[https://scontent.fmnl8-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/313520736_1143570626272301_545225775092673846_n.png?stp=dst-png_p280x280&_nc_cat=107&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_eui2=AeHCpqakgmF1qQqcvkS3ZPFOJ5coOB8f6t4nlyg4Hx_q3gaRGuKiJGc_BiqUzsRLraUTRrCA8IZYl8KC-zL3KJX9&_nc_ohc=bxUHiBqZ2BoAX9ErLmg&_nc_ht=scontent.fmnl8-1.fna&oh=03_AdStroCH78gwkFwq2PdgUnYccjB8s0P4umXHr6b9vm7CfA&oe=63B99AA5]
13
Kneel
----------------------------------------
“YOU ARE WEAK, VIKTOR,” Friedrich’s voice flashed inside the goblin’s head. He was back in ashen desert now, back when he was a general, back when one of the Five Kings was still one of his closest friends. “A strength that cannot afford kindness is not strength, but a mere excuse for cruelty.”
Viktor tugged at his cloak, looking at Dos now. “Good work,” he said. The goblin looked like it was about to cry. Viktor ignored him and started walking, gesturing for Canyon to follow. He took a good look at his camp and his army, his lieutenants, the individual soldiers, and it was as if he was seeing them again for the first time.
When he looked at them then, he wasn’t really looking at them. He wasn’t looking at an army; he was looking at them like they were his weapon.
Tools.
Objects.
A part of him knew that wasn’t true, but a part of him recognized how far apart he was from rest of them. And now, the more grounded he was, the more dissatisfied he became with the state of things. It wasn’t the goblins’ fault, they did their best and the result was better than what he anticipated.
Only it wasn’t enough.
There exist entire armies in The Land Beyond the Walls, far better and far more disciplined than the Gaian Expeditions. He had been a Marcher and a Janitor, and he’d seen commanders that even Inquisitors couldn’t hex, walls that even fire wouldn’t burn, and orcs lords whose soldiers could tear through metal. The only reason Amanila was still standing was because these armies could never afford a supply line to reach their city.
“Mimic had nine orcs to trade,” Canyon filled him in. “We could at least convince him to smuggle nine people.”
“That can work,” Viktor replied. “What happens if our entire army comes in peace?”
“We would get torn apart by Gondo’s gangs and become food, or Pureza’s traders and become products, or Bluemin Scholars to become specimens, or Conspi’s landlords to become slaves.”
“So they won’t respect us.”
“They will see us as an army of fools,” Canyon answered. “Like fishes straight into a crocodile’s teeth.”
“And if we kill them?”
“We’ll die.”
“I thought there are no laws in Sunspine?”
“We don’t have laws in the camp either lad, but we’ll sure put a knife to whoever tries to enslave us.”
“Ruled by family and favor then,” Viktor concluded. He knew how it works. He had danced the same dance. He did the exact same thing in Port Quezon: unspoken laws made from unfilial bonds, groups and collectives holding their own territory, asserting power. “We can pin them against each other.”
“I’d advise against that,” Canyon said. “There’s a competent guy who had recently started to keep everything together, he managed to make everyone bow to him.”
“He seems like a respectable man,” Viktor commented. “How cruel is he?”
“A firmer hand than yours, lad, but a hand that Sunspine needed.” Canyon answered. “He’s doing good work, last I heard he’s establishing some sort of law.”
“Any rebellion?”
“None.”
“Sparks of one?”
“None. Nobody disagrees with him and nobody goes against him, and that’s not because he’s cruel,” Canyon’s hand rested on Viktor’s shoulder. “Look lad, he’s the only good thing that happened to Sunspine. If you try to ruin that, I will knock you up myself.”
“Seems like a proper king.”
“No,” Canyon continued. “Sunspine has no kings.”
Viktor eliminated half of the ideas he had in his head. He couldn’t go against a righteous ruler, it would take too long and would have too many consequences. Undermining a tyrant was preferable, at least he would have a cause.
But it wasn’t like he needed to take over the city. He just needed to look for anything that Erin might have left, and should there be none, then he still needed provisions should he want his army to survive their upcoming expedition.
