Lex Chamberlin

The wall of towering hedges marking the maze’s end drips with smoking streaks of my blood as I stagger into the clearing’s light—clean light, a false sun, under a sky bluer than I’ve seen in years. Fibers from my torn tunic burn deep in my wounds, and I throw my sword to the ground as the hissing metal continues to melt, no match for the final guardian’s acidic maw. I wipe my brow with a shaking hand. It’s almost over.

The damning tree stands peacefully, its roots thick and creeping over the mossy mound it crowns. Splayed out around it, skeletal remains circle beneath the branches, half buried as though fused down. The bones are bare and palest gray, preternaturally aged and stripped by the cruel magic of this place. But I steady myself as I move in—every moment, the curse worms its way that much nearer our shrouded haven. The farmlands lie already reduced to swaths of fiery horror, and irate heavens pour poison on the few survivors who endure. I will succeed here where these conquered souls succumbed.

I will scorch the willow’s heartwood to cold, lifeless ash.

As I hobble forward, I am not careless in my passion. I heed the warnings, keep my eyes trained low. Even so, the closer I get, the larger a strange longing blooms in my chest. A musical hum plays around the edges of my hearing. I focus on the ground: my booted feet meet the farthest sprawl of roots, then the first bones, a delicate skull. Another. The green and yellow and teal patchwork of moss blanketing the enemy’s soil seems to breathe beneath me. I stand six paces from the trunk’s villainous bark when numbness creeps up my fingers, consumes my lips—only the dying wails of my compatriots falling to the monsters in the labyrinth lend me the clarity to fumble for my hatchet.

I exhale a confounded breath. When I take another step, the hum pulsing around me deepens precipitously. I must have crossed some threshold—the sound buzzes through my ribs like heartbreak, and I can feel my body and will weakening with each moment spent so close. I begin to sweat. The air grows thicker, an invisible sludge, and the force of its resistance tightens back my skin as I press on—

I’m panting when I reach the screen of foliage nearest the tree’s body. The willow’s turquoise braids sway in a gentle breeze around its branches, and in madness, I think I may dodge through them. But I’m too slow now—the leaves brush the filth of my shaven head, and as they swab over me, the touch sings with such delicate warmth that my vision swims. My throat constricts, heaves of emotion scraping it raw. Shaking, I grip my weapon in both deadened hands, just a step away from the glorious, the sublime, the benevolent enemy—

I break.

As my knees hit the earth, the willow’s heart speaks to me. Not in words, but in inner sight, in understanding—in doom. I double over in dazed delirium as I listen. The calamity cannot be ended by such unworthy hands as mine. My hatchet falls—no, is thrown—far behind me. How could I ever have dreamed to slay something so beautiful, so pure? Surrender oozes through my skin. The air I breathe, too graciously enriched to gaseous nectar I don’t deserve to taste, indebts me by itself to whatever is asked.

And the requests come: Won’t I fertilize these grounds, in owed atonement? Won’t I shed my flesh in necessary apology, feed the well of ruin for my fiendish kind’s demise? My children’s faces fight to the fore of my mind, the thought of my bloodline beyond them that will never be, my youngest’s rattling cough and frailty ever worsening as the smoke intensifies. But then the images slip, and all I feel before my blameless deity is shame, disgraced by the threat I’d so very nearly posed.

Of course, I am granted mercy. The urgent hum connecting flesh to wood vibrates down to my bones, soothing my guilt, leeching the tension from my tired muscles, and my eyes glaze to a compliant serenity I never knew I craved. Remorse may have eaten me alive, yet here, in the home of holiness itself, is true forgiveness.

I inch out a hand. An attempt to touch divinity would be selfish, an unseemly act of vulgarity, but just the once—I have to try. I’m not sure I can reach it in time, before my body gives out completely. But in a last push of will, the tip of one finger…it scrapes the bark.

Ecstasy shoots through my veins like opium. I cry my unworthiness, profess my devotion, shout my vilest apostasies in eternal self-loathing gratitude—

I fall to my back.

The mangled wails in the fields beyond fill my ears, but with the heavenly roots below me, the sound is sweet: a cosmic lullaby for my resting place. The flames licking the earth raw, the smoke painting the true sun a pitted red, the dark orange haze of the curse permeating the toxic air outside my perfect mossy bed—what is this beauty I am so privileged to witness in my twilight moments? What could I ever have done to deserve such a blessing?

And then my skin peels away to feed my blood into the hallowed ground.

Lex Chamberlin (they/she) is a nonbinary and autistic writer of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. They hold a master’s degree in book publishing and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, and they reside in the Pacific Northwest with their husband and quadrupedal heirs. Find them online at lexchamberlin.com.

