The Creators Ch. 04

"Tera," Willowbud said beside me, sounding of slightly-bored amusement, "can we stop this?"

"I take it you're Night Eyes?" Tera said, tousling her steed's matted hair and grinning from her perch. "I've got to say, Gloria talked you up to be some kind of badass, and I'm a bit disappointed."

"Well, I hate to disappoint," Willowbud grinned, then turned toward Astrid. "You know what to do."

Astrid strode forward, looking as magnificent as a creature could. Her braided golden hair draped over her broad shoulders, her wings glinted resplendently in the sun, her sword gleamed from crossguard to tip, and she held the massive weapon with the ease of obvious expertise. The scene looked biblical; the holy angel with her holy sword facing down a demoness riding atop a disfigured monster. Grunt and Gronk limped to the side, looking up in awe at their champion, waiting with bated breath for the showdown to commence. Astrid stepped forward, positioning her sword, crouching slightly. Hacksaw kicked his heels against the stones, seething like a bull ready to charge, his face contorted in rage at the woman who would dare challenge his master. Astrid stepped to the side, and with two swings of her sword, she decapitated Gronk, and then Grunt. Willowbud burst out laughing as the heads bounced, and rolled next to another head which already lay on the flagstone by the door.

"There's some more for your collection, Gloria!" Willowbud laughed at the groaning vampire, who was clutching her broken ribs in the fetal position. Tera looked absolutely dumbstruck; she stood atop her steed with mouth agape, and Hacksaw looked up at her expectantly, awaiting orders that didn't come. Astrid walked nonchalantly to the half-giant, cut off his legs in one swoop, and then took off his head with the next. Tera tumbled forward and sprawled onto the stones as Hacksaw's head rolled down the street, and her daggers slid after it. Astrid's blade rested softly on her throat, and Tera conceded.

"Old Terry's betrayal got me good and spooked," Willowbud said, stepping over Hacksaw's corpse and crouching in front of Tera. "So I decided some housecleaning was in order. I need people whose trust can't be bought or bullied; people like you, Tera."

"You enslaved my daughter," Tera said, glancing at me, "and you expect me to join you?"

"To be fair," Willowbud said, sitting cross-legged on the stones, "your daughter tried to enslave me first. I was just returning the favor."

"You lie!" Tera snarled.

Willowbud just shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not much of a liar," she said, resting her bare hand on Tera's bare breast, and grinning as Tera's eyes went wide, "I'm a thief, a rapist, a torturer and a killer, but lying's not in my repertoire."

"Corruption has you," Tera said, her voice shaking slightly. "You're the whore of a Sentient."

"Ooo, that was a good guess!" Willowbud exclaimed. "Did you figure that out on your own, or did Gloria help you?" Willowbud turned to the incapacitated vampire, "How ya doing over there, Gloria?"

The vampire coughed blood in response, and I took the opportunity to look Tera squarely in the eye, and let my eye color show. She gave me a subtle nod before Willowbud returned her gaze to her.

"Corruption has me like you have herpes, Tera;" Willowbud said, "she's there, and she's never leaving, but you learn to live with it. Sure, I might make a brash decision, sometimes I might kill a lot of people, but they're still my choices. It's not like there's voices in my head. At least, not like what's going on with your daughter."

My breath caught in my throat, my hair stood up, and I pissed myself. A chair of stone formed beneath me, butting against the backs of my knees and forcing me to sit. A similar chair of stone smacked into Astrid's legs, much harder than had happened to me, and she sprawled into it, barely holding onto her sword. Tera's expression of shock was glued comically to her face as her body was folded forward in another armchair of cobblestone. Willowbud stood between us all, a shit-eating grin shining from her tan face.

"Next time you want to have a secret conversation, Angela," Willowbud laughed at me, "you better move further than across the fucking room; I hear everything!" She tapped her foot against the cobblestone, "I can hear your blood moving in your veins, your shit moving in your guts, and your piss running down your skirt; though, I can see that as well."

She wheeled on Astrid, who shrank in her chair, cowering before her god.

