The Creators Ch. 16

"Holy Mother above, thank you for giving us passage to this most sacred place, the first holy city of your new kingdom. Provide us with joy and sustenance in the days to come. Above all, please awaken your messenger so that she may guide us and speak your honest word." I looked up at Sister Tera and whispered. "Please, Holy Mother, save my daughter."

Sister Tera looked back at me, her black eyes belying her terror, and she redoubled her apparent efforts to mix concoctions and crush herbs before administering them to Diamond. I would give the whore until morning before she was proven a fraud. It was evening already.

I stood up, and my flock stood with me. "Open the gates," I commanded, a cheer arose from the orcs. Two long ropes had been tethered to the handles, and hundreds of males took up the lines and began to pull. The metal groaned deeply, but even though the hinges were millennia old, they did not have a single bit of rust to make them squeak. Still, the gates would not budge. Ten more lines and hundreds more orcs had to be added before any progress was made. The gates suddenly shifted with a low boom, and an immense cloud of dust was released into the air. The orcs cheered and pulled harder. A monstrous roar sounded from Droktinar. The cheering orcs went silent. The gates burst open, sending the pullers arcing into the air, their broken bodies splattering onto the sands in thousands of gory pieces. Blood smeared a wide arc across the sands before the threshold from where the gates had dragged the pullers beneath the bottom. The entrance to Droktinar stood as a monolithic black maw, gaping and depthless. A pair of massive spiny legs held the entrance open from one end of the doorway to the other, but the monster itself was obscured in the darkness. The legs retracted from the inside of the door and disappeared.

"Droktinar is not a home," Yuntok whispered.

"Nonsense, Brother Yuntok," I said, and stepped toward the entrance. "It is clearly the home for something."

"Sister!" Yuntok yelled.

I smiled over my shoulder at him, then continued my measured pace toward the threshold. When Jade tried to follow me, I bid her stay, and watch the entrance. This was a journey I was meant to endure alone. I stepped through smeared puddles of gore, my feet sizzling into the sand and blood, wafting the scent of cooked orc into my nostrils as I wreathed myself in black fire. Droktinar had not seen the sun for thousands of years, and its blackness was so complete that there wasn't even a gradient to its shadow, but my fire still absorbed the minuscule remnants of light that danced in the derelict annals, completing the desolate vacuum. I passed under the threshold, where the guardian gargoyles sneered down at me, mocking me like some damned soul plodding her way to perdition. I smiled back at them and stepped into the darkness.

Though the western sun shone behind me, there was no shadow before me. My fire ate the light that would be my aura, entombing it within the confines of this great hollow. My feet rested upon stone so smooth that it felt like I was walking upon ice, and when I burned my footsteps into the ancient obsidian rock, I felt a faint connection with the stone. This stone was born of fire, exploded from the belly of a volcano, and sent raining from the heavens to reach this place. Though an Earth Former had molded it, this stone belonged to me. I could see through it with a strange ethereal vision, sensing the great pillars of rock and the voids between them, much like how Willowbud claimed to have seen the earth. I was standing in an enormous atrium.

Archways formed a dome overhead, and sloped away from each other in cathedralic fashion to go down, down, down into the depths below, thousands of feet—miles of space. The footstones of the arches were so far below me that I could barely sense them at all, and I realized that this atrium was but the landing of a great staircase. The staircase's breadth was that of the entrance, and the enormous steps would take twenty strides to span before the next descent. After several thousand feet, the staircase split and spiraled in on itself to descend into the vast hollow below. Each staircase split dozens of times, spiraling ever downward and reaching outward, encompassing the hollow from end to end until hundreds of staircases touched the very bottom miles beneath me. The city was beyond my comprehension. The whole of Drastin could have fit within it, and there would still be room to spare.