The artificial glow of your backlit eyes flickered at the ceiling from the filthy stone floor of the cellar, our inevitable tomb. Up the splintered stairs, the buzzing horrors with their searching green tendrils marking the end of the world slammed over and over into the other side of the door, well barricaded for the moment. But it wouldn’t be long now. The screwdriver you’d handed me from the cache of tools in your arm laid discarded at my booted feet. I hated you for lying down, for suggesting this. For promising to leave me alone.

I shifted my glare from your glinting frame to the circular cast-iron drain cover you’d torn from the ground. Rounded metal rungs forming a ladder into the sewers were visible from where I stood trembling. It was a narrow opening, big enough for me, but not for the creatures. And not for you.

“Professor Evaline, you are nearly out of time,” you intoned, your voice choppy on the syllable transitions. I should have fixed that so long ago.

“This can’t be the only way,” I said. I ran overlong nails through my mess of dark hair, frizzy from sweat despite the cold. It was such a stupid, predictable thing to beg. Even now, looking back, I’m not sure which of us realized it first—that there was no other way out, that you were too broad to fit, and that I’d need your power core if I hoped to survive, for light to navigate by and for warmth. But you’re the one who actually said it.

“Professor Evaline, you are nearly out of time,” you repeated.

“I can’t hurt you,” I said bitterly. “You know I can’t do it.”

“That is correct,” you replied, ever mechanical. “You cannot hurt me. I do not experience pain.” You weren’t even looking at me.

“It would kill you—”

“That is incorrect. I cannot die, as I am not alive.”

“Stop it,” I said. “You are alive—you’re being deliberately obtuse—”

“Professor Evaline, I am not an artificial intelligence. You have seen my programming parameters.”

“But to me—”

“Professor Evaline, your perspective cannot alter my software. Please proceed with the necessary dismantling.”

The door up the stairs creaked, then gave between two boards nailed over it. A backlit hole appeared briefly in the center before thick undulating vines wriggled their way though, and the pounding continued—we had minutes at most.

I knelt beside you, your sleek silver panels concealing the wires, the chips, the heart within. Took the screwdriver in hand again. I brought it over the first screw that would need to go. And then I dropped it back down, and my face landed in my hands.

“Professor Evaline, if you are unwilling to act, I will need to risk damaging the core to extract it for you. This will greatly diminish your chances of success. I will allow ten seconds.”

I counted down from ten without looking up. But when without a word you raised your metal fingers to pry off your central plate, I latched onto your closest wrist to hold the action back—and I had no effect.

You were clumsy, and you began to glitch and smoke as you corrupted your own innards. You knew your layout, but you weren’t designed for this. I thought you’d lose capacity for movement long before you dug it out, at the rate of the damage being done. But then, with a final burst of power, you jerked, and I flinched and let out a sound I didn’t recognize. You’d calculated the endpoint perfectly—six inches above your now-inert form, suspended loosely between your palms, you offered me your spherical heart, gently pulsing green through the lacework of thinly threaded silver and rubberized ports.

Down the drain, into the freezing damp, it wasn’t a minute before I heard the barred door finally explode, the rush of insectoid bodies flooding the cellar, the furious buzzing as they tried to force themselves into the sewers after me. For a moment, I held my breath, and a sick part of me hoped that we’d miscalculated after all. But only a writhing bouquet of their pointed tendrils squeezed through, reaching not even a third of the way to the ground. In the soft emerald radiance cast from your gift, they menaced, but that was all they could do.

With a shiver and onset of chattering teeth, I cupped both hands around your heart, and I held its warm metal to my throat to heat the blood as I forced myself away. I stumbled through grimy half-iced tunnels for what must have been hours, time I had no way to track. In those numb, fumbling steps, despair gave way to resentment gave way to exhaustion, and your last moments replayed in my head, over and over, until I felt nothing.

I still don’t know if there are other humans left. I think it’s been weeks, and I haven’t found them. I wish I could bring myself to disrespect your sacrifice with surrender, just sneak up a building and throw myself off, let a swarm of the foliage-scarab hybrids crunch me away in their incandescent jaws. Far easier, forget to scrounge for food or water, let the pack I pulled off that soldier in the tunnels sit a little lighter on my back.

It’s funny, though—I never wanted there to be souls until you died. And now all I think about is yours, and whether mine will be able to find it in the end. I work on a system of metaphysics, when I can, that would grant an android a soul, grant anything a soul, as long as they were loved enough. It’s the details, though: Can your soul be revoked if we’re apart for too long? If I stop loving you, if I forget, do you cease to be made? Where do you wait?

Your core is still so warm.

Lex Chamberlin (they/she) is a nonbinary and autistic writer of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror with a master’s degree in book publishing and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. They reside in Portland, OR, with their husband and chihuahua mixes. In their spare time, they enjoy cooking, video games, and martial arts.

Willow at the Labyrinth’s Core

Willing Souls