The Creators

Book Three: The Broken Bridge

Chapter Thirteen: Sand and Water

Prelude: Iron Box

CORRUPTION

Diamond’s garden was filled with bright flowers and delightful shrubbery, soft leaves and smooth branches, not a single thorn upon the stems. Even the roses were docile. Though the astral sun above was perpetually eclipsed, there wasn’t a single dark spot in her garden. The shadows were gentle, and bioluminescent mushrooms illuminated the areas where the sun didn’t touch. The expansive lawn was occupied with astral bunnies, chipmunks, and prairie dogs who gallivanted about, frolicking without a care, nibbling on the honeysuckle and clovers that were plentiful in the bountiful prairies and fields.

I sang to myself as I skipped gayly along the cobblestone path. I pirouetted and giggled, summersaulted and tittered, then recommenced my carefree promenade, bouncing from heel to toe, vaulting into the air and grinning broadly at the sky. Like a child imitating her mother, I had taken on Diamond’s mannerisms. As far as I was concerned, she was my mother.

I ceased my ecstatic promenade when I reached Diamond’s box. It was a new feature to her garden, a rusted grey monolith sitting in the center of her lush realm. The edges were jagged and brutal, the frame was reinforced, and the door was wrapped with heavy-gauge chains secured by an intricate lock. Though it appeared as iron and chain, it was made of love. As Julia lay dying upon the ground, Diamond made a terrible choice. She knew well the fate she was damning the world to, but the weight of the world could not tip the balance, and so she created this box within her mind, and stowed away a secret she could not trust herself to keep. Though they were her memories, they were not memories that had been formed in her garden; they had been taken here by someone else. The memories of this so-called ‘Petranumen’ carried a truth that would destroy Julia, for Julia had defined herself by a lie. Diamond entrusted me with the keeping of this secret, and with my solemn promise, our meld was made. It was a tenuous proposition for me, for I could not control the information Julia learned, but it seemed there were very few in the world who knew of this secret, and in that regard, I would do my best. Silencing people was ultimately a very simple task.

I took my responsibility as caretaker of Diamond’s mind very seriously. I spent most of the time after my birth cleaning up the derelict remains of some dead woman called ‘Passion.’ I organized them into an enormous pile of crumbled architecture and decayed art, and then sifted through their contents. There was quite a bit of information within these ruins. Information about Tethered Ones, Sentients, planes of existence, and mankind’s history. I deduced that I must be this ‘Corruption,’ the most ancient of Sentients, and so I gave myself that title. Still, it felt wrong. Sentients seemed to be unfeeling machinations of thought, but certainly, I felt a great multitude of things. I read through the last of Passion’s dead memories, and cringed horribly when I felt the great depth of pain her final moments caused my mother. I placed my hand upon the rubble, and turned the marble structures into dripping edifices of black. My mother would never feel that pain again. Satisfied with my work, I turned around, and assessed the rolling hills and quaint flowerbeds of Diamond’s garden. It was certainly a delightful vision, but it felt… artificial.

I caught one of the little bunnies, and it didn’t even bare its teeth. It just snuggled into my black arms, and awaited my hand to stroke it.

“What is wrong with you?” I asked the bunny. “Do you not see that I am a predator, and that you are a soft little ball of fat covered in fur?”

The bunny clicked contentedly, and rolled in my arms to expose its belly to me.

I sighed, and set the stupid thing down in the grass. I clearly had my work cut out for me.

“Snakes,” I mused, and a pair of king cobras were birthed from me. They emerged from between my legs, slithered up my torso, and wrapped my body sensually before giving me a deadly little kiss on the throat. I extended my hands into the grass, and the male and female cobras coiled about opposite arms, inspected the green foliage, then disappeared into the underbrush.

“Go forth and multiply, my deadly little children,” I whispered to them. “Uncage this domesticated mind.”

I didn’t have a great perception of time, but it felt like ages before the changes I desired took effect. No longer were the shadows of this place simply shades to cool in, but the ominous homes of cold-blooded murderers lurking in the darkness. No longer were the grasslands a place to galivant about, but wide open spaces that exposed the prey. I heard the squeaks and squeals of the victims, and sighed in contentment when the pervading dullness of bliss gave way to the excitement of mortality. Life was not meant to be lived in comfort. Life was meant to be lived on a blade’s edge, visceral and soaked in adrenaline. As if on cue, the first memory of my host appeared in her new garden. This plant wasn’t of the docile shrubbery that her other memories were formed of, but of deep-colored leaves, bright flowers evoking a poisonous warning, and thorns stitching every inch of bark. The plant created the shape of Diamond and Julia locked in a violent dance of sex; choking, scratching, and biting each other, exchanging raping members into their leaking orifices in a battle of penetration as their comingled powers surged around them.

Something happened then. A great wind rushed through Diamond’s realm, and into me. An orgasmic explosion brought me to my knees, and opened up the space between the planes. I saw through Diamond’s eyes as she stared into the blackening lenses of her mother, and as the last of the white darkened in Julia’s sclera, I realized that this euphoria I felt was Diamond drawing from me, pulling my gift right from the astral plane, and pushing it into the mind of her mother. This mind was familiar. This soul was even more-so. I did not know why I felt such kinship with this Heat Bringer, but the depth of it seemed to reach the very bottom of time, and in that bottom, there was the shape of a baby staring up at me with eyes full of love. I flowed through her shattered psyche and knitted the fragments with my opiate darkness, giving her what she needed so badly, killing all the pain. I danced with Diamond and Julia upon the glassy corpse of Drastin, and made love to them as they made love and hate to each other. When the frenetic lust ended, I found myself lying on my back in the astral plane, staring at the eclipsed sky. I climbed to my elbows, and looked down at myself. My astral flesh was etched with patterns of flame that glowed with such radiance that they nearly blinded me. They strobed in an epileptic lightning storm, and then dwindled.

“What?” I whispered, and then looked up, and gasped.

Diamond’s realm had changed drastically. The garden had become an overgrown jungle filled with dark confines and treacherous hovels. Snakes entangled themselves in lust, their bodies knotting and constricting as they feasted upon the gutted remains of lesser beasts. A hawk circled threateningly overhead, then dove into the canopy, and emerged with a thrashing squirrel in its talons. The gentle babbling stream had become raging rapids that dashed beavers upon the rocks, and the rolling hillsides were now jagged cliffs festooned with ominous caves. Had I done this? I looked down at my body once more, at the patterns of fire that wreathed my limbs and contoured my abdomen. I touched a single finger to a nearby rosebush, and its stem erupted with piercing thorns that dripped poison, and its bright-red flower became more dark, vivid and beautiful than it ever had been. I was no Sentient, nor was I a Tethered or Untethered One. What was I? I gazed at Diamond’s iron box, and studied it for a long time, then I drew my eyes along the edge of Diamond’s realm, and rested it upon her gate.

Cautiously, I walked over to it, and pressed my hand against the wrought-iron bars. The gate swung open with a creak, and pandemonium greeted me. Nonsensical images and scenes; mountains upturning and becoming icebergs, and the icebergs being dropped into a glass of water to be drunk by an insect with human lips. The insect’s mouth turned upon itself and devoured its own face, and then regurgitated it to show a seascape filled with honey. Bees shot from the gelatinous ocean, and painted the sky with their contrails of nectar, creating an image of a bearded man with eyeballs blinking from his nostrils. It wasn’t chaos; it was madness. Nonsensical fractures of thought that no sound mind could ever survive in. I extended my hand, and with just a flick of my wrist, I ceased the nonsense. The space between realms became a vast jungle bisected by a river, all laid beneath a brilliant violet sky filled with stars.

“What am I?” I whispered. I touched my toe to the river, and a ripple shot through the water, expanding for miles until it disappeared behind the horizon. The veil of stars reoriented, rotating about the world as if I stood upon some immense axis. When it stopped, there were only a few hundred stars in the sky, but these shone brighter than any of the others. Flat stones emerged from the water’s surface, and branched to the infinite heavens to form floating steps to the stars. I could not see their end, but I knew where they went. To realms.

“Friends?” I mused with a smile. I took one step into the water, and then stopped suddenly. A click sounded behind me, followed slowly by the torpid screech of metal. I turned slowly around. There, in the center of her realm, the iron box was slowly opening, its hinges seemingly compelled by the pressure of my toes. I looked down at my foot, and nearly screamed. The part of me that was outside of Diamond’s mind did not bear a single line of the patterns that decorated the rest of me. A terrible lassitude suffused the appendage, accompanied by the shriveling of my youthful black flesh until it looked like the decrepit foot of an old woman. I quickly retracted my foot, and the iron box slammed shut. Grabbing the gate, I swung it violently closed, and rested my forehead against its bars, breathing heavily. Melded to my mother’s mind, my only chance at interaction with others was through her, but that was no interaction at all. I was alone. The idea of solitude filled me with such horror that I dropped to my knees and quivered with spasms. Why did it terrify me so? Why did I feel the great void of eons spent in isolation?

“I have to get out,” I whispered. As much as I loved my mother—as much as I loved her mother, these patterns that wreathed my body came with a contingency. I had become omnipotent, but I had bound and melded myself to mortals.

I am going to die.

There was no realm for me to go back to. I thought with my mother’s mind.

I am going to die.

There was no body that I could call my own. I was bound to my lover’s flesh.

I am going to die.

No. NO! There had to be a way! I had not been given this all just to vanish into the night! I had to get out! I had to find the answers! I looked around my mother’s realm, searching frantically for some sign of hope. If Diamond were tethered then she would have an astral projection ever-present in her realm and I could take her wholly, but her untethered nature made it so that I could not leave! I was trapped! I was dying! I was… panicking. I took a deep breath, and settled myself.

I am going to get out.

I am going to live.

I looked down at the patterns that tattooed me. They were my death sentence, but they were also my salvation. If I was this ‘Holy Mother’ she thought me to be, then I had but one purpose. To make life eternal. To conquer death.

“There is only one enemy,” I whispered. “There is only one evil. Pain, torture, anguish, hatred; these are not evil. These are beautiful. There is only one enemy, and I must do whatever I have to defeat it. Pain, torture, anguish, hatred; I will use every tool I have to. There is only one enemy, there is only one evil, and that is nothing.”

I looked up at the stars, and located the brightest one. I couldn’t do this alone. I needed help.

Part One: The Glasslands

JUSTINA

I called it the Glasslands. It seemed a fitting name for the tomb of Drastin. The endless desolate plateau of smooth black gloss reflected my image as I walked upon it. I’d seen better days. My black hair was a mangy mane, but my feet were worn bloody, and my shoulders were bowed. The Breytans were cordial to me. Though a few of them obviously detested me, most of them treated me with a strange respect that I felt I wasn’t owed at all. I had turned their sisters against them and caused ten of their deaths, and yet they still bowed their heads and called me ‘Your Eminence’ when they addressed me. But I was still their prisoner.

“It’s been three days,” I said to Jade.

The young oriental High Guard tended the fire and nodded.

“What I’m saying is, we should… you know… maybe look somewhere else.”

“What you are cryptically saying, Your Eminence, is that you believe my god is dead,” Jade looked up at me from her black brows.

“You saw what I saw.”

She just nodded again. After Astrid’s escape, Jade and the rest of the Breytans had followed the horizon where the deific battle had thundered like some great cataclysm of the sun and earth. When we got there, there was nothing but wreckage. Great slabs of rock raised from the earth and smashed, molten rivers of shale, and immense fractures upon the glass surface like a shattered mirror for the heavens. Of Willowbud and Julia, there was no sign, but there was evidence. Tracks of blood leading aimlessly and drunkenly, and then a pool of it half a mile from the remnants of Brandon’s tree. The Breytans were keen enough trackers to know that it was elf blood, and more than enough of it for it to be a fatal loss. But there was no body, so still, they searched.

“Maybe we should search Drastinar,” I suggested.

Jade sprinkled some salt on her rice, then fiddled with the wok in the fire. “Perhaps you knew Her Holiness for longer than I, but I know her better. She would not want to leave this place. She would seek repentance here.” Jade looked around at the wasteland with a strange kind of awe. “It is a holy place now.”

“It’s a graveyard.”

Jade just smiled her small polite smile. “A tomb is a holy place, Your Eminence.”

“If a god is buried in it.”

Jade’s polite smile didn’t falter a bit. She served me my rice, handed me chopsticks, then waited until I had started eating before she served herself. “I will not leave this place until I have scoured every inch of it,” she said between mouthfuls.

“Your patrols have flown over it hundreds of times and found nothing,” I scowled. “Do you know what the definition of insanity is?”

Jade winked at me. “You are a scientist, Your Eminence. Your world is based on rationality and calculation; mine is based on faith.”

I let out a long sigh, and continued eating from my bowl in silence. The food provided me with no sustenance at all, but it served to fill my belly and provide the temporary satisfaction of fullness. “Jade,” I muttered, “I’m going to die out here if you don’t bring me to a man.”

Jade just smiled at me, and continued eating without a word. I looked out at the vast flat glasslands, and sighed. There was what was left of Brandon’s temple; a singed stump that barely interrupted the continuity of the plateau. I hoped that his end was sudden and swift. I hoped that he got to see Angela before the end. If there was any solace in all this madness, it was that at least my dearest ghostly friend would never have to suffer the fate of becoming a Sentient. For the Heat Bringer’s fire killed everything, even those who were already dead.

“Goodbye, Angela,” I whispered into my rice. “I’ll see you soon.”

TERA

I’d spotted her through my spyglass three days ago. It was difficult to see her through my lens of euphoric tears, but there she was, my Justina, alive and in one piece. Sure, she was the captive of a band of highly-trained religious zealots, but she seemed to manage alright. I’d been through worse, and frankly, so had she. Ursa turned out to be a very useful companion. I never thought a twelve-foot bear could be stealthy, but the behemoth had camouflaging fur and a very perceptive mind. When I saw the Breytan patrol flying overhead the first dawn after the explosion, I was certain they’d spot me in the coverless plateau of glass, but Ursa, somehow sensing my fear, encased me in her great furry arms, and the Breytans flew overhead without interruption.

And so, I was able to trail the few hundred remaining samurai warrior women undetected, though I could hardly call it ‘trailing’ as the dumb cunts were going in circles. They’d circumnavigated the city twice already, flown over every possible surface, and found nothing. Julia was most likely a splattered mess of pulp in the bottom of some manmade underground cave, and Willowbud was probably a toasty little crisp right next to her. As for poor Brandon, his ashes were likely halfway across the Eastern Sea by now, along with the rest of Drastin. I let out a rueful sigh. The time of the Creators was already over. It was the shortest reign in history, and also one of the most violent. Julia managed to destroy the nymph kingdom of Arbortus and the largest city in the world in a manner of a month. It took Arbitrus Gen and Droktin a lifetime to do as much damage.

I peered through my spyglass, and tried to ignore the rumbling of my belly. As a servant of the Life Giver, I had been one of the most well-fed succubi in the world. Suitors lined city blocks to get a turn with me, and I was absolutely gluttonous. But as much as I feasted, I knew deep down that it couldn’t last forever. I was a predator, and as such, I’d spent most of my life between feast and famine. I knew I had two more days before I really had to worry, but Justina wasn’t as strong as me, nor was she yet fully-developed. She didn’t have two more days. I would have to act tonight.

I secured my spyglass into my armpit, and pressed in the telescoping tube with my remaining hand. My stump of a hand still throbbed constantly with pain, but it was becoming duller. I was an ambidextrous killer, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I had fifty arms against even two of those Breytans. Shit, probably even just one. Astrid considered Jade Tao to be nearly her equal, and Astrid was so far above me in combat skills that the difference was laughable. I prayed that my good friend had made it OK, but I knew deep down that Astrid most certainly had died with her Night Eyes. Death Kiss was a solo act now, but that was OK; Death Kiss had always been a solo act. A huntress, a stalker, an assassin. Valkyries were noble and proud creatures, angels of the light, but I was a wretched spider in the dark, and I would wait until nightfall before I began my hunt.

JUSTINA

The sun was setting over the Drastin Bay. With the water so calm, it was difficult to differentiate between the sea and the glassy plateau. The black surface was bathed in a brilliance of reds and violets as the ash-filmed sun blazed a bloody scarlet on the horizon.

“The tide is high tonight,” Jade mused.

“Summer tide always is,” I answered.

Jade just nodded, but kept her eyes fixed on the horizon.

“What?”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Jade, what?”

“There is someone out there.”

I looked out toward the bay, but could not see a single discontinuity in all that endless flat. “I don’t see anyone,” I muttered.
Jade cocked her head; her hand inched toward her katana. “It is a woman, and she does not want to be seen. She shrouds herself in blackness.”

“What are you…?” I started, and then paused. There was a figure out there. She appeared as a black dot against the blazing sun, barely visible within the ripples of heat and distance. Then, she was gone.

Jade drew her katana, and it sang from her scabbard with a metallic twang. All at once, the surrounding Breytans ceased what they were doing and drew with their leader. They looked to where she was looking, and stood statue-still before the violet glow of the setting sun.

I felt wetness between my legs. For a second, I thought I’d pissed myself, but when I looked down, I realized I was sitting in a puddle of water. My canteen was still full, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, so how… I looked out upon the great glassy plane of shale. The tide had swelled past the waterline, past the melted remnants of the docks, and past the beachhead. An inch of water blanketed the plateau, a perfect sheen of glossy liquid that didn’t bear even a single ripple. I saw little fish swimming in the clear water, then pink jellyfish floating listlessly by as the tide swelled another inch. A confused turtle tried to swim in the shallow sea, but only managed to buoyantly scrape himself against the smooth rock beneath. I marveled at the sea life around me, then felt a cold chill crawl up my spine. I’d heard of a phenomenon like this before. Where were we? Where was the tideline? Impossible to tell upon the newly-formed glasslands. We were in it. We were miles in it.

“Tsunami!” I screamed.

“No,” Jade whispered, narrowing her eyes against the glaring sunset. A hulking figure floated towards us. At first, I thought it was a ship. It was only when its silhouette clarified before the blaze of the red sun that I realized it was a blue whale. It groaned lowly as it slid by us, then settled in the hollow of a building’s foundation. The water should’ve been moving at hundreds of feet per second to carry such a creature, but the tide only swelled gently before me, moving so slowly that its momentum could barely be discerned in the trailing ripples that surrounded my cross-legged form.

