XLIV.

Tehom’s Crimson Keep, The Megacity

To say the room provided to them were accommodating would be an understatement. The size of the bedroom alone was comparable to Vagari’s entire house back in Eastend. Vagari stood at the doorway, BP ducking under his arm to creep in, a look of awe on her face. “Woah… Have you ever been in a place so nice?” BP exclaimed, her bulbous eyes wide as she shuffled over to the fully stocked kitchen/bar and began digging about. “Oh my… Food, Vagari! There’s real food in here!” Vagari sighed and stepped over the threshold into the room. It felt like signing a deal with the Devil just being there – not that they had much of a choice. He looked the room over, spying several pinprick lights only he could see. “Nabu, is it?” He asked the open air. “Turn the cameras off – now. We’re not creatures penned for your amusement.” Suddenly the room got a bit darker as the watchful stars blinked out. “Good,” Vagari said bluntly, “and I’ll know if they turn back on…”

“Vagari,” BP squealed from across the room, “there’s a shower in here! And it actually works! DIBS!”

“W-wait, BP!” he exclaimed in reply, rushing to catch up. “Wait. Let me check things out first.” He peered into the bathroom, and seeing only the finest the rich could afford, he reeled back with a resigned click of the tongue. “It’s fine… Just don’t get comfortable here, alright? Make no mistakes – we’re across enemy lines here. Tehom is not our ally. Our… goals just happen to align, is all.”

“I know,” BP replied bluntly, “and I don’t trust her one bit. She’s as much, if not more, at fault as Dr. Xu for what happened at the wall. She knows where the people are, and I aim to find out where. But, I’m also going to milk this for all its worth until I do. So… scrub my back?” Vagari snorted and pinched the bridge of his nose. Alto would have liked her. “Fair enough,” he uttered with a huff. “I can’t even remember the last time I bathed… Grab your stuff. We’ll use the tub to wash our gear while we’re at it.”

“Ye-e-e-s!” BP exclaimed, tugging off her backpack.

After a very much needed shower, the pair bunked down for the night in the softest sheets Vagari had ever slept in, both lives included. Tehom really didn’t skimp on quality it seemed. Soft bed aside, Vagari couldn’t help but stare up at the ceiling, thinking to himself how impossible it would be to sleep in such a place. Afterall, their worst enemy was literally down the hall. But, sheer exhaustion ultimately proved him wrong as soon as he dared close his eyes.

Morning came unwelcomingly fast as a dull tonal alarm woke Vagari from a thankfully dreamless sleep. At first his eyes parted with a sense of panic, not recognizing his surroundings, or understanding why the room was pulsing red. The previous night refreshed itself in his mind – the events aboard the Tevat and after. “Alright, time to get up,” Vagari announced as he threw his legs over the edge of the bed only to be confronted by a kitchen on fire. “Jesus!”

“It’s fine, it’s fine!” BP hollered over the blaze from her perch on top of a wobbling chair. “I’m just cooking!”

“Yeah, cooking us alive!” Vagari snapped, scrambling out of bed to put the fire out. “Who taught you how to cook?! I know it wasn’t me!”

“I’m sorry!” BP squealed as she attempted to juggle a burning pan and a pot of water. “I thought it would be easier!”

After dousing the flame, Vagari quickly moved to reclaim the stovetop from her, shooing her out of the kitchenet and harms way. Bacon, potato hash, some very overcooked eggs – she had the makings of a delicious breakfast. Vagari scraped the eggs clear into the wastebasket with a sigh. “Where did you even get eggs,” he uttered under his breath, “much more so bacon?” No sooner did the words leave his mouth did the countertop open and expel four eggs and a slab of bacon. Vagari stared at it suspiciously before accepting the offering with a nervous thanks. Whether they were printed or fully organic, Vagari couldn’t say, and probably didn’t really want to know, considering he hadn’t seen a chicken in years, much less a pig.

As soon as they sat down for breakfast, the light began to pulse again, this time as a line going from the ceiling to the door – no doubt Tehom summoning them. This made the food taste a bit better and Vagari to eat a little slower. Eventually, after savoring each bite, he came to the last of it and couldn’t reasonably stall any more. Vagari stood and slid his plate across the countertop. “Alright – alright… Lets go see what fresh horrors today holds, shall we?” he said in a dry and gloomy tone. BP patted his knee consolingly, before saying, “Oh hush – we just have to look on the bright side of things right?” She said with a confident nod. “We’ll get through this just like everything else.”

