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The Fall is All There Is

by C.M. Caplan

The Fall is All There Is - C.M. Caplan - Four of Mercies
Part of the Four of Mercies series:
  • The Fall is All There Is
Editions:ePub - 1: $ 4.99
ISBN: 978-1-7372095-1-5
Paperback: $ 16.50
ISBN: 978-1-7372095-3-9
Size: 5.00 x 8.00 in
Pages: 487

You never want to ruin a really good dramatic exit. When you flee home on a cyborg horse the exact second you turn eighteen, you don’t really expect to go back to the place you fled from, you know? But sometimes your old life hits you from behind.

Sometimes you spend years away from home, killing dangerous people who had the bad luck to get infected by a lungful of ghostfog, only to find out that your dad, the king, is dead, and now your siblings are ordering you back home for a high stakes family reunion.

But when the heirs are quadruplets, the line of succession tends to get a wee bit murky. So in order to regain your independence, you’ve got to navigate a deadly web of intrigue, where every sibling wants your allegiance, and any decision might tear your country—and your family—apart.

Gideon the Ninth meets Realm of the Elderlings in this post-apocalyptic science fantasy featuring court intrigue, thyroid-powered swords, and cyborg horses!

"The Fall is All There Is is both relentlessly energetic and visceral. Caplan doesn't hold your hand as an author, he slams down the lap bar and sends the roller coaster that is Petre Mercy's story careening down the tracks."
- Quenby Olson, author of Miss Percy's Pocket Guide (to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons)

"The Fall Is All There Is was delightful [...] the characters are distinct and hilarious, the worldbuilding is deep and imaginative, and the pacing is solid enough to hold your interest for hundreds of pages. Throw in some cyborg horses, thyroid swords, and ghostfog, and you have a five-star read."
- Kerstin Espinosa Rosero, author of Burn Red Skies and Rise Red Kingdom

"The sibling dynamic [Petre Mercy] is a part of – both included and painfully excluded – is written with care and intense feeling. The inner thoughts of Petre as he navigates the courts and troubles of a complex society will stay with me for a long time."
- J.E. Hannaford, author of The Skin and The Pact

"This book is freaking amazing and you should absolutely read it. Now. Will I say that about all of Caplan's books? It's likely. He's fast becoming one of my all-time favorite authors ever."
- Melissa Polk, author of The Trow of Duncaster

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author - american, format - book, format - kindle, format - kindle unlimited, format - novel, format - novel <100K, format - paperback, format - self published, format - series, potential trigger - abuse, potential trigger - abuse - past, potential trigger - bashing - fight on page, potential trigger - blood, potential trigger - bullying, potential trigger - drug abuse, potential trigger - grief; past loss, potential trigger - murder, potential trigger - self-harm, potential trigger - sexual abuse, potential trigger - traumatic past, potential trigger - violence, what - concept - danger, what - concept - family conflict, what - concept - resilience, what - condition - adhd, what - condition - cancer, what - condition - disability, what - condition - injury, what - condition - mental illness, what - condition - ocd, what - emotion - anxiety, what - emotion - grief, what - emotion - guilt, what - emotion - hope, what - emotion - jealousy, what - emotion - love, what - sex - angry sex, what - sex - bdsm, what - topic - family, what - topic - politics, where - general - castle, where - general - tunnel, who - description - amputee, who - description - runaway, who - description - unaccepting parent, who - occupation - aristocrat, who - occupation - celebrity, who - occupation - diplomat, who - occupation - king, who - occupation - knight, who - occupation - lord, who - occupation - mercenary, who - occupation - politician, who - occupation - royalty, who - occupation - scientist, who - occupation - secretary, who - occupation - warrior, who - type - mature woman, who - type - older woman, who - type - robot / cyborg, who – description – abuse survivor

Pairings: M-F, M-M
Heat Level: 3
Romantic Content: 1
Ending: Click here to reveal
Character Identities: Ace, Bisexual, Lesbian, Polyamorous, Straight
Protagonist 1 Age: 18-25
Protagonist 2 Age: 18-25
Protagonist 3 Age: 18-25
Tropes: Badass Hero, Cheating, Coming Home, Death of Parent, Everyone is Queer, Marriage of Convenience, Mistaken Identity
Word Count: 120,000
Setting: Post Apocalyptic Ruined Futuristic Kingdom
Languages Available: English
Series Type: Continuous / Same Characters
Excerpt:

I was six years old the first time Mom threatened to sew my mouth shut. She got the needles out and everything, I swear. In her defense, I was a chaotic little shit at that age.

And while this incident never managed to convince me it was worth it to shut the fuck up, that afternoon I spent with the back of my head pressed against the cold basement cement did teach me I had to get away. 

From her. From Dad. My siblings. From Mercy House.

I was eighteen before I found the kind of courage I required, but I got there. Eventually. I ran away to Blackheath House and everything. 

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The rest of the family didn’t like it, mind you. They all sent letters and missives my way expressing their disdain, telling me how I was embarrassing them. There were no shortage of attempts to fetch me over the first few years. But soon enough they found new conflicts, new trivialities at court to snap at and chase after.

I had five years to build a life without them. To stay out of the spotlight. To realize I didn’t need them.

Until—well. Hm. How to put this? 

Let’s say you get a letter for the first time in a while. Let’s say the people sending the letter are angry. Let’s even suppose they might have valid reasons to be angry because you’ve been avoiding them.

So! When you knife the envelope open and find they’re making demands—when you find that they’re threatening everything you’ve worked five years to build—all because you refuse to embroil yourself in their insipid games…

Hypothetically. 

Can you see how I’d be upset?

Honestly I was surprised it took them five years to find the words to express exactly how much and in what ways they wanted to hurt me for leaving, and how badly they wanted me back. 

