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Q Code Presents Birds of Empire, created by Jason Liu.

Music created by Jason Liu. The daughter of death.

Gaya looked down at her hands as if they might fade from creation at any moment,

dissolving into a mist of flesh and bone and vapor,

steam and fear and longing and sadness,

as she often wished she could.

What thoughts are these?

Stretched and stacking and ever-present.

What madness!

Why can't I shake them?

And then her shoulders would stretch and rise.

Her grip would tighten on the hilt of her blade.

The smell of iron and sweat and rage would fill her head. She would breathe

in and remind herself that she was here, there in the blood den, training to take life.

The bodies of the other girls seem each one to be a version of her own, but still she felt like hers

was more beast than girl. As she would swing the blade, she would imagine herself behind

the eyes of another, and a pain would rush in that she found not unpleasant, the stretch

of her skin as it pulled over theirs. Once, she woke

from such a trance with a mouth full of flesh. The salt and metal of blood as it rushed down her

throat. Her sister Azira told her that she'd won a fight and looked happy that it was so.

But Gaia never felt she'd won, only that she was a deep river with no bottom.

...