Kore
"He's waiting for you in the alley, around back," Na-Kath said, after roughly twenty minutes of sitting in silence. By this point he looked very much like a man who wanted to be home, for whom all this was an annoyance and, more to the point, quite thoroughly beneath him. Kore and Diesch exchanged a glance.
"That true?" Kore asked, flatly. The real question, posed to Diesch, was is he lying?
"Of course it is," Na-Kath said, glancing away. Behind him, Diesch gave her a look explicitly conveying that yes, he absolutely is.
"Alright," Kore grunted, rapping her knuckles twice on the bar and rising to her feet. "I’m gonna step out for a minute. Don’t worry, Na-Kath, my friend here is gonna keep you company. Varras," she turned to Diesch, using the agreed-upon fake name, "shoot him if he tries to run."
"If you insist," Diesch replied, with a loud yawn. He reached over, put a mechanical arm around Na-Kath's back, and gave the other man a wide smile. It was all for show, of course, but it was also all rather convincing.
Waiting for Kore outside was more or less what she'd expected. Four rough-looking men, all with las-pistols holstered on their belts. They turned to her at once, and in each of their faces there was the obvious and unspoken promise of physical violence soon to come.
At the far end of the alley, a sleek black hovercar was idling silently. Watching. The man Kore wanted to see, then. Which meant the only thing between Kore and her objective was the four men cracking knuckles and muttering threats.
They were confident, of course.
They shouldn't have been.
At this point in time Kore could nearly have qualified for SUPERKOMMANDO-rating, which would put her on par with one of the Emperor's Liquidators. She had just spent the last seven weeks sparring with a Se-dai. She also had weight and height on her side and, perhaps most importantly, she was in an uncharacteristically foul mood. All these poor sods had on their side was numbers.
"Come on, then," Kore said, dropping her cigarette and crushing it beneath her boot. "Ain't got all night."
The first one to step up – a brick-faced man with a tattoo running up his neck – feinted left, then swung right. Kore sidestepped and jabbed him hard in the side, then simply grabbed his face and slammed his head against the side of the nearest dumpster. The man spasmed, went limp, and she dropped him in similar fashion to her cigarette just moments ago.
“Next,” she grunted.
The other three saw this, and were wise to come at her all at once. Kore put up her arms like a boxer, planted her feet, and held firm – enduring a storm of punches and kicks before, with a snarl, she burst forward and dislocated the center man's jaw with a titanic right hook.
She stepped in between her two remaining opponents, blocked one punch, took another to the cheek, spat out a glob of blood and stomped down on the closest foot. Hearing the cry of pain that she wanted, she rounded on the uninjured man and pummeled his chest with one, two, three rapid-fire jabs that left him on his knees, retching and vomiting.
Then, she turned to her remaining opponent – the man with the broken foot, who was howling invectives and fumbling for his las-pistol – and battered his weapon away, then silenced his curses with a left-hand chop to the throat. He, too, crumpled like all the rest, eyes wide as he gasped desperately for air.
Kore tasted blood; there was a small trickle running down from one of her nostrils. She reached up and wiped it away with a thumb and a snarl. Ahead, the hovercar door opened – and out stepped a true giant of a man, one almost certainly the beneficiary of vat-grown muscles and clad in a tight-fitting starch-white suit. He pushed a pair of circular glasses up his nose and rumbled, apropos of nothing, "That's my nephew."
Kore turned to see the man whose head had made covenant with the dumpster. "Your nephew throws a shitty punch," she told him.
He surged forward with alarming speed and Kore put up her fists once more. This time, she was moving agile and light, darting and ducking around brick-fisted swings that tore violently through the empty air. But the big man was fast, and admittedly the big man was good and so Kore took a hammer-blow to the face that nearly put her flat on the ground, then felt sausage-thick fingers close right around her throat and squeeze. She watched with dimming vision as the big man cocked his other fist back – and then she remembered exactly what Sekhmet had taught her to do, in this position.
She put both hands on his wrist, wrenched, snapped his arm at the elbow, then spun about and swept his legs out from under him. The big man’s weight went from strength to weakness as he went down hard, and even as he was rising back to his feet with a furious growl it was already far too late. Kore grabbed him by the collar, yanked him close, and beat him savagely – eight, nine, ten hits and finally he went limp, his face now thoroughly unrecognizable as Kore discarded him in much the same way she had his nephew.
Kore stomped his glasses into the pavement as she stormed forward, all the while wrenching her nose back into place with a painful crunch. The hovercar, still, was silent and unmoving. Kore locked eyes with her own angry reflection as she stopped just outside the door and rapped one bloody-knuckled fist against the window.
"Roll it down," she ordered. "Or I'm coming in."