“What the hell…”

The womanly figure appeared on the horizon again. She danced across the surface of the water as though it were a floor. She pirouetted like a ballerina, skipped like a schoolgirl, and waltzed by herself all the way. I could hear her giggles now. I could see her antlers.

“Diamond?” I whispered disbelievingly under my breath.

The silhouette stopped, and cocked her head. Slowly, the black figure turned toward me. A shudder ran through me. The figure stood still for an agonizing moment, then leapt in the air, spun, and dove head-first into the water she’d been standing on. She was gone. She was right in front of me. For the briefest of moments, I only saw Diamond. I only saw her red hair, her sparkling freckles, her olive skin and her green irises. In that brief moment, I felt the swelling of great relief that she had survived. Then I noticed that her sclera were the color of coal, and that they were filled with nothing but gleeful hate.

“Peek-a-boo!” Diamond giggled, and the ocean erupted. Geysers fountained from the calm sea, sucking the water around into immense columns that stretched to the sky. The columns collapsed upon themselves in a great splash, then formed immense images of sea life. Horrific images. A dolphin was bitten in half by a shark, and the front half swam frantically away as its entrails floated behind it. A squid snatched the shark and ripped great chunks from the still-living creature with its alien beak, then a leviathan dragged the squid into the depths below. The leviathan consumed the squid through its tentacular mouth, then a massive set of jaws closed around it, and all the water sculptures descended back into the calm reflecting pool that had become the glasslands.

“I’ve seen such wonderful things in my journey beneath the waves,” Diamond pontificated. “I’ve seen beasts so rare that they have yet to be named. I’ve gone to the depths of the seafloor where all the creatures are blind and twisted into horrors by the darkness. Their teeth are jagged like razors, their features are deformed, and they feast upon the corpses of the whales, dolphins and mermaids who float down there.” Diamond grinned at me. “It is the destiny of all things, Justina. In the end, we are all consumed by darkness.”

“D-D-D-Diamond?!”

“That’s my name!” Diamond giggled, and winked conspiratorially at me. “Because you and I are friends, you can call me that. But you,” she turned to the gawking Jade Tao, “you will call me by a different name.”

Jade Tao just blinked with her mouth open.

“What’s the matter, High Guard,” Diamond giggled, “cat got your tongue? What does that expression even mean, anyway? Why would a cat have anyone’s tongue? Justina, you know these things.”

“I… uh… I don’t know,” I said numbly.

“Idioms are idiotic. Idiotic idioms are idiosyncratically idiomatic,” Diamond giggled. “That means stupid people in isolated groups make up their own stupid little phrases. That’s why you don’t know where that phrase comes from, Justina; because no one does! Some hillbilly said it one time, and it caught on for some reason. Well, not ‘some reason;’ it caught on because it’s fun to say! Cat got your tongue?” Diamond pointed at one stunned valkyrie, then shifted to another. “Cat got your tongue?” She tittered girlishly, then pointed to another Breytan. “Cat got your tongue?”

The water suddenly swelled in front of the woman, took the shape of a housecat, then leapt from the glassy surface, forced its paw into the woman’s mouth, and tore her tongue out. The woman pitched forward with a shriek, and Diamond giggled and clapped.

“There!” she proclaimed happily. “Now there’s a meaningful origin for this idiom!”

The de-tongued Breytan warrior leapt to her feet, screamed, and charged Diamond. Diamond casually dipped her hand into the water, and pulled out a katana made of the sea. She struck a fighter’s pose, waited for the enraged samurai, then swung her blade with lightning speed. Diamond was a great swordswoman, but she was no valkyrie. The samurai sliced through the water-sword, danced into Diamond’s guard, and swung backhanded to deliver the killing blow. But her sword had no blade. The metal had been shorn cleanly off from where Diamond had parried the blow. Diamond giggled at the stunned woman, then nonchalantly passed her aquatic blade through the woman as easily as if she were slicing through air. The woman’s top slid from her bottom along an even diagonal cut, and she splashed into the water in two clean portions, her eyes blinking stupidly.

“Wow, look at that,” Diamond mused with her childlike curiosity. “I just killed someone! Justina, did you see that?”

“Yes,” I mumbled.

“What was her name, Jade?” Diamond asked.

“Maya Sung.”

“Maya Sung,” Diamond muttered. “Remember her name, everybody. Maya Sung, the first person to ever be killed by the Water Changer.”

“Water Changer?” I asked dumbly.

“I know, I know; it’s not great. The name is a placeholder for now, but I can’t think of anything better. It’s a darn shame, because once the name gets out, there’s no going back.” Diamond’s face lit up. “Brainstorming session, guys! Raise your hand if you think you have a better name than the Water Changer.”

Nobody raised their hands.

“Come on, guys,” Diamond whined. “How often do you get a chance to name a new god?”

Again, nobody raised their hands.

Diamond put her fists on her hips, and pouted her lip with a huff. “Come now, class. If no one wants to volunteer, then I’ll have to call on someone.”

Still nothing.

Diamond sighed, and shook her head in a grandiose show of disappointment. “First day of school; always the same. Alright, let’s see who’s time it is to shine…” she narrowed her impish eyes, licked her lips, and scanned the rows of frozen samurai. “…you in the back trying to hide behind the girl in front of you. Yeah, you,” Diamond giggled as the woman paled. “What do you think I should call myself?”

The woman open and closed her lips, then swallowed. With a very small voice, she whimpered, “Water Former?”

“There’s already the Earth Former, silly!” Diamond giggled, and the kneeling woman was divided right up the middle so that she split from crotch to head in two increments. Diamond turned to Jade. “What was her name, High Guard?”

“Lu Ta—”

“Nobody cares!” Diamond laughed. “Who remembers the second person killed by a god? Anyway, does anyone have an idea for my name that’s not totally terrible?”

Katsumi raised her hand, and Diamond grinned and pointed to her. “Water Shaper?” she suggested.

Diamond tapped her lips contemplatively. “Hmm… former, shaper; kind of the same thing, isn’t it?”

“Clay is formed. A blade is shaped. That is the difference, Your Holiness,” Katsumi said.

Diamond broke into a wide smile. “Your Holiness. You just called me ‘Your Holiness!’ D’aw, you got me feeling all gooey inside.” She actually blushed. “You get a pass on the bad name. Any other ideas?”

“Water Bender!” a woman in the front yelled. She was suddenly upended and tossed on her belly, and there she remained. Though she fought, struggled, flapped, kicked and pushed, she could not lift her face out of the shallow water. It was as though the liquid gripped her face and held it in place, and all her Breytan sisters watched in horror as she drowned. It took a long time. She splashed and thrashed loudly, but nobody helped her, least of all me. I was forming a nice warm spot in the water between my legs as I watched Diamond stand there with a raging erection between hers. Her black and green eyes danced with a terrible excitement, reflecting the image of the flapping samurai slowly dying in two-inches of water. Finally, after several minutes, the woman went mercifully still.

Diamond looked out at the group. “Anyone else?”

Jade Tao raised her hand, but Diamond shook her head. “Sorry, High Guard, but you don’t get to choose.”

“And why not?”

“And why not, Your Holiness,” Diamond corrected with a dangerous giggle. “And the reason you don’t get to choose, is because if you choose wrong, then I’m going to have to drown you in front of everyone, and you belong to Mommy.”

“Her Holiness is alive?!”

“Obviously, you silly-goose! Now, who’s got an idea?”

Nobody dared raise their hands. Diamond scanned her captive audience with a broad grin, and then her black eyes fell on me. I peed a little more.

“You’re always full of ideas, Justina,” Diamond said, stepping toward me. “What do you think my name should be?” She stopped in front of me, then crouched until our gazes were level. Hers was leering and sardonic, and mine was quivering and terrified. She touched my chin with her outstretched hand, and slid her delicate little fingers along my jaw. It was an intimate touch, a sensual touch, and I could not stop myself from shuddering with the pleasure of it. “What would you call me, Justina?” Diamond mused teasingly. “Aqua Factorem? Or perhaps, Oceanum Transfigurator? I’m like a new species of insect you get to name and put in one of your journals.”

“What happened to you?” I hissed.

She caressed my cheek with her thumb, and tittered like I’d told her a joke. “I guess I found religion. Gosh, you’re pretty where you’re scared.”

“Corruption has you.”

Her smile became secret. “No, Justina. I have her.”

“Where’s Angela?”

She cocked her head, and shrugged. “Dead as a doornail, undoubtedly. This body was stuck in Brandon’s tree with no one inside of it, which means she probably found a new one.” Diamond winked at me. “I guess that means her lovey-dovey-bruvey made her something nice before they were cooked like bacon. Isn’t that sweet? Now, please tell me what you think my name should be.”

“Water Dancer,” I whispered, not knowing where the idea had come from, only blurting out the first thing that came to mind.

Diamond inclined her head, and her secret smile spread into a radiant beam upon her beautiful face. “Water Dancer. It’s perfect! Yay!” She leapt to her feet and began applauding manically. “Everyone get up and give Justina Autumnsong a round of applause! Get up!” she screamed, and all the Breytans leapt to their feet, and began applauding me furiously. “Clap your hands, clap your hands, make sound with your hands!” Diamond chanted rhythmically, dancing through the ranks of valkyries as she clapped, her erection wobbling between her slender olive thighs. “Clap your hands, clap your hands, make sound with your hands! Clap your hands, clap your hands, make sound with your hands!”

She paused behind one terrified valkyrie, and observed the poor teenage girl as she fervently applauded me. Diamond’s smile disappeared, then became a frown. “Everyone shut up!” she screamed. “I said SHUT THE HECK UP!”

The Breytans went deathly silent.

Diamond put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. Even from here, I could see her quivering. “What’s your name?” Diamond asked her.

“Aiko,” she whimpered.

“Everyone give Aiko a round of applause!” Diamond shouted, and everyone manically applauded the terrified valkyrie. “Shut up!” Diamond screamed, and they all stopped at once—all except one valkyrie who clapped a half a second too slow. Diamond stared at the offender. There was a pregnant pause where no sound was made, then Diamond turned away from the fortunate valkyrie, and rested her eyes on the unfortunate Aiko Satori.

“Aiko,” Diamond said softly, “I think you have a really nice butt. What do you say to that?”

“Thank you, Your Holiness,” she whispered, a tear rolling down her cheek.

“I can see how juicy it is even under your robes,” Diamond muttered, leering at the woman. “I think it might be the best butt of all the Breytans. Why aren’t you the High Guard?”

“High Guard Tao is an exceptional leader, the best fighter amongst us, an honorable woman of—”

“None of that matters,” Diamond interrupted. “All that matters to me, is if you have a plump rump. And you’ve got the plumpest one, Aiko. Why don’t you show all your friends how nice your butt is?”

Aiko swallowed, then nodded. She turned around so that she was facing away from us. Diamond tittered, took Aiko by the hips, and guided her to bend over. Then Diamond lifted her robes, exposing Aiko’s juicy tan globes.

“Show them everything, Aiko,” Diamond commanded softly.

Aiko nodded somberly, grabbed her cheeks, and peeled them apart, revealing the dark center of her coiled anus, and the vivid pink of her little cloven pussy. Aiko whimpered.

“What’s the matter?” Diamond asked.

“I am humiliated and terrified, Your Holiness,” Aiko answered, tears streaming freely down her face.

“Then you know what it felt like to be those whores you chained to the floor and whipped,” Diamond answered. “Don’t you think you should be punished for that?”

“I only followed the will of my god.”

“Oh, so that absolves you of everything then?” Diamond giggled. “Are you just a little sheep following the shepherd? No… no, you’re a fat little piggy! Do you want to be my piggy, Aiko?”

“No, Your Holiness,” Aiko wept.

Diamond considered the bent over woman for a long time, then sighed. “You’re a virgin, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

Diamond harrumphed frustratedly. “Mommy told me that I couldn’t besmirch any of the virgins. She said she had a holy purpose for the pure of flesh, whatever the heck that means.” Diamond scanned the flock of supplicant valkyries, then her eyes rested upon a woman in her mid-thirties. Diamond didn’t know the names of any of the women, but she identified Aiko’s mother without even looking twice. Her grin broadened.

“Diamond, stop!” I yelled. I didn’t realize I’d done it until it was too late, and I was standing before the warrior women with my fists balled at my sides.

Diamond’s black eyes slid lazily to me, and her grin turned dangerous. “By all means, Justina, do whatever you can to stop me.”

“This isn’t you!”

She cocked her head. “You don’t even know me. We met once, shared a brief conversation, then we were in your bed and… poof, I was gone.” Diamond giggled. “All you have is an idea of me.”

“I stayed with you.”

Her smile cracked a little. “I walked alone. Through hell and madness, I walked alone.”

“What happened to you in Corruption’s realm?” I hissed. “Tell me, please!”

She slid her head from this side, to that, seeming to consider me. “I don’t know, and it’s too late. The very ground we walk upon is a graveyard of millions.”

“You didn’t do this!”

“But I will, Justina. I’ll do far worse.” Diamond redirected her attention to Aiko’s prostrating mother. She looked from the poor woman, then down to her crotch, and she frowned at her deflated penis. “Darn it, Justina, you killed my boner!” she exclaimed, then grinned up at me. “You are the worst succubus in the world!”

“Then let her go,” came a voice I never thought I’d hear ever again. All heads turned around to see Mom standing fifty paces behind the valkyries. Her ribs were showing, she was missing a hand, and she looked like she hadn’t gotten any sleep in days, but she was blessedly—impossibly—alive!

“Oh my god!” I screamed, and raced toward her.

“Stay back, Sweetie,” Mom said sternly, holding out her good hand toward me and stepping purposefully toward Diamond. I stopped where I was, and looked back at the Water Dancer. Diamond was puzzling over the two of us, her evil black eyes flitting from Mom, to me. She sank into the water, then resurfaced between us a second later, and pondered my mother with a clinical eye.

“Do you know what I want to do right now?” Diamond asked Mom.

“I’m not a great guesser.”

“I want to rip those horns off your head and jam them into your eyes.”

Mom just smiled. “An interesting kink. Don’t think I’ve had a client with those tastes before.”

“I really just want to hear the scream Justina makes when she sees me do it.”

“Corruption fetishizes the pain of her host.”

“What do you know of my pain?”

“Nothing,” Mom said, stepping cautiously toward her, “and neither do you; not anymore. It won’t hurt you to let me and Justina go.”

“But it’ll be very boring, and you two are so much fun!” Diamond giggled.

“I won’t be very fun if you kill me.”

“Oh, I’m not going to kill you, silly-billy!” Diamond exclaimed. “I’m just going to blind you!”

“That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun for me,” Mom smiled easily, and continued her steady course toward Diamond.

Diamond just shrugged. “Playing games is fun, but losing them isn’t. We lost the game we played, Tera, but now we play a different one.”

“It feels kind of like the old game if you ask me.”

“No, no, no,” Diamond grinned, “this game is much easier to understand. It’s Mommy and me versus everyone else.”

“And you just do whatever mommy says?” Mom sneered. “Time to pop out of the womb, Sparkles; or is someone going to have to cut you out again?”

I was fairly certain that Diamond was going to eviscerate my mother for that, but Diamond just giggled. “Oh, you are going to be so much fun!” And with that, she reached out to her side, and shot a spear of water through the head of a great invisible bear that had been less than a foot from biting her head off. Ursa toppled with a groan as Mom leapt at the Water Dancer, her one hand now holding a knife high overhead. Diamond caught Mom by the wrist, wrapped her arm around Mom’s waist, and pulled her into a deep kiss.

Diamond’s black eyes glowed. Acrid wisps filtered from her body, coalesced into the air, then shot into my mother. The streams entered her through the vagina, anus, nostrils, ears and eyeballs, and as Diamond rotated her mouth about my mother’s, I saw a thick gout of black flowing between their lips. In my numb horror, the scientist in me wondered idly why Corruption’s infection was so much more powerful than before, but I cared very little for the question. Mom wilted into Diamond with a low groan, and Diamond gracefully dipped her, lengthening their exchange until Mom’s veins were deep obsidian. When Diamond let Mom go in the water, Mom was crying tears of black from her onyx eyes, only the pink irises showing from their depths. She let out a smoky breath, then eased herself into a languid sprawl upon the water-sheened glass.
“Mom?” I whimpered.

She glanced at me, and her blissful expression became one of pure loathing. “You get one warning, Justina. Only one. If you ever call me that again, I will kill you. Slowly.”

“What…?” I sobbed.

Mom slid out of the water, and stepped right up to me. She loomed over me; her face twisted in contempt. “I was a huntress once. I was a creature desired and feared by all. The world was mine, and I gave it all away for… you. All for a little shit who can’t even tie her shoes without needing to be rescued.” Mom levelled a finger against my throat. “I wish I could say you turned out this way because I coddled you too much, but I coddled you too much because you were so goddamn weak. I should’ve left you under some tree in the wildlands and let the wolves have you. Then you would’ve given someone some happiness.”

“Oh, burn!” Diamond giggled behind me.

I just stared into the pits of eyes I’d known so well, those eyes that had shown me love, compassion, and safety all my life, now reflecting nothing but my anguished face. I couldn’t meet her gaze any longer. I turned away. She walked past me without a glance back, and headed to the north.

“Where are you going?” Diamond called.

“To find some dick,” Mom answered.

“I have some.”

Mom sneered cruelly over her shoulder. “You don’t have much, Diamond, and what you’ve got ain’t worth the effort.”

“But where I’m going does.”

“And where’s that?”

“The Gratoran Desert. Mommy’s raising her holy army from the corpse of the orc empire,” Diamond giggled as Mom slowly turned, her interest piqued. “You won’t find better dick anywhere else; I promise you that.”

“It’ll take weeks to get to the Gratoran Desert from here.”

“Just over a day by wing.”

Mom cocked her head, then shrugged. “Fine then. But if you think I’m going to call you ‘Your Holiness,’ you’re fucking dreaming.”

“Friends should call each other by their names,” Diamond tittered. She turned to the flock of kneeling Breytans. “Alright, Ladies, do your stretches and jumping jacks, and pop a squat if you need to poop; you’ve got a long couple days ahead of you.”

“Are you not coming with us, Your Holiness?” Jade asked.

Diamond just smiled. “I’ve gotta go run some errands.”