"Hello?" I called out. My voice echoed interminably, becoming lower and more distorted until it was a discordant roar in the deepest belly of the hollow. I waited for a minute, but nothing answered. I frowned and pushed my foot deeper into the rock, trying to get a clearer picture of the behemoth that had laid claim to this place. Such a monster surely couldn't hide very well, and yet, I could not see it. Even as I concentrated more of my focus on the feedback my heat was giving to me, even as I discerned the patterns of scripture carved into the wall a mile below me, I could not see the thing that had opened the door. I could see other things though. I could see the great multitude of squirming, writhing horrors that scuttled upon the subterranean floors of Droktinar, wriggling upon each other, tearing each other limb from limb in an orgy of death. They were spiders, scorpions, centipedes, and worse, all of them larger than a wagon—some larger than a house. And yet, these things were but the food of the guardian who had granted me entrance to this place. God's caretaker for this, the holiest of sites.

"I am Sister Julia Gendian, the Flame of God," I called. "I am giving all of the Holy Mother's creatures who reside in this place a fair warning. Leave before I come to you, or I will send you to our creator. And to you, holy guardian," I pressed my foot deeper, "please do not bar my path. Go in peace, and go with God."

No one answered. I sighed and commenced my journey into the blackness.

Interlude Two: Prisoner

CORRUPTION

Wrath was a brutal lover. He pierced me with his cock like he was trying to spear me through the guts, he bent me over and arched my back like he was trying to snap me in half, he choked me like he was trying to tear my head off. I enjoyed every second of it. As spit leaked from my gasping lips, and ecstatic tears poured from my sobbing eyes, I backed into him, squishing my ass against his driving pelvis, clenching my knuckles about the bars of the bedframe, growling and snarling with his animalistic sounds. He forced orgasm after orgasm out of me, and in those blissful moments of pure intensity, I could forget the horror of my situation for a moment.

When he was sated with me, he would pull his shaft out of my loosened netherlips, and slop the comingled juices that coated him onto my thighs. He would kiss me rapaciously, disgustingly, dominatingly, and I would savor it for the residual heartbeats of carnality that still thrummed within my chest. But then the moment was gone, and I would be back in the dining hall, staring at piles of meat for a few seconds before I was transported to the arena. How many times had I slain the orc? Dozens? Scores? Hundreds? I had lost count. I killed him dispassionately, decapitating him before he even had a chance to open his mouth, and then we would be back in the boiling tub, reminiscing upon the glory of a contest that never was. After Wrath drank his fill of ale, he would take me to his bedchambers, and we would begin again.

If there was any value to this interminable hell I'd gotten myself stuck in, it was that I could study a Sentient up close. Wrath was capable of learning, he was capable of knowing, and he was even capable of ingenuity to some degree. There were times when I almost forgot he wasn't alive at all, but then I was reminded by the patterns of his mannerisms. It wasn't that he was a machine who would react identically to repeated situations, for he was wholly capable of remembering and adapting to those memories, but I knew instantly how he would react to whatever situation was presented to him. He had no ability to grow past his confines, no room to evolve and change. He was stuck forever in this caricature of emotion, ceaselessly trying to mimic an idea that he could not ever understand. He was 'Wrath,' but he had no concept of what wrath was. Because the astral plane was on a higher echelon than the physical plane, Wrath vividly understood pain and pleasure, but devoid of a soul to occupy him, he could never comprehend the suffering and joy that accompanied such sensations.

I had tried to take him to his center, and to show him his origin. He would walk no further than the first painting, and even when I tore it from its stand and shoved it before his face, he could not see the portrait of the vampire woman. When I picked up the bible at the very origin of his realm, he did not react, nor could he see the book that was in my hands. When I tried to write over the story Petranumen had given him, the ink simply dripped off the page without taking hold in the paper. I was the god of the astral plane, and yet, only a mortal mind could change these things. Wrath would be Wrath until some poor melded soul changed his nature.

"Why do you exist?" I asked him over a horn of ale.

He snorted. "Because you made me."

"Furok made you."

Wrath rolled his eyes. "This again."

"I'm just trying to understand how you occurred." I frowned into the foam of my horn. "A Life Giver's power is manifested in the physical world, so why would it not perpetuate there after his death? Why does something need to be bound or tethered? A mountain stays a mountain even if the Earth Former dies. The fires of Breyta burn for thousands of years after the woman herself died. Even the beasts and plants the Life Givers have made still thrive in the world, but the souls they try to keep are lost? If a Life Giver can create a dog and can endow that dog with unnaturally long life, and that dog outlives the Life Giver, the dog or cat does not become Sentient."