The window rolled down in short order. And so Kore was now face-to-face with a slack-jawed, glassy-eyed, portly woman in a three-piece suit. Attached to the side of her skull like a barnacle was a small black box, one that sported a trio of blinking lights. She was, Kore realized, a golem – a bought-and-paid-for cadaver now being piloted by a sentient artificial intelligence program. This sort of ghoulishness was entirely foreign to a word like Callisto and all but part and parcel to a place like the Venusian undercity. On any other night, in any other mood, Kore might well have been surprised or revolted.
"Yes?" the woman slurred, quite impatiently. And Kore saw now that, just below the window, the corpse was pressing a smooth-barreled disruptor pistol against the door. Kore arched an eyebrow and eyed the weapon with blatant disinterest.
"You want my money or not?" Kore demanded. The corpse cocked its head, like a lizard. There was no such thing as subconscious body language, not for a creature bereft of any subconscious at all. It was all a careful and calculated gesture.
"What for?" it asked, through dead lips. Terse, for an AI.
"A meeting with the Mondat," Kore said, as though it were the most casual thing in the world. And then the word was out, having slipped fully from her lips. It was real, now. She had spoken that name and now it was really going to happen.
"You cannot just-"
"I have it on the personal guarantee of a fucking Scion that you most certainly can arrange for that meeting," Kore growled, her patience completely and utterly shot to hell. "I’m not playing this game with you. Just make the voiddamned call already." She reached into her pocket – fished out a credit chit worth more than she had ever held in her life – and tossed it into the backseat. "I'll be at the bar."
And so, the ex-rebel stepped over the heap of groaning and unconscious men and returned to the world of overpowering sight and sound – this time with a sore jaw and a stabbing headache.
----------------------------------------
Jaheed
A howl the likes of which Jaheed could never have imagined – not even in his deepest, most vivid nightmares – split the air above him, its point of origin thankfully far in the distance.
Many of the Ceresian retinue had refused to enter; it was now only Volsif and his Se-dai accompanied by Xenet, Loki, and five more of her number. And, of course, there were still those loping black figures, still swinging incense and still gurgling bizarre, terrible nonsense. This was the group that watched now as flesh bound itself to mithril, as skeins of muscle and tendon arced like delicate ribbons through the air. At either side of the teal skeleton there was a man in a grinning mask, each directing the flesh by means of a thin metal wand. They wove nerve and sinew together in silent harmony, slowly and gracefully stitching together a horrid masterpiece of living tissue.
Another howl rang out – louder, this time. Freyja moved closer to Nergal and the two clasped hands, tight, and Jaheed heard Nergal say so quietly that only he could hear: "[Endure, my love. Soon it will all come to end.]"
Freyja just gave a tight nod. Jaheed saw this and said nothing.
Every one of the Se-dai, in fact, were visibly uncomfortable, their bodies all vibrating with a subtle yet apparent tension. Even Loki looked ill-at-ease, her eyes darting to and fro in a state of perpetual alarm. Yet Anansi stood apart from them all and simply watched, by Volsif's side, with jaw clenched tight. The others, Jaheed could clearly see, were terrified beyond all belief. But oh, Anansi was far from afraid.
Anansi was furious.
Volsif leaned over, whispered something in her ear that Jaheed couldn't make out – and then he turned to Xenet with an easy smile, one that contrasted almost inappropriately with the prevailing mood. Always the iconoclast, Volsif. Always the one against the tide.
"The time of the Birth draws near," the Jade Emperor said. How he could possibly have known such a thing was a mystery to Jaheed – and yet it was no question, but a statement of fact.
"[It does, Blessed One,]" Xenet agreed, bowing his head. The masked Bishop seemed to be the only one comfortable here, amidst the den of the Fleshweavers, and there was tangible excitement in his voice. "[Shall we make haste?]"
"We shall," the Emperor decreed. And thus it was so.
The retinue descended further and further, through workshops of skin and muscle and bone, past countless half-built Se-dai hanging like dead meat from the ceiling above. The deeper they went, the stronger the smell of the incense became, until Jaheed could swear his vision was beginning to swim. He saw things that he would never forget, on that journey. He also saw things that his mind banished from memory at once, things that his subconscious worked overtime to protect him from. All around him, the Se-dai – usually as smooth and flowing as water – were moving rough and jerkily, as though having to physically force their bodies forwards. Countless times he saw wrist-blades begin to extend, only to be quickly and shamefully retracted. Not once did Nergal and Freyja ever release one another's hands.
"[Not far, now, O Celestial God-Emperor,]" Xenet was saying, bidding the others to follow along. He was all but giddy. "[Not far at all.]" The Jade Emperor said not a word – he just smiled to himself, as though this were all some grand amusement, and followed. And so, after what felt like a dreaming eternity, Volsif and his retinue arrived in a place that could only be described as a womb.