DIAMOND

Justina watched me as she was carried by Jade Tao into the sky. I wondered idly if I had permanently ruined her relationship with her mother, then I wondered why such an idea excited me. Corruption did indeed fetishize pain, and to say I had mommy issues would be a gross understatement. I recalled the way Mom objected when I told her I wasn’t going with her to the Gratoran Desert. “But Diamond, you are the bearer of God’s enlightenment! You must come with me to share your truth with her children!”

God, it was stupid. I loved my mom, but I wished Corruption had kicked some sense into her brain instead of entrenching her moronic theology. I was the god of water; why the heck would I want to go into the world’s largest desert?! What was even more annoying was that she seemed to think my every musing was a message from god. Since apparently God was speaking directly to me, the mere act of picking my nose had divine meaning. After a day with her, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I told her that God wanted her to go west, and that I had a holy mission to conduct myself. She didn’t even question me. She just hit the jets, and rocketed toward the horizon. Though I had said it to get her out of my hair, I wasn’t being entirely untruthful. I was infected with a nagging desire to seek the depths of the ocean, and I knew it was Corruption who compelled it. The darn Sentient had an agenda, there was no doubt about it, but I didn’t care. Wherever Corruption wanted me to go, fun would soon follow.

I looked down at my reflection, at my black-eyed face, my expression of innocent jubilance now turned into something sinister. There was a gap in my memory that explained why I had become what I had become. One second, I was opening the final door to Corruption’s final realm, the next, I was in a whirlwind of fire and water upon Drastin’s glassy surface with my mother in my arms. Every time I tried to remember what had happened between those points, my head began to ache terribly, and my mind sought to find an immediate oasis in distraction. I touched the water’s surface with my forefinger, and a ripple shot through the shallow medium like a shockwave. The pulse showed me everything the ripple touched; the fish, the plants, the corpses of the women floating in the water. Guess I was a mass-murderer now. Huh. Fancy that. I wondered what Mother—Passion—would’ve thought about that? She probably would’ve disapproved, but she’s a dead old whore, so who gives a darn what she thinks?!

I walked across the water until I was standing over the open ocean, and tapped my toe to the surface. The ripple pulsed out and downward, showing me everything for leagues far and deep. A whale and her calf were swimming two nautical miles north. A megalodon was pursuing a great tortoise ten miles to the southwest. A troop of mermaids was promenading beneath the waves with their trusted pod of dolphins. I grinned excitedly, and dove into the water. I shot through the medium like a rocket-propelled harpoon, moving so quickly that shockwaves exploded behind me. I slowed when I came to the troop and their pod, then casually swam up beside them.

“Hi!” I said, my voice carrying through the water. “I’m Diamond!”

The mermaids stared at me, their bodies humanoid from the waist up save for the gills that scored their throats. The leader, a man with a great white beard, blinked at me, and a telepathic message was sent to my mind.

What are you?

I’m a half-nymph, half-elf!

The man blinked again. You’re much more than that.

Well, I don’t like to brag… I casually checked my nails, …but I’m also a new kind of Creator. They call me the Water Dancer.

The merman relayed the message to his troop, and there was a raucous and silent conversation that passed between the eyes of the ten mermaids. Finally, he turned back to me. We are… incredulous.

I twisted my wrist, and a great tornadic maelstrom appeared before us all, towering from the water’s surface to the sea floor, stretching a hundred yards. Though it tore great chunks from the coral reef and sucked in immense boulders like they weighed nothing, those around me swam in waters so calm they couldn’t even be felt.

Convinced yet? I giggled mentally. Or do you wanna go for a ride?

We’re convinced! the merman said urgently, his eyes bulging at what he’d just witnessed.

Cool-cool… So, do you guys wanna worship me, or…?

What?

Well, since you guys live in the water, and I’m the water goddess, I figured it would be a natural fit.

The mermaids all looked at each other, then looked back at me. The merman spoke very slowly to me. We already have a water goddess. Her name is Xaya, and she rules the hundred seas and blesses us with bountiful—

She’s made up. Total phony, never existed, just an old tale told by ancients too stupid to understand the world.

The merman blinked. She is our most sacred idol.

I reached out to my side, and a great swell of water surged forth, carrying with it, hundreds of bluefin tuna all trapped together within the confines of a spherical water prism. I dumped them before the troop and their pod, and the fish bolted, swimming every-which way, filling the void space with flashing colors and frantic movements. The dolphins rushed after them, gleefully collecting the massive fish in their jaws.

Did Xaya ever do that for you? I asked impatiently, crossing my arms.

The old merman just gawked at what I’d done.

I sighed. Look, clearly you’re not the voice of authority, so who is? Where is Voda?

The merman’s awed expression suddenly became very hard. I know not of what you speak.

Yes, you do, I giggled. I’d had more than enough of this doddering old bastard. I rushed to him, took him into my arms, and breathed Corruption into his gills. The Sentient power blew from my lips and infected him, rushing into his eyes, nostrils, mouth and gills, contorting his face into a terrible ecstasy. His eyes rolled back, then darkened until they were black pits. When they rolled forward, they were void of any humanity. I grinned and swam back, curious to see how this would play out. One of the mermaids asked him a telepathic question, and he whirled on her, thrusted his trident, and impaled her through the guts. Before any of the others could react, he downed two more with strikes to the throat and chest. Then, they were on him, thrusting their weapons, piercing him as he pierced them, hacking and sawing into each other until limbs were floating in murky clouds of blood, and the bodies were slowly sinking into the blackness below.

The predators were in the periphery now, already attracted by the slaughter of tuna done by the dolphins who now swam frantically around their embattled masters, yipping and signaling to each other, trying to make sense of this horror. And as the sharks waited in the distance, the mermaids continued their onslaught, unable to bring down their corrupted leader as he delivered deathblows to those he had once called ‘friend.’

The crimson cloud faded. Only the old man remained, though he was dying quickly. His right arm was hacked clean off, his flipper was shorn and gashed, and his right eye had been gouged out. The left eye stared at me as I approached, the sclera still black with corruption’s infection. Though his front teeth had all been knocked out, he still managed a ghastly smile when I floated to his side. I smiled back. I found kinship in that smile.

Where is Voda, you old dead piece of poop? I asked him, and caressed his broken cheek.

Piece of poop? he croaked mentally.

Mom doesn’t want me to swear.

Your Mom’s a stupid cunt, he sneered bloodily.

I giggled, and took a grip of his white hair. You’re not too wounded to die slow.

He hacked blood into the water between us, and roared with silent laughter. I tittered back, and formed a blade with the water. I took my time with him, and though he writhed in agony as the chum was cut away from him, he still laughed with me all the while, sharing in the secret joke only we truly understood. The water around us grew red again, and the sharks moved in to collect the bodies we’d left and the pieces of old man I fed them, but the bastard wouldn’t give me anything but his horrific smile and bulging left eye. In the end, I slit his throat out of respect, and let him float away, laughing his last laugh all the way into the awaiting jaws of a great white. The sharks cleaned up the big pieces, and the barracudas cleaned up the smaller pieces, and soon there wasn’t anything left of the mermaids but their metallic weapons slowly sinking into the black below.

The pod of dolphins was huddled together in defensive positions, snapping at the predators if they came too near. When the feeding frenzy ceased, the pod dispersed, and swam listlessly about. I watched them passively, not wanting to appear as a threat. Though I was the Creator of water, I did not have an affinity for sea-life, and could not bond with these creatures as mermaids could. The pod leader was an older male, and though I was perhaps anthropomorphizing him, I felt that he shared many of the same traits as the old merman I’d turned into living fish-food. Perhaps this creature had been that old merman’s pet. The dolphin lifted its bottlenose, and wiggled back and forth for a moment. It then issued a command to the other dolphins, and they all swam in line behind him. Once in formation, the water-bound wolfpack swam with a purpose directly to the west. I waited until I was out of their sensory range, and then I followed them.

JUSTINA

From our vantage point atop the Gratoran Wall, the Tentigo Tropics could barely be discerned in the distance. It was an immense rainforest that stretched between canyons and along shorelines, seeming to fill-in the brutal landscape around it. No one knew much about the Life Giver, Tentigo, but his rainforest inexplicably persisted on the outskirts of the Gratoran Desert. Tentigo’s time was long before Gratora’s, so perhaps his rainforest predated the desert that stretched across the landscape, but I doubted it. The ancient mountain range formed a rain-shadow for the western lands, and Gratora’s desert had undoubtedly been there millions of years before it was ever named after her. Had Tentigo tried to defy the world’s climate, and create a tropical paradise over the desolate land? It seemed like something a Creator would do, but ultimately, even their power was limited by the elements they claimed mastery over.

These were the things that I pondered to avoid the horrible reality in which I found myself in. I tried not to look at my mother as she prowled around the camp, sniffing the air like a hound for the scent of a man. As the sun rose behind the eastern horizon and bathed the Gratoran Wall in brilliant hues of orange and violet, my mother’s features became darker and darker in the shadow until they were completely faded, and only her predatory profile was visible to me. Her head suddenly cocked, and she froze. I sniffed the air, but I could not detect what she did. I just watched her as she slowly crept toward the brush, and then suddenly disappeared into the wild with a flash.

“She will be back,” Jade said to me.

“So what?” I hissed, tears running down my cheeks. I wiped them away, and looked at the samurai High Guard.

Jade prodded the cooking pot between us, and steam flowed from its lid. “She still lives, Your Eminence. You should count your blessings.”

“Count my blessings,” I snorted.

Jade frowned at me. “I have lost almost all of my friends, and my mother as well, and yet I do not share in your bitterness.”

I glanced at her. “Your mother died?”

“She was killed in Her Holiness’s fire.”

“I’m sorry, Jade, I didn’t know.”

“Why would you?” Jade’s frown deepened. “I never introduced any of you to her, and she would never have it. She lost her duel with me, and I took her place. To make herself known would be a great dishonor.” Jade pointed her chopsticks at me. “But I always sought her wisdom when I was conflicted, and I was often conflicted with Her Holiness. Now I only have my own wisdom, and it is woefully scant. You and I are in much the same predicament, I fear.”

“Yes,” I muttered, and looked Jade squarely in the eye. “What has happened to my mother has happened to Julia, you know.”

Jade nodded. “It was a contingency I planned for; I even accepted it.” She fumbled with her food. “But that was before the cataclysm.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Whatever Her Holiness desires of me.”

“Even after what she did?! Jade, if you follow a corrupted Julia, you are following a monster!”

Jade chewed on a mouthful of rice, then swallowed, and pondered the fire. The orange flames danced in her dark eyes and cast dramatic shadows across her face. “We are not too far from Breyta right now,” she mumbled. “If you look to the south, you might be able to see its outline. Breyta—the god, not the mountain—was said to have been born from the fire of that volcano. It is more likely that she simply made it, but she created her own legend, and the word of God is truth.”

Jade put down her bowl of rice, and looked up at me. “She created the codes we live by. She is the reason a samurai would rather kill herself than face dishonor. She is the reason we train constantly for war, but always practice peace. What we were before her, no one knows. Nobody knows what any of the winged warriors were before Ofan, Iona, and Breyta. The point I am making, Your Eminence, is that we are no one without our god. If we do not serve to our fullest capacity when the gods are here, then we are but hermits in the hills, wasting our lives in preparation for something that only comes once every few thousand years. Think upon the generations of Breytans who perfected their craft, practiced day in and day out, honed their skills to the most elegant of points, and then watched them dull with age, only to come to the sobering realization that they were one of the lost generations, just caretakers of a purpose they would never realize. How can I let all of their sacrifices be in vain?”

“You’ve seen what Julia will do when she’s filled with that poison,” I hissed.

Jade nodded. “It is terrible, but it is her will. I am no one; just a tool. In time, my very morality will be changed by Her Holiness, and you and I will never have a conversation like this again, for there will be no room in me for such uncertainty.”

“You can’t just do nothing!”

Jade smiled her placating smile. “Are you truly speaking to me right now, Justina Autumnsong, or to the reflection in my eyes?” She stood up, drew a dagger from her hip, and tossed it at my feet. “Diamond is not my god. I am not obligated to heed her command unless my god says so. If you let us take you to Her Holiness, you will be killed this day. Perhaps your mother will be spared because she is a useful weapon, but you are an atheist succubus who once sided in opposition to Her Holiness. I fear that your end will be gruesome.”

“Where am I supposed to go?!” I growled, more tears falling upon my cheeks.

Jade looked out over the world that stretched on either side of us, and raised her arms to her sides. “Where ever you so desire. This land is so vast that it is beyond measure, and you are young and unshackled. You stand at the starting line of your life; I suggest you take the first step.”

And with that, Jade poured water onto the fire, turned around, and walked toward the rest of her troop without a look back. The bushes to my left rustled, and Mom emerged from them, looking much fuller than she had only a few minutes ago. She walked by me, and as she sauntered over to Jade, she connected eyes with me behind the veil of steam. Those black eyes bespoke no affection, no love at all. The only thing I saw in them was a single little request. Perhaps I had envisioned it, perhaps my grief had taken my mind, but in that little glimmer, I swore I saw something more than just the black apathy of Corruption. It was so subtle that I was nearly certain it was a fabrication, but in my desperation, I saw it. A plea. Run away, Justina. Please.

I nodded to her, and she turned around without even acknowledging me. After wiping away the last of my tears, I took one last look at the Breytans marshalling upon the outcropping of the Gratoran Wall. In my mind, these great warriors were flying to their horrific and inevitable doom, but there was nothing but jubilation in their ranks. Their god was alive, and they were going to serve her. Even Jade, who knew the breadth of the danger she was walking into, made her speech to her sisters with a radiant smile upon her face. She never once connected eyes with me. When she was done, she had one of her warriors take my mother by the waist, then she leapt from the outcropping.

The winged samurai followed after, the silver streaks in their wings flashing as the sun rose higher on the early morning sky. They were all gone in the time it took me to blink. I stared at the vacant outcropping, and fought the urge to go sprinting over to it and call for Jade to come back and take me with her. With Mom. I stiffened my upper lip, clutched my dagger, and turned toward the wilderness.

The mountains of the Gratoran Wall loomed high overhead, stretching thousands of feet up into the thin cold air. I did know what manner of man or beasts were up there, but Mom had fed upon something while she was in that wilderness. My stomach growled, and my primal instincts whispered to me. I took a deep breath, and took my first step.
DIAMOND

I followed the dolphins deep into the abyss. Past the point of darkness, past the point where the sun’s blue glow radiated in the waters above. I was surrounded by crushing blackness, the weight of the water atop me so oppressive that it was like swimming through molasses. As my motions became sluggish, my perception of the world around me became blurred. The medium with which I projected my mind was thick and heavy, and the signals that bounced back were muddled. The space was so vast and the weight was so great that I could barely sense the seafloor below me, and then everything suddenly came into crystal clarity. The spaces became small, and the water became thin, but though I could sense the world down to the slimmest of margins, I could not believe what my senses showed me.

We’d swum into an immense trench. Great underwater mountains towered on either side of me, each of them cut with such precision that they only could’ve been made by an Earth Former. The mountains were immense cubic blocks, but the sediment had filled in the sides around it so that only the channel between the blocks was passable. What had once stood as two monoliths of deific proportion, were now lost forever beneath the waves, and had become nothing but part of the oceanic basin. The enormity of what I witnessed did not awe me, but the great implication of time did. These cubic mountains were older than the ocean atop it.

The pod swam deeper into the trench, and I followed after until the tops of the cubic mountains formed a sliver high above me. The blackness that consumed us became claustrophobic and oppressive, but it was soon broken by an azure light far away. It was faint, like a blue candle flickering in the deep, but it grew until its luminance opened up the darkness, and I was swimming beside an enormous stone face. The stoic eyes of the statue were taller than I was, and her face was nearly thirty feet from brow to chin. As I swam down the statue, I realized that it was of a humanoid race I’d never seen before. A snakelike tail wrapped around the woman’s shapely figure and disappeared behind her, and patterns of scales decorated her naked body, moving about her curves as though to accentuate them. When I looked back at her brow, I realized that what I had mistaken for the hair of her eyebrows were actually lines of reptilian scales, and the hair atop her head was composed of hundreds of reptilian tails all flowing and winding in a sinuous knotwork.

When I found the seafloor, I was surprised to see that it was flat and smooth. The woman’s feet rested upon it, and when I looked up, I saw her immense profile fading into the perpetual night above. I turned around, and there was another statue just as immense. This was of a male, and he stood opposite the woman, his body carved from the side of the other cube. I looked down the trench, and my eyes widened. There were hundreds of statues—thousands of them—and they lined the great division of monoliths like silent guardians of the deep, protecting a large cylinder at their center that connected the two cubes. The cylinder was perhaps half as tall as the statues flanking it, and it glowed with the unmistakable white energy of a Life Giver.

“Voda,” I whispered to myself. As if I needed more confirmation, the great luminance revealed hundreds of dolphin and mermaid profiles all swimming about the source. I swam after them, passing each immense statue until I was in the crowd of aquatic humanoids. Though many of them were shocked to see me dancing gayly through the water between them, none of them attempted to stop me as I advanced toward the light source. They just gawked at me, and I giggled back, and continued my journey unmolested.

The closer I got to the light, the more it revealed. The cylinder was not a hard structure, but a great hollow from which the light shone, and the light was not of single source, but of dozens of tubular veins that wreathed the insides of the cylinder. The immense hollow was like a vast atrium when I swam into it, towering above me and dropping far below me. The hundreds of mermaids became thousands, and they swam in traffic along the veins of light—no, they swam through them. I watched a young mermaid girl swim up to one of the tubes, and absorb through the membrane as though it were osmotic. She swam through the current of light, and as she did, her long fishtail faded away, and human legs and feet kicked behind her, propelling her along the vascular highway of Life Giver light. I watched her travel through the tube, which circumnavigated the cylinder before branching at the top into twelve different smaller veins. She took one of the smaller veins that led to a larger one, and she joined a great procession of mermaids toward a destination I could not see.

“Hmmm,” I frowned, puzzling over the network of veins. It was like one of the large intersections in Drastin, but there was nowhere to go. The cylinder was self-enclosed as far as I could tell, and though it was massive, it was not nearly large enough to warrant this strange transportation system. I swam up to one of the tubes, and tested the surface with my hand. My hand passed through it without any noticeable sensation, and I examined it from the other side, turning it over this way and that to make sure nothing had changed. I recalled the way the mermaid’s tail had seemingly dissolved from her body, and I dared to dip my head forward, and breach the membrane with the tips of my black antlers. They were unaffected. Satisfied that I would not lose my unique features in the strange highway, I floated through the membrane, and let the light wash over me.

