The Creators Ch. 10

"We need to understand Corruption's motives before we can figure that out," I said, lying on the bed between them, enjoying their warmth squishing me from both sides. Angela shivered at my seductive touch, unconsciously biting her lip as she read her book. It was adorable. Her blossoming sexuality was quite alluring to me, and I was silently envious that my daughter had taken Angela's male virginity.

"Right," Justina nodded, "but Corruption's dealings still don't show a pattern. Here, a dwarven senator, here, an elven prince, here, a pirate lord. Is she attracted to positions of power, or is that just historical bias? Corruption might've infected a peasant, and no one would ever hear about it."

"And we're running out of books," Angela said, tossing one she'd just finished into the 'completed pile,' which was growing quite large. "Where did Gloria get all these anyway?"

I turned over the front cover of one of the ancient volumes, and showed Angela the faded stamp.

Property of the Hektinar University Library.

"So, I guess this is it then," Justina sighed. "Thanks a lot, Arbitrus."

"That's probably where 'The Broken Bridge' is," I said. "Or was, anyway. If you're wondering why history has such large gaps in it, people like Arbitrus fucking Gen are your answer."

"We still have this old bible," Angela said, holding up the oldest of Gloria's books.

"There are literally thousands of theories for each verse of the Maternal Bible," Justina replied. "Scholars have exhausted every possible meaning of every syllable of that book, and not an ounce of truth has been squeezed out. It's a fairy tale, Angela."

"I believe in it," Angela grumbled.

"Really?" Justina giggled, and Angela gave her a dark look.

"Brandon and I were raised on a different version, but the story's mostly the same," Angela said. "Maybe they aren't what happened, but that doesn't mean they're not true."

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

"You're the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

"Oh, good one. How about you explain to me why goblins and nymphs share a common ancestor if evolution doesn't—"

Angela farted loudly. "I'm sorry, did you just say something? I've could've sworn I heard a bunch of bullshit."

Justina wrinkled her nose. "You're disgusting."

"You drank cum out of Astrid's farting prolapsed butthole twenty minutes ago, and you didn't brush your teeth afterwards."

"This is Halok's bible," I said, taking the book from Angela before the two of them could continue. "I suspect Gloria did not mean to leave this behind. This was important to her."

"Well, it makes for a good paper weight," Justina snorted.

"You won't be laughing when you're burning forever," Angela grinned, then turned on her side, and ran her eyes across my body. "We're not getting anywhere here; let's see what Diamond's found out."

Interlude One: Greed

DIAMOND

"Untethered One," an imperious voice said from beside me. I looked to my left, and saw a woman made of gold. Her skin glistened with it, her sclera and irises shined with it, and her hair waved with it. She was much bustier than before, almost exaggerated in her curves, and upon her naked flesh, she wore the wealth of empires. Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and more; they ornamented her like a holiday tree, and reflected the theme of this new realm. A great pyramid of gold rose like a mountain from a field of opals, trees of amethyst trunks bore emerald leaves, onyx paths curved through deserts of axinite. The melancholy left me, and when Greed put her hand on my shoulder, I felt the predictable avarice swell in its place.

"It is a pitiful thing," Greed pontificated airily, "that a woman of such wealth as me should desire the company of another, but such things cannot be sidestepped, I suppose. We are social creatures, after all, and if I must have you, then I will have all of you, Untethered One. Will you be forever mine?" and Greed got on one knee, and presented me with the largest diamond I'd ever seen.

"Yes!" I squealed, and once she put the ring on my finger, we were on each other again. This time, we weren't making gentle love in the rain, but porking each other like animals. Our hands entangled in each other's hair, our lips moved over each other's bodies, wanting to taste every part, greedily sucking, licking, nibbling. We pressed our bodies along the lengths of each other, and shifted with voracious movements, making a bed of the treasure. She held me inside her clenching pussy, her slit dripping and smearing gold nectar across my pelvis, and she wouldn't let me exit her for a thrust, so great was her gluttony of my gift. Our pelvises stayed connected as we drove back and forth, gems and coins falling from our bodies as we rolled through piles of wealth, our lips staying locked, our eyes staying glued. She wrapped her legs around my waist, dug her heels into my flank, and compelled me to drive harder, faster, all the while she met my motions with her own; grinding, gyrating, moaning, screaming, coming. Her golden breasts jiggled forth with the arch of her back, her proud chin jutted with the tilt of her head, and she clawed at the bed of riches, crying out as I did. I filled her womb, and she held me in stasis, soaking every drop I had to give before releasing me.