"And you," Willowbud snarled, causing Astrid to cower even more, "you traitorous bitch, you conniving cunt, you..." she broke off in a fit of laughter as Astrid grew smaller and smaller in her chair, her eyes wide, her lips trembling, "I'm just fucking with you, Astrid. You only did what you said you'd do, and bravo for finding a sucker willing to help you. I like that kind of initiative."

Willowbud made a chair for herself, noticeably higher than everyone else's, and she smiled down at the gawking faces of Tera, and myself.

"The Earth Former?" Tera asked, her eyes bulging, her mouth agape, her voice barely a whisper.

"I prefer to be called 'Night Eyes,'" Willowbud said, and winked at me as she leaned forward, "but since you're family, Auntie, you can call me 'Willowbud.'"

I didn't think Tera's jaw could go any lower, but I was wrong. Her cheeks went gaunt with her gawking.

"It's just a day full of surprises, isn't it?" Willowbud chuckled, "This is why I love this city; you never know what tomorrow may bring. Isn't that right, Gloria?"

I turned around, and saw Gloria slumped in a chair of her own, looking as confused and horrified as her succubus friend. Her chair shifted forward, sliding as though on ice. Our circle of chairs widened, and made room for the vampire. Willowbud grinned broadly at the woman.

"I bet you're realizing that you never had a chance against me, Gloria," Willowbud smiled, "but I appreciated your efforts. Is that Alexa I hear snoring in your house? And who's that young man behind the door?"

"H-h-h-he's my dinner, Your Holiness." Gloria stammered beneath her veil.

"'You're Holiness?'" Willowbud exclaimed. "I never figured you for a Creationist. I bet that's not the usual moniker you have for me. I bet it's usually 'that cunt' or 'that fucking bitch,' isn't it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Your Holiness," Gloria muttered.

"Well, normally I like to be referred to as 'boss,' 'Night Eyes,' or occasionally, 'Mistress,'" Willowbud said, "but in your case, I think 'Your Holiness' will do just fine. In the end, there's really only one god that matters."

A stone spike shot through the vampire's chest, spraying blood across Astrid's face. Gloria's red eyes widened for a second, and then faded as her head dropped. Tera let out a blood-curdling scream and made a move to launch at Willowbud, but her hands were bound to the chair before she even got off her ass.

"She tried to kill me, Auntie, so don't act like I'm the bad guy here," Willowbud said as Tera thrashed. "You've got to be level-headed about these things. How many poor bastards did you kill?"

"She could have helped you!" Tera screamed. "She could have saved you from that thing inside you!"

"First Angela, now Gloria? There's just saviors on every corner in this city!" Willowbud laughed. I wondered how much longer I had until a spike shot through my back. There was no warning, no indication. It just happened, and that was it. I had a mental flash of rolling wheels, and the sound of a baying oxen as hoofs trampled. I was not ready to experience anything like that again.

"Gloria would have saved me right after she was done breaking the last of my bones," Willowbud said. "I sent a lot of her blood-children into the dirt. I mean a lot, and not in nice ways. Stakes through the palms and left to burn in the sun was my favorite method, but Hacksaw and Gronk had their ways as well."

"And you expect me to join your gang after all this?!" Tera cried. "To torture and kill?!"

"No, no, no!" Willowbud laughed, shaking her head. "I'm done with the gangster business. I turned that page of my life just now," she gestured to Gloria, "my last enemy dead. No, I'm in the entertainment business now; a much seedier, more cutthroat business than drug dealing and whores ever were. I don't need thugs and brutes anymore; I need stone-cold-killers and foxy broads. You happen to fulfill both those needs."

"You're insane," Tera gasped, her eyes trembling. "You're a god, a being of immeasurable power, and you want to be a show producer?"

"Fight promoter, actually," Willowbud grinned, "and I never made any claims on sanity." She turned to me and gave me another wink, "But you know all about that, don't you, Justina-slash-Angela? I gotta know; when exactly did you go so crazy that your brain split right in half?"

Angela's a dead girl, and the Life Giver is in that house, and could you please fuck me, and—

"When I was ten," I said before Justina could blurt out the truth, "my best friend got run over by an oxen cart, and now she lives in my head."