It was cramped, dark, and oppressively hot. The retinue were crowded in amongst two dozen of the long-limbed creatures and three Bishops outfitted in similar masked finery to Xenet. The Se-dai did not enter; save for Anansi, all silently chose to wait outside. That was a threshold they would not – perhaps could not – cross.
Dangling like a slumbering chiroptera from the ceiling above was an opaque sack of some milky fluid, festooned with hundreds of wires and tubes. They resembled at once both a system of nervous and a cluster of multicolored intestines. And inside that false womb, faintly visible, was the outline of a human being. Of a Se-dai, asleep yet soon to be born.
The Emperor was watching in rapt attention, hands clasped behind his back. Beside him, Anansi was a live wire, and all save for the Emperor himself kept her at a far distance. It had seemed a physical effort for her to enter this womblike chamber; now, it seemed it was taking every ounce of her discipline to remain still.
The air was humming. No – throbbing, like the beat of some alien heart. Jaheed could swear that the floor was undulating beneath his feet. It was as though he were inside the stomach of some great, colossal thing, of a beast that had slumbered for so long but was now, finally, beginning to stir. To wake.
Bishop Xenet took two steps forward - spread his arms wide - and from behind his mask there emanated a hoarse cry, one that was joined in unison by the gurgling figures and Bishops alike.
"[Loooooooooooooove,]" Xenet warbled. The others chorused in turn. "[Come to me, my love. Come, daughter of Ceres.]"
"[Come,]" they echoed. The sack began to spasm and tremble, and all present fell to their knees in silent prostration, save for Volsif and Anansi. Jaheed, kneeling as well at the behest of some unknown compulsion, turned to see that there were long streaks of tears running down Anansi's face.
"Da rek!" Xenet intoned. There was no translation. "Da fal she ka!" His words were repeated in turn.
"Se-dai!"
"Se-dai!"
"Se-dai!"
"Se-dai!"
And then the womb split, and with a gush of yellow-white fluid and an eyewatering smell the newborn Se-dai was dislodged, falling for what felt like a frozen eternity before hitting the floor with an impact that shook the very foundations of that terrible subterranean chamber. Anansi's chest and shoulders were heaving wildly with every breath. Her eyes were floodlights. She stood there pinned like a deer, like prey – no stoic display of discipline, now. Just an animal unable to run.
The newborn whimpered.
She was but a huddled mass of trembling flesh, naked save for a coating of translucent sallow fluid. Her eyes were blinking rapidly on-and-off, on-and-off, and for a moment she could manage only a string of mewling, abortive noises. And at the far back of his reeling mind Jaheed understood that these were cries for help.
Bishop Xenet stepped forward, lowered himself to one knee, and graciously extended a hand. "Welcome to the world," he told her.
The newborn's eyes went wide as saucers and then came a sound no human being could ever have made, not in ten thousand years of evolution. To call it a scream, a howl, a shriek – none of these words would do that sound justice. Her mouth hung impossibly wide and she leapt back, smashing so hard against the wall that the stone actually cracked and then she was wailing in pain, her back now thoroughly bloodied. She tried to stand, stomped with incredible force, then immediately buckled and collapsed to a weeping, shrieking heap. Jaheed watched and did not move – could not possibly have moved – as the newborn dragged herself to the nearest corner and curled into a ball, staring out at all present with blazing, terrified eyes. And she screamed, of course. The screaming never stopped and somehow Jaheed knew that the screaming would not stop for a long, long time.
Abruptly, Anansi turned to leave, her heels clicking sharply against the granite as she stormed out without a word. Her expression was unreadable; Jaheed dared not stare too closely. And the Emperor, all the while, was observing the newborn closely. The smile had vanished from his face.
Later, when they were all standing on the other side of that wretched chamber, Bishop Xenet explained. "[It will take twenty years for her to become a full-blooded Se-dai. She will spend much of it as an infant in an adult's body, her mind filled with knowledge she has not the means to interpret or understand.]" He paused, then added: "[We will blot out the unpleasant memories of her ‘childhood’, in time. Not one Se-dai here can truly recall the moment of their birth, though a puzzling number claim otherwise. They are born fighters, after all. They love to be right,]" Jaheed could hear the smile, behind his mask, “[and they love for us to be wrong. Thus is the nature of things.]”
Anansi was glaring sheer murder at the Bishop, though she remained as always the perfect and obedient sentinel. Jaheed, for his part, was still shaking quite badly. He loathed everyone, then, with a surge of emotion he had not felt since the last days of Callisto. He loathed Ceres and he loathed the Great Domain and he loathed the Sovereign and perhaps most of all he loathed the Jade Emperor for bringing him to see such a thing. The vivid details of these memories would fade, in time, as would the fires of these passions. But in that moment Jaheed was begging, in the depths of his heart, for Anansi to step forward and rip Bishop Xenet's throat out. What he had just witnessed offended and assaulted his senses on every comprehensible level.