“You’re the last Monarch of Amanila, right?” Canyon interrupted his thought. The old man seemed to be thinking about the question deeply. “The one whom Erin the Endless served. The Wise King who drank poison, The Valhamoth, the one whose name was lost, the Victor of the War of the Five Ki—ah.”
“What?”
Canyon laughed. “It wasn’t that your name was lost, it was mistranslated. Your name is Viktor, and the records say ‘Victor of the War,’ not as your name, but victor as a word.”
“What does the word ‘victor’ mean?”
“It means you won.”
“I’ve always won.”
“And you won so much that your name became the word for it,” Canyon said. Fog-eyes was waving from them in a distance, in the bridge where Viktor carved the entirety of his army’s faces. “Now your name is lost,” Canyon continued. “And only the word remains.”
----------------------------------------
VIKTOR APPROACHED FOG-EYES WITH FIVE PROPOSITIONS prepared, but none of them were worth a dime compared to what the orc had in mind.
“Sounds like you need to become a primer,” Fog-eyes told him. “What a coincidence.”
“No, that’s out of the question, we have—”
“—Canyon,” Viktor interrupted him. “Let him speak.”
Fog-eyes started pulling a book from his cabinet. “If you’re a primer, none of the Sunspine circlejerks would simply touch you. Not even a Biomancer.”
Viktor remembered when he met the orc for the first time, and one of the questions he asked was this one. “Fog-eyes, what is a primer?”
“Cursed folk they are—”
“—Canyon,” Viktor interrupted him again. “One more, and you’re dismissed.”
Fog-eyes began flipping the pages of his book, searching for something. “Primers are essentially the superior goblins,” he started. “Stronger, faster, more powerful, and blessed with a certain force from nature.”
“But?”
“No buts, that’s it. That’s what they are.”
“Like a goblin ‘chosen one’?”
“Yes—”
“—yes, but how?” Viktor interrupted. “You’re finding something in your book and you’re going to show it to me, and we both know that whatever it is, it’s not good news.”
“You need to kill a chimera,” Canyon answered.
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
Viktor almost cursed. “Why?”
“You eat its heart,” Canyon answered again. “Or brain. Or lungs. Or hand. Any part you that you think can help you. But you can only eat one part.”
“Not exactly one part,” Fog-eyes said. “But you can have a kilo and a half at max, depending on your body mass index, and eating different parts grants incomplete advantages, so. . . yeah better to take only one part.”
“I’m assuming I need a witch.”
“You don’t. Goblins have some sort of uh, compatibility with chimeras to a certain extent. And you don’t really aim to digest them—that’ll defeat the purpose. You aim to imbue their organs with yours,” Fog-eyes showed an image of a chimera in his book. It was an animal with three heads, that of a goat, a deer, and a tiger, stuck in a body of a horse. “The best of your kind used to hunt them and eat them, as a form of tribal ritual. They eat the chimera, and I suppose those without teeth ate them whole and became stronger. Maybe those goblins didn’t chew. But after a time goblins with special abilities had become an observed phenomenon, enough to be given a name. Like humanity’s Kings or the orc’s Lords; these goblins were called Primers.”
Viktor tried to register what Fog-eyes just said.
Goblins—fighting—chimeras.
There were two things the Gaian Expeditions always avoided: the first was the Sanguine Cursed, painless, restless beasts that devoured everything in its path. The second was Chimeras, because it could absorb everything it ate into its body and make it into its own, viscous, visceral, and smart to the point that most of them could speak.
An average chimera looked like a hotchpot of every living thing in a territory mashed together into a single creature: a wolf head on a tree-sized snake’s body, flowing into a scorpion’s tail while a giant bat’s wings grew from its back, with vulture claws on its front legs and three pairs of spider legs for its hind.
Viktor himself had never killed one, nor would he dare try to. He had seen a Chimera eat a Sanguine Curse once—imagine it—a chimera who doesn’t rot nor tire nor feel pain.
And goblins, the dimwitted mud-faced goblins, killed those?
The thought itself was terrifying. If Canyon wasn’t discouraging him, he would assume that Fog-eyes was lying and was using this proposal to get rid of him.
“I don’t recommend eating them though,” Fog-eyes continued. “I can mance it and attach it to your body, safe and easy.”
“I’m assuming you’ll take the rest of the corpse then?”
