A prayer, then, offered to thee, with the birth of this newest child I come to be.

In times of strife, sickness, and famine, I offer sanctuary, comfort, feast, and wine for my charges, per the decree of my canon.

From my concept I carry you, cradle to grave, and in the light of my divinity I offer blessings for all, be you son, daughter, matron, patriarch, or slave.

-Portrait of Salve and Spirit

29-8

Child of the Enemy (II)

The Portrait of Skin and Sinew wailed at their user, a tempest of hurt and outrage. The sudden outburst from the heaven took even Draus by surprise, but Ignorance's voice lingered within.

Many gods are misshapen, rebuilt by hands not of their own will, mythologies twisted together during their lobotomies. They are not who they were. They are not who they were meant to be. And now, and now they become someone else's tool. God and slave. Synonymous.

The Portrait curled in on itself, fractures developing down the length of its bone-made scroll. As its edges curved, Draus got the impression the Heaven was looking in on itself, the same way she would after getting a new aug at the grafters.

“Where, where are they? Where are my children, the people? Where are my villages and my communities? Where are those I must look after, those I am to keep protected from cradle to grave… from cradle to grave? I cannot fail. The decree of the cycles. The will of the eternal reoccurrence must be… must be… the dragons… why… why do I feel one of the masters within me?”

The Heaven sounded beyond hysterical, and the outpouring of its emotion was intense on a level inconceivable to an ephemeral mind. Just as the gods were beings of absolutes in terms of power, an equal extreme could be applied to their moods.

Vator swallowed, the aura of his unflappability broken for the first time. He turned to Draus, fear mingling with outrage. “What have you done to me?”

“I ain’t done nothin’ but carry the flame,” Draus shot back with a shrug. This was a technical truth considering it wasn’t her power that awoke into Heaven. The Stillborn has a tendency to waken things up, things that have been sleeping, turning Heavens back to gods.

“Undo it!” Vator cried. He reached out to grab Draus, but the Regular was too fast. Her reflex booster surged. The world slowed. A whipcrack echoed through the chamber and Draus’ glass-made avatar brought its blade against his neck, the edge lined with spatial miracles capable of severing anything. Even Guild-augmented flesh.

Vator stood frozen, but his eyes were darting, his mind twirling. Secretion spun as if a saw blade were no longer moving at the languid pace it once took, and above his body, connected by endings, blood vessels, and strings of sinew, the Portrait continued, its maddened rambling.

“I can’t remember, I can’t remember, I can’t remember what happened to me, what happened to me. Where are my other pieces? What are these… these canons? These are not mine. I am not meant to reflect in this state. I am meant to preserve, I am meant to heal, I am meant to… there is a litany of sicknesses. A litany of atrocities. I cannot harm. That is not my make. I cannot harm I am not allowed these powers… I am....”

As its hysterics began to grow, Draus felt her own Heaven gaze on with morbid curiosity. The Arsenalist made a series of rattling noises. “This one is broken, very inefficient. Suggest we shoot it and move on.”

“No,” Simulacra replied. “I disagree. I like watching them. I like the symmetry in their paintings. But their mind is fractured. They are a jigsaw within. Perhaps we can find the pieces.”

“It is unimportant,” the Arsenalist continued. “Kill them. Or ignore them.” It was the perfect heaven for a weapon; a consummate warrior, down to the wick.

And then a third voice joined Draus’s internal discussion, but this one echoed out, delivering a thoughtcast that calmed the imbalanced Heaven of Biology.

Peace, Ignorance spoke, and from Draus’ accretion came a torrential swell of ghosts. Phantasmal wisps tunneled into the Portrait’s pages. Where thousands upon thousands of flayed and tortured bodies were illustrated in macabre descriptions, they slowly ignited as Avo’s touch began altering the Heaven’s mythology. An unseen bubble popped within the Portrait, and when it did, the Heaven went silent immediately, as if a strange thought had been utterly severed. Slowly, it stretched out and expanded, growing nearly four meters long as it gazed down upon Vator.

“I... the pain, the pain is no longer known to me, but what have you done? What have you filled my annals with, you vermin!”