"You enjoy your work," Volsif said. It was, again, not a question. Just a simple declaration of fact.
"[I must confess, Lord Emperor, that I do feel a certain patriarchal bond with the newborn,]" Xenet admitted. "[It is a beautiful thing, that which we do. Here, in the depths of these hallowed grounds, we carry out traditions the likes of which have existed for millennia. I follow in the footsteps of two-hundred-and-ninety-seven Bishop Xenets before me.]"
Off to the side, Jaheed realized, there was another exchange taking place. Loki and her five Se-dai were facing Anansi down head-on, while Anansi met her old rival with Nergal and Freyja by her side. Jaheed wondered, to himself, whether this was a legitimate dispute or a mere attempt at distraction from the reality of what had just occurred in the other room.
"[You are Se-dai,]" Loki hissed. "[We were never meant to bear witness!]"
"[Unlike you, sister, I refuse to turn a blind eye,]" Anansi shot back. "[I do not shy away from the horror of my existence. I confront it – not just for myself, but for all Se-dai!]"
"[I am no coward.]” This seemed, to Jaheed, a rather insufficient reply.
"[How many times have you stood outside that door and listened to the cries of your sisters?]" Anansi pressed, stepping closer. Amongst the Se-dai, a single step like that was all but a declaration of war. "[How many times have you delivered them, cold and shivering, to the arms of their wretched father?]"
"[Blasphemy!]" Xenet bellowed, whirling around. And before anyone could say or do a thing the Bishop was storming over, his voice practically incandescent with rage. The Se-dai of Ceres parted at once, making way as he rounded on Anansi and shouted, “[How dare you speak ill of the Blessed Sovereign!]” He came to a trembling halt and jabbed an accusing finger at Anansi, whose manner in that moment was distinctly cool and reptilian. Jaheed flinched, involuntarily, though the Sha-sur had not moved a muscle. “[You are yet a daughter of Ceres, Anansi. Perhaps some manner of discipline is required-]”
That outburst, Jaheed surmised, could only have been the final straw. Because the Emperor, without warning, snapped his fingers and said “Nergal.” And in the blink of an eye the Se-dai leapt forward and slit Xenet’s throat from ear to ear, sending the old man sputtering and gurgling with his very essence running in a fat crimson river down the length of his robe. Jaheed had only an instant to process this – only an instant to see Loki’s head snap to him, of all people – and only an instant to understand that Loki intended to answer Volsif’s transgression with an eye for an eye. Then Loki, too, blinked forward, and Jaheed caught only a blur of motion before an armored hand shoved him roughly back.
Anansi had appeared from all but thin air, her wrist-blades crossing Loki’s own, and there came a ferocious shower of sparks as the two women clashed with all their prodigious strength. Beside her, Freyja darted in, wrist-blade at the ready, while Nergal moved to protect the Emperor and every one of Loki’s Se-dai moved to slaughter the interlopers on the spot.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
"Halt," the Jade Emperor commanded, and like magic all present did just that – froze on the spot, as though their mithril skeletons had simply locked up and refused to move any further. Yet both sides of the Se-dai continued to eye one another hatefully, and Freyja was shifting ever-so-slightly now to completely block Jaheed from Loki's line of sight. And all the while the long-legged figures were letting out strange, keening wails at the death of their Bishop. It was an apocalypse in slow motion, a diorama of complete and total bedlam.
The Jade Emperor just looked at the whole messy spectacle and smiled. "I warned him," he explained, as though any of his actions ever required any explanation. As though he answered to any higher power in all the Great Domain. "I am, if nothing else, a man who stands by his words. I do not lie; I do not make falsehoods or half-truths." Then, for some unfathomable reason, his head tilted - and he met Jaheed's eyes, of all people, amidst that frozen battlefield.
"This place..." Volsif began. And then came something that Jaheed never thought he would see in all his life, something that had – until now – been simply ludicrous to even consider. Something that violated the very natural order of things.
The Jade Emperor was interrupted – by Loki, who strode forward and declared, in a voice that was decidedly not her own: "That was my Bishop, Doss."
Time stopped. Jaheed's heart stopped. Never once had he seen Volsif truly angry; never once did he ever want to be on even the same planet as such a thing. Yet now there was a clear expression of murder upon the Jade Emperor's face, his eyes narrowing to emerald slits. Wrath emanated from him like a physical miasma, rippling through the air and heating the skin of all unfortunate enough to stand in his presence.