"Life Givers do not make life; God does—YOU DO!" Wrath bellowed.

"Indulge me for a moment. Please, Wrath."

Wrath sighed and adjusted himself in the tub. "It's in the name. Sentients are made from those with sentience. A dog is alive, but it cannot think beyond its primal cage. A man can create worlds within his mind."

"Of course," I muttered, "abstractions. The enemy of pure thought. The thing that made the cognizant winds lethal are the very things that gave animation to a shelled dead man."

"We are all abstractions, Holy Mother. Even you."

"No. I have understanding."

"Do you?" Wrath grinned horribly at me. "When you tear down the last wall of the astral plane, and the world beneath us is laid to ruin, and even the very last word of language is silenced forever, what will you do when the planes of the mind and body do not knit?" He leaned toward me and blew smoke from his nostrils. "For there will still be one person who carries abstractions in her mind, and so spreads them into the astral plane to perpetuate its separation."

"I will die when my bind does," I said, touching the patterns on my throat.

"Then how will you know it worked?" he asked with a terrible leer. "When your final breath leaves you, your final thought will be one of doubt. You will never know peace."

I smiled back at Wrath, shielding the tremor that went through me. "I have faith."

He laughed and eased back into his side of the tub. "We all have faith in God, but God is faithless. I know a lie when I see one." He yawned mightily and rested his eyes upon me with a greedy expression. "Come, Holy Mother, let us go to bed."

Part Three: Project Management

ASTRID

Angela flew beside me, a pair of gold-streaked Ofanian wings flapping from her back. She was absolutely stunning now that she lived in the flesh, and she had no compunction about showing it, for she was naked.

"I'm sorry that I broke your jaw," I said to her.

"I'm only sorry that I didn't manage to pop Willowbud's nuts."

"I hereby retract my apology."

"Too late," she giggled. "Don't worry, if she and Brandon are fucking right now, I'm not gonna go after her; I'm gonna cut Brandon's cock off."

"I would be very upset if you did that!" Bianca yelled from above.

"It would probably solve a lot of the world's problems though," Justina chuckled beside me. "It's really great to see you, Astrid."

"It's good to see you too—all of you," I beamed at the lot of them. "Even you, Bianca!"

Ofan erupted into pandemonium the moment we arrived. News of Willowbud spread like wildfire through the Ofanian and Ionan camps, and all members of both clans came rushing out for answers. There were two things I noticed immediately—well, three things, actually. The first thing I noticed, was that the Ofanian Guard no longer wore gilded plate armor, but instead decorated their brown bodies in various cuffs, garters, chain-link bras, and panties. The black women made no attempt to hide their masculine organs, and quite a few of them wore golden rings around their shafts. They looked delicious. The second thing I noticed, was that the Ionans all looked... well, exactly the same as I remembered them. The third thing I noticed, was that I felt much more immediate kinship with the Ofanians than my own people. I could see the way the Ionans loathed their neighbors, I could smell the hatred simmering in them, and I could hear the disgust in their voices when they shouted their imperious insults at the Ofanians; words like 'whore,' 'slut,' 'oath-breakers,' and 'anathema,' and I felt every single one as if it were directed at me, but despite my obvious sin, there was nothing but reverence for me. My black wings, raven hair, and fangs would've made me an abomination in any other situation, but the patterns on my flesh made me holy, and the name 'Skyborne' made me legendary.

"Our High Guard! Our Bound One!" Rachel Skyshield proclaimed and dropped to her knees before me.

"I am neither, Rachel," I said, and gestured to Nona and Angela beside me. "She is your High Guard, and she is your Bound One. You have sworn oaths."

"Our oaths were forced upon us under threat of death!" Annie Aurora objected.

"And if you are true Ionans, then you would have chosen death if honor demanded it."

"Our matron god has returned! Surely there is something in the Codes that supersedes the will of one god to the true god of rock!" Shayla Starlight shouted.

"I have read the Codes forwards and backward a hundred times, and there is nothing. Your life is sworn to His Holiness, and you should all be grateful to serve him."

"He puts penises on women!"

"His sister throws shit in our water stream!"

"The Ofanians masturbate outside of our windows!"

"You are our rightful High Guard!"

"Show us the way!"

"Free us from this bondage!"