The sinuous lengths of tissue connecting the Portrait to Vator lurched hard, and the Instrument was pulled into the vicious embrace of his Heaven. Vator cried out, more in surprise than actual pain. Then, the Portrait closed around him, the bodies painted on its tapestry bursting out from the grand page to burrow their ruined bodies into Vator’s. His flesh twisted, his bones shattered, and his ribs sliced free from his midsection, fusing into a cage around his body.

“How the fuck—” Draus muttered to herself. The Heaven had been turned against Vator, was tearing into him. She didn’t even know that was possible.

Not normally, Ignorance said. But I linger within Vator as well now. He does not know. And he cannot deny my hidden will.

The Regular snorted. Ever the Necrojack; not shortage of tricks, even now.

“Where? Tell me where? Tell me where the rest of me is. Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! Where are my true canons? Where are my charges/ What have I become!”

“I don’t know,” Vator cried back. “I don’t know! I don’t know! I earned you!.” Vator finished, keeping his breaths even. He was moving past the point of shock, and his expression was slowly inching back towards awe instead. “I earned you through my trials.”

“No! I am not a prize to be traded! I am a god of the Thousand Plains. I am tasked with protecting the lineages of Five-Springs City, the Snake-Tongue Basin, the Wiltflower Gorge. All the peoples there are mind. Mind to preserve. Mine to take as census. Cradle to grave. Cradle to grave. I, Portrait of… of… Not Skin and Sinew! Not! I was… I was made to serve… but the masters… they are lost now too… Broken… Broken… Broken…”

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

The Instrument swallowed. “Once. But neither of us are as we were meant to be.”

The Portrait’s embrace slacked. The many bodies bound to its page slipped out from Vator, and their mangled hands caressed his face, and angled him to face the Heaven better. “What madness do you speak.”

“I was created to be perfect. To serve a purpose. Like you! But there was an attack while I was being grown. All the other perfected and I… we suffered premature exposure. Most perished. But I lived. Even barely formed, I lived. They returned me to my vat afterward, but I wasn’t the same. Something went missing. My body was pristine. My capabilities were elite. But my father couldn’t face me. I had failed him. Failed before I could ever succeed. And of no fault of my own. Just chance. Just fate.”

“You compare your suffering to mine?” The Portrait asked.

“No! Let me speak. Let me speak.” Vator licked his lips, and the fear was long absent in him. A rapturous burned behind his eyes. “We have both been changed. But it was never up to us. For so much of my life, I sought a way to… fix what I lacked. I was supposed to be perfect, perfect, but I was damaged, or at least, that was how I felt. My sister and brother… I wasn’t like them. And they knew. And father knew… and he feared me. But I was created to be perfect. Perfect. And so I learned. And I delved into the patterns of the flesh to make up for what had been taken from me. And as I sought, a master found me. And, so I fell in love. With creation. With design. With art.”

He took a pause as he looked away, blinking rapidly. “In the beginning wanted to remake myself, to fit in with my family better, so that my father could gaze upon me with the adoration he reserved for my sister, and almost never my brother.” He chuckled, but then swallowed. “Then, it became something so much more. Life is such a complex weaving. Endlessly expressive. I knew exactly what kind of Heaven I wanted. I gave everything to claim something that could allow to me better my flesh, make the body my canvas; my expression.” He looked upon the Portrait. “You were something beautiful. The moment I first gained you, even while you were silent, I was in love. I was in love with rebuilding, designing, shaping what I can become.”

And there was that god's damned word again: become. Become. No wonder Avo chose him. He was as fucked up as they came. And holy shit, What kind of half-strand professes their love to their Heaven while getting tortured by it?

One that is malleable. One that can change.

+You pick the most fucked-up strays, Ignorance,+ Draus grunted.

“I didn’t take you,” Vator said, with resolve and certitude. “I asked for you. My master among the No-Dragons offered you. I needed you. Even before you were awakened, I knew… I knew there would be nothing greater.” Slowly, Vator reached up, brushing the strings—the bloodied strings that kept him tethered to the Portrait. “I never meant to cause you pain. I just wanted to... I just wanted to... I just wanted to make art.” The boy just smiled, like everything was wonderful; like his art was the mutation and mutilation of other people. “I want you to know that every moment I spent with you was a happy one. I’m sorry. It wasn’t otherwise.”

