. More and more bee drones threw themselves at the hornets and the hornets carefully grabbed them and ripped their heads off, one by one. A few of the hornets made a run for the hive. Some were ineffectually swarmed by drones and they simply lifted themselves into the air and began their calm decapitations. Some made it inside. There, he saw the hornets dig into the honeycombs and feast upon the larva, ripping their heads off and tearing into them.
There, inside, he saw the queen bee doing nothing. She sat there with her antennae folding and flapping around, surveying the area, watching the carnage. She watched her drones, her children, be torn apart be the hornets. A headless bee carcass fell and hit her head. She shuffled a little, but did nothing else. She did nothing as two hornets dropped and tore into her young. She did nothing as five hornets above her tore into her dwindling drones, savaging them and murdering them. She did nothing but wave her antennae casually up until the moment three hornets landed on her and tore her to pieces.
Horror struck him. Horror filled his head, his eyes, his lungs, his heart… his soul. Horror dried his mouth, buried itself in his eyes and tightened its grip on his throat. Horror wrapped itself around his guts with cruel fingers and horror tore into his knees and feet. His hind legs buckled and he sat down. For the first time in his life, Absalom wept.