"Oh, how I missed the touch of another!" Greed sighed, lighting a cigarette from a long holder. "You cannot know, Untethered One, how boring it gets here. The creature comforts are fine things, but a woman of my appetite needs carnality to sate me."

"I suspect you're insatiable," I grinned at her.

"You would suspect right," Greed winked, and rolled over for more. After the fifth time, I'd at least sated my needs. Coins stuck to my sweaty body, and Greed's golden nectar shined viscously from my deflating shaft. The Sentient herself lounged atop of a pile of gemstones, inspecting an ornamented sword with passing interest.

"What is your mortal name, Untethered One?" Greed asked.

"Diamond," I answered. Greed grinned broadly at that, clearly approving.

"You have come to ask me about the most ancient one, Diamond," Greed said.

"Yes," I answered, "will you tell me?"

"Some say knowledge is the greatest treasure of all, and curiosity, the greatest form of greed," Greed mused, studying me. "But, what's the harm? You are mine forever now, so I will indulge your ravenous curiosity." Greed slid down her pile, creating little waterfalls of coins in her wake. She took my hand in hers, her grip remarkably strong, and she led me down the onyx path of her realm. I noticed that Greed's kingdom was much larger than Sorrow's was—implying that she'd been Greed for much longer than she'd been Sorrow—and though it was just as lifeless as Sorrow's realm, the opulence more than made up the difference. We stopped at a clearing where the bare rock lay in violent contrast to the shining surfaces around it.

"What is this?" I asked.

"This is where the most ancient one stood," Greed curled her lip. "She really ruined the continuity, you know that?"

"Tell me about her!" I said, my excitement only exaggerated by Greed's influence.

"She was black all over," Greed motioned to her body. "She stood right there, and she looked at me like I was a fucking peasant. Then she left."

"That's it?!" I cried, exasperated.

"No, she did the same thing when I was Sorrow," Greed said, rolling her eyes. "She came to my graveyard—and mind you, I was not in a good mood—and she just stood there, and stared at me. I can't say she ruined the atmosphere, but she did remove the soil from my center."

"You remember being Sorrow?" I asked with a hushed voice.

"What? Of course! I was her not five hours ago!"

"And... can you see what's in your center here?" I asked carefully.

"It's a splendid room, but I never found the time to decorate it," Greed sighed. "If you wish to visit it, it's only a—" and Greed stopped dead, her eyes going wide. She took me by the hand, and dragged me down the path, practically skipping with her glee.

"What?" I yelled.

"Visitors!" Greed sung operatically. I wondered if Arbitrus had somehow managed to break into Sorrow's realm, then break into Greed's. Then I wondered if Corruption had abandoned Willowbud to find out who was snooping around in the astral plane, and I felt a chill run through me. But no, it was just two goblins. They stared with jaws hanging open at the realm of riches. The threshold they'd stepped from seemed to be nothing but a gilded doorframe, but a third goblin stepped through it as though there was a room on the other side. It was a one-way door.

"It's been almost six millennia since the gate beneath Fedar has opened," one of the goblins said, bowing before Greed. "Most of our people had lost hope and left the mines, but one clan stayed. We are here to serve you, oh Gilded One, in the hope that you may pass your gift to one of us."

"And I would be honored to do so!" Greed grinned. "But first, we must consult the sun dial, and..." Greed looked at a massive disk that hung from a tower, then pouted her lips, "...it looks like you're about two-hundred years too early. Sorry." And the goblins turned to statues of gold. I yelped and stumbled back, and realized that the newcomers were not alone. Thousands of golden statues littered the area, most of them goblins, but some of them were dwarves, and a few humans shined above the masses.

"Why?" I gasped.

"Because they came too early," Greed said, like it was obvious. "Punctuality is important, but early guests are never appreciated." I stared dumbly at her. Why would Greed care about staying on a thousand-year cycle? For that matter, why would Sorrow?

"There's another door, isn't there?" I asked.

"What?" Greed looked alarmed. "No! I am the first."

"Knowing what you know now about Sorrow, can you tell me unequivocally that you are the first?"

