The Creators Ch. 10

"Speaking of evil bitches..." I smirked at Astrid. She twisted her lips into a pout, and gave me a side-eyed guilty look. It was adorable, and it immediately prompted the urge to face-fuck the woman into a weeping, drooling mess. So, I did. As she gurgled and choked, her arms pressing her breasts together to lead hands between her legs, the knuckles working fervently to deliver fingers into her ravenous depths, I wondered if Astrid's advice was right. Was the only way to win, to not play? It seemed counterintuitive, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Corruption was holding on to me by a thread, and I doubted I could withstand one more turn of Sister Julia's psychological warfare. She knew where all my weak spots were. And what were Sister Julia's weak spots? Well, they were Diamond, Lucilla, and God, in no particular order, and Sister Julia had done a number on Lucilla and Diamond today, all in the name of God. If I engaged her, I'd give her a reason to keep going, but if I just stepped back, and let her flounder in the mess she'd made, she might just sink on her own accord. Then I would swoop in while she was weak, and deliver Corruption to her on a silver platter. Fuck Astrid and her stupid ideas; I wasn't going to just walk away from this. I was going to fucking win.

JULIA

Blackened faces screaming. Eyes wide with agony, staring at nothing, seeing only their pain. Blue flame around me, inside me, coursing from my flesh. Silence, moonlight, night. Sapphire embers smoldering in the wreckage, illuminating ash that falls like snow. Passion screams and begs, but I just laugh. Lucilla screams and begs, but I just laugh. Sapphire embers twinkle and dim, and in the silence, I can still hear the screams. I just giggle.

"Julia?" a voice asked. My eyes fluttered open, and the blur of color came to focus behind painful light. Brandon and Jade were standing over me, equally-relieved smiles on their faces.

"Diamond?" I croaked.

"I'm here, Mom," Diamond said from the other bed. I barely had the strength to turn my head, but I had to see. Her bright emeralds shown from pure whites, and a single tear rolled down my cheek.

"I'm sorry," I mouthed, unable to speak the words. My throat was closing with the guilt, choking me. Diamond just smiled weakly, no blame in her expression. She was too good for me, and judging by the look Justina was giving me, I wasn't the only one with that sentiment. I turned my head to look at the ceiling, and steeled myself before I asked, "Lucilla?"

"She's outside," Brandon said, gesturing to the arched entryway of the room. We were in his Great Maple, I guessed. The cavernous confines spoke of comfort, but the only thing I felt was horrible dread. I had done unforgivable things; I had planned on doing even worse. I had tortured the one I loved, broken her to her essence, and stripped her of herself. My body felt like there wasn't an ounce of strength within it, but I numbly managed to roll myself over until I was at the edge of the bed. Jade stopped me before I toppled off it.

"You need rest, Julia," Brandon said, rolling me onto my back. His expression betrayed him; he didn't want me to see what Lucilla had become—what I'd made of her.

"Jade, carry me," I said hoarsely. Brandon might've objected, but Jade didn't care what he had to say. She pulled me into her arms, and walked me out the door. It was nighttime, and Brandon's arboretum was glowing with millions of bioluminescent blues and greens. Willow trees dangled glowing strands of azure around the ponds at the base of the maple, cherry blossoms added their bright pinks to the mix, and lilacs countered them with deep purples. Everything was in full bloom, alight with divine power, and smelling of budding life and humidity. Lucilla slouched spinelessly in a wicker loveseat, facing away from me and regarding the spectacle from the balcony. Tera massaged Lucilla shoulders and whispered into her ear, but Lucilla didn't seem to hear. Tera turned when Jade approached, and offered us both a cordial smile before leaving. Jade settled me beside Lucilla, and she also left. A deer with glowing antlers bounded in the brush. An albino squirrel leapt between baobab trees. A humming bird flitted through a nearby flower patch, leaving an after image with each of its rapid movements. I saw these things, because I did not want to turn and see Lucilla's blank expression. I could tell just by her posture that she was still that empty thing I'd made her. I'd rather she hated me. I'd rather she spit in my face, tell me she never wanted to see me again, and walked away, but she just sat there, and I couldn't bear to look. I sat with her, and stared numbly at the miracle Brandon had made as I slowly sank into my despair.

"Next time, we should probably use a safe word," Lucilla whispered beside me.

I choked, sputtered, and burst into tears. I collapsed into Lucilla's lap, and vented my sorrow as she pet my hair and whispered tearfully of forgiveness.