"Then you used an astral enchantment to change the eye color," Willowbud smiled, almost endearingly, "and viola; Angela lives."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, trying to sound as nuts as possible, "that's just my natural eye color."

"Your clairvoyant, aren't you?" Willowbud said, looking closely at me. "You can see astral beings as clear as day, even melded ones."

"Yes," I said as Justina screamed the truth in my head. Willowbud leaned forward, took my hand in hers and brought that hand to her mouth. I half-expected her to bite my fingers off, but instead, she kissed it with love and reverence, which was somehow worse.

"You're as broken as me, Cousin," she whispered, her black eyes gleaming behind almost-affectionate irises, "cursed with gifts you didn't ask for, forced into hiding from a world that hates you. You're not in Towerhead anymore; no one's going to hurt you with me around."

"Willowbud," Tera said, her voice ragged, "please release my daughter. It's me you want."

"It's both of you," Willowbud said, her eyes glistening, "my family, my real family. The family that was cast out like I was, the family turned away from the world just for being born."

"Willowbud," Tera said, her voice hushed, tears streaking down her cheek, "please."

"You don't need to fear me, Tera," Willowbud said, turning away from me, and leaning toward Tera until their faces were breaths apart. "I would never hurt my family."

A single tear ran down Willowbud's cheek as she gazed into her aunt's glazed eyes. Tera's wet face was caste in the golden light of dusk, and Willowbud's was black with the shrieking face of Corruption. The Sentient was writhing as if in agony, tortured by whatever thought had caused Willowbud to cry.

"No," Willowbud whispered, taking Tera's trembling chin into her hand, and tilting it until their lips brushed, "family is sacred."

Their mouths connected. Willowbud ran her hand through Tera's onyx mane as she sucked gently from her lips, their cheeks growing gaunt in their embrace. Her fingers trailed behind Tera's ear, caressed back-handedly along the pronounced line of her jaw, and then rested in a gentle clasp about her neck, just above the collar. It was a subtle a move, but a threatening one, and Tera melted in it. She couldn't help it; much like Justina couldn't help her sexual nature, but it was still disappointing to see her give in so easily. Her violet eyes closed, and she tilted her head further back, letting Willowbud's white hair mingle with her black. Corruption relaxed in her host's mind and slowly faded from view; the thought that had tortured her no longer present. The nymph finally parted from Tera, whose eyes shown with a mixture of fear, hatred and desire. Willowbud was pleased with the expression. Her demeanor flipped like a switch, and she wiped away the single tear that had rolled down her cheek, and curled her lips in her usual grin. Tera's binds popped free, and the chairs we all sat in melted back into the street. Gloria's body shifted dumbly until it rested flat on the cobblestones, the spike shrinking from her wound until the hole in her chest was empty.

"No witnesses, only widows, eh, Death Kiss?" Willowbud laughed. "We can't have the whole city wondering how the street turned into a living room."

"I guess not," Tera said numbly, in complete disbelief of her situation.

"Alright!" Willowbud exclaimed happily, taking Astrid by the hand and turning on her heel. "Now let's all go back to The Screeching Siren, have some brews, and reminisce about old times in Arbortus. We can talk about how much of a cunt Flora Autumnsong is until the taps run dry."

Willowbud actually skipped away with Astrid in tow, the pair looking like an excited child and her frustrated mother. I looked at Tera, and she looked at me, seeing my blue eyes shining from her enslaved daughter's face. I glanced at the door to Gloria's house, and she nodded. Then we followed the skipping god back to The Screeching Siren, carrying the vain consolation that despite everything, Brandon was still safe. Still safe as long as I stayed inside Justina to keep her mouth shut. Still safe for as long as I could endure the Earth Former's idea of fun.

BRANDON

Alexa was snoring like nothing was happening, making it incredibly difficult to listen through the door. Why Gloria didn't put a peephole in the fucking thing was a mystery, and it took all my will not to open it a crack and see what was going on. Early on, there was fighting, screaming and yelling, but that had stopped. Then, there was a lot of talking, some laughter from a voice I didn't recognize, and a screech so shrill it could've come from a stuck pig. Then more talking, footsteps, and nothing. I waited for what felt like an eternity, and nothing continued to happen. I took a deep breath, steeled my courage, and opened the door.

