The Fishers

Mary Fisher had bloody thoughts. She would wake up in the mornings and see nothing but red rivers until she had eaten, which was rarely in the dawn. The people in town would call her a witch, for she spoke often of the red lizards which poured from her head and the heads of others. Sometimes, she would catch them and bite down on them, removing their heads, letting the musty sweet taste of their torn muscle and bone stain her lips, and tensions in the camp would go down. One day, she caught a big fat one and kept it in her arm, wanting to see what might happen if she let it loose on someone who yelled at her again.

She got her chance not long after that. A trader pushed her down and spat on her back when she turned down his advances, and so she pulled the red lizard from her arm and shoved it into his forehead. The back of his skull popped open like a rotten fish, and his spine arced up and lashed about the market like a dying snake. The camp turned against her, and chased her to the swamp with pikes and fire. She fled into the mires and walked until her throat ached and her eyes swelled from flies and she cast herself down in the mud, waiting for death.

An angel found her; it appeared out from between the water and the sky, and spread its broad wings around her. It touched her face with its tentacles, and the green lights in its body flashed in quiet sympathy. It told her that we all have bloody thoughts, even angels, and told her that the lizards she saw were but one form of the Forgotten, creatures from the mist that rises above the Bleed. It wrapped her more tightly in its wings and whispered the secrets of the Chimera, the Bleed, and the Fog into her mind. This, she knew, was her place.

She stood from the swamp, resplendent in the green lights, and marched west, gathering followers behind her.