“Well, look, Viktor, I—”
“—I can make my entire army a primer.”
“No, you can’t,” Fog-eyes said. “Well, you can, but most of them will die, or get some disease, or end up crippled. Depends on how their body takes it. I can use mancing and attach it to you safely, but too many and my hands will be as shaky as a wet dog, and we’ll risk mixing our organs both,” he continued. “Besides, where are you going to find a chimera?”
Viktor stared at him. Already the orc was pointing at himself. “Fog-eyes, get to the point.”
“A chimera was spotted about four days from here,” the orc said. “Problem is, lots of Biomancers want it. Including me. They don’t have uh, goblin partners, but unlike me, they aren’t scholars living in debt. They can hire their own mercenary companies.”
“How much time do we have?” Canyon asked, turning to Viktor. “To think about it.”
“You have nine days before they get there, tops,” the orc winked. “The deal is I get the body, and I make one of you a primer.”
Viktor thought about his lieutenants. “Five primers.”
“You’ll rip my veins for an entire year, so that’s a no,” Fog-eyes said. “Two primers, and I’ll get my orcs to help you.”
Viktor thought he could spare Dos from being a primer, that goblin was far too meek. “Four primers and those nine orcs are free.”
“Look, It’s not a simple process, alright? This is an inter-species transplant, I am no expert in goblin anatomy nor a chimera’s body. I’m an orc doctor, I am an expert on orcs, and sometimes a human dentist, but that’s the end of my doctorate degree. If I screw this up, both of me and my patient can die,” Fog-eyes said. “Three primers, and my nine orcs are free.”
Viktor thought about Mimic. She was a builder, she was downright bonkers and borderline sociopathic. Giving her too much power was too dangerous for everyone else. “Alright,” Viktor finally agreed. “Three primers, your orcs are free, but you’ll help me take it down.”
“Deal.”
Fog-eyes was visibly happy. Viktor could already tell that the orc came to his camp to propose the idea, it just so happened that their interests aligned.
Luck. That was too fortunate, eerily too fortunate. Viktor knew how Witchcraft works, and it wasn’t always filled with advantages. It takes its price in ways you couldn’t tell. Maybe a sickness. Maybe a family member dying. Maybe a storm, a landslide.
Good thing he wasn’t the one dealing with the magick. He would worry about Erin, but that woman had been doing this her entire life, he knew that she knew what she was doing.
Fog-eye’s black teeth still bothered him, but at least the orc was smiling. Gaining the man’s favor was crucial to his plans. And so they shook hands, they did their business, the sun sets and Viktor was once again cooking their dinner.
“Most of us will die, Viktor.”
“We won’t,” Viktor replied, stirring his pot of gruman and crows. The truth is he wasn’t sure. It was a chimera, not a simple Sanguine Cursed. Chimeras are clever and cunning, wicked and malevolent. “We’ve got a Witch’s luck and a proper plan.”
“You have a Witch’s luck. And we don’t have a proper plan.”
“We’ll have one once we see where it is,” he assured. He once saw a chimera in the ashen deserts, it had the shape of a fish that swam in the air, but its body was made of hundred orcs mashed together in a pile of flesh as huge as a three-story building. When it spoke, it spoke through its hundred tongues from the hundred orcs. It wasn’t a Sanguine Cursed, he was sure of that, the way some of the orcs making up its body were already rotting corpses. It was singing when he saw it, something ominous and indescribable. He ran as soon as he saw it, he ran and he didn’t dare go back. “Bring me Mimic and Dos, we need to build some proper weapons. Ranged. Like a ballista, or a catapult. Let’s just hope this one doesn’t fly”
“And if it crawls? If it can swim?”
“Then we’ll need a plan for that too,” Viktor tasted pot and thought it tasted horrible. He would make a plan, he would have a plan. Or so tells himself.
The truth was, he is terrified. There was no immediate need to become a primer, nor was there any at all. He had mutilated worse beasts in worse conditions; he even lost his hand. But at the same time, he was excited. He wasn’t sure what a primer was or how strong they were, but the status that would come with it would be useful in the long run.
He looked at his men, the green little things laughing and talking, they almost looked human beside the fire. Dos and Mimic on a corner, Scaramouche, even Canyon. They weren’t what he thought goblins were. They weren’t just dogs who could speak and fight.