"Sovereign," the Jade Emperor acknowledged, turning slow and predatory to face Loki. Loki, whose eyes were now glowing a deep purple. Loki, every muscle of whose body was clenched tight, whose teeth were locked together such that Jaheed felt they might shatter at any moment. Loki, who looked to be in sheer agony even as she spoke with a voice that shook Jaheed to his very core.
"Report to my Inner Sanctum. NOW. There shall be no further delay." And then, without further ado, Loki's eyes switched off and the Se-dai was hunched over, dry-heaving, and there was a thin line of steaming black fluid dribbling from her open mouth. Yet a moment later she was calm and composed and fixing the Emperor of the known universe with a droll, superior stare.
The balance of power had shifted.
"Come, then," Loki said simply, forgoing the Emperor's myriad titles. "My Master awaits."
For a moment, Jaheed imagined that Volsif would do something truly terrible – something that would see both he and Anansi killed on the spot. Instead, the Grand Architect just gave the Se-dai a knowing little smile and command her: “Lead the way.”
----------------------------------------
Kore
Kore was back in her seat with a loud, angry sigh. Diesch met her eyes – inferred the obvious – and let Na-Kath go with warnings to not dare report this to the Greencoats, that they knew where he lived, et cetera et cetera. And so the Black Hound returned to the booth beside her, a fresh drink in hand, and so they both continued to wait.
"How'd it go?" Diesch asked, roughly twenty minutes in, which was well past when such a thing might have been sensible to ask. Perhaps, Kore thought, he was feeling apologetic. Perhaps he did not fully comprehend the mood she was in.
"They made me work for it," Kore grunted, which was as diplomatic a response she could muster. Her jaw still hurt like all hell. "Boss is a Golem, by the way."
"No shit?" Diesch arched an eyebrow. "Don't see that every day."
"You do not."
More silence.
"Have you ever-" Diesch started.
"Fuck off," Kore snapped, and that was that.
They didn't have to wait much longer. After not five minutes a waiter in a dark button-up approached their table with a tray full of drinks. And though there were no immediate outward indicators, Kore understood immediately who and what exactly this man was. Kore had spent so much time with Sekhmet that by now she could identify every one of the signs – the way his every movement was so smooth, so perfect, so calculated. The way that when he stood still, he stood just a tad bit too still.
"That was fast," Kore remarked, dispensing with the whole waiter-serving-customers pageantry at once. Diesch shot her a questioning glance – put it together – and then immediately leaned back, observing in silence with his las-revolver clearly displayed. For an argumentative asshole whom Kore could not stand, he played the role of Second to absolute perfection.
The waiter's expression did not change. "Anything I can get you folks?" he asked. “There’s a special on Deuronian Brandy tonight, though there’s-” he checked his watch, “-only eighteen minutes left.”
"I’ll meet you out back," was Kore’s only response. And then, before the man could answer, she was on her feet and walking out the door.
Ten minutes later that same door swung open beside them. Kore and Diesch were smoking in the back alley, the former leaning back against the wall and the latter sitting atop the bloodied dumpster. The wounded thugs were gone, as was the golem’s hovercar. It was almost as though the entire brawl had been but a dream; save for the dull ache Kore was currently feeling.
The waiter stepped outside, kicking the door shut behind him, and now Kore looked him over good and proper. And he was, well... ordinary. Utterly unremarkable in every sense of the word, a man of average height and average build with a face that looked like nothing at all. He was an extra in a holodrama, a faceless background character who existed only to fill space. Sekhmet's eyes, glowing or otherwise, had a stark intensity that immediately stood out under scrutiny. But this man's eyes were dull and dark and, in all honesty, quite stupid. Even now, having seen all the telltale signs, Kore could not help but feel slightly underwhelmed by the nature of his presence.
"Well?" he asked, and then the illusion was shattered, because that was the voice of a killer. Cold, calm, demanding, and suddenly there was an undercurrent of tension to this whole thing that had not existed a moment prior. "What would you have The Mondat do?"
The Se-dai were, unquestionably, the most feared killers in all the Great Domain. They moved at the blink of an eye, killed without a sound, and were all but invincible short of artillery or a mithril molecular-blade. Yet even so, the Mondat – the shadowy group of mercenary assassins – lingered not too far behind. For while the Se-dai were a distant, mythological sort of threat, the Mondat were real and physical and countless high-profile politicians and celebrities had died rather publicly by their hands.
The Se-dai were tools of the Emperor. The Mondat were tools of anyone who could afford to pay their immense fee.
"Kill someone," Kore answered, which was patently obvious. And then: "A man called Sain Sahd."
If her words had any effect, the Mondat's blank expression did not show it. "The newest Scion?" he asked.
"That's very same," Kore nodded. "He's on Mercury right now, in the Panopticon. Protected by a Se-dai."
"Just one?"
"Just one," Kore confirmed.
"And the price?"