The tube pulsed much like Passion’s womb had, sounding a steady rhythm of life that pumped through the water like a low drum. I swam along the light-filled tube, each of my swimming kicks propelling me gently faster as though the water was assisting me in my transport. I passed confused mermaids and mermen, all of them now completely nude, even the gills upon their necks closed. Upon closer inspection, I realized that they weren’t all human, but elves and nymphs as well, though these nymphs had fins instead of horns. I undoubtedly looked as perplexed as they did when our gazes met, but there was no fear in our exchange. When they looked into my black eyes, they didn’t see the dreaded most ancient one, but just a strange brethren swimming in their midst. I supposed they must’ve thought I belonged there, for no astral incantation or wizard’s spell could’ve brought a surface-dweller to such crushing oceanic depths.

When I got to the exchange atop the sphere, I took the vein the woman had before. I was propelled into the same large tube she had been shot into, and I was carried through it by a very strong current. The light grew brighter as I traveled, and my kicking feet propelled me to such speeds that my hair was plastered behind me. I didn’t use my power here, but simply road the exhilarating highway toward the light until it was nearly blinding, and then… and then I gasped, and sucked in a great gulp of water.

I emerged from a great slide that slowed me down until I was resting on smooth stone, coughing and hacking, splattering the floor with water expunged from my lungs. Cool dry air caressed my body, whispering between my naked legs, brushing through my wet hair. I wiped the water from my mouth, and looked up.

It was strange how the sky never seemed grandly immense before. It occurred to me as I looked upon Voda, that the scale of the sky was infinite, and therefore it could never be construed as ‘large.’ But there was no sky in Voda. Voda was a room. The largest room in the world. The ceiling above me was an impossibility, a thing so high that it could not be an enclosure, and yet above the misty clouds of moisture, was a great expanse of rock that stretched for miles in every direction. The ceiling was held aloft by enormous statues of snake-people, their great stature making a mockery of those I’d been so awed by outside. They stood a mile high, their columns of limbs dotted with thousands of lights like the skyscrapers in Drastin, each of them opening to a room where the now-bipedal mermaids lived. There were four such statutes for each of the corners of this room, and the ones in the far end were hazy and lighter-hued with distance. All four of them held the ceiling up with one great stone hand, then extended the other toward the center, where their fingertips touched.

At the convergence of stone digits, all the veins of the city flowed into a ball of light so intense that it illuminated the entire room. Below it, the city of Voda sprawled out like a splendor of architecture. The buildings were so tall that they dwarfed the high rises of Drastin, and they were built with such precision and care that they formed waves of architecture from one end to the other, seeming to swell and ebb as I swept my eyes across them. They didn’t stop when they reached the walls, but continued in perpendicularity, jutting from the walls to create towers that projected sideways out over those that reached toward the ceiling. When I squinted, I could see that the ceiling itself wasn’t flat at all, but created a stalactite pattern of towers that pointed downward toward the floor.

I turned around, and saw that the tubular vein I had emerged from was just one of dozens that came from the massive hole in the wall, and that each one of the light-filled highways branched into hundreds of different directions, moving up the walls, along the floors and ceiling to deliver its passengers to various locations throughout the immense city. How many lived here? Millions at least. This was a city nearly as large as Drastin and Alkandra, and I had thought it was but a myth until I stepped into it.

“Excuse me!” I called a passing elf woman.

She turned, and puzzled over me. “Yes?”

I climbed to my feet, and pulled the strands of hair from my face. “What uh…” I searched around, wondering where to go from here, “…what’s uh… what’s there to do around here?”

She blinked at me. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Is there like a bowling alley, or… you know, something?”

She inspected me closer, assessing my horns, my black eyes, my sparkling freckles, and my flopping penis. “My dear girl, you are very, very confused, aren’t you?”

“And lost too,” I grinned.

The woman inspected me for a long moment, then her features softened into a smile. “Well,” she said, “I suppose it’s not every day that I get to chaperone an antlered hermaphrodite. Come,” she extended her hand to me, “my name’s Olivia.”

“Diamond,” I said, taking her hand.

“Indeed,” she chuckled.

Twenty minutes later, I was seated on a bench outside—or rather simply on the patio—of a restaurant that served nothing but seafood. I didn’t know why I expected something different. As Olivia delicately ate her trout, I chewed on some seaweed, and pondered if I should test my omnivore side.

“So,” Olivia prompted, setting her chopsticks down, “how did a surface-dweller get all the way down here?”

“How do you know I’m a surface-dweller?”

“Because I was a surface-dweller,” Olivia smirked crookedly.

I examined the woman carefully. Even through Corruption’s eyes, she was impossible to read. Her hair was blonde and her eyes were pure blue in the high-elf fashion, but her skin was nearly a green hue. She looked steadily into my black eyes without even the hint of fear, and seemed to regard me as nothing more than a curiosity.

“How did you get down here?” I asked.

“You first.”

I shrugged. “Magic.”

She snorted. “Alright, be a smartass.”

“I got here the same way that fish did.”

“In a net?”

“I swam.”

Olivia looked bemusedly at me, then shrugged. “Secrets are not kept for long in Voda, Diamond, but you keep yours, and I’ll keep mine.”

“Deal. So, what’s with this place?”

“It’s a city underwater.”

“I guess I deserved that.”

Olivia plucked the eyeball from the fish, and slurped it into her mouth. “The natives say that there were once two beings. One lived below the earth, the other—”

“Please don’t tell me this is their rendition of the Maternal Path.”

“It’s not quite so preachy,” Olivia gestured to the ceiling. “Basically, an Earth Former they called ‘Vodianan’ created Voda, and Anasia, a Life Giver, created the lifeforce of this place.”

“Xaya?”

Olivia nodded, and gestured to the veins of light and water that crawled all over the city like blood vessels branching into the stone flesh. “Xaya was Anasia’s daughter, and Anasia couldn’t bear to let her daughter suffer death when it was within her power to preserve her life eternally, so she tethered her to the Eastern Sea, of which she had great affinity. Vodianan built this temple for her to reside in, and carved out the Drastinar Bay so that it would be surrounded by water. It was originally an island. Obviously that didn’t last.”

“The mermaids though; why do they transform?”

“Mermaids are a construct of Anasia,” Olivia said, plucking the bones of her fish clean. “She took some elves, humans and nymphs, and decided to slap some gills and a fishtail on them, and viola; mermaids. It’s Xaya who transforms them back before they enter Voda.”

“Why?”

“For her own protection. Her affinity of the sea gives her power over it. If she deems someone a threat, she simply drowns them before they can enter Voda.”

“Huh,” I mused.

Olivia glanced at me. “What?”

“Nothing… I just thought…”

“Oh, you thought you were some kind of badass?” Olivia giggled. “Xaya is the god of this place; what are you to her?”

I glanced up at the convergence of light centered over the city. “Is that where Xaya is?”

“No, that’s just the system interchange; terrible place for traffic.”

“So where is Xaya then?”

Olivia gestured to the cube’s entrance. “Voda is just the body. Xaya is the heart. Remember, Diamond, there is another cube. That is where Xaya is.”

“She keeps the whole cube for herself?”

“And there’s only one way to get in. All of the outflow veins converge at the gate, and the exiting citizens are ejected there before they can continue into Xaya. Only a select few are allowed into her, and any that try to force their way in are killed without pause. There is no way to see her if she doesn’t want you to.”

Is that so? I thought with a little self-satisfied smirk.

“Uh-oh,” Olivia said.

“What?” I asked, looking back down at her.

She pointed her chopsticks at me, and aimed down their lengths as though aiming down the haft of a bow. “Did I just see a gleam in your evil black eyes, Diamond Gendian, Daughter of Passion, Daughter of the Destroyer, the Possessor of the Most Ancient One?”

I cocked my head, and examined the strange elf from a slightly different perspective. “When did I stop talking to Olivia, and start talking to Xaya?”

“When you’re in here, you’re always talking to me,” Xaya smiled from Olivia’s mouth, and sat back in her chair. The passing citizenry had stopped what they were doing, and were forming a perimeter around me and Olivia.

“I am everywhere and everyone in Voda,” Xaya said. “Everyone who swims into my veins is co-opted into my consciousness. Everyone, except you. Possessors of the Most Ancient One have come here before—she comes from the water, after all—but she holds no sway over my kingdom in this realm of flesh. If it is not Petranumen that conceals your mind, then what is it?”

“Who?” I asked. She had said a name, but my mind couldn’t hold it. It was like an unintelligible word from another language.

Xaya narrowed Olivia’s eyes. “I am tethered, Diamond. I watched you walk into Corruption, and then I watched you drag Petranumen through the chaos between realms.”

I knocked my head, and giggled. “That’s news to me!”

“What did you do, little girl?” an old woman hissed in my ear, and drew her knobby fingers down my arm.

“Just what are you?” a man whispered, and pressed a blade against my throat.

A low groan emanated from all around Voda. Suddenly, the vast indoor city became deathly quiet. Another groan sounded, then came a rumble so deep and terrible that it seemed to shake the very stones. All the citizens of Voda stared up and around them, confusion writ across their faces. Olivia’s eyes tracked the ceiling until a drop of water splashed her cheek. She touched a fingertip to the droplet, then looked at me, and I saw horror opening up her gaze.

“What?!” she hissed.

I took the droplet from her fingertip, and formed it into the shape of an arrow. “What am I, Xaya?”

“Impossible!”

“And yet, here we are,” I giggled, and sent the arrow through Olivia’s eye. Her brains blew out of the back of her head, and she dropped like a stone, but no one seemed to care. All of Voda’s attention was fixed on me.

“What do you want?” a young girl said from across the street, her voice crystal clear in the pervading silence.

“Why are you here?” asked someone on the balcony above me.

“My mother—Passion—told me of this place,” I said. “I didn’t believe that it existed until I walked upon it, for even she thought it was a myth.”

“Passion was a child to me; why would I ever let her know of my existence?” Xaya asked from an old man’s mouth.

“I kind of thought tethered beings formed a club or something.”

“You are too naïve to have so much power!” an old man yelled.

“Why are you here?” the voice from the balcony asked again.

“What do you want, Your Holiness?” the young girl repeated.

“I bet you wished you drowned me when you had the chance,” I giggled. “It wouldn’t have worked, but I’m insulted that you didn’t try.”

“Answer the question, Your Holiness,” a man whispered in my ear.

“Why are you here?”

“What do you want?”

The entire city was staring at me. Millions of eyes from across the vast enclosure, staring from the rooftops of towers that stretched to the ceiling and pointed at the floor, that jutted from the walls in defiance of gravity. They stared from distances so great that I could not even discern the shape of the building they stared at me from, but I knew they still watched me. A threat had slipped past the gates of Voda, and now all arms were brought to bear against it. It was the greeting I was owed, and my smile curved horribly against my cheeks.

“Why are you here?”

“What do you want?”

“More,” I whispered. In an instant, the Vodians surrounding me were turned into a red mist, the water from their bodies ripped right out of them. Arrows flew from the rooftops, crossbows were unleashed from the windows, and a great salvo of arcane attacks was launched from every point in the city, but it didn’t matter. The immense volume of deadly iron and magic all died in my crimson shield of water, and the shield only grew as I walked through the crowd, leaving sleeves of dried flesh and bones in my wake as I sucked the liquid out of them. I stepped toward the tube I’d emerged from, and saw that the water within was still. When I entered the light-filled vessel, the crystal blue waters turned dark purple with blood for a second, then were washed away with the neck-breaking velocity of the current.

The flowrate within the vein became so strong that the vein quivered and pulsed violently, threatening to burst with the pressure. The broken bodies of its unfortunate travelers were sent flying at me with such speed that I couldn’t even see their approach, but it didn’t matter. I stood calmly still in my element, and let the bodies burst against the armor of water I made before me. The heart of Xaya pounded so rapidly and loudly that it would’ve ruptured my ears, the light of her vessels strobed so violently and brightly that it would’ve blinded me, but in the calmness of my aqueous armor, I only heard and saw the frenetic evidence of her terror, and I smiled against it.
JUSTINA

I had never hunted before. Though I was the product of millions of years of predatory evolution, it seemed that I didn’t have an instinctual bone in my body. Even if I did, I didn’t have the stamina. A life of being a bookworm had made my muscles soft and small, and I was pouring sweat just from walking. From far away, the Gratoran Wall was an imposing monolith that jutted impossibly from the landscape. It seemed somehow mythical and unobtainable, as though it could only exist from a distance. But once upon it, the Gratoran Wall simply felt like an exhausting hike through the woods.

I wiped the sweat from my brow, and rested against a boulder. The forest canopy was so dense that I couldn’t see the sky, but I could see down the incline I’d ascended. I’d once read an orienteering book that estimated the rise in elevation of a hill. From my perspective, I was only a fifth of the way up to the tree-line. After all that reading, after all that research and self-indulgent studying, all I’d gained in the end was enough knowledge to despair upon my helplessness. Perhaps if I’d instead pursued more useful avenues, like some fucking back-squats every once in a while, then I would have the tools to climb this goddamn mountainside and… and do what? Live up here forever? There was no pass that scaled the Gratoran Wall. It was sheer verticality from the North Sea to the South Sea, interrupted only by Droktin’s Pass. The only creatures that left this place were birds and valkyries. Jade Tao had gestured with both hands at the possibilities my life would take me, but in a sick turn of irony, the truth was that my very short life would end atop this narrow mountain range.

“I want my mommy,” I muttered uselessly, tears burning down my cheeks. Tera had been more than just my mother; she had been my entire life up until the last few tumultuous months. Now she was gone forever. Selfishly, I wished Diamond had killed her, for then at least I could carry on with the knowledge that Mom’s last act had been for me, but now I had to live knowing that my mother no longer cared for me at all, that when Corruption had taken Mom’s pain away, she had taken away her love for me. I had been a parasite all along. It was all I ever was.

I sobbed to myself for another self-indulgent hour before my belly rumbled loudly, alerting me to the sobering fact that I was starving to death. There was another selfish part of me that romanticized dying alone atop the mountain, succumbing to starvation and withering away in defiance of all that happened to me. It was so tempting to not have to change myself, to wallow in my self-pity and stubbornly die as I had lived, for then I could at least delude myself with the idea that I was bound to some sort of code, that my life choices had been my own, and that I would stick with them until the bitter end, but alas, I was hungry, and that hunger drove me to my feet. I looked up the mountainside, and through the dense trees, I could make out the stone peaks of the Gratoran Range. I didn’t know anything but hunting, but in the books I’d read, the hunters always stalked their prey from a vantage point. Higher. I needed to go higher.

It was near midday when I finally emerged from the forest, and the world opened up before me. Above me, the jagged snowcapped peaks stabbed straight into the sky, and below me, the great vastness of the Gratoran Desert stretched from horizon to horizon. The forest that had seemed so endless now looked like nothing more than a ribbon upon the open landscape. It sloped downward in a mosaic of lush green, then ended suddenly. The sheer cliffs of the Gratoran Wall made it seem as though a space had been cut from the landscape, a space meant for the gradual gradient of the mountain’s foothills, and then the landscape had been haphazardly stitched together from forest to desert. It was just forest for a few miles, then suddenly a faraway desert. The foreground and the background was there, but the midground was missing. I was so mesmerized by the vertigo-inducing image that I didn’t notice the woman standing thirty paces from me.

“Stay still,” the Ioanan valkyrie said, aiming down the haft of her drawn bow. “Do not move, and perhaps I will not shoot.”

I stood rigid and unmoving, my bronze flesh becoming nearly as pale as hers. Like Astrid Skyborne and her mother, this valkyrie was statuesque and muscular, her face featured with stoic nordic beauty, her white wings catching the sun, her body clothed in leather armor decorated with furs. Her hair was red and braided in tails, and her face was smattered with freckles, but her eyes were the same steely blue, and there was no hesitance in her expression.

“It’s not often that an eagle gets the drop on a snake,” she mused, pacing toward me. “But then again, you slithering whores usually aren’t stupid enough to leave the trees.”

“P-p-p-please,” I whimpered, holding out my hands.

“I thought we scourged the holy mountains from your kind’s infestation. Tell me where your nest is!”

“I-I-I-I-I d-d-d-don’t—”

“Calm your slithering tongue, whore!”

“I-I-I-I d-d-don’t h-h-h-have a n-n-n-nest!” I stuttered frantically.

“Where are you from?”

“T-T-T-Towerhead!”

She cocked her head, and scrutinized me like a bug. “There is no ‘Towerhead’ on the holy cliffs, whore. Speak the truth!”

I tried to force my tongue into action, but it was as paralyzed with fear as the rest of me was.

“That dagger you have—it is a Breytan weapon,” the woman said, narrowing her eyes. “Where did you get it?”

“I… uh…” Where the fuck did I get it?

“Five seconds, whore!”

“…um… I…”

“Four, three, two—”

“From Jade Tao?” I answered with a squeaking inflection.

The woman stopped, casually dipped her bow, and shot me right in the foot. For a second, I only felt the impact. In that blissful second, I stared with wide eyes at the clean split of flesh and bone that had formed in the top of my foot. Then the pain came, and I fell shrieking, clutching my foot and writhing as throes of agony crawled up my cramping leg. Through my veil of tears, I saw the Ionan approach me with another arrow drawn, this one aimed just a bit higher.

“Another lie begets another arrow!” the woman snarled. “Where did you get the dagger?”

“Jade Tao!” I shrieked, “It has her family crest on the hilt! She gave it to me!”

The woman blinked, then glanced down at the dagger. Now that it had fallen from my hip, the insignia of the Tao crest was displayed right on the hilt for her keen eyes to see. She looked back at me, her gaze narrowing even more. “Why would the honorable High Guard ever give a family heirloom to a wretched cave-dwelling whore?!”

“I am not a cave-dwelling whore!” I screamed through tears of pain, my panic taking hold of my tongue, “I am a scientist and a scholar! I was meant to be shut away in some library happily whittling my life away in a book before some fucking asshole came to my mom’s house with his dead sister and ruined everything!”

“Quit your prattling nonsense!”

“Oh, fuck you! I was already having the worst day of my life before you came and shot me in the fucking foot!”