BRANDON

It was just me and Bianca in the room now. Diamond, Tera and Justina had left for Tera's safehouse to work on their research while Lucilla and Julia had gone back to their temple. Astrid and Willowbud were gone, but I knew they'd be back by sunrise. I rubbed at my eyes, trying to process the day's events. There was something I was missing in all of this, but I couldn't put my finger on it. At the center of everything, was Corruption. Julia and Willowbud were battling in a game of wills, while Diamond, Justina and Tera were trying to find the secrets of Sentients with Gloria's old books, and Lucilla was... what was Lucilla doing? I highly doubted the princess was standing idle while her beloved was playing such a dangerous game. Freydis was supposedly off to Iona, but no word had come back from my Ofanian scouts. Flora was still at large, as was Angela. In all the chaos of today, I'd forgotten to ask Diamond about my sister. Too busy swapping spit with her, huh? I sneered at myself. She was a fantastic kisser, I had to give her that. I glanced at Bianca, who was resting against the heartwood of the maple.

"What do you think of all this?" I asked her. "Speak candidly."

"I think you should reconsider staying here, Your Holiness," Bianca replied tiredly. "Going to Arbortus was a good plan."

"I can't leave Willowbud here. God knows what she'd do if I abandoned her. Diamond was right; I'd be a coward to leave."

"Bravery and stupidity walk hand-in-hand, Your Holiness. I can't tell you how many Ofanians have died stupidly for the sake of bravery."

"Well, no one's ever accused me of being smart," I chuckled. Bianca offered a tired smile.

"I carry the Ofanian curse of stupid bravery as well," she said, pulling her thickly-braided hair back to reveal a nasty, swollen scab. "Just yesterday I drew on Astrid Skyborne. I'm lucky to have lived to tell the tale."

"Shit, Bianca!" I exclaimed, and scurried over to her. "Why didn't you say something?"

"Pride," Bianca sighed, letting me inspect the wound. "I was embarrassed to have been so easily defeated. I didn't want you to know that you got the worst of the winged-warriors."

"Quit with that nonsense," I scolded, reducing the swelling, healing the wound and adding follicles over the bare spot. When I couldn't see any more damage, I ran my hands through her wooly hair, making sure I hadn't missed anything. It was only after I was done examining her, that I realized I had positioned her to kneel between my legs. I tentatively pulled my hands away, and her head tilted slowly up. Her eyes were big and brown, the same color as her skin, and her lips were impossibly full, centering a face of dramatic cheekbones and a wide, smooth nose.

"You know," Bianca whispered, her voice shaking, "if you asked me to lie with you, I would not protest, Your Holiness."

"Bianca..."

"Astrid and Jade have both lain with their gods, so if you expect as much from me, I will do my duty," Bianca's hands moved slowly up my thighs.

"Bianca..."

"You can do whatever you wish to me," Bianca whispered, her hands meeting in the middle. "I will gladly obey."

"Stop," I finally managed, putting my hand over hers, her fingers hooking my belt. Bianca gulped, her cheeks grew red, and her eyes began to glimmer.

"I am sorry, Your Holiness," Bianca hissed. "I know I am old and undesirable. I just thought—"

"You are fire-ass hot, and a constant source of distraction for me," I said firmly, but with a smile. "Every time you're not looking at me, I am looking at all of you."

"Oh," Bianca said, blushing more furiously than ever. At least the tears had gone from her eyes. She regained herself, and donned a coy smile, "If you so desire me, then..."

"No, I won't ask you to have sex with me."

"What if I asked you?" Bianca whispered, her brown eyes big and pleading.

"Then I'd still say 'no,' because it goes against your codes to do so, and I wouldn't have you throw your life's work away over one moment of physical weakness." I held Bianca's chin, and guided her to stand. "You are my High Guard, after all, not my whore. Willowbud and Julia might not respect their guardians enough to know the distinction, but I do."

Bianca's chest swelled with pride, and I struggled not to stare unabashedly at her tits. "You are an honorable man, Your Holiness," she managed through a tear-choked throat. She saluted smartly, then left the room with her head held high. I watched her go, wondering if she'd noticed the boner I was packing. She definitely did. I sighed, walked to the heartwood of the maple, opened the tree, and went back to work. What a shitty day this had been.