Kore just reached into her pocket, fished out another credit chit, and held it out for the Mondat to see. This one carried enough to purchase a small moon and had come about as a combination of Jaheed's family holdings and some of Ket Sal's personal funds. "Will the Se-dai be an issue?" she asked, feeling an odd little pang of guilt as she did so. The Mondat just reached out and took the chit, and his fingers were ice-cold when they brushed against Kore's hand.
"Fifty-seven Se-dai have been killed at the hands of the Mondatti," the man answered flatly.
"And you, specifically?" Kore asked, feeling a bit defensive – knowing exactly what Sekhmet would have said to him, in that moment.
"Twice, I have fought them," the waiter said, the chit disappearing into his pocket. "Yet still I stand before you today."
It was as clear an answer as she would receive. No Mondat could take on a Se-dai in a fair fight, of course. Everybody knew that. But the Mondatti had numbers and, perhaps more importantly, all manner of other strange advantages. Their agents wore faces like cheap masks and were known to possess weaponry that broke light and folded shadow. There would be no fair fight, Kore knew, which she also knew would gall Sekhmet to the core.
And yet, well. There was nothing to be done about it.
"That's it, then?" Kore grunted, her hand resting on the hilt of her melt-blade. Just in case. It felt comfortable there, anyway. "No handshake, no receipt?"
"This conversation never happened," the Mondat replied - and then he was the waiter once more, slouching and weary and currently on break. "Bum a cig?"
Reluctantly, Kore handed one over. Price of doing business, she thought to herself, as she and Diesch stepped away. And all the while she could feel the heat of the Mondat's stare boring twin holes straight through her back.
"C'mon," she muttered to Diesch. "I wanna get the fuck outta here."
----------------------------------------
Jaheed
The Emperor's throne room had been somewhat surprisingly understated, in contrast to his overwhelming personality and presence.
The Sovereign's was anything but.
Volsif, Anansi, Jaheed, Nergal, and Freyja were forced to pass between a physical column of pike-wielding Se-dai to enter into a huge, vaunted chamber, one replete with such gilded embellishments as to temporarily blind the human eye. There was such a magnitude of detail that for a moment, Jaheed's vision literally blurred – and then it refocused, and then he saw it.
It was dangling from the ceiling. It was like a worm, of sorts, a worm of mithril composite and fat, undulating, veiny flesh. Meat and mithril intermingled as one in wild and directionless fashion, the thing seeming to have simply grown from the shadowy recesses of the ceiling above. Pulsing tubes and multicolored wires and glittering displays all festooned skin replete with pockmarks, with stray tufts of hair, with exposed tendons and the occasional misplaced ear or nose. And, at the very termination of it all, there was posited – amidst a slab of sheer mechanical nonsense – a trio of human faces, all aged to the point of being scarcely recognizable. In fact, all three were little more than skin stretched over some other, unknowable shape.
The stench was such that Jaheed simply could not take it. His throat constricted and he hunched over, voiding the contents of a fine breakfast on the Gorger. Nobody seemed to notice – save for Freyja, who shifted just incrementally closer. Jaheed understood, distantly, that she had been assigned to keep him alive, which was cold comfort in the nightmare he was currently living.
Now, this bizarre biomechanical serpent of a thing bent down, its faces coming to a halt just inches from Volsif's own. And with all three mouths in unison, it spake thus:
"You should not be here, Doss."
There was not a shred of doubt in Jaheed's mind that this was the almighty, the ineffable, the eternal Sovereign. In all the Great Domain, Doss Ken Volsif XCVII was supreme lord and ruler. No Emperor but a God-Emperor. Yet here, on the grounds of Blessed Ceres?
The Sovereign was god. And Doss Ken Volsif XCVII was just a man.
"It is the privilege of any Emperor to pay visit to his subjects," Volsif replied, a smile upon his face. "And it is a privilege for the subjects, as well. You should weep at my presence, Sovereign." In truth, the Emperor looked delighted with all of this, even as Anansi and her Se-dai were glaring daggers at the Lord of Ceres. No fear but hate, raw and scarcely-restrained. Behind them, Loki came up, taking position by the Sovereign's side, and from that distended length there came a spindly metal arm to rest quite soundly upon her shoulder. Loki flinched, which was something that no Se-dai ever did.
"You ridiculous little upstart," the Sovereign practically spat. Its voice was overpoweringly loud, and the foundation of a palace rumbled with each and every word. The voice itself was a bizarre amalgamation of a thousand different sounds, all congealed into something vaguely word-shaped. "I have seen ten thousand Emperors come and go. And I shall see the passing of another, soon enough."
"You support my half-brother's claim to the throne, then?" Volsif arched an eyebrow. The question was clearly intended as a mocking indictment, as though such a thing were the most ridiculous idea in the world.
"Categorically."