“You don’t exactly have a good point of reference for normal day-to-day life,” Vagari stated as he moved towards the door. “We’re not guests, we’re hostages. Between that and the Tevat, I don’t see how things could be looking any darker.”

“You could have left me in the kitchen,” BP suggested with a shrug, managing to squeeze a laugh out of him as she followed suit.

The pair followed the luring A.I. out of the room and into the hallway beyond. As they made their way through the twists and turns of Tehoms red keep, Vagari couldn’t help but churn with anxiety. It wasn’t that foreign dread, but it was almost enough for him to lose his breakfast. All too soon they stood again in front of the large black door. It was time to see what their deal with the devil wrought.

Tehom sat stiffly in her throne as they entered the room, staring over at them with shadowed but glimmering eyes. “Sleep well, I trust?” She asked casually with a brisk wave of her hand in greeting.

“Surprised we woke up at all,” Vagari answered grimly.

“I assure you, my intent in our partnership is factual,” Tehom stated in the most reassuring tone her cavernous voice could manage. “It would be counterintuitive to kill you… now,” she added with a chuckle. Vagari couldn’t tell if it was an attempt at humor or a threat, or maybe both. He forced a sigh through his nose and stepped forward. “Well, we’re here and we’re awake,” Vagari announced, throwing his arms up. “What’s your plan?”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Yeah,” BP piped up, stepping forward with an assertive stomp, “how do we stop the Tevat?”

“All in due time, little one,” Tehom insisted. “Firstly, I wish to just… look upon you two.”

The pair shot each other concerned glances, both suddenly feeling like prized lambs before the slaughter. “What,” Vagari said impatiently, “do you want us to do a twirl too?” Tehom’s psychic laughter bounced around their minds as a delayed physical one left her throat. “No, no, that won’t be necessary,” she denied. “You don’t know what a strange twist of fate you two really are. What even are the chances of you two meeting up – if it were by chance at all, I wonder.”

“What do you mean if by chance?” Vagari asked, obviously annoyed by her vague allusions.

“Why, you’re two halves of a whole, of course!” Tehom answered straightly. “As a little gift to you, let me tell you about yourselves. You, for instance, Vagari… You’re a mortal mind tied to the body of the weħǵhekw Dhrebh, or Abaddon, his most recent incarnation. But that’s not it, is it? There’s a third hidden within your shell, isn’t there? It’s obvious now, having seen what you were capable of aboard the Tevat – the heads of two hundred of my guards, and a fully awakened weħǵhekw under your belt. The shassuru Nintu, her soul lies within you, powers you… I cannot say how such a thing came to be, but that is the truth of it, isn’t it?”

“I… believe it is,” Vagari answered honestly, drawing further into the room. He thought on it for a moment before continuing, saying, “I remember everything now. A voice, a voice helped me. I think it was hers, but I’m not sure.” Vagari paused, thumbing his lip in remembrance. “But I remember everything from that day now – the bad and the worse.”

“By all means,” Tehom uttered, motioning for them to take one of two leather-bound chairs stationed in front of her desk, “do tell.”

Vagari pulled out one of the chairs and sat down with BP following suit. “After we brought her through,” Vagari continued, “she said we had to go to her Forge – her bio-sculpting device. We traveled to Peter through the Gate to find it.”

“Blessed Nintu took you, a mortal,” Tehom asked, seemingly in disbelief, “to the Seat of the World? To the Gates of Kur?”

“Yes,” Vagari confirmed slowly, realizing that Tehom had no idea what had happened back then. For some reason he had thought she had been in the know somehow, but they hadn’t even been born yet. He was probably the only one of them who knew what happened that day. “We arrived but the place had been deserted, ruins since the last ice age. There was an A.I. like yours. Neti she called it. Unfortunately it couldn’t tell us what happened, only that someone had betrayed her inner circle. Only the Udug survived.”

“The Udug never mentioned having met Val,” Tehom uttered suspiciously.

“We never found it,” Vagari told her. “We lost track of it at the old thermal plant. Since her own forge was destroyed along side all her Watchers, we set out to find the manmade one. So we trekked all the way to the base. Things had somehow gone worst there than for us,” Vagari said with a dry laugh. “I hate to say that what we got was kind, but it was, compared to whatever happened there. She suspected a forge malfunction, that they messed it up somehow. There were bodies – all fused together, mutated. At the time I had never seen something so damn horrifying.”