TERA

"Holy shit," I muttered. The room was silent after Angela had finished recounting everything she and Diamond had discovered in their respective astral journeys. In her comatose state, Angela had attempted to go back to her realm, but with no luck, so she instead discovered the shit-bomb of memory left in Diamond's astral garden. There was just too many revelations, too many implications, and way too many questions.

"Well, one thing's for sure," Angela sighed, and looked at me. "Your sister's a fucking cunt, Tera."

"Yeah," I laughed humorlessly. The revelation that Flora had made a deal with Corruption would've been life-changing any other day, but today, it was a footnote. I looked over at Justina, my little scientist with a mind for the practical and a disdain for the theological, and I could see the conflict written across her face.

"There has to be logical explanation," Justina finally said. "The answer to our questions can't just be 'God is real, and her job is to hand out bibles to the undead.'"

"No one's saying that," I said, "but we can't ignore the pattern. There was a bible in Wrath's center, a bible in Hatred's center, and there will be a bible in Corruption's center."

"We think," Justina said darkly. "Two instances don't make a pattern."

"Our knowledge is scant, and our evidence is nonexistent," I replied. "We're operating on projection and theory. We're dealing with the plane of cognizance, Justina; we can't be a slave to the scientific method when studying the irrational."

"These things are the degraded constructs of dead minds;" Justina said, "they're not complicated."

"The only thing that separates them from me, is a soul," Angela said quietly. "They're like living thoughts that have been abandoned by themselves." Angela looked at Justina. "When I was in my realm, I felt... singular, like I was the embodiment of my title. I felt so sure of my purpose, so belonging."

"Do you think the Holy Mother came down from heaven to give you a divine purpose?" Justina laughed.

"It's not like that," Angela frowned, "but there was a sense of connection that I don't feel here. I knew that my realm was exactly how it should be, and its place within the astral plane was exactly where it had always been. It was like a spot had been reserved just for me, Serenity."

"And you think God reserved it for you." Justina wasn't smiling anymore, but crossing her arms and frowning.

Angela shrugged. "It doesn't have to be God. My realm could have just always been. Perhaps there are thousands of empty realms waiting for Tethered Ones and Sentients to fill them, each realm a unique emotion felt by all thinking things. Maybe the astral plane wasn't made by design; maybe it evolved as people do, as thoughts and emotions became more complex. The maternal bible is the oldest story known to civilization. It's the tale we tell ourselves about where we came from. Over and over, day after day, millions of people are believing that the Holy Mother created them, and they are pushing those thoughts into the astral plane. Of course Sentients adopted the Maternal Path; the Maternal Path is the single strongest idea in the astral plane."

"But the order," I said. "Wrath didn't even know who Corruption and Sorrow were when Diamond asked them, yet he took the third day of creation? How did he know he was the third? There have got to be hundreds of Tethered Ones we don't know about, and yet none of them wrote themselves into the bible."

"Wrath didn't, but Halok did," Justina said, pulling Halok's bible out, "and he became very religious toward the end. The way you say it, Gloria described Halok's degradation as a slow process, that he lost himself one piece at a time as Furok started dying. Why would he become religious at the end? Was it mortal fear, or a growing sense of connection to the most pervasive idea in the astral plane?"

"It makes sense," Angela nodded. "As Serenity, I would have one foot in both realms, but as Silence, I would be wholly astral. In the physical world, I am a slave to the laws of reality, but the laws of cognizance are governed by the most prominent thoughts. I would have to conform to the Maternal Path; I wouldn't have a choice."

"It's an interesting idea," I frowned, unable to shake the feeling that we were missing some critical piece. It was certainly a better explanation than 'God did it,' but it still felt wrong.

"Like you said, Mom," Justina sighed, "we're operating on projection and theory now. All we have is ideas."

"Does anyone have any idea how Joy was tethered to the astral sun?" I asked.

"For now, let's just stick with what we know," Angela said. "We now know why Corruption melds with who she melds with. We know that Sentients can change each other by writing in their newly-made bibles before the ink is dried, so to speak. We know that Hatred used to be Joy, who used to be a Heat Bringer, and we know that Hatred is batshit crazy, and likes to rhyme."

"Joy, Passion, Serenity... Arbitrus?" Justina frowned. "Why doesn't he have an emotive name?"

A knock on the door sent all our head spinning. I put a silencing finger to my lips, grabbed my knife belt, and tiptoed along the wall, careful to keep my body out of the door's sightline. I peeked through the peephole in the wall, and sighed when I saw Lucilla's face illuminated by the patterns that ran up her neck.