"Of course, I..." Greed trailed off, seeming uncertain. She looked at her pyramid, and narrowed her eyes, "...it's not an empty room, is it? It's a hallway that I can't see."

"I think so."

Greed worked her lips, tilting her head this way and that. "I am... curious."

Greed's center was atop her massive pyramid, and I was drenched with sweat by the time I reached it. Greed sauntered into the room like she'd just gotten up from a nap, and inspected the cavernous chamber with a critical eye.

"What can you see that I cannot?" Greed asked me. I stared at the statues that rested on pedestals lining the bejeweled walls, and gulped. The one closest to me was of Greed herself, and could've been easily mistaken for the Sentient were it not for the lack of white rims surrounding her metallic irises. The second statue was silver, and though it still mostly looked like Greed, she had aged significantly, and there was a haunted look to her lined face. The third statue was made of steel, and it was of a woman so old, she could hardly be considered alive. There was no mistaking the look on her face now: madness. The fourth one was made of glass, and her face was dead, mutilated, and twisted with horrific mania; eyes rolled back, mouth hanging from an unhinged jaw, hands clawing at her elongated face. I looked at the floor, and saw the unmistakable marks of footprints leaving bare rock on the tiled surface. I followed the tracks with my eyes, and saw that they disappeared at the top of the steps, then reappeared before the barren place Greed had shown me, then disappeared again. I followed them back the other way, and saw that they came from the black iron door at the end of the hall.

"Can you see this?" I asked, pointing to the tracks. Greed looked down, and frowned.

"She's ruined my floor!" Greed huffed.

"What are you not telling me about her?" I hissed.

"I've told you everything I know."

"Can you lie?"

"Sentients are the personifications of emotion, Diamond; we cannot deceive," Greed looked across the room. "Whoever lives behind that door, she knows about the most ancient one. I must know too."

"I think Corruption has done something to her," I whispered. "I don't think you want to be that woman."

"Nonsense! Spirits cannot change each other. Only mortals can change those they are melded with," Greed shook her head as though trying to convince herself. She took a step past the first statue, and winced. She took a step past the second statue, and fell to her knees. Her color turned to silver, her body began to shrivel, but she still crawled forward. It wasn't bravery that compelled her, but her own nature, her need to have knowledge, to take what had been stolen from her. She past the third statue, and collapsed onto her belly. She was the color of steel now, and her body grated against the tiled surface like her flesh was made of it. I ran over to her, and screamed when I saw her face. Twisted, horrible, a mockery of life. The lavish beauty that had been Greed was now hardly more than a corpse that grinned without lips, and stared without eyelids.

"Drag! Me!" she managed to growl, and I grabbed her metal hand, and hauled her forward, my body bent against the weight. We passed the fourth statue, and I lurched forward, the sudden loss of mass sending me careening into the iron door. An agonized shriek split the air, and I stared with mouth agape at the torn-off limb in my hand. It was broken glass, twisted arthritically, knuckles misshapen and fingers mangled. The sound coming from behind me wasn't elvish at all, but of some tortured beast in its death throes. I took the ruined hand, wrapped it around the doorknob, and broke it to shards when I squeezed. I screamed, my hand searing with pain, blood running down my wrist. The door didn't budge. I turned slowly to the horror behind me. Its mouth was a gaping, toothless hole, its eyes bulged and rolled, its nose was gone. It clawed mindlessly forward, its remaining arm shaving against the tiles with every movement, causing her shrill cry to grow even more terrible. The sound throbbed in my eardrums, stabbed against my temples, and pulsed behind my eyes like a fever that gripped my brain and slowly pulled it apart. I wanted to shove the thing backward past the statues and return the creature to the beautiful avaricious monument she'd been, but I steeled a breath, carefully grabbed Greed's remaining hand with my uninjured one, and guided it to the doorknob. I turned it, and the shrieking mercifully stopped.

Part Two: Play to Lose

WILLOWBUD

I could hear the whooping and laughing of Brandon's team as they ran through my stone maze. With Ternia and me in jail, and no attackers to contend with, Brandon's entire team was free to run roughshod through my territory. With my defenders outnumbered and without mounts, it was only a matter of time before Brandon got my flag.

It's just a stupid game, I thought to myself, but if there was one thing I hated more than anything, it was losing games, even stupid ones. Competition was more than a passion, it was an obsession, and I guessed Sister Julia knew that. Was this her way of humbling me? To make me sullen and bitter over something as trivial as a kid's game? I didn't understand it.

