SUNKILLER is by che. Any text in italics is taken directly from the text. Photo by Braňo on Unsplash.

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Content warnings: death (sickness, rot, fire), extinction (sickness and rot), religious imagery and theming.

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HEARTS. Scorched earth and smoggy skies, we lived here long, but were consumed, the detritus of a vanished empire.

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Jack, the Ship

It’s beautiful. Matte black, like the sunless sky, glittering with artificial stars. They told me the stories. Long ago, when we were dying, some thought the lower heavens would be their salvation. As Moon Rot spread and blighted and cursed, they thought the skies would keep them safe from sickness and death and it did, for a time.

They forgot about THE SUN. THE SUN, our ruler, our jailor, our executioner, filled the heavens with sacred fire. I can feel HIS heat now, protected though I am. It is everywhere, incessant, and it needs to go. For them. For everyone.

Soon. Soon, humanity will be burned from this universe. And when it is, HE’ll be coming with us.

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Queen, the Temple

When you live in a place scarred by divinity, you learn to smell it. 

It begins as a speck, then grows until it’s a blob, then a shape, then a building. It floats among the wreckage of a history destroyed by the gods, a castle of white and gold and blood rot read. I can see the altars, the statues. And though I am sealed in, I can still smell them.

HE is here, iron and blood, mixed with lunar sulphur. There is cold metal and dust, there is burning wood. This is sacred land and it must not be disturbed.

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King, Into the Void

The Earth was not my home. I mean, it was. I was born there, I grew up there, I lived there. But it’s a burnt out hollow filled with nothing. No life. No death. Just endless sludge. It is better if it remains empty. Let it stand testament to crimes of THE SUN.

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CLUBS. The great sea through which the sun passes in the night, total oblivion, darkness, the enemy.

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Queen, the Mother-of-Night

It has been cold for months. THE SUN’s anger is focused, I see. Nothing left for the grave of HIS lover. They must have been beautiful, the Moon, to attract the adoration of THE SUN. They must have been awful, in both senses of the word. To sacrifice oneself, to hollow oneself, to incubate an apocalypse. To even be able to do that in the first place.

I do not wish to be cold any longer. I do not wish to fly among the fragments of a harbinger.

I want THE SUN to come back.

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King, Into the Starlight

THE SUN is not here, but HIS siblings are. Stars, spreading out into what feels like infinity. I wonder if they, too, are divine or if that curse only befell our system.

I find myself praying to them, just in case.

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DIAMONDS. The sea of stars, the birthplace of suns, the potentiates of divinity, majesty revealed.

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Ace, the Lights

They all answered. All of them, every single star at once. Singing and shouting and whispering and looking. All of them looking directly at me. They spoke of HIM, of their SIBLING, their loathed SIBLING, and of the weakness of HIS eye, of how I could pierce it with my ship. With my life.

I believe them. I do. I hope that isn’t a mistake.

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Queen, the Constellation

I saw her today. I was looking out of the porthole and there she was, drawn in the stars. I wonder if she is safe with them. I wonder if she’d be happier here.

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King, Into the Heat

I am approaching THE SUN. HE is glorious, and beautiful, and HE is going down. I press a few switches, course correcting, and let my eyes close.

Even so, HE is all I see.

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SPADES. Ultimate heat, the true form of something imagined, fury, THE SUN.

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King, To Kill A God

And HE is all I feel, HIS consuming flames as they wash over me. I do not think about the temple I left behind on Earth, do not think about the overwhelming darkness of a universe without THE SUN. 

I do not think about the part of me still praying to HIM for salvation.