"You forgot the secret knock, Princess," I grumbled.

"Shit," Lucilla cursed, then knocked three times, smacked the flat of her palm against the door, and added three more knocks.

"It's a little late now," I sighed. "Is anyone else with you? Were you followed?"

"She's alone," an unfamiliar voice said from out of sight. The contradiction wasn't lost on me.

"That's Sara; she'll be waiting outside," Lucilla replied. I kept a hand on my knife, and opened the door. Sara stayed at a respectable distance, but her hands were inside her robe, and I didn't doubt they were both occupied. She nodded to me, and I nodded to her, and Lucilla pushed past me into the safehouse. I closed the door, and left the deadly little elf to stand guard in the night. Lucilla pulled off her cloak, folded it twice over her arm, and looked long and hard at Angela and Justina. Angela stared back, unmoving and unflinching, while Justina became extremely interested in the bedspread.

"Arbitrus is ancient elvish for 'Purity,'" Lucilla finally said. "Arbitrus Gen literally translates to 'man of purity.'"

"Oh," Justina said quietly, not meeting Lucilla's gaze. It was obvious that Justina felt responsible for what had happened to Diamond, and to some extent, so did Lucilla, despite how hard I tried to explain to her that Diamond had gone off on her own.

"Tera told me everything you three—you four—have been doing," Lucilla said curtly, seating herself on the edge of the bed. "From what I understand so far, Diamond has gone from Wrath, to Sorrow, to Greed's realm. There was a realm in between, and now she's traveling to Corruption's realm. Is that right?"

"That's right," Angela said, a million words flowing between her eyes, and Lucilla's.

"And...?" Lucilla prompted. Angela cleared her throat, and recounted everything she'd told us about Hatred and her visit with Corruption. When she was done, Lucilla just nodded, her expression unreadable. She reached into her cloak, and pulled out a maternal bible.

"Forever they will live as one, like two lovers in the sun, shining from creation's birth, to hold a tether to the earth," Lucilla recited, then looked up. "It's in the hymnal section. What did you say Hatred said?"

"A thousand years they are as one, like conjoined twins of the sun, and when they set with rattling breath, they're torn apart by the hands of death," Angela replied.

"It's a bastardization of the hymn, obviously. Whoever wrote the hymn didn't think the astral sun would ever part from the physical sun," Justina added.

Lucilla nodded. "And Corruption confirmed that with what she told Angela. But what was it she said after?"

"'Joy turns to dust, and Hatred is born. If you wish to know hell, you must first know love,'" Angela recounted.

"We're operating under the presumption that Corruption had a romantic relationship with her Life Giver," I explained to Lucilla. "Obviously, it didn't end well for them."

"No, there's clearly some animosity," Lucilla said, "but what about Corruption's relationship with Hatred?"

"Who fucking knows," Justina sighed. "Maybe she wasn't too big a fan of Joy when she was a Tethered One. Maybe she just didn't like another Sentient claiming spots in the maternal bible."

"Um... no," Lucilla said slowly. "If there's one thing I know, it's jealousy-fueled hatred. These two bitches knew each other, and they had beef."

"Lucilla, Hatred is younger than Corruption by at least two-thousand years," I said. "Elves live long lives, but not that long."

"Maybe she's not," Angela said. "Did Hatred call Corruption 'the most ancient one?' No! She called her 'Black.'"

"They're the same age!" Justina gasped.

"Only Joy got tethered, and Corruption was left to rot," Lucilla said. "So no wonder she went after the bitch the moment she could."

"Ok, but how does that help us?" I asked. "So they knew each other; so what? We need information on Corruption! We need to find the skeletons in her closet!"

"Wait..." Justina hissed, her eyes practically bulging from their sockets. "Why would Corruption know a Heat Bringer and a Life Giver, hmm?" Justina looked around at all of us. "Why does Corruption fit like a glove into Willowbud Autumnsong? Why does Corruption so badly want to bind an Earth Former and a Life Giver?!"

"She was an Earth Former!" Lucilla gasped. The room was silent for a moment, the revelation hanging in the air between the four of us. It wasn't iron-clad truth, but goddamn, did it make sense. But how could we use it? How could that information dislodge Corruption from Willowbud, or at least help Willowbud change Corruption into something more innocuous?