The sun was setting between the buildings, casting the world in a glaring orange hue punctuated by sharp and sudden shadows. Gloria lay in the middle of the street, her arms splayed to her sides, blood pooling from a massive wound in her chest. I stepped cautiously forward, looking at the headless bodies that littered the roadway, trying to keep my stomach from churning. I expected killers to pop out at any moment, beasts with human hides as clothing and skulls as helmets, but nothing happened. Tera and Justina weren't among the dead, which was good, but I doubted their lives were in safe hands. Whoever this Night Eyes was, she clearly didn't fuck around. I knelt over Gloria's body, closed my eyes, and touched my thumb to her brow. She was technically dead, her heart was an exploded piece of pulp, but the faint vestiges of life still thrummed in her mind. Time to make like a god, and perform a miracle.

Blue light radiated from my palm, and spread into Gloria. It laced through her skin in winding tendrils, flitting this way and that, fracturing randomly like cracks in the ice. The light pooled around her chest wound, seeped into the bloody cavern, and began to move pieces of her back together. The tattered remains of her heart righted themselves and then melded, each chamber forming and taking shape until the entire organ stood perfectly in her chest. A pulse of blue power shot along the arteries that held it in place, and the heart contracted violently before beating with life. Gloria's eyes flashed open, she gasped in a deep breath, and she screamed. The bones, muscles, sinew and skin stitched back into place, and the pain receded from Gloria's wail as the last strip of flesh was melded seamlessly back together. She coughed up a splatter of blood through her veil, and I eased her upright as she hacked the remnants of her mortal wound onto the cobblestones. She wiped her lips, her breathing shallow and frantic, her eyes wide. She looked at her hands as if they were foreign to her, touched her face as if it had never been there before, breathed deliberate, deep breaths as if the action was the only thing that mattered in the world. She looked at me with panicked, disbelieving eyes, her mouth working to find words that wouldn't come. Her lips trembled, and her crimson eyes welled.

"You're alive," I said, pulling her close and letting her vent into my chest, "and you have a lot of explaining to do."

Excerpt from Arbitrus Gen's Journal, Chapter Eleven, Page One-hundred Fifty

The Creators before us—Gratora, Hektin and Dawnbark—all believed that working in congress was the best way to progress civilization. My contemporaries in Furok and Droktin shared this sentiment, as they would, for they both haled from the great orc empire, as did Hektin and Gratora before them. Ray Dawnbark was both a nymph and a Life Giver, which naturally made him a pacifist's pacifist, so he did not oppose the accelerated progression of the orc empire. Many celebrated his passiveness, for so many cycles have been marred by cataclysmic destruction between us so-called gods, but those that praised peace did not see where it would lead. Unchecked creation leads inexorably to unchecked destruction. There is a balance that needs to be drawn. No further proof of this needs to be brought forward then when Droktin opened his pass, and cost the lives of millions. Some called me a monster for what I did in response to this attack, and perhaps I am. Only the Holy Mother can judge me, for it was the Holy Mother who gave me these gifts. I took no joy in Hektinar's destruction, but make no mistake, reader, Hektinar needed to be destroyed. The evils that festered behind those high shining walls were unspeakable, and the atrocities the orc horde committed under Droktin's unprovoked attack needed to be answered. Call me what you will; murderer, genocidaire. I will not refute you, but if you saw what I saw, you would understand.

But I digress. The Life Giver and Earth Former are natural Creators. The question is then posed, what is the Heat Bringer? What does fire create? The ancients did not call 'the Heat Bringer' a Creator. It was not until Hektin tempered the steel city of his namesake that the Heat Bringer was identified with the rest, but I would argue the validity of this label. Hektin simply annealed the iron shaped by Gratora. In a sense, he was a master of transfiguration, but not a Creator. So then, what did the ancients call the Heat Bringer?

They called us 'The Destroyer.'