"Nona," I growled, "control your guard. They are making fools of themselves."

"They will never respect me with you present, Bound One. You are their High Guard no matter what you say."

"This is going to be a problem," Bianca scowled. "Bound One, you must do something to make their loyalties known, or fractures will form, and violence will follow."

"Sisters," I called, "I am not the Astrid you remember—I am hardly a valkyrie at all. I have whored my body, killed for glory, cheated friends, and betrayed loved ones. I killed my mother with our people's sword, then I lost it to our enemy. I am a wretched, lecherous, murderous creature, and if you place yourself under my leadership, I will not forsake your oaths to His Holiness. In fact, I will place you below his Ofanians, as they have a higher claim to the Life Giver than you do. I promise you this, and you know it for certain, for I cannot speak untruths."

"You are not wholly valkyrie any longer!" Helga Sunscraper pointed out from the crowd. "Perhaps you can now speak an untruth!"

"Do not forsake your duty, Astrid!"

"You are the rightful High Guard!"

"Show us the way!"

I sighed and turned my eyes to the heavens. "Forgive me for this, Mother," I said under my breath, then dropped to my knees, pulled out Bianca's thick cock, and consumed it all the way to the base. I was shocked at how large she was, but not nearly as shocked as the thousands of valkyries watching me, and none were more so than Bianca herself. I smiled up at her with my lips wrapped around her base and moaned as she grew hard down my throat. Oh, she was truly blessed. I enjoyed her for an indulgent moment, savoring the crowd, angling my face so that they could see all the gritty details of what was happening. It felt like a lifetime since I'd last performed before an audience—and I supposed it technically was—but it was still just as exhilarating as the first time I performed in the Screeching Siren. I pulled out Bianca's spit-sheened gift and nestled it against the side of my face as I knelt worshipfully at her feet.

"I have never spoken a lie in my life," I whispered huskily, saliva stringing from my chin. "If you follow me, I will make certain that you all worship the superior race as I do." I planted more loving pecks upon Bianca's nuts, and hissed so that all could hear, "Please High Guard, put a black child in me right now! Make me your breeding whore! Show my sisters what pleasures await them if they choose to join me!"

"That's enough, Bound One," Nona said with a shaky voice. She turned back toward the stunned faces of the Ionan Guard. "Everyone, go back to your quarters. There is nothing to see here."

I watched as my people showed me their backs, and flapped to the treetops toward the peak of the mountains. I had once been their favorite daughter, destined to rule them for glorious decades, but it would not be so. It was strange to me that the revelation hurt them more than me.

"Bound One," Bianca said breathily above me, "I must inform you that I cannot sire children! I am sorry to disappoint you!"

"Great Creators above, Bianca, I was lying."

She blinked at me. "You can do that?"

"I picked it up from Gloria. It is quite a useful tool."

"So... do you still want me to..."

I grinned up at her. "Only if you invite me into your treehouse to play with your friends."

"Only if you will teach me how to consume man-flesh as you do," she touched her thumb to my lips. "I have had the pleasure of many women's mouths, but I have never felt anything like that."

"You can't teach natural ability; us Ionans are just born better."

"This is an interesting time to tout your racial superiority, Bound One," Bianca sneered back, sliding her cock across my face. "Are you going to finish your meal?"

"Guys, we get it, you're horny and competitive," Justina sighed, and split us up, "but as crazy as this sounds coming from me, there are more important things than fucking. Come on."

WILLOWBUD

When Brandon and I arrived, I was hounded by the Ionan valkyries. They collectively ignored the god they'd sword their lives to and circled me like a pack of puppies yipping for their returned master. I tried to paint on a smile and wave away their affections, but they were relentless. It wasn't hard for me to imagine what Night Eyes would've done in this situation, and I shivered. I wasn't anywhere near ready for a leadership role; it was best if Brandon kept them. The pair of us walked side by side through the tropical wonder of Ofan, and then promenaded into a large hollowed baobab tree. Brandon sat in a chair between Bianca and Angela, both of whom were giving me dirty looks—though I suspected Bianca was just doing it because Angela was doing it. I held their gaze with a forced smile for a few excruciating seconds, then walked quickly to the safety of Astrid and Gloria.