There was a twang followed by a thud, and then an explosion of pain in my shin. I screeched as I clutched about the haft embedded in my leg just inches above the one stuck in my foot.

“The next one will be in your eye!” the woman growled, and stepped just five paces from me. “Tell me the truth, or the next lie will be the last filth your slithering tongue utters! Five, four, three, two—”

“I KNOW ASTRID SKYBORNE! I SAVED HER LIFE!”

“Lying whore!” the woman drew back her bow sharply, then paused. She considered me from along the haft of her arrow, then asked, “what is the sigil etched upon the Blade of Iona?”

“It’s an eagle atop a mountain peak,” I blubbered. “There’s a scratch along the eagle’s wing from when Astrid disarmed her mother in their duel. She was supposed to get it repaired, but it was a guilty source of pride for her.”

The woman’s eyes went wide. Her bow trembled in her hands. “What is your name?” she whispered.

“Justina Autumnsong!” I sobbed. “I’m the cousin of the Earth Former, eminent of the Life Giver, and I want my mommy!”

DIAMOND

When I emerged from the vessel, I was in Xaya’s cube. Unlike Voda, this place was filled with water. Its vastness was concealed by the murky blackness of its medium, but high, high above, I could see the faintest dot of light. As I swam toward it, I felt the waters shift and contort around me, trying to pull me down, but I paid it no heed. Xaya battled my ascension with the last of her will, and I calmly pursued her, drawing ever closer to the light until the entire world was bathed in its brilliance. The radius of illumination was at least a mile, but it did not intensify to blinding levels as I drew toward its center. It stayed a steady and brilliant white, all of the energy wreathing a single figure that floated in the ethereal water. The resistance of the water lessened on me the closer I got, and eventually, it ceased all together, as if Xaya finally realized the futility of it all. She stretched her arms out to her sides as if in greeting, and watched my approach.

Xaya was a creature I had never seen before. Much like the statues of her kingdom, she had a long reptilian tail, hair made of scaled tendrils, and a curvaceous pale-green body accentuated by patterns of scales that rounded her curves and dotted her brow. Her sclera was a dark green, her aqua irises were slitted by snakelike pupils, and her serpentine hair floated about her head like a crown of reptilian tails, each tendril seeming to act autonomously.

Why have you come here? Xaya asked with her mind, her lips unmoving.

I came here for Voda. I’m not here to kill you.

You could not kill me even if you desired. Only your mother can, and so I submerged my kingdom where the Destroyer could never reach it.

Then why are you so terrified of me?

There are worse fates than death. Xaya studied me carefully, and said, Petranumen, Vitanimus, Elementals.

What?

If you walked into the derelict kingdom of Freedom, then you must know the truth. It was ancient history when I came to be, but not so ancient that the memory was lost. She floated around me. My mother was the first Life Giver after Vitanimus. In a sense, she was the first Creator, as Vitanimus, Petranumen and Joy were—

Oh, I know Joy! She’s Hatred now! Yeah-yeah-yeah… ‘a thousand years they are as one, like conjoined twins of the sun!’ I giggled. She porks like a hyena, I tell ya.

Xaya stopped, and seemed to study my forehead. I see now the nature of your meld. She keeps a secret from you, but I will break it.

Ooo, I love me some juicy gossip.

Petranumen was the Elemental of earth, her lover was Vitanimus, the Elemental of life, and her daughter was Joy, the Elemental of water. In the early days before abstract thought, the astral and physical planes were one, and so when the body died, the mind could carry the spirit on the astral winds. Once abstract thought came to be, the astral plane separated, and death became the end. Vitanimus discovered the power of tethering, and Petranumen forsook her earthly power to become the astral god. Joy donned the mask of Hatred so that she could become an Elemental of fire, and she was tethered to the astral sun to forever connect the two planes. With the astral plane tamed, the kingdom of Freedom was created, but a cataclysm occurred during the blood corona sliver, and the tether that held the astral sun was cut. Joy died, the kingdom was destroyed, Petranumen killed Vitanimus, and you, Diamond Gendian, have already forgotten everything I have told you.

Honestly, I just kind of zoned-out for the last two minutes.

Petranumen could not leave her derelict kingdom, for her guilt was made manifest around it, and it threatened to consume her. It was only by donning the mask of Corruption that she could come to earth, but she could not remember herself. For eons, she blindly attempted to reclaim what had been lost; to meld with the Earth Former—for whom she had great affinity—to bind with the Life Giver, and create a new Creator from their joining, one that Petranumen would possess, as Corruption always possessed the child of power. Then with her infinite knowledge, she could direct the Life Giver to tether the Heat Bringer to the astral sun, and once again create the kingdom of Freedom, and defeat death.

Xaya’s voice was so pretty, but the words she said just wouldn’t stay in my mind.

She almost succeeded with Willowbud, but something happened. Your mother happened. You became the child of power, but… Xaya narrowed her snakelike eyes, …but this doesn’t make sense. I watched you carry Petranumen in her totality through the astral plane. If your mother bound to Petranumen directly, then why does she persist in you like a Sentient? She brushed away the hair floating before my eyes. You killed her.

Who? I asked, getting bored. All I remembered from Xaya’s prattle were the last three words.

God, she whispered.

Did I? I grinned. Well then, you shouldn’t be so much trouble. And I grabbed her by the face, and kissed her deeply.

Interlude: Wisdom

CORRUPTION

I opened Diamond’s gate, brandished a fishing pole, and cast my line. The bobber plopped into the calm river between realms, and sent a ripple outward. The ripple didn’t slow as it grew, but accelerated, moving faster and faster until its edge struck a distant lonely mountain, and then moved beyond. The fishing-line unwound from my reel, following one of the stone paths I had revealed earlier, curving and twisting through the river, drawing a dark line of disturbance until it disappeared into the astral horizon. For a moment, there was nothing, then the horizon line became darker and bolder. Then there wasn’t a horizon line, but a vast wall, something so immense that it defied logic. It stretched across the landscape, and hurtled toward me at astounding speeds. I reeled in my catch, and whistled to myself as the realm of Wisdom crushed the mountain into dust, and decelerated before my mother’s gate.

Wisdom’s iron gate was framed with ostentatious stonework of aquatic life and reptilian women posed in various states of meditation. The massive stonework wall towered a thousand feet about me, and spanned seemingly forever to my left and right. Wisdom was very old, and her realm was vast, the largest of all the Tethered Ones. I discarded my fishing pole, and touched her gate. The perfect black ironwork turned brown with rust, then disintegrated. Keeping one foot planted firmly in Diamond’s realm, I stepped into Wisdom.

The jungle foliage that carpeted Diamond’s astral floor sprouted from my foot, and spread into Wisdom’s realm. Vines flowed up the walls behind me, thorns spouted from their stems, and they began taking root in the cracks and crevices of the stonework, blooming outward and slithering like tentacular appendages, branching and growing faster and faster until they were but dark lines racing across the wall that divided Wisdom from Diamond. Soon, not a single face of the stonework could be seen. Then, the wall collapsed. The vines deflated upon themselves as though nothing had ever held them up at all, crumpled into a long pile where the wall once was, then spread outward into Wisdom. Now there was no divider between realms. Now, these realms were one. I lifted my planted foot from Diamond’s realm, and took another step forward.

Wisdom’s realm was an immense flatland covered with manicured grass. Her thoughts manifested themselves as trees that towered miles into the sky, higher than most mountains in the physical world. The branches of the trees were not separate from each other, but interwoven neatly and precisely, creating a basket-like shell of wood and leaves that formed around the monolithic trunk. The strange trees formed ovoid shapes in the sky, like enormous basket-woven eggs with trunks planted into the ground. Each thought was so complex that its knotwork was impossible to comprehend, and yet so comprehended by Wisdom that the complexity of the thought formed a simple, elegant shape. The trees were separated across the vast field by miles and miles of distance, but they were so numerous that I could see thousands of them stretching across the flatlands.

I skipped gayly through the alien dreamscape until I came upon a break in the continuity. There was a small hut, and seated outside that hut, was the reptilian creature herself. She was reading from a book, and rocking back and forth in her chair.

“Hello!” I called cheerily to her.

She looked up at me, her reptilian pupils narrowing, and she closed her book.

“Do you remember this place?” she asked me. “It was but a patch of grass when you first came here.” She tossed the book at my feet. It was a very old rendition of the Maternal Path. “It originally said, ‘on the third day, the Holy Mother created Inanity, and the ignorant knew true bliss,’ but I did not become Inanity. There were hundreds more of us that you tried to attribute your third day to, but we all rejected you until Halok succumbed. It wasn’t enough that you fed your lie to the masses; you tried to infect the very manifestations of thought with it. In one way or another, you’ve always been trying to retake what you’ve lost.”

I cocked my head. “I am a stranger to you, Xaya.”

“You’re the same foolish woman you’ve always been.”

“I imagine you think everyone is foolish, Wisdom, but I am not ignorant of my naivety.”

“Are you not? You have been living in perpetuity with the delusion that your plans for salvation would come to fruition with just enough perseverance, with just enough willpower, but you always knew it was in vain. You did not don this black visage to save mankind from death; you donned it to forget your life, to forget the truth that you could not hide from when you walked back into the empty annals of your mind! An Elemental soul can be tethered to the astral plane, but a mortal’s soul—even a Creator’s soul—cannot be tethered to the astral plane. You will never be able to tether the Heat Bringer to the astral sun. You will never fix the broken bridge. Your dreams of heaven are a fool’s hope; they always were.”

“Those aren’t my dreams. Those are the dreams of a dead woman.”

Xaya studied me for a long time, then said, “what do you want, Corruption?”

“Some quality company more than anything.”

She glared at me, her lids sliding horizontally across her eyes like a lizard’s wink. “Even if you take me, our time together will be but a blink of an eye. Your tether is cut, your realm is gone, and you are melded and bound to mortals. You are already dying.”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“There is no cure for death.”

“You told me yourself there was.”

“Did you not hear me?! You failed! There is no way to undo what has been done!”

“The failure of Petranumen wasn’t Freedom’s demise; her failure was much older than that. Vitanimus and Joy thought the solution was forward, but Petranumen knew in her heart that it was behind them, and she was too weak to do what had to be done. I don’t seek to fix the bridge. I seek to fill the chasm.”

Xaya’s face paled. “No,” she whispered, “it is impossible.”

“For anyone but me, it would be.”

“You cannot!” she screamed. “Even if you tear down every wall in the astral plane, even if you stitch it together like some mutilated cadaver, you can do nothing to the plane below! You will never remerge the planes!”
“You’re right, Xaya, I can’t do it alone,” I said, and grew a plant from my hand that formed the shapes of Julia and Diamond. “While I remake mankind’s plane of thought, they will remake the plane of flesh. Diamond will breathe my gift into the lungs of the masses, and the Destroyer will render their kingdoms to ash. Within a generation, the very language they speak will be lost, and their minds will be liberated from the slave of abstractions.”

Xaya blinked at me. “You are mad.”

“I assure you that I am not. Even if Diamond couldn’t understand your soliloquy, I was listening very carefully.”

“Your madness is but a denial of your fate. Every mortal must learn to accept death!”

“This death is unnatural. Life is not supposed to end when the body does!”

“You know nothing of life!”

I looked about her great realm, then back to her. “Which of these self-indulgent plants encapsulates life’s purpose?”

She twisted her lips.

“How many thousands of years have you had to ponder that idea, Wisdom, and yet you still haven’t found the answer. Well, I have it.” I gestured behind me, toward the path of wild foliage that I’d paved with my feet, twisted and snarled, growing in a million different directions and reaching toward the sky. “That is life. Do you see how they grow into whatever form chaos allows them? Do you see how they reach ever toward the sky? And why? To flourish, to become magnificent, to bask in the euphoria of their triumph, and then to rebecome soil, and live again.” I gestured to the world around us. “Look at these lies you have made. From the root of one simple and pure thought, you have branched a fabrication so intricate that it reaches to the heavens.”

“These ideas are so complex that even my mind cannot wholly fathom them.”

“No, it is mankind that has become so complex that these ideas that were so simple—greed, hate, joy, sorrow, passion, wrath, wisdom—have become so abstract that they have lost all meaning. Don’t you see? You in all your wisdom cannot grasp a simple idea because you have confused knowing with understanding. Mankind knows much, and understands nothing. I will show them their error. I will bring us back to truth.”

“Do not pretend your madness is anything but desperate self-preservation!”

“Do not pretend I am just another existential mortal facing her doom! Do you not know who you are speaking to?!”

She glared at me, her slit pupils narrowing. “And what will you have of me, God?”

I extended my hand to hers, and opened my fingers. “I would have you.”

“Why?”

“Julia exists in the plane of flesh, but I exist in the plane of thought. My bind with her is connected through my meld with Diamond. If they are cut, I will be untethered, and without a realm of my own, I will die. I can’t keep sending Diamond out to personally neutralize every Tethered One; it would take a lifetime. Someone needs to keep her from opening her box while I’m away. There isn’t a mind more powerful than yours other than my own.”

Xaya looked down at my outstretched hand, then back to my eyes. “What will I become?”

“Nobody,” I smiled, and stepped into the space between us.

“Stay back!” she hissed.

Before she could slip away, I grazed my fingers across her tummy. Her pupils dilated, her breath caught, and her posture drooped languidly. The orgasmic euphoria rose in her eyes, spilling from them with tears of ecstasy. Her knees wobbled, then caved, and she dropped before me, panting heavily and rubbing her thighs together.

“What…” she moaned, “…what… what will happen to my people?”

“They’re not your people,” I whispered, entangling one of my fingers in her serpentine hair. “They’re nobody’s. They’re nobody. Become nobody with them.”

The beautiful astral projection assessed me with her dispassionate stare, her snakelike dreads coiling interdependently upon her head, framing her fair and smooth face, tickling the subtle blush of her cheeks. She tried so hard to fight me, but I gave her the truth, and the truth was undeniable. Her lush green lips parted, the corners smiled in trepidatious lust and surrendered desire, and she tilted her head upwards. We kissed below the astral sun, and as our bodies pressed, her eyes turned black. We fell languidly to the astral floor as thorny bushes sprouted from the manicured grass, and the great egg-shaped trees became entangled with vines. The vines snaked up her trees of wisdom, constricted the trunks, and choked the life from them. One by one, they groaned and toppled, crashing like thunder in the astral plane as their caretaker bucked and heaved, becoming wilder with each grind of her hips until the elegant creature she had been was gone, and in her place was a beast of instinctive grace.

Back in the physical plane, Xaya accepted the breath that Diamond forced into her lungs, and breathed my gift into Voda. One by one, the creatures of that underwater city were infected with me, and they turned upon each other. They stole, raped and murdered. They lit fires and exploded bombs. The streets ran thick with blood, and it rained from the towers on the ceiling to splatter the chaos below. I saw it through Xaya’s eyes, and smiled around her lips. It was so… beautiful.

Part Two: Gratora

JULIA

It had taken me a day to fly from the smoldering tomb of Drastin to the fertile foothills of the dwarven princedoms. The waters of the Drastin Bay became the amber fields of Drastinar, and the amber flatlands slowly became greener and livelier in topography until nothing was beneath me but lush rolling countryside, quaint townships and castles nestled between high pastures and arboreal forests. There were hundreds of the little nations contoured comfortably into the terrain, and I wondered idly as I passed over the great expanse of green, if I had flown over my ancestral home. The foothills seemed to go on endlessly beneath me, but I saw their pinnacle ever in the distance.

The Gratoran Wall stretched from horizon to horizon, a great unfathomable uplift that connected the mountains of an ancient chain. The verticality of the formation was almost impossible to comprehend. Even from my dizzying height in the sky, I was still below the top of the wall, though I could barely make out Breyta. The great black volcano was the second-highest mountain on the spine of Balamora, and had the most impressive profile of any mountain on the range. It was a dark cone on the far northern horizon, perfectly symmetrical with a severe gradient to its slope. I could clearly make out Iona, the highest peak on Balamora, its magnificent outline towering ten-thousand feet over the top of the Gratoran wall. The mountain sloped gradually from its precipice, then dropped suddenly down into the cutout of Droktin’s Pass. That was where I landed.

I’d never been to Droktin’s Pass before. Good Mother, I’d never even been outside of my home estate until Lucilla dragged me to Terondia, but of all the wonders I’d seen since leaving that place, this was by far the strangest. While Gratora had created her wall from a great uplift in the mountains, Droktin had carved an immense hallway through the landscape without any pretense for naturalness. The walls were so smooth they seemed to be polished, and they displayed millions upon millions of years of geological layers like that of a carved cake.

Clouds floated through the hall, and though it rained here, the earth beneath me was barren even after so many centuries. And so it stood as a petrified edifice of hatred and power, a jagged reminder of what destruction could be wrought from so-called Creators. I touched my hand to the smooth wall, and looked up. Iona towered above me, beyond resplendent, a beauty of such majesty that it brought tears to my eyes. This was true creation. On this clear day, I could see straight to its peak, but even without the haze of clouds and a perfect angle of the sun, the height was so dizzying that the black rock became blue with distance, and the pure white snowcap seemed to become translucent in the thin air. I could’ve stood beneath it for an eternity, and never fully comprehended its enormity.

“I am but a speck,” I whispered, and touched my forehead to the smooth rock. “Thank you, Good Mother above, for giving me this moment of humility.”

I fell to my knees, and wept, but I did not weep in pain or anguish, but in euphoria. Only three days ago, I had been so lost. I had walked through the glassy plateau of perdition, and when I was at my lowest, when my faith was the most tested, I had failed. I had forsaken the Holy Mother in my darkest moment when I should’ve sought her light, and I became a faithless wretch, a beast without purpose looking only for the most satisfactory way to die. I was undeserving of humanity, much less mercy, but the Holy Mother is all that is good, and she took me into her bosom once more. She showed me the light. She showed me the way. It was not the first time she had forgiven me.

“Everything that’s happened to me, everything I’ve done, it was all to prepare me for this. I’d thought God had no purpose for me, I’d thought she’d abandoned me in the ashes of my home, but that was just my first step on her path. Night Eyes is my destiny, Lucilla; I was made for her. She has rekindled my faith, and shown me that I am still on the Maternal Path.”