"I see," Volsif grinned. "And yet for now, it is I to whom you must bow. And I shall indeed see you bow." Slowly, portentously, the Jade Emperor raised a metal arm - and then pointed straight down. "Now."
The Sovereign burst out into laughter.
It was a strange thing indeed – a mechanical sort of clicking accompanied by a deep, bassy rumbling as the entire body spasmed and shook. All around, those long-limbed creatures were gurgling out similar sounds. The Se-dai, even those of Ceres, remained silent – save for Loki, who wore upon her face a vicious sneer. Jaheed came to understand, then, just who Loki was on Ceres – and just why she and Anansi despised one another so violently.
The Emperor just waited, smiling all the while. Finally, the laughter subsided, the noise drawing away into a thin, drawn-out hiss – and then the three flesh-masks contorted into angry scowls.
"This is my Domain, Doss," the Sovereign boomed. "I am lord and master, here. And now, it is my will that you kneel before me."
"Kneel!" the long-legs gurgled as one. “Kneel, Doss!”
This time, it was the Emperor who laughed out loud.
"A god does not kneel!" he cackled, as though it were genuinely the funniest thing he had ever heard. And then, in a blur, there were no less than five wrist-blades against his throat.
Anansi, Freyja, and Nergal all went utterly still. Jaheed's heart caught in his throat. Yet the Emperor didn't flinch, didn’t even react – he just chuckled, quietly, to himself, and glanced down at the blades with an expression of mild annoyance.
"Perhaps you fail to understand the nature of your situation," the Sovereign loomed, from above. The Emperor's eyes flicked up.
"Oh ye of little faith," he mused, just as he had earlier to the Sha-sur. "Not one of you understand that I simply will not die in this place. It cannot happen. My leaving here today, intact, is as certain as all the stars in the sky."
"By what means?" the Sovereign rumbled, leaning in close. "You have no power here, whelp."
The Emperor's eyes were glittering as he responded. "By my own will," he said, with truly indomitable certainty.
A long moment passed – and then, with a nigh-incomprehensible sound of disgust, the Sovereign pulled away. The Se-dai of Ceres stepped back at once, returning to their positions, and Jaheed saw the Emperor's own Se-dai relax – if only by the barest fraction. The Acolyte himself was still sweating buckets and his breath still tasted of vomit. He still wanted to be anywhere other than here, where gods were spitting into one another’s eyes.
"Let us speak plainly, then," Volsif declared, taking a single step forward. Anansi and Nergal stepped with him. "I am here, Sovereign, to deliver a message, and it is out of..." his nose wrinkled, "...respect for your long-tenured position that I do you the courtesy of appearing in person."
"It was an insult and an affront for you to set foot upon my monastery-moon!" the Sovereign snapped. "Do not play at contrition with me, Doss."
The Emperor paused. Frowned, raised an eyebrow. Asked genuinely: "Even now, you will not honor my father's name?"
"You are no Volsif," the Sovereign spat. "Your adoptive father was a great man, a Highborn of limitless vision. A true deity made flesh. You are Lowborn gutter-rat who bought his title only through treachery and low cunning."
"Is that truly what you believe?" the Jade Emperor cocked his head. Jaheed could not possibly discern how much of this was real, how much was sardonic, and how much was a mask for something else entirely. "How sad. I tell you now for a certainty, Sovereign, that my father loved me dearly."
"Irrelevant," the Sovereign dismissed, waving another spindly mechanical limb. The Emperor of the known universe, dismissed just like that. "Speak plainly, boy, then begone. I shall suffer you no further."
"Very well.” And then, as though a switch had been flipped, the Emperor was no longer smiling. His expression was as cold and hard and merciless as the void as he turned his head to the side and said, by way of invitation, "Anansi."
The Sha-sur strode forward without a word – brushed aside the pair of Se-dai who tried at once to impede her – planted her feet, pointed a finger, and accused in a voice thick with hatred: "Monster."
The Sovereign reeled back as though they had been slapped. Every Se-dai wrist-blade extended at once, and more than a few had Ker-sots in hand. Freyja had forgotten Jaheed entirely and was now focused solely upon her red-armored leader. And entire room seemed to cant towards Anansi as she stood, fearless, before an immortal god-creature that could have obliterated her with but a word.
"Daughter," the Sovereign growled, the entire length of them literally trembling with rage. "How dare you speak to your father thus?"
"You are no father," Anansi spat. "You are a butcher, and a torturer, and a debaucher. And we-" she pointed back to Nergal, to Freyja, "-are not your daughters."
"It is by my immaculate seed that you exist at all!" the Sovereign roared, the words shredding Jaheed’s ears and leaving him reeling. The Jade Emperor did not flinch.
