Lizzy Burnam 🐞

Some say the world will end in fire, but from this hot pit the fae queen's reign begins—the reign of a vindictive sprite who siphons power from an afterlife not quite like heaven, not quite like hell either. 

With eyes black as petrol and the ashen wings of a gypsy moth, she is mother of the sleeping dead, tightly tucked in their deep coal beds. There, her slow and steady magic brews, igniting the earth's pulse. Her empire has slept undisturbed for millennia, until the first oil drill breaks through the earth’s crust and rattles her old bones. 

She flashes on like a lightbulb, blazing-mad, as one by one, her children are sucked to the surface and incinerated to feed a crude magic that destroys more than it manifests. The metal ogres grow fat and asthmatic on the breath and blood of her kin. Life itself accelerates, high on death's residue. 

As the fae queen's palace crumbles around her, the last whooping crane sticks his beak down her well and cries for help:

    Cardiac, the kids combust 
    The poison leaks, the engines rust 
    The makers make as makers must 
    To fuel their greed and sate their lust 
    And turn the coral reefs to dust 

    Too late by now to readjust 
    Like cancer cells, a manic thrust 
    The ocean churns, a toilet flushed
    And every life will soon be snuffed 
    Oases dry and voices hushed 

His lifeless body drops down the well, dead at her feet. The fae queen rises from her grief. She takes the late crane by the neck and feels his body quiver with the slow-burning magic of a now-extinct beast—a small glimmer, but just enough to flood chaos on the giants and their machines, strengthened by the quick and violent raid of her realm. 

The sky breaks open with a torrent of acid rain, melting rubber belts and loosening the bolts that keep the machines running. Production grinds to a halt. Blinded by smog, the giants chase street lamps like will-o-wisps into the fae queen's catacombs. Telephone lines snap with a pop and spray electric sparks across the street. Freight trucks crash and catch fire, spilling full shipments of diesel, wood pellets, and animal feed. The giants crawl from the wreckage, clutching their throats, suffocated by smoke. Desperate to breathe, they rush indoors to drink the last of the good clean air, but are crushed by the buildings when they fall. 

As her storm rages on, the fae queen walks the deserted halls of her underground home, remembering the gentle faces of her little ones, the soft sighs of slumber. She waits to hear the world whimper as it ends. And when the time comes, she'll sing her ancient lullaby again.