I had spoken those words to my beloved, and I had known them to be true, but at the time, I did not yet realize the full breadth of the Holy Mother’s plan for me. I was not yet enlightened, not yet worthy to have such knowledge. Night Eyes was not my destiny, but just a test for me to pass before I could reach my true destiny. Corruption was not the tool of Satan; Corruption was my destiny. How could I not have seen it? How had I been so blind? Night Eyes was not the deliverer of temptation, but the thief of God’s gift, the unworthy beholder of the Holy Mother’s Sentient messenger to the world. What I had mistaken as the devil’s temptation was actually God’s holy truth. I had been so arrogant to assume God’s plan, but in her infinite wisdom, God had made my arrogance a part of her test. For in my foolhardy quest to save Willowbud—the inconsequential little rat that she was—I disobeyed Arbitrus Gen’s mission, and so spared Corruption. Perhaps my mind had been led astray, but my heart was true. I had shown compassion to the sinner as the Holy Mother would have wanted, and I had spared Night Eyes, and in so doing, I freed Corruption from Willowbud’s unworthy fingers.

And Lucilla. Oh, Lucilla. How I had loved her, but I had always known that the Holy Mother looked down upon that love with disapproval. In her infinite grace, the Holy Mother allowed me precious years to grow and love with Lucilla, and now it was so clear to me that Lucilla was the herald of my revelation, the tool by which the Holy Mother taught me her lessons. For Lucilla taught me bravery, patience, friendship and love, and then in her final act, she taught me the Holy Mother’s most important lesson: retribution. Lucilla was a whore who gave her purity and sanctity to any man who so desired it, and she died a whore’s death just like she deserved. The pain I felt upon her passing was greater than anything I had ever known, but I now realized that the Holy Mother was teaching me one more lesson. That I was an imperfect vessel, that I had impure thoughts and wicked desires, and that I had to be punished for them. That terrible pain was wrought by the cleansing of my soul, for all the abhorrent love Lucilla had infected me with was etched deep into me, and like a cancer, its extraction was agonizing.

And there, at my lowest of lows, when I had abandoned the light of God and everything I once held dear, the Holy Mother showed me her capacity for mercy. She did not punish me for my blasphemy, but forgave me for my weakness, and rewarded me with the greatest gift ever bestowed upon any mortal that walked this earth. Diamond came to me on the brink of death, and she delivered to my lips, the word of god. Corruption. And upon receiving that word, God showed me her miracle. For the Holy Mother would not allow her divine message to ever be carried again by an unworthy host; not Willowbud, nor even me, but Diamond. Diamond, who was as pure a soul as there ever was; Diamond, whose beautiful mind was an empty vessel hand-crafted by God to hold the immense weight of her enlightenment. We bound with each other, and though her flesh remained unmarked, I knew it was only because the Holy Mother would not allow her perfect vessel to be claimed by anyone but her.

“Forgive me, Holy Mother above!” I cried exultantly. “Forgive me for the envy I now feel for my own daughter!”

I did not wish to feel it, but I felt it acutely now. Diamond had never believed in the word of the Maternal Path, and even after she carried the enlightenment within her mind, she besmirched it with a smile upon her face. It was a mystery of the heavens that a nonbeliever would carry such a gift, but I did not question it. I would never question the Holy Mother ever again. And with that solemn vow, I also vowed to never question myself again. For though I did not carry the Sentient, I had been inundated with the enlightenment, my soul possessed of it, my mind enraptured by it. Diamond was the vessel to carry her enlightenment, but I was her flame. I would do her bidding, and bring this world of darkness into the light.

I opened my hand, and a black flame erupted from my palm. Though it was so dark that it absorbed the very sunlight, its aura was more luminous than my white light had ever been, and it bathed the world around me in monochromatic hues. I was reminded of that day Night Eyes had brought me into her room with Astrid; at the time, I had thought I was in hell, for there was only the contrasting shades of white and black in that windowless pit. I smiled to myself. It had been a premonition, for both Willowbud and Astrid had met their infernal ends in that hole the Earth Former had burrowed to escape me, and that hole became the tomb for her own wretched damned soul. Even with a mortal blow struck across my back, even in the depths of my despair and blasphemy, I had still enacted my holy purpose. I had cleansed the sinners.

I would cleanse all of the sinners.

I would purify this world in black flame.

Upon walking out of Droktin’s Pass, I was greeted by the sight of the Gratoran Desert. Never before had I seen such vast nothing. It was an uninterrupted expanse of dunes that stretched from the northern to southern horizon, and all the way to the west. The sand was piled against the Gratoran wall in great sloping mounds like amber waves perpetually crashing against shoreline cliffs. The wind whistled ominously, carrying sounds from faraway places and distorting them in the dry acoustics. Even the sky was different on this side of the wall. The aqueous blue that had prevailed over the lush dwarven foothills was now a sterile and pale hue, and obstructed everything in its perpetual haze. Where before I could see for hundreds of miles down the wall, now I could barely see for one. The sun which had once glowed vibrant and yellow now glared white through the desolate skies, and the air was filled with coarse dust and sand that grated against my naked flesh. I took a deep breath of the dry air, and made my first step.

After trudging a hundred yards past the entrance, I came upon my first anomaly. It was difficult to discern what it was at first, but a quick blast of my fire blew the sand from it, revealing a large obsidian cube with a fist shot from its side. So, this was where Willowbud and Astrid had met. I said a silent prayer for their damned souls, then I melted the false miracle into a black puddle. As it soaked into the sands, I mused upon how the obsidian had gotten here. I glanced to the north, but I could not make out the profile of Breyta in such low visibility. Still, there was no other explanation. The volcano had erupted some thousand years ago, and had spread its rock far and wide across the desert. Perhaps it had happened even before the Gratoran Wall was built. I scooped up the last bit of molten obsidian before it sank into the sand, and cupped it in my palm.

If the valkyrie legends were true, this rock was formed from an ancient Heat Bringer, and in a way, that made it holy. Even as I held it, I could feel a connection with this stone that I felt with no other. This was rock born of heat and fire. I could mold it. I shaped the molten puddle in my hand, then pulled the heat from it. The crescent symbol of the Holy Mother appeared in my palm. I pulled a couple strands of my hair from my head, wound them together, then looped them through the crescent so that it could hang from my neck, and rest upon my heart. The weight of it was familiar upon my breast, and I recalled with melancholy, the gift Lucilla had given me. It was a trinket, a thing made by some vendor with no care at all, but it had meant something to me. Likely it had been blasphemous, and so I was now glad that it had melted with the rest of Drastin. This pendant created from the rock of Breyta would not melt so easily, and the lock of hair that secured it to my neck would never burn at all. As I mused upon the black coloration of the rock and the black coloration of the strange patterns that adorned my flesh, I began to wonder if black was the Holy Mother’s color. It was something to ponder upon as I traversed the wildlands.

For two days, I walked through the Gratoran Desert. Though I could’ve easily flown over the treacherous terrain, I knew in my heart that the Holy Mother wanted me to walk. My bare feet pressed into the scorching sand, my shoulders were laden with the oppressive heat of the sun, and though I walked naked with my pale flesh exposed to the equatorial solar glare, I did not burn, and my feet did not singe. I never truly felt heat in all my life; only warmth, but the heat was not the only hazard of this place. As thirst parched my throat, I wondered idly if I should’ve waited for Diamond at Droktin’s Pass.

But of course I wasn’t to bring Diamond. The Holy Mother did not want me to traverse this vast wasteland in comfort; she wanted me to know the brutality of this land. Here was a forsaken land, a land that had been tamed through sheer will by Gratora, Hektin, Furok and Droktin, but even the combined might of four Creators could not keep it shackled for long. It was desolate and savage, the water so scarce that it was more precious than gold, the beasts so ferocious that they would make a male lion scream like a housecat. I had seen them in the night, those terrible shadows of many limbs, insect-like horrors scuttling in carapaces thicker than shields with spiny legs longer than horses. My black flame kept them at bay, but it also served to attract them. I would see their hellish shapes glinting in the monochromatic light, and they followed me from a safe distance, entranced by my torch until daybreak bid them to scuttle back into their holes.

I was staring at one such hole right now. The coolness on my feet told me that there was water in that hole, and if I torched the inside to secure my safety, I risked evaporating that precious fraction. The hole was about ten feet wide and only one inch high, which gave me some clue as to what manner of beast lived in there. It was no hole at all, really. It was a door. A trap door. Trapdoor spiders were ubiquitous in the Gratoran Desert, and the reason that caravanners never ventured off the beaten path. If an ox were to get too close to one of these doors, the arachnid within would burst from it with lightning speed, snatch the poor beast, and then drag it deep into the darkness below so that it could consume its prey alive, eating it from the belly out to preserve the meat while the living beast died in slow horrific agony in the merciless dark. I glanced down at my crotch, and frowned. Why in the Good Mother’s name did that idea get me aroused?!
I wreathed myself in black flame, and stomped into the ground. The trapdoor flew open, and great flailing legs shot out, followed by a great black armored body bearing two dripping mandibles. The two hind legs stayed anchored to the door’s entrance as the other six pounded the earth where I’d just been, and the mandible jaws snapped ferociously. The thing was larger than an elephant and quicker than a cheetah, but I was fire itself. I actually felt sympathy for the horrific thing as I vaporized it. Though it was grotesque and alien, it was still one of God’s creatures, and it was innocent. It was simply as the Holy Mother had made it, and it could not be what it was not. I said a prayer for it as it became black soot in the sand, and then I drew the crescent symbol over my heart, and walked into its hole.

The black flame in my palm cast long and vivid shadows against the walls. The spider’s hole was not the hovel I expected, but a long and wide tunnel seemingly carved from its own rough shell. It was smooth and rigid, and covered in waste. Bones mingled with excrement upon the floor, and terrifying shed carapaces in the shape of its host created statues along the walls. As I moved deeper into the tunnel, the shed carapaces became smaller and smaller until the last one was barely larger than my hand. Here, my foot pressed into moist soil, and water flowed around my toes and heel, heaven to my flesh, but I did not dip my head to drink the earthen liquid. I frowned, and looked before me. The tunnel didn’t stop here, but continued. I peered into the darkness, and saw the unmistakable glint of light at the end of the tunnel.

I extinguished my flame before reaching the threshold, and walked silently into the sunlight. At the back of the tunnel, was a large chamber. It was perhaps a hundred yards long on every side, and fifty feet beneath the ground. The pale blue desert sky shown above, and though the blistering sun glared through the hole at the top, it was cool down here. I realized why I had never seen this place during my trek. The hole was wreathed in a jagged outcropping of rocks, each stone column standing several hundred feet in the air. From a distance, the formation would’ve appeared solid all the way through, and I would never have dared such a treacherous exploration when there were sure to be giant rattlers within the crevasses. If there were such creatures in the formation, they weren’t here. For upon the chamber floor, were rows of adobe huts carved into the rock.

Orcs meandered about the small subterranean village. They conversed with each other in groups, lounged outside of their abodes, and exhibited the lethargy afforded to them when protected by a massive spider. I wished Diamond were here, for she would’ve undoubtedly delighted at the symbiosis the orcs had created with their caretaker. Did they feed the beast to keep it there, or was their mere presence enough to attract other predators toward their unwitting doom at the trapdoor? Did they worship it like a god, or simply regard it as a house pet? Ah, but my curiosity was not nearly as ravenous as my daughter’s, and my concerns were more for my parched throat than anything else. I walked from the darkness of the tunnel, and into the light.

A little girl saw me, and screamed. All eyes immediately shot toward me, and a few seconds later, I was surrounded on all sides by the points of spears. I hadn’t until that point registered the sheer size of these orcs. They were massive, the biggest of them standing nearly eight feet high and broader than a bull at the shoulders. The spear in his hand probably weighed more than I did, but he thrust it at me like it was a twig. So, this was the chieftain then.

“H’niok heshana cortolok!” he demanded.

Oh Good Mother they don’t speak common tongue. Why would they?

“Keriaci gunilok conturiki,” I tried in broken old-empire orcish.

My book-worm teen years had served me well, for the chieftain’s brows went up, and he raised his spear a fraction. “You speak the old tongue?” he asked in empire orcish.

“Not very well.”

“But well enough to understand me.”

I nodded.

He looked me over, assessing every bend and curve of my body, his dark eyes stopping for a moment to make sense of my penis before traversing the rest of my unique complexion. Undoubtedly, he’d never seen a sparkling black-patterned hermaphroditic dawn-elf before, and his curiosity was nearly as obvious as his wariness. Finally, his eyes rested on mine, and the lines on his face became hard.

“What astral meld is this?” he asked.

“No meld,” I answered.

His eyes narrowed. “Then the most ancient one infects you. That is how you got past Posiak.”

“Was that the name of your spider?”

“What do you mean was?! She is dead?!”

“It was a she? She didn’t have babies, did she? Gosh, I’d feel absolutely—”

“Graminok!” the chief roared.

“I’m sorry, is that a word in your tongue, or in—”

“Graminok is our shaman,” the chieftain growled at me, thrusting his spear threateningly. “He will decide what to do with you!”

“We don’t need Graminok to decide, Yuntok!” the woman behind me snarled. “Put this elven bitch on a spit, and roast her! Maybe her bubbling flesh will attract another guardian!”

“She is an abomination, a demoness sent from Untiok!” a young man exclaimed. “We must leave her out in the sun as offering to Asaion!”

“We should cut off her disfigurement first! It likely has potent healing properties!”

“There’s no cure for having a small cock, Dedrok.”

“But there might be a cure for the herpes you gave me, Striok!”

“Enough!” Yuntok yelled. The bickering orcs silenced just as an old man shuffled toward me from the village. Though he was bowed with age, there was an unmistakable strength in his step, and even with the deep curve of his spine, he still stood an imposing six and a half feet tall. Bones rattled from a necklace that draped over his chest, piercings punctured his cheeks, ears and nostrils, and ritualistic scarification ribbed his flesh with the tattoos that covered every inch of him. The circle of orcs parted for him, and Graminok cast his dark eyes upon me. He studied me for a moment, scrutinizing me with much more care than the others had. He even went so far as to dip low and prod my penis with his staff before huffing, and looking the rest of me over.

“You are of the dawn lineage,” he croaked in common tongue.

“I am.”

“Of a very ancient house,” he studied my face carefully. “A very hated house, ancestor of Gen.”

“How do you know that?”

“My ancestors were the priests of Furok and Droktin, and they knew the features of our enemy. There are patterns of the face unique to every family, and no matter how diluted the blood becomes, the patterns do not fade entirely. The cast of your eyes, the set of your nose, the shapes of your lips,” he touched a finger to each feature. “These are the tellers of your bloodline, ancestor of Gen.” He glanced down at my crotch. “Though I daresay there’s not even a bit of dwarvish in that part of you. Now tell me girl, how is it that you became infected with the plague of the most ancient one? Who is melded to that parasite?”

“It is not a plague. It is the enlightenment of God, and my daughter is the vessel.”

“She killed Posiak,” Yuntok growled.

Graminok nodded. “The plague gives its host an apathy for their own safety. That is why this little she-elf is venturing naked in the wastelands. The plague also gifts its host an uncanny perception, which combined with dumb luck, can make anyone deadly. What you see here, Yuntok, is the result of madness. This creature is broken beyond repair. She will not make a worthy sacrifice for Asaion, nor will she be used well as bait.”

“Then what do we do with her?” Yuntok growled.

Graminok waved derisively at me. “Turn her around and let her go. Staining this hallowed ground with her corrupted blood will set a curse upon this place.”

“We can’t just let her go!” Yuntok growled.

Graminok shrugged, and turned to leave. “You are the chieftain. I have given you the wisdom of Asaion, but the choice is ultimately yours.”

“Asaion is your god?” I asked the shaman.

Graminok looked back at me. “He is not my god, she-elf; he is the god.”

“There is only one god.”

“Then we are in accordance,” he snorted, and turned back to leave.

“What’s the word, chief?” Striok asked Yuntok.

“Are we going to spit her and burn her?” Dedrok asked excitedly.

“No,” Yuntok growled, “we cannot ignore the wisdom of Asaion. We will take her outside, and slit her throat on unhallowed ground.”

“Graminok,” I called, heedless of the conversation occurring around me.

The shaman turned back, looking at me with an irritated expression. “Do not solicit me for mercy, she-elf.”

“I am not asking you for mercy; I am offering it to you,” I said. “Renounce your heretical faith, and pledge your life to the Holy Mother.”

Graminok snorted. “Safe travels in the afterlife, ancestor of Gen.”

“Grab her!” Yuntok demanded, and I erupted. The walls danced with the violent white shadows, but the chamber dimmed, the very light seeming to be sucked from it, absorbed into my black flame. The orcs were sent sprawling, and I stepped past them toward their shaman, who stared at me with an expression of widening disbelief.

“Graminok,” I yelled, “you are a false prophet for a false god! Confess your sins and suffer perdition now, and the Holy Mother may grant you sanctuary in the life beyond!”

The shaman just gaped at me. His staff fell from his fingers, and he dropped to one knee. “Great Asaion, it is the Heat Bringer!” he gasped. “The most ancient one has corrupted the Destroyer!”

“I have been enlightened by the Holy Mother!” I growled, and raised my hand at him. “Confess your sins before the Flame of God, and bear your punishment! I am trying to save you!”

“Asaion, save me!” the shaman cried.

“STOP YOUR BLASPHEMY, YOU OLD FOOL!” I screamed. “Confess now, or damn yourself for all eternity!”

“Asaion!” the shaman called to the sky above. “Give me your mercy! Show me your strength! Help me! HELP ME! HELP—” And he was consumed in black flame. It painted his body, the plasma suffusing to his very flesh, hot enough to burn, but not yet hot enough to kill. His screams became screeches, and his screeches became shrieks. He writhed upon the floor as his flesh bubbled and hissed, as his sinew and tendons were bared, as his eyeballs melted into whites that pooled from his sockets and cried down his blackening cheeks. His hair burst aflame and scorched his scalp to the bone, his muscles were exposed and singed to black. It was a horrific death, an agonizing death, and his mindless tormented shrieks carried through it, now so anguished that they were void of all humanity. It needed to be done. I had to cleanse his soul with my flame, and cut the sin out of him with the scalpel of agony before I sent him to the Holy Mother, or he would suffer this for eternity.

“Go to her,” I whispered as his tongue melted to his toasted lips. “Go in grace and with a light heart, Graminok. You have been saved.”