Maybe they could make proper men. Maybe he could become a King. Maybe he could become a better one.
And for that, he needed power. Reputation. A title that goblins recognize.
“There’s always a way Canyon,” he said. “There’s always one.”
“Lad, It’s nice to see you not rotting in your carved woods, but right now you’re being impulsive,” Canyon said. “I don’t think the weight of it had sunk to you yet, but every goblin head we’ll lose will be on you. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” Viktor just stared at the pot. Already he was thinking about chimeras. He was thinking about grumans and vultures and bears, and all the wild animals he had seen the past year within the vicinity. With these alone, he could form a conception of what the chimera’s body would be like. “I understand that each man who follows me knows what they are doing. That this battle is a means of their choosing, and an end they intend to earn. I understand that their deaths will not sink me with guilt, but with pride that they had lived and died in their choice to anchor my back. I understand that in their deaths I will kneel not on their graves, but I will carry their souls in my spine and vow that I will bend to no man, to no nature, to no beast. And they will rest in great pride that they served a man who shall kneel to no one but himself, that their years of servitude and subjection ends with me; for I will die a death on my feet if I won’t die a death of my own choosing.”
Canyon didn’t seem pleased with his answer, so Viktor expounded.
“I give my men a choice, Canyon, a choice that I extend to you. You will follow me not because I am your better and you are my lesser, but because I am your equal. In choice, and in right. In freedom, and in weight, in its cost and consequence. I will not force on you a command that I will not risk myself, and I will not carve you a path that I am hesitant to take.” he finished his pot. “I will make you your kingdom, Canyon. But first, you shall help me seek mine.”
He watched the old man succumb to a frown, and he wondered if there was anything wrong with what he said. He felt like he had disappointed him.
“I trust you lad,” Canyon said calmly, as he began to walk away. “Don’t make me regret it.”
[https://scontent.fmnl8-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/315312438_1341022673369440_7929462700702226116_n.png?stp=dst-png_p280x280&_nc_cat=100&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=ae9488&_nc_eui2=AeEG0GDdSKnPF3dEdqIA_ODGXbfae0IbRNpdt9p7QhtE2jLY7TTbXP1W_BDJ8QiASm8plczGVHI63CR4sTAgZhyR&_nc_ohc=aCHFJC3dyP0AX8aj7Pj&_nc_ht=scontent.fmnl8-1.fna&oh=03_AdSIEl3oglxdUhTf4tGvXklMsBkl8sGlcUe2iEGOn3Vjsw&oe=63B99501]
The Second God
[Entry from the Hall of Knowledge, courtesy of the Summit of Ylimb]
Abel, Eva, Vahlek, Aspo, or Janus, the second god is known in many names. His history and existence have various interpretations and misinterpretations. One thing the scholars agree on was that he is commonly known as “The Roaming God.” He who disappears and reappears in the land from time to time. Where war, famine, pestilence, and death were mentioned, he would always be present at its end. This gave him the nickname of "The Roaming God," traveling the corners of the world and helping where he wishes, when he wishes.
It had been centuries of debate among historians and theologians as to what his purpose was, but one of the most famous arguments was that The Roaming God may be responsible for maintaining the balance between chaos and order, material and immaterial, nature and progress. Some interpretations suggest that he is Death itself, appearing only at the peaks of his greatness—bloodshed and famine, however, logical arguments would suggest otherwise.
In Ylimb, he is worshipped as Janus, God of choices, beginnings and endings. In Amanila, he is known as Abel, the Arbiter, Justiciar and Inquisitor. In Fremen, land of the First Men, she was known as Eva, God of birth, of safety, of progress. In Sunspine, she was known as "Lith," as She Who Holds The Bells of Freedom.
The Roaming God is recognized for slaying the Great Dragon, the extinction of the Ampyrs, the creation of the Jagbone Archipelago, and for his guidance of Erin the Endless to end the War of the Five Kings.
Currently, as society progresses into civility and science, more and more atheists started claims that The Roaming God was no God at all, but rather different Mancers achieving great feats on different lands and eras, whose names were simply lost in time as their success was attributed to a legend.
----------------------------------------