"No, Your Holiness; you must follow the rules. You can only get out of jail if one of your teammates tags you out," Jade Tao said, grabbing me and hauling me kicking and punching back to prison. It was the fifth time I'd tried to escape illegally, and the fifth time Jade Tao had plucked me from the soil like I was nothing. Soil. Fucking soil. If there was one thing more useless to an Earth Former than sand, it was soil, and Brandon's territory was covered in it. I pouted on the fertile ground, my arms petulantly crossed, my hate-filled gaze fixed on Jade Tao as she stared placidly back. She'd been wise to make sure she wasn't wearing metal, or I would've turned Sister Julia's new toy into pulp.

"I fucked you in the ass," I sneered at her.

"Yes, you did," Jade nodded.

"You screamed like a whore."

"I quite enjoyed the experience," Jade nodded again.

"I have herpes," I lied (I hoped).

"Then I also have herpes," Jade nodded for a third time, and I sighed. There was no getting to the woman. Beside me, Ternia was sniffling, still stung by Barkmoss's betrayal. I guess she had a little crush on the boy, but I had no sympathy. If Ternia knew Barkmoss well enough, then she should've known he was a rat piece of shit, and that made Ternia stupid, and I hated stupidity. Another whoop echoed from across the forest, followed by a series of yells. One of Brandon's teammates had gotten my flag, and now they were being pursued by Grok and his orcs.

"You're a stupid cunt, you know that?" I grumbled at Ternia. She sobbed in response, and I felt a little better. I wondered what other words I could use to torture the ten-year-old, when a little face burst out of the bushes. Tulipfall! I shot upright, my heart racing as Tulipfall raced toward me. She tagged my hand, and I yelped, hoisted her on my shoulders, and sprinted back to my territory. The trees began to thin, and my wall showed through the thicket. The yells of my orcs and the laughter of Brandon's team grew louder as I neared, and I could tell whoever had the flag was getting close to the border. The pounding of hooves sounded less than fifty paces away, the escalating scream of victory blowing from the rider's lips. I pushed my fist into the wall and opened it just in time to see Barkmoss atop his unicorn, three strides away from scaling the steps. I enjoyed the look of utter horror that crossed his face, then I impaled his unicorn through the skull, and sent the little nymph-boy careening over the top. He skidded up the steps, and sprawled out, the flag clutched in his hand.

"Tagged, you little shit!" I cackled, palming his horror-stricken face.

"Tagged!" Bianca echoed from above, scowling at the gruesome display beneath her. I was about to desecrate the remains of Barkmoss's beloved pet just for good measure, but Bianca anticipated my cruelty and flew the weeping boy to jail before I could. I sighed, and stomped a foot into the rock. Through the tons of stone, an image of my maze crystalized in my mind with all its inhabitants. I grinned, and a second later, I heard seven stifled screams. Brandon, along with all his teammates, were now trapped in stone boxes.

"I waited until they all crossed, then I came running for you," Tulipfall said on my shoulders.

"Good girl," I smiled up at her, and she offered me a little smile in return. "Do you want to help me rub it in their faces?" I asked her, and her little smile broadened.

"Hey, Mr. Stinky-butt!" Tulipfall giggled, pounding Brandon's box.

"She's five, Brandon," I laughed. "You were outsmarted by a five-year-old."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Brandon's resigned voice sighed from within. "Are you going to let me out now?"

"What do you think, Tulip, should we let Mr. Stinky-butt out of his box?"

"Um..." Tulipfall tapped her chin, then grinned evilly, "...no!"

"My sentiments exactly," I chuckled. "Let's take a leisurely walk through his territory, shall we? No need to rush."

"What about Julia's team?" Tulipfall asked.

"What are they gonna do? Limp over the wall?" I laughed.

"No," Tulipfall said, making a drum out of the top of my head, her little hands playing a disjointed rhythm, "but they could dig under it."

I stopped. Dwarves and goblins, expert excavators and miners.

That crafty bitch! I stomped my foot into the rock again, my soles puncturing the earth, sending the waves deep into the bedrock. The waves bounced back, showing me a perfect image of a little crippled dwarf industriously mining his way right beneath my citadel. A second later, the little shit was staring wide-eyed into my grinning face, pissing his trousers as his lips trembled.