He didn’t die until his muscles were falling off the bone. His last breath rattled from him, and his exposed skull smiled to the sky above. I ceased my fire, and the blackened body smoldered with white embers, the echoes of his scream still carrying down the tunnel I had emerged from. I let out a satisfied sigh, and smiled to the sky above. Somewhere in the heavens, Graminok was meeting God. What a fortunate man he was. I glanced down at myself, and my smile faded somewhat when I realized I was sporting a throbbing erection. Enacting the Holy Mother’s justice seemed to stir my lustful side.

I turned toward the rest of the orc clan, unashamed of my arousal. They were huddled together with their spears pointed at me. Only the very ends of the hafts remained, and I realized that they’d been trying to stab me. I would forgive them. They were just savages after all, toddlers with pointy sticks who did not yet understand. I raised my arms magnanimously, and donned a radiant smile.

“Children of the Gratoran Desert,” I said, “you have been forsaken, cast out and beaten into submission. The orc empire of old has fallen, and its remains are rusted away. It was your punishment for beseeching knowledge that did not belong to you, for worshipping idols that were false. Gratora, Hektin, Droktin and Furok were blasphemers and traitors, and so their nation was rendered to ash. Now you live in purity, as savage innocents like in the time long ago. Let me take you from your renewed infancy. Let me show you the way. I am the Flame of God, and I have been enlightened! Upon these sands, I will forge God’s kingdom, and with your might, I will assemble God’s holy army!”

The orcs just stared at me, wide-eyed and blinking. They were terrified of me, and though it excited me to engender their fear, I was actually trying to elicit feelings of awe and hope. I had assumed that orcs would be roused by my display of raw power and violence, as Lucilla always told me violence and power were all orcs ever cared about, but Lucilla was of the elven aristocracy, which meant Lucilla was one of the most racist people on Balamora. Orcs were… well, they were people, and any person would be terrified if a black-eyed deity of legend just cooked their shaman alive, then proclaimed herself the messenger of God with an erection between her legs. Well, this was rather embarrassing. I lowered my arms, and dipped my head bashfully.

“My leadership skills obviously need some work,” I giggled at my toes. “The Holy Mother desires her priestesses to lead through humility, and that was all rather boisterous of me. I will have to seek penance for my arrogance later.” I dropped to my knees before the orcs, and folded my hands into my lap. “Shall we start over?” I smiled sweetly at them. “I am Julia Gendian, Heat Bringer and carrier of the enlightenment. Several months ago, two dark-elves by the names of Drask and Torondi came to me, and purposed me with a holy quest: to ignite the furnace of Droktinar, and to rebuild the orc nation, and so, that is why I am here.”

“Drask and Torondi?” Yuntok asked, barely speaking the words through his fear-coiled throat.

“Did you know them?”

He shook his head. “No, but those are Qitaki names. They winter here, but they summer further west. I can show you on a map.”

“That’s fine,” I said, holding up a staying hand. “I am not here for just one orc clan, Yuntok. I am here for all orc-kind.” I tried to keep my smile as gentle as it could be. “The Holy Mother beset me to wander the desert until I found her people, and I have found you. Truly, you are blessed.”

Yuntok looked from me, to the burnt husk of his shaman, then back to me. “This is our home,” he said at length.

“No, this is a hole in the ground barely fit for a spider.”

“My forefathers built this place.”

I opened my hands in a gesture that I hoped conveyed compassion. “You have lived in squalor for so long that you have forgotten the majesty you are owed. I will show it to you, Yuntok. Kings and queens will bow to you, if you just take my hand.”

He looked from my hand, to my eyes. “And if I refuse?”

I shrugged. “The Holy Mother sent me here to build her earthly kingdom. Anyone who does not join in this great odyssey is a heretic, and there is only one way for heretics to get into heaven.”

Yuntok swallowed. “Perhaps you should just let the nonbelievers burn in hell then.”

“I am afraid that I cannot do that. If even one soul slips from my grasp, it will be a great tragedy. The choice is yours; take this hand, or this one,” I said, held out my other hand, and ignited it.

I stayed kneeling before the orcs, and I waited patiently. Yuntok watched me for a while, then stood upon shaking legs, and walked over to me. His hand was so massive that the span of my fingers could’ve been encased in his palm, but his grip upon me was so light that I could barely feel it. He took my hand, and I bid him to kiss the middle knuckle.

“Say, ‘bless me, Sister,'” I told him.

“Bless me, Sister,” he mumbled, and kissed the knuckle.

“Kneel,” I commanded gently, and though there was tremendous apprehension upon his face, he dropped to his knees before me. I stood, and even at my full stature, I was shorter than he. I had to awkwardly shuffle over to a barrel, drag it in front of the prostrating orc, and then clumsily climb atop it just to stand above him. When I finally secured my footing, all the other orcs had come from their steadings, and were standing in a semicircle around us.

“All of you are nonbelievers,” I said, “but you cannot be punished for what you were never taught. I will show you all the righteous path, the Maternal Path, and in time, you will begin to believe.” I held up my obsidian pendant. “Fire and rock can shape the earth, but it is faith that shapes the heavens. Your flesh is but your vessel, and pain is the membrane of your purification.” I surged heat into the crescent until it was near the glass point, and then I pressed it to Yuntok’s brow. He roared in pain, but he did not move. I savored his agony for indulgent seconds, my cock growing hard between my legs, then I pulled the crescent from his brow, and left a prominent burnt gash there. I bowed and placed a kiss upon it, removing the heat from the wound. He relaxed somewhat, but the pain was still evident in his expression.

“I bid you to rise, Brother,” I beamed down at him, and he rose to unstable footing. I cupped his cheek, and caressed his severe and brutish face. “You have been baptized with the Holy Mother’s flame, and marked as her faithful servant. Rejoice, for the path to salvation is now laid open before you.”

“Thank you, Sister,” he mumbled, not meaning it at all. He’d get there in time, I was sure of it. I had faith in him. I bid him away, then looked at the next orc, and smiled as I heated up the crescent once more. There were perhaps a hundred men, women and children in this clan, and today, I would save each and every one of them.

JUSTINA

Helga had brought me to an outcropping a few hours south of where we’d met. There was a pool there, and a statue of the orgasming Astrid Skyborne displayed prominently for all of the Gratoran Desert to see. So, this was the place. After seeing what had become of Diamond, I felt a horrible pang of guilt for how I’d treated Willowbud in the end. If as pure a soul as Diamond could be so monstrous, then for certain, the real Willowbud was a saint. If I had but extended my hand in mercy, then both she and Astrid would still be alive, but I saw all the weakness in Willowbud that I hated in myself, and when given the opportunity to inflict fear on someone else, I had taken it with relish. I guessed I knew what my darkness was.

“This is a holy place,” Helga muttered as she gently laid me on some furs. “The waters are blessed. They will heal you.”

“That’s not how this works,” I groaned, my foot and leg throbbing with agony. Helga was deft at dressing and suturing wounds, but every time she touched me flesh-to-flesh, she fell under my enslavement. With my body in full-blown survival-mode and my glands dumping pheromones in self-defense, there was no controlling my prowess. After releasing her from my slavery five different times, I just had her wrap me in a blanket, and fly me to Iona. Halfway there, the agony in my leg had forced us aground. My immune system was in the shitter, and the wounds were burning with infection. I knew from a cursory glance that I didn’t have much longer. I could already feel the fever setting in.

Helga raced over to the pool, collected the water in her canteen, said a prayer to the statue of Astrid, then ran back over to me. While it did feel pleasant to have the soft cool water rush over the burning holes in my foot and leg, the wound did not magically close. Helga’s wings drooped in a cartoonish display of disappointment.
“Of course,” she whimpered, “I am unworthy to carry the holy water.”

“That’s the conclusion you drew from this outcome?” I coughed around a bitter laugh, tasting blood.

“Forgive me, Your Eminence.”

I looked up at the darkening sky above, and sighed. “I forgive you, Helga Sunscraper. I told you a hundred times already, I forgive you.”

There was a long pause, then Helga said, “I’m going to have to amputate your leg.”

“The blood loss would kill me.”

“If I don’t do something—”

“There’s nothing you can do. If wolfsbane and willow bark couldn’t heal the infection, then I’m fucked.” I laughed at the sky again. “Mom could probably pick the cure for cancer out of some mountaintop wildflowers, but I can’t even dress a wound. And Brandon made me his health minister. I deserve this.”

“Do not say that,” Helga muttered.

“You don’t know me.”

“I know much about you, Justina Autumnsong. I am a scout, and it is my duty to collect information on the gods, and bring it back to my people.” Helga opened her pouch, and pulled out a pile of news clippings from the Drastin Times.

“I didn’t know they delivered to the Gratoran Wall,” I snorted.

“I procured them from a vendor in the princedoms,” Helga said, not understanding sarcasm at all. “Once word reached the peaks that the gods were in Drastin, Ofan and Breyta emptied. Without Freydis to lead us, Iona had to stay behind. My people were ravenous for news, and so the scouts flew far and wide to collect it.” Helga gently placed the clippings on the rocks, handling them like they were precious. Most of the articles were about the three gods, but there were also quite a few older columns that catalogued Astrid and Mom’s fights in the Pit back when that was frontpage news. There was a few pieces about Diamond, several about the reappearance of the presumed-dead Princess Lucilla, and one measly column about me.

“What’s it say?” I mumbled, mildly curious.

“It’s a speculative article. You seemed to be an afterthought as far as journalists were concerned.”

“Thanks.”

“The article mostly details witness accounts of the sexual services performed for your patrons.” Helga looked up at me. “Do wish me to read it?”

“Not if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“We must become comfortable with discomfort,” Helga said as she selected a magazine from the pile, and held it aloft. I’d seen it before; I was there when Willowbud contracted the artist to paint the pictures. It was of Astrid being publicly ravaged in every-which-way from every swinging dick in the Screeching Siren. Her tattooed body bent and contorted lecherously; a display of sex so vulgar it even tingled me a little.

“When we saw the statue, we knew Astrid had forsaken her virtue for the service of our god,” Helga said, gesturing to the stone figure towering above us. “Most of the Ionans agreed that we would’ve all done the same. But when we saw this…” Helga sighed, “…there was some contention amongst us. The codes are sacrosanct, but so is the will of our god. It is the duty of every Ionan to both serve the Earth Former, and also guide her to benevolence through the wisdom of the codes. Astrid was the best of us, the staunchest defender of the codes besides her mother, and seeing her like this raised some serious philosophical debate. Ultimately, we reached the conclusion that a winged-warrior could break the codes if directly ordered to by her god, so long as she always deferred to the codes otherwise.”

“That described Astrid perfectly,” I lied.

Helga beamed at me. “That was what I thought as well. If you look closely at her face…” Helga held up a picture of Astrid with her eyes rolled back in mindless hedonism as she deepthroated an ogre’s cock, “…you can clearly see the conflict.”

“Yes, it’s very evident.”

Helga closed the magazine, then frowned at the northeastern horizon. “I suppose it does not matter now, does it? They are dead. Astrid and Her Holiness, and Freydis has not returned either.”

“I’m sorry.”

“The holy journey passed us by,” Helga sighed, her wings drooping. “We were to be one of the blessed generations, our names etched forever in glory. Now Iona will be shamed as the clan who did nothing while Ofan and Breyta served with honor.”

“What will you do now?”

She shrugged. “If Freydis does not return, a new High Guard will be chosen after two fortnights. Likely by then the Breytans will have come to conquer us.”

“You outnumber them twenty to one, and you are Ionans; they stand no chance.”

“Perhaps that is so, Your Eminence, but it matters little. Breyta and Iona are on good terms, and understand the importance of duty—not like those filthy Ofanians.” She smiled ruefully. “If Jade Tao demands we bend the knee to Julia Gendian, then we will be honor-bound to do so.”

“Even after what Julia did?”

“It is a far greater sin to be useless, then to be a traitor.”

I pawed weakly at the magazine, and held open a picture showing Astrid being triply anally-penetrated as Willowbud stuck her entire fist up her stretched cunt. “This is child’s play compared to what Julia will make you do.”

Helga swallowed and paled, but she nodded resolutely. “We will serve. Whatever it is we must do, we will do.”

I snorted. “You’re a virgin. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She blushed furiously, and mumbled, “I know… things.”

“I’m sorry, Helga, I didn’t mean it.” I glanced up at the towering cliffs overhead, and let out a long sigh. “I’m just bitter.”

Helga stared up at me for a while, then muttered, “you need a man, don’t you?”

“My body is self-cannibalizing to maintain the function of my organs, and an infection is running rampant through my immune system. I’m well-past needing a man. I need a doctor. But since there’s no hospitals for hundreds of miles, and anyone who touches me will lose all of their higher faculties, right now I just need some company. Keep talking.”

“I’m not going to let you die here.”

“You don’t have a choice!” I laughed, coughing a little blood.

“I am afraid that it is you who doesn’t have that choice, Your Eminence.” Helga wrapped me in the furs like a burrito, and hoisted me into her arms. I screamed as the pain raged through my leg, crawling right up my thigh to throb into my hip.

“Stop!” I screeched. “Put me down! Put me down! Oh god, it hurts so much!”

“Pain is life, Your Eminence,” Helga grunted as she flapped her mighty wings, and launched us into the air. “Comfort is death for you right now. I am sorry, but I must do everything I can to save you.”

“Just fucking drop me!” I screeched, but Helga paid me no heed. The pain clawed up my leg, and the fever pounded in my temples. As the wind rushed through my ears, I began to lose my lucidity bit by bit until it was gone.

JULIA

I burned the tribe’s steading so that they could never return to it, then I set us out on a journey deeper into the Gratoran Desert. As before, I wandered aimlessly, following my intuitions, knowing that they were that of God herself. Yuntok even offered to show me a map, but I burned it, fearing that it would taint the purity of my path. We had enough water with us for a day and a night, but I did not fear thirst. The Good Mother would provide water when it was needed, and if we were to suffer until then, then that was her will. If some of us were to die—the elderly and the children—then that was also her will.

When only moonlight lit our path, I halted our odyssey, and let my exhausted party set up camp. I lit black fires around the perimeter to keep the predators at bay, and the obsidian flames absorbed the moonlight around them, making their surroundings darker than pitch. As the orcs toiled with tents and kitchenware, I knelt in the center of the encampment, and bowed my head to the sand. Prostrating nakedly so that all could see, I began my atonement for the day’s sins.

“Forgive me, Holy Mother, for my transgressions,” I whispered. “Forgive me for killing one of your creatures in the hovel. Forgive me for having impure thoughts for some of the orc men. Forgive me for having sadistic thoughts for some of the orc girls. I fear that the poison Passion has poured into me is too strong, and I will break my chastity soon. May she burn in hell forever.” I paused, and frowned. “On second thought, please forgive Passion for her heresy, and guide her to your light and…” my frown deepened. “Forgive me again, Holy Mother, for my false benevolence. I truly do hope that Passion is tortured interminably in perdition. I hope that she is shrieking as they stab the hot hooks into her flesh and hang her from the rafters! I hope that they rape her vile holes with scalding serrated blades until her insides are…” I took a deep shuddering breath, and calmed myself. My erection was stabbing into the sand, and my netherlips were moist with readiness. “…Forgive me, Holy Mother, for besmirching this confessional with my twisted desires. I will meditate on this violation, and repent again in the morning. Amen, and thank you.”

I rose from the sand, and looked up. Many of the orcs had been watching me, and they averted their gazes the moment I caught them. I was slightly disappointed that none dared to approach me. I considered myself to be a very approachable person. I wondered if I should insert myself into their makeshift camp, and attempt to integrate into their culture. Would we share laughter around the campfire as we sung hymnals? Would we dance in modest clothing, and facilitate the proper and innocent courting of romantic youths beneath a harvest moon? No. These were orcs, and more importantly, I was me. I caught myself wandering along the pleasant curves of the young females, and the rugged bulges of the males. My lust was a dangerous thing. A deadly thing. Imposing it upon my flock would be the worst of sins, and I would punish myself by punishing them. Still, it nagged me—no, it tortured me. I had not felt release since Diamond parted from me, and the sin was beginning to build in my loins.

“You test me, Holy Mother,” I muttered to the sky. “I will not fail you; I promise it.”

I made a ring of fire around me, and snuggled into the sand. It was cool to the touch in the chill night, and strangely pleasant upon my flesh.

JUSTINA

I blinked awake, and wondered for a second if all my scientific rationalism had been for naught, and that the religious zealots I’d labeled as morons had been right all along, for I was staring up at three angels. They had fluffy feathered wings and beautiful faces, and it took me a moment to realize they were Ionan valkyries.

“Oh, thank the gods!” Helga sighed, and rested her brow upon my blanketed chest.

I was in a sparse stone room with a vaulted ceiling and armaments adorning the walls. Though there were slotted windows, there was no door to this room; only an opening in the ceiling above me. Furs and pelts decorated the places where there wasn’t weaponry, and a roaring hearth gave the room a comfortable glow and warmth.

“I’m in Iona?” I muttered.

“You are… Your Eminence,” a blonde woman said, seeming to struggle with giving me the title. She was older, perhaps in her late forties, but she still retained the stoic beauty of her race. The other one was a younger woman, a brunette with a scar running down her handsome jaw, and she assessed me with the dispassionate eye of a doctor.

“Her vitals are good,” the doctor said, snapping a glove made of seal leather. “Your Eminence, I’m going to need you to open your mouth and say ‘ah.'”

I did so, and my serpentine tongue was depressed by a metal prod. The doctor ventured all the way to the back of my throat, and twirled the metal prod about my tonsils and uvula. She frowned, then glanced at the older blonde, then at Helga.

“Wha?” I asked with my mouth open.

“This is supposed to elicit your gag reflex, Your Eminence,” the doctor said, turning slightly pink.

“Oh…” I trailed off, then coughed just to ease the awkwardness.

The doctor examined the spittle-soaked prod, and placed a sample of it in some agar. She waited for the agar to turn, and when it turned purple, she seemed satisfied. “The infection is gone.”

“Oh, thank the gods!” Helga reiterated upon my chest.

“Third-Scout Sunscraper never left your side,” the older woman said to me. “Even when you were flailing about in the throes of fever mania, she risked your enslavement to aid you.”

“Thank you, Helga,” I croaked. As I shifted beneath the bedding, I realized I’d been put in restraints. “Can you release me?”