"A gift we all would shun, were we ever given the choice!" Anansi roared back. "But there was no choice but to be born into the horror of this world! No choice but to be a tool, an object, a thing of value! A weapon in your wretched hands whom you have the gall to claim as a daughter."
"You ungrateful bitch," the Sovereign shuddered. "You should never have been Sha-sur."
"How it must infuriate you, then," Anansi said, "to know that I will be the last of the Sha-sur. Because I tell you now – all of you – that by my hand, the Se-dai Order will come to an end."
"Stop!" the Sovereign bellowed, and that command was the only thing keeping the two-dozen Se-dai from tearing Anansi and her retinue to shreds.
"With this, I herald the creation of a new Order!" Anansi shouted, banging her fist loudly against her breastplate. "Le Sang Neuf!"
"Le Sang Neuf!" Nergal and Freyja hollered, full-throated, in unison.
"Sisterhood! Sorority! Solidarity against this wretched place!" Anansi declared. "Se-dai no longer! Weapons no longer! We are people and we are, all of us, the last of the Se-dai! Never again shall one of our sisters know the horror of the Birth! Never again shall you defile another of your own creations, you despicable imitation of a father!"
“Butcher!” Nergal cried out.
“Despoiler!” Freyja chorused.
"ENOUGH!" the Sovereign screamed, so loudly that everyone – save the Jade Emperor, somehow – was thrown entirely off their feet. And now, as Jaheed and the others scrambled to rise, all present could feel the room itself heaving with rage as the Sovereign coiled like a fat serpent preparing to strike.
"Mongrels," the patriarch shuddered. "MONGRELS! Ungrateful failures, each and every one of you! GO! BEGONE FROM MY SIGHT!" The three heads whipped around, and the six eyes locked onto Volsif like targeting beams. "AND YOU, DOSS!"
"Do tell," the Emperor smirked.
"IT IS WITH MY SE-DAI AT HIS SIDE THAT THE CRIMSON EMIR SHALL RIP YOU FROM YOUR STOLEN THRONE AND REND YOUR PITIFUL FORM TO PIECES! IT IS WITH MY SE-DAI THAT YOUR LAST UTTERANCES SHALL BE SHRIEKS OF AN AGONY YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY COMPREHEND! AND IT IS MY SE-DAI THAT WILL SUBJECT ANY FOOLISH ENOUGH TO PLEDGE THEMSELVES TO LE SANG NEUF," their gaze turned to Anansi, "TO TORTUROUS PUNISHMENTS THAT SHALL OUTLAST SOL ITSELF! YOUR SCREAMS SHALL BE MADE AS MUSIC TO MY EARS!"
"May the best man win, then," Volsif chuckled.
"BEGONE!"
And so, to Jaheed's astonishment, they were leaving unscathed – with himself and the Emperor boxed in tight by a living wall of Anansi and her companions. Her companions, he realized. Le Sang Neuf. The New Blood. An intergalactic conspiracy, headed by Anansi and implicitly supported by the Emperor himself. Was Ammit amongst their number? Was Sekhmet? Did Kore already know?! Jaheed's fear had given way to insatiable curiosity and as they were matched through the monastery-moon his mind was reeling, whirling with possibilities. The enormity of everything he had just seen was dawning heavily upon him. A civil war – an openly-declared schism amongst the Se-dai! The Sovereign openly taking the side of the Crimson Emir! But, then...wait, that made no sense! Ceres was right on the Emperor's doorstep. What was to stop Volsif from simply obliterating the planet on the spot?
Jaheed got his answer as the Ankh finally achieved liftoff – and then all within were violently pitched to the side by a colossal gravity distortion that left his ears ringing and his vision spotty. It took all within, even the Emperor, several minutes to recover, until finally Frejya reported: "It's gone."
"What's gone?" Jaheed demanded, speaking up for the first time in hours. The Emperor's jade eyes flicked to regard him, as though relishing in the young man’s confused ignorance.
"The Monastery-moon of Ceres, Lord Acolyte," came Nergal's terse reply. "It has slipped into voidspace and exited this sector."
"Oh," was literally the only reply Jaheed could muster. And he was reminded, then, of just how much in all the Great Domain there was that he still did not know. Because, after all, the very concept of a planet-sized void drive was nothing short of ludicrous – yet still he had just been knocked flat onto his ass by one.
"I don't understand," Jaheed said, after having properly regained his bearings. He flicked between Anansi's frigid gaze and the Emperor's glittering stare, decided the Emperor was marginally less disconcerting. "Why did the Sovereign just let us go?"
"Because, my devoted Acolyte," the Emperor explained, crossing one leg over the other and folding his hands quite contentedly, "the Sovereign, the Crimson Emir, and myself all want the same thing."
"And what is that?"
Doss Ken Volsif XCVII grinned. "A good fight."