“Curious,” Tehom interjected with a curt wave of her hand. “The Forge we recovered was perfectly operational.”

“Well, we never found it either,” Vagari said with a huff. “It was gone when we arrived, damage done… It was a hopeful lie, anyways. There was something else there, something else at play, something that scared her. I could see it in her eyes, plain on her face. When we got there, there was this feeling, this presence, one that scared the hell out of her – out of GOD.”

“The Mother feared nothing,” Tehom announced firmly, leaning in upon bony elbows.

“She feared this, whatever this was… or is,” Vagari said bluntly. “I thought… thought that the first time I felt it was when… When Alto died. But it was always there I think, since that fateful day.” Vagari seemed to shrink in his chair at the thought of it. “It feels like ice when it’s around, like… like you’ve been thrown into the coldest part of the ocean and the breath had been torn out of you. It’s aversion, a deep and sinister aversion that makes you want nothing more than to get the fuck out of Dodge. That was the first time,” Vagari continued, “back on Peter. She felt it too. She knew what it was. She said it might be a demon, but I think that was just a hopeful lie she was telling herself.”

Tehom leaned back, knitting her fingers together. “Perhaps you just mistook realization for fear,” she suggested plainly. “Perhaps…”

“She was afraid, dammit!” Vagari snapped, thrusting a sharp-tipped finger at her. “It isn’t distant, it’s at the forefront of my mind – like it just happened yesterday. I can see the fear in her eyes! It wasn’t the demon, because that we found, burnt to a fucking crisp, just like… everything was. Someone had gone through, burning the bodies.” Vagari bit his hand, taking a moment to steady himself before continuing. “The demon was alive, at least for a little while. It said there was a wrongness there, a Ħelalyos – an Outsider. It and the Living One, they tried to stop it. They destroyed a device called the Beacon, but it didn’t work.”

“Living One,” Tehom repeated with a tut. “You’re saying the Godhead helped the demon? Tch – what is that blasted Lamb playing at…?” Tehom huffed. “I warned you before that the Godhead had been corrupted. I believe now that we’re uncovering by what. Continue. How does this all end? How does one steal the soul of a goddess?”

“I didn’t steal it,” Vagari replied flatly. “There was nothing left for us there. The forge and whoever had taken it were long gone. So, Neti sent us back to New Houston. We were to be remade without the forge,” Vagari said, sucking on his teeth as he remembered the scene, the screaming. “That you should remember.” Tehom nodded surely. “I was the last. She sunk her hand into me and… Well, it happened. There was a light, so bright I could see it in my cocoon. It killed her, or… close enough to it anyways. She was bleeding, dying. I don’t know if it was to preserve herself, or what, but she pressed herself into me, into my cocoon. Her and Val, they overcame the trials of rebirth together, and I was what came of it. The rest is history.”

“I see,” Tehom uttered, her hoarse voice hardly a whisper. Thoughts and scenarios were racing across her mind, that was plain to see. This seemed to be a lot to take in, even for her. “It explains why our efforts to resurrect her were met with endless failure, for sure. We found her body – or, at least, parts of it. The flesh of a Shassuru is as close to immortal as it gets in this reality. Even if burned down to dust, it can reconstitute itself as long as their soul remains. Their souls are strong, much stronger than any other, and like the Weħǵhekw they don’t fade to energy. Who they are remains in Kur for their body to be rebuilt.”

“If she couldn’t really die,” Vagari asked questioningly, “why do what she did?”

“I don’t know,” Tehom said in such a way that she seemed fascinated by her own admission. “But I can speculate. Whatever that light was, I think it didn’t just kill her body, but somehow damaged her immortal soul. And, to save that soul, she put it into you – to heal, or for safe keeping. I cannot say it worked to her hopes. You seem no more like her than any of the simulacrum we created. Perhaps the soul is still damaged? Either way, such a development is concerning to say the least.”

“Are there weapons that can do that?” Vagari pressed. “Damage the soul?”

“There are weapons that can kill Shassuru, yes,” Tehom answered with a nod. “The Shassuru have been at war with each other for longer than even I know of.”

“War… Do you think it was another Shassuru?” asked Vagari.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Tehom told him with a skeletal grin. “Our first step into the unknown is a familiar one. It begins with a book.”