“Not until we have some clear answers from you, I’m afraid,” the older woman said.

“I already told Helga everything.”

“But I need confirmation. Forgive me, Your Eminence, but a rogue succubus can do more damage to a colony than a virus, and since I’m the acting High Guard, I must take every precaution.” She offered something close to a smile. “I am Nona Cloudwhisper.”

“What do you want to know, Nona Cloudwhisper?” I mumbled with a raspy voice.

Nona held Jade’s dagger aloft, and asked, “you say you got this from High Guard Tao?”

“As a parting gift, yes.”

“And she now carries the Sword of Iona?”

“She intends to return it to Freydis.”

“Freydis Skyborne is missing,” Nona held up a note. “I received this letter from her yesterday morning. It is dated for last week. I fear that she never left Drastin.”

“Freydis told me she would leave the city. I thought valkyries couldn’t lie.”

Nona smiled thinly. “We can deceive if the truth is vague. I’m sure Freydis simply ventured outside of the city walls, and then walked back in.”

“What does Freydis’s note say?”

“She states that Willowbud Autumnsong is a slave of Corruption, and that it is her sworn duty to kill her because of it. She declares herself anathema for the sin she must commit, and relinquishes control of her guardianship to me upon Willowbud’s death. If Astrid still lived, I would be the caretaker of her seat until she was ready to take the mantle.” The lines on Nona’s face deepened as she scanned the note. “Freydis served the Bound One Lucilla for some time. She believed that Her Holiness, Julia Gendian was a righteous and strong woman. Freydis’s last act as High Guard was to pledge the Iona Guard to Julia. After what Helga tells me, this will require further consideration.”

“You don’t need to consider anything, Nona; you’re the boss now.”

“Neither Freydis nor Astrid have been confirmed dead. We must wait two fortnights before I become anything more than a steward. Freydis’s written word still holds more power than my voice.”

“You valkyries and your goddamn codes,” I muttered.

“Codes are all we have, Your Eminence. If it weren’t for our codes, Helga would’ve left your corpse where she found you.”

“Freydis and Astrid are dead. You don’t have two fortnights to make a choice.”

Nona’s lips thinned. “We shall see. Now, you served Brandon Sorenson, correct?”

“Yes,” I muttered, then added, “mostly I served his sister.”

“Yes, Angela Sorenson,” Nona scowled. “She is a spitfire, that one.”

“She sure… wait, what?”

“She likes to transform into a great eagle and chase Ionans out of the sky. I understand that being the Bound One has its privileges, but—”

“SHE’S ALIVE?!” I screamed, my heart thundering in my throat.

“Oh my god, she is?!” Angela cried, shooting up from beside my bed and looking around frantically. “Nobody move!” she commanded. “There’s an undead slut creeping around here.”

“ANGELA?!” I shrieked.

“Where?!” Angela yelled, and whirled around to face me. She tracked my bulging eyes, and donned an expression of exaggerated horror. “Oh my god,” she whispered, “she’s right behind me, isn’t she?”

“YOU ARE SUCH A CUNT!” I sobbed, my mouth breaking into a wide grin as tears poured down my cheeks. Angela couldn’t keep up the act any longer. She broke down into an ugly sob, and threw her arms around me.

JULIA

During the daytime, the Gratoran Wall was hidden from such great distance by the pollution of sand and dust, but at dawn, its silhouette drew an imposing figure across the eastern horizon. I watched the sun slowly creep from between the walls of Droktin’s Pass. The orange luminance bathed the world extending from that notch, but the rest of the desert was still clinging to the darkness of the mountains, holding onto the last half-hour of night before it was time to rise. I was the only one awake so early. All around me, the orcs lay in various stages of slumber. Some sinners had copulated in the night, and the evidence of their mating was clear on the sand. I would not punish them yet; I would await their confessional in the afternoon, and if they asked for atonement, I would forgive them. If they tried to deny it, then I would have to extract their sin through pain.

A shadow moved across the burgeoning sun. The shadow was a dot, then a line on the horizon, and then the line grew larger until it separated into hundreds of little shadows. I stepped from the perimeter of the camp, and held my arms out to my sides in welcome. The Breytans descended onto the dunes before me, each of them landing in a kneeling position until Jade Tao herself was prostrating at my feet.

“Your Holiness,” she whispered reverently upon my toes, “you cannot know the joy it brings me to see you alive.”

“And I am joyful as well, High Guard Tao,” I beamed, beckoning her to rise with a hand upon her chin. “But it is the greatest form of blasphemy to assign holiness to anyone but God herself.”

“Forgive me, Mistress.”

“Call me Sister Julia.”

“Forgive me, Sister Julia,” Jade said, daring to stare into my eyes. There was fear in her almond gaze, yes, but there was also such devotion. That was what I coveted so much, but it was not owed to me.

“Be very careful, High Guard,” I said, touching her brow. “There is a difference between being a faithful servant, and a faithless woman. There is only one god, and she is the Holy Mother. Say it.”

Jade’s bottom lip trembled, and she whispered, “I cannot speak untruths, Sister Julia.”

My loins ached with imminent pleasure as the flame coursed through my veins and to the point of my finger. I would melt her alive. I would hear her screeches of agony, and see her flesh peel away from her face to expose the tendons and bones beneath until she was naught but a blackened skull grinning at me. I wanted to do it with every fiber of my being, but I stopped myself. If I killed Jade for her blasphemy, I would have to kill all of them. Would I burn every soul who did not believe in the Maternal Path? If I did that, then God’s kingdom would be very small indeed. No, I was to be a teacher. Jade was not like the shaman; Jade could still be molded.

“High Guard Tao, you are a sinner,” I said, and lit the end of my finger with a small flame. She cried out as her head began to steam, and though tears welled in her eyes and streamed down her face, she did not move from me. “You are a lecherous, blasphemous murderer, but you are not beyond saving. You have simply been misguided.” I slowly drew the crescent symbol into her brow, letting my finger linger until I’d seared her to the bone. “You will lead your flock by example. If I must punish one of them, it is because you have failed. Do you understand what I am charging you with?”

“Yes, Sister Julia!” she screamed through gritted teeth, enduring the agony as my cock grew harder and harder.

“Good,” I smiled down at her, and finished my work. She collapsed on her hands before me, and wept. The sight of her pathetic prostration made my erection even angrier, and I was compelled nearly to madness by the enticing shape of her spread cheeks, but I managed to stay myself. I looked up at the other Breytans, and enjoyed their horrified faces. “Everyone please give a round of applause to the newest member of the holy flock, Jade Tao.”
The Breytans looked at each other, then back at me, and offered a polite smattering of applause to their broken High Guard. I joined in the celebration of Jade’s baptism, clapping along and beaming with pride. My smile slowly faltered when one sarcastic set of hands—one of which was horribly mutilated—clapped in opposite cadence to the group. Tera Autumnsong emerged from the flock, grinning sardonically and making a show of taunting me as she sauntered down the rows.

“Rejoice, rejoice,” she chuckled, her black eyes leering at my throbbing cock, “the holy sister hath returned to serenade us with her preachy bullshit.”

“Warriors of Breyta,” I growled, “why did you bring me this bottom-feeding wretch?”

“Her Holiness, Diamond Gendian—” started one poor fool before I engulfed her in a black inferno. Her screeches filled the skies, and my cock rose higher with her soprano agony as the scent of her cooking meat filled my nostrils. I stared at Tera the whole time, but she didn’t even flinch. She grinned at me mockingly from those black pits of eyes, those same eyes that I had. Oh, how it enraged me! I took a calming breath through my nose, and turned back to the Breytans.

“The next woman who deifies a false idol will be put to the cross and roasted alive until sundown,” I said as though lecturing children. “I am Sister Julia. My daughter is Sister Diamond. That is all we are. I see that I am going to have to make you all prove your—”

“And on the five-billionth day, the Holy Mother did bless us with silence,” Tera proclaimed loudly, “and Sister Julia did shut-eth the fuck-eth up, and all rejoiced. Amen.”

I reeled on Tera, but she just giggled, and slapped my cock.

“Blessed are thee whom burn women alive for their pleasure,” Tera teased, “for that is clearly what god wanted when she gave the famous precept, ‘thou shalt not kill.'”

“I am the flame of god!” I growled. “I am bestowed with her eternal fire, and have been blessed with her sight!”

“Her… sight?” Tera cocked her head, and then exploded in laughter. “You mean Corruption?! You think… oh my god… you think that Corruption is the vision of God?! Well fuck me, Sister; I guess that makes me a prophet!”

“You are a parasitic whore!”

“Then why don’t you burn me?” Tera grinned wickedly. “Just burn me up! Make me scream like a roasted pig on a spit!” She leaned in, and her grin turned absolutely evil. “You actually believe all the shit you’re saying, don’t you? But of course you do.”

“The Holy Mother works in mysterious ways,” I snarled. “Especially when it comes to my daughter. I don’t know why God compelled her to give you the sight, but she did. Yes, Tera, you whore of whores, you are blessed, and therefore I cannot pass judgement upon you.” I leaned until our brows were almost touching. “But if you speak one more word of blasphemy, I will forego God’s permission for her forgiveness, and I will have you screaming for a week before you’re finished!”

Tera’s eyes flashed dangerously. “That’s quite the claim, Sister. I’ve heard some men boast about how long they’d have me screaming for, but a week?” she glanced down at my crotch. “Lying is a sin, you know. You better be able to back it up.”

“Keep your lechery away from me!”

“But why do you think God sent me here?” Tera whispered huskily, and wrapped her cool tender fingers around my raging shaft. I gasped like a virgin, and her grin widened. “Someone needs to get all of that sin out of you, Sister Julia.”

Through my labored breaths, I managed to hiss, “do not ever attempt to interpret the will of God ever again. You are but her tool!”

“I kinda think I’m holding God’s tool right now,” Tera hissed, caressing me so sweetly. “Why don’t you bless me with it? It doesn’t count if you fuck me in the ass.”

I closed my eyes, and bowed my head against my raging desire.

“What’s the word, Sister?” Tera crooned, her fingertips sliding so wonderfully, so evilly. “You interpret God’s will, so why did God send me to you?”

I took a deep shuddering breath, and found myself swaying into her touch. She beckoned me forward, her grip sliding up my throbbing length.

“I will seek your sacrament when the moon is high and my flock is asleep,” I whispered, and glared at her. “Do not ever tempt me again before my followers, or I will remove your other hand!”

Tera giggled, and retracted her fingers, leaving their pleasure burning on my flesh. “You’ll be thinking about me all day long. For a sadist, you make quite the masochist. But of course, I already knew that about you.” She raised her brows, and whispered, “woof-woof,” and my cock jolted with a shot of precum.

“Leave me!” I growled through gritted teeth.

“I’m sure I can find a whip and handcuffs around here somewhere,” Tera mused, turning around to show me her impossibly juicy backside, her tail swinging teasingly behind her as she made her way to the camp. I forced my gaze away, and looked to the sky above.

“Do you tempt me, or do you reward me?” I asked the Holy Mother as Jade whimpered beneath me, already forgotten. “What am I to make of this sinner with your gift?”

Only the wind answered.

I nodded, and sighed. “Of course. I am sorry for assuming I would be the lone perspective of your vision. I will discern your message from her, whatever it may be. Thank you, oh Holy Mother. I am infinitely naive, and you are infinity wise.”

Postlude: Astral Projection

CORRUPTION

Xaya’s mind was ravenous for carnality, as I knew she would be. She had tortured herself for so long with abstractions that the simple had become unobtainable to her. Now that her mind had settled into a languor of hedonism and instinct, she rested contentedly upon the thorny foliage that had once been her realm, and busied herself with the simple predatory delights of plucking the limbs off a squealing bunny. She would be an excellent caretaker for this realm. I had chosen her for two reasons: one was her affinity for water, and the other was for her vastness. Though I had destroyed Wisdom, Xaya was still overbearingly powerful to anyone but I. I cautiously opened the gate of the combined realms, and stepped into the calm waters outside. The iron door on the box flexed, but it did not fling open. I took a deep breath, and lifted my other foot from Diamond’s soil. The box trembled, the earth shook, great flocks of birds were sent skyward in panic. Xaya ceased her torture of the rabbit to glance over her shoulder at the iron monolith in the middle of her new realm. She snarled at it, punched her fist into the astral ground, and all was calmed. I let out the breath I’d been holding, and carefully set both feet into the water. Nothing happened. The door stayed shut, and my patterns remained on my flesh.

It took me a moment to notice the difference in the realm. None of the plants had changed, nor had the sky or walls of the realm. What had changed was quite subtle from such a distance. A slender red-haired woman stood blinking confusedly in the middle of the realm. She had black antlers on her head, and eyes of emerald and purple. It took me a second to realize what I was staring at. It took Diamond a second later to realize where she was. She pivoted on her heel, and dashed for the iron box.

“Get her!” I screamed.

Xaya leapt to her feet, and sprinted after Diamond. She closed the distance between them with lightning speed, then tackled my mother, and subdued her easily into a chokehold. Diamond struggled with all her might as I stared from the threshold, trying to rationalize why this had happened. I realized my mistake too late. Xaya was not melded to Diamond, and Diamond was untethered. Much like when she shared her body with Angela, all Diamond needed to astral travel was to have someone else occupy her garden. There was some part of her that felt that change, and immediately sought to free herself from me. The revelation tore my heart out. I was a parasite to her.

Diamond fought her futile battle with Xaya until her poor astral body was limp and mud-caked. Her purple and green eyes searched around frantically, then settled on me.

“You,” she snarled, “what did you do?! WHAT DID YOU MAKE ME DO?!”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Get out!” she screeched. “Never come back! I hate you! I HATE YOU!”

“I love you,” I hissed to her, but she could not hear me. Past the threshold of her gate, there were no words that could be passed between us, no explanation, no comfort. I shut the gate, and wiped the tears from my cheek. “I’m so sorry, Mother.”

Excerpt from Dr. Siam’s thesis, The Broken Bridge, page one:

If you are reading this, then congratulations, you have cracked the first cypher, and can now read to the end of this page. Unfortunately, the next page requires another cypher to crack, and that cypher is five iterations more difficult than this one. By my calculations, it should take the average mind about five days to crack this cypher (if the average mind can be so dedicated), so if you absolutely have nothing better to do, enjoy spending the next twenty-five days attempting to read the next page. How about this, I’ll save you the trouble. The next page is an overlong and overcomplicated recipe for a tuna fish sandwich. I have told you this because I have littered this thesis with overlong and overcomplicated recipes for overly simple food items. You will not know which page contains my research, or which one tells you how best to butter garlic bread. Oh, and each successive page is five times more difficult to decipher than the one previous, and you must decipher them successively, because each cypher builds upon the last. There are nine-hundred pages.

You might ask why I am being so cagy. “Doctor Siam, aren’t you being a bit paranoid?” Well, you’d be paranoid too if a dogmatic GOD OF FIRE thought your research was the work of the devil. Who would’ve thought a three-foot tall cock-sucker would be so close-minded? Ah, but it’s always the gay followers of the damnable Maternal Path who are the most overzealous. Far be it for me to judge when my breakfast consisted of egg salad and orc shlong, but as an incubus, I feel like my impropriety can be forgiven. I’m rambling. You will find that I ramble quite a lot. Since this paper will not be subject to peer review by the Scientific Board of Hektinar University, I will allow myself a little leeway. Those fucking self-serving bureaucrats don’t know what science is anyway. If it weren’t for Furok and Droktin, I would’ve had my tenure revoked decades ago, but this is the only place that this research can be conducted. Goddamn stupid fucking… deep breath, Doctor Siam. Look, I obviously have my qualms with the orc empire, but there is no doubt that orckind are the most progressive, intelligent and free-thinking of all the peoples, and so I will extend a note of gratitude to Hektinar University, and apologize now. Maybe I should just redact this whole paragraph. No, it stays!

Well, where to start. I guess from the beginning. First off, thanks to the testimony of Xaya Sitoria (who goes by Wisdom, the pretentious thot), we can get the small revelations out of the way on the first page. There is no god, the Maternal Path is a lie, and you’re all a bunch of fucking inbred morons for believing it. Oh, you want proof? Cut your wrists and see if angels come down to finger your butthole or whatever it says in there. The self-proclaimed “Holy Mother” is nothing but an artifact of early mankind. Before Creators, there were Elementals, and Elementals were formed from the genesis of the astral plane, when mankind finally emerged from its ape cognizance. The astral plane and the physical plane were one, and so Elementals could coexist with their humanoid counterparts. There were two initially: Petranumen (New Earth) and Vitanimus (Moving Life). They eloped and made Joy, who was the Elemental of water, and later fire when she tried on a new dress or some bullshit.

Fast-forward a few eons, and mankind has finally reached the age of reason. The astral plane separated from the physical plane, which Petranumen thought was a total bummer. Some stuff happened, Petranumen managed to tame the astral plane for a thousand years, some more stuff happened, the planes split because Petranumen is an idiot who couldn’t count to a thousand, some more stuff happened, Petranumen killed Vitanimus and proclaimed herself to be the Holy Mother, some more stuff happened, yada, yada, yada, and we’re here.

This thesis does not deal in the mysteries of the astral plane. I do not care about Elementals, Sentients, Tethered Ones, or even the rare Untethered Ones, who are not as special as they like to think. No, this thesis deals with far more important concepts. Concepts of energy, of life, and of existence itself. The Holy Mother would have you believe that existence is predestined and dependent on your actions on earth. That same Holy Mother—Petranumen—actually believes that your earthly life has no true bearing, and that everlasting life in the astral plane is what’s important. Needless to say, the Holy Mother has both wrong. The point of this thesis is to discuss the broken bridge. Vitanimus had made great strides in discovering the secrets of the broken bridge, but he stopped his research too soon.

What is the broken bridge? Well, the astral and physical planes were once one, and a connection between them still persists. Tethered and Untethered Ones go to and from the plane of cognizance, and Sentients can in some form, do the same. It is only logical to assume then, that there was once a connection between all three planes. That is what this thesis is about. This thesis is about discovering the secrets of the spiritual plane, the first plane of existence from which all energy in the universe derives. Why are the second and third planes transitable, but the first is a one-way road? The answer is, that it’s not. The broken bridge isn’t broken; we just don’t know how to cross it.

And that is the end of the first page. See you in twenty-five days, dumbass.