Maybe surprise isn’t the right word—the letter inspired something closer to fear and alarm and sheer fucking panic. 

It’s a funny thing, panic. It’s got a way of getting you on your feet. Making you want to move. Like your body wants to match the speed of its thoughts. 

But sometimes those thoughts are stuck on hamster wheels that spin and spin until you’re sweaty and exhausted and you can’t breathe because your heart is clogging up the hollow of your throat—and then you look around and realize you never actually got anywhere.

I couldn’t figure out what to do on my own. I needed help. Advice. 

I had to talk to Avram.

I navigated Blackheath House’s labyrinthine hallways, the twisting corridors, the limestone tunnels, with my mind snarled in hysteria.

The whole place was built inside the structure of a gigantic lizard skeleton. Big wooden doors were set in between the skull and jawline. Steel and iron and concrete clung to it—the meat between the old bones. 

I hurried through the furrowed hallways of the right ribcage, passing windows reinforced with orange plasma. They hummed softly. Helped keep the ghosts out. As I passed, one of them eked out yellow veins that sizzled as the ghostfog outside breathed against it, frying the spirit-air into smoke and black vapor. 

They wavered softly when the wind howled, bending inwards to receive it; growing big distended bellies every time wind swelled against them. 

I slipped past chamber doors inset with heraldry. Fesses and gules. Chevrons and bordures. Scutcheons. Archways reinforced with cyborg bronze. Ribbed marble hallways with electric panels.

Until a small white door stood out, completely blank. I knocked insistently. My knuckles buzzed with the impact. I don’t know how long it took for Avram to answer my insistent pounding. Time was runny round the edges while I did it. Clarity only bothered to show up when he did.  He was wearing nightclothes and looking ludicrous without his glasses. He squinted, eyes adjusting to the hallway light. “Petre?”

“Avram.” It was the first time I’d spoken since I’d received my siblings’ threats, which meant my mouth still had to catch up with my thoughts. I wished I’d practiced what I would say to him. “Come with me. I need injections. Quickly.”

“Petre, I—?” He rubbed his eyes and blinked at me. “Your injections? What?”

“The IMI,” I blurted. Intramuscular Memory Injections. 

“I know what your injections are,” he said. “You’re not due to get them until tomorrow morning.” 

“I need them now.” I needed to be able to coordinate myself before tomorrow morning. Without them I’d have the coordination of a wet paper bag. IMI could at least bring me up to the baseline of the average athlete before breakfast time tomorrow. “I need them now.” 

“Petre, it’s dangerous—you can’t—why—?”

I knew he needed more information, but I was struggling to array my facts on the fly. Instead, the details fell from my tongue in haywire fragments. “It’s important. I just got this letter and I read it and my sister’s about to host a coronation feast and all my siblings are reaching out to me about it and I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I haven’t had a chance to tell anyone before you now but I was thinking maybe if you got me my injections I’d be prepared to deal with them and I think I can get them to cooperate if I just see them in person so then it’ll be okay and nobody will be the wiser and I think maybe I can—”

“Petre,” Avram drawled. “Slow down. Take a breath, Mercy.”

“I just—”

He put up his palm. “What did I just say? You’ll wake up the whole fortress at this rate.”

It’s funny, you know? It’s not like he told me anything I didn’t know. I knew I had to fucking breathe. But somehow when he said it—I don’t know. He made it sound a lot more reasonable than I ever could.

So I obeyed. Only then did the noisy carousel of my mind begin to slow its spirals. The letter, crumpled up inside my pocket, still felt heavy and demanding. But I could breathe.

“Again,” he said. “I want to hear you.”

I did it again as Avram slapped himself awake, calloused hands sliding against blond stubble. “Alright. Alright. Alrightalrightalright. What’s the problem, Petre?”

“I—”

“Actually. Don’t answer that. You said you needed your injections?”

“Yes.” The word burst out of me. I had too much to do. I couldn’t waste time standing here and talking. My fingers made their way around the crumpled paper in my pocket. “Someone’s coming tomorrow and I want to be prepared.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“Are you asking if I think getting my injections is a good idea or are we talking about the thing I have to do after I get them?”

“Whatever it is you have to do.”

Damn him. I knew clarifying would hamstring me. I owed him honesty. And he knew it. And I knew he knew I knew. “Not even a little bit.”

Avram looked at me, scrutinizing the panic written deep into the contours of my face. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I—”

“Slowly.”

I swallowed. “Oh man. Where to start? I mean I just got another letter, but—”

His eyebrows shot up. “What do you mean another letter?”

Sometimes the more you worry the harder it becomes to convey what you’re worried about. You spend enough time picking at the details like a scab, digging so deep beneath you start seeing bone. When someone actually notices, you’re not sure how to explain anything anymore.

I forced myself to take another deep breath. “So my family started reaching out again three months ago. Right after I skipped—” I was not about to say the words Dad’s funeral. That was absolutely not going to happen. “They’ve um. They’ve been checking in on me. But they’re getting…nastier? I guess? They’ve started wheeling out some new threats, and I just—here. Look.” I handed Avram the letter. It was a single page stuffed full of ire and ink.

Anxious breaths knifed out from my throat while Avram read. It didn’t take him long. Each character was smudged by the side of a hand or drowned in ink. Desmon had sent me something halfway to an inkblot test.

Avram looked up from the page and sighed. “Come inside. Tell me what you want to do about this. I’ll make coffee.”

COLLAPSE

About the Author

C.M. Caplan is the author of the SPFBO7 semi-finalist The Sword in the Street. He’s a quadruplet (yes, really), autistic, and has a degree in creative writing. His short fiction also won an Honorable Mention in the 2019 Writers of the Future Contest.