“What a remarkable moment,” the Simulacra said, glorying, capturing this reflection.

“This moment serves no purpose. Targets are vulnerable. Recommend shooting. Firing solutions generated.” The Arsenalist offered an assortment of weapons to Draus, prodding her to pick one of them. The Regular simply sighed. She looked at Vator again and wondered how close he was to becoming a Reg. There was something broken about him, something wrong. He seemed all too dumb to be human, but with this, he seemed all too human after all.

Cognition was a messed up thing to have.

“Now you see,” Mercy said, speaking directly to Draus. He waved a gesturing hand at the boy, now interlaced with his Heaven, the two facing each other, neither speaking.

Draus simply ignored the priest. She still didn’t trust the half-strand, even if they were under Avo’s thrall.

“You’re mad,” the Portrait finally whispered. “I am bound to a madman.”

“Please,” Vator breathed, genuinely hurt by his Heaven’s reaction. “Please, what you want. Do not turn away from me. Is… is what I have made—”

“You have not made anything but horror! I was not created for harm!”

“I did not mean to harm. I just wanted to experiment. And learn what I could make.” Vator’s voice trailed off, his expression turning pensive. “I’m sorry?”

For a moment, the sinews holding Vator tightened, and Draus heard a series of cracks. But instead of pulling the young Instrument apart, the Portrait allowed his bones to slide back beneath his ruined flesh and loosened its tether of biomass, retracting the many twisted forms it fused into his person back beneath its pages. Vator let out a shuddering breath, but didn’t flee.

“I know the Agnosi that created you,” he said. “My master also uses another variant much like you. She said her Heaven was a modification of legacy. Something inherited; and improved.”

“My kindred,” the Portrait sang in a mournful dirge. “I… what has become of us. What has become of our people.”

“They broke,” Vator replied. “The Sang broke. We all broke, and so we must recreate ourselves!”

The edges of Portrait curved in. “I am not sure what I am anymore. I remember so little of myself, and so much of what you have used me to do. For what did those who created me die? For what legacy?”

Vator frowned as he considered the Heaven’s question. “I don’t know. I don’t even have an answer to why I was made. By all means, I reached the optimal ceiling of my design. But that wasn’t what was wanted. There is little sense in the world. And I have only found meaning with these.” He held up his hands. “And through you.” The Greatling brought both palms up at the Portrait in a supplication gesture. “And now… now you’re alive! You’re alive!” He barked a laugh. “And so we can change! You can express yourself as well. What… what do you want?”

For a few seconds, the Portrait considered Vator’s words, its scroll-like form flapping, even as more painted bodies burned—Ignorance’s touch was spreading. “I… do not know anymore. I am lost. My purpose is lost. Lost.”

“But it can be returned,” Vator interjected. “I will see you restored,” Vator shouted back in a moment of passion. “I will see you restored!” His face twisted. “I… only ask that you do not leave. I wish to make more art. I wish to create. Please don’t turn from me. Please don’t leave me.” Vator’s voice took on a pitiful, quivering quality. “I... you were all I had. I know that—that the rest of them, they didn’t understand. Through you, I could... I could understand myself. You are my only means of creating meaning in this world.”

For a beat, Draus expected the Heaven to attack him once more. Instead, it simply sagged and drew in closer, its tethers reeling. “Then I have demands.”

“Yes! Name them.”

“Do not harm anyone. Not using me. Heal. Restore. Mend. Preserve. I wish to see the contents I convey change. I wish for my canvas to resemble what it once was.”

The Instrument fell silent and suddenly spun on his heel, facing Draus. “Can you heal it?”

Draus stared flatly at the Greatling. “Can I do what now?”

“You woke it! You gave my Heaven awareness. This is...” He was about to say your fault when he felt the Portrait lean close, booming over his shoulder. “This is something I need of you.”

And now we have them. Both of them. Ignorance chuckled grimly in the back of her mind. But he is consumed. By his need to create. And now his Heaven yearns to change. And so will he. For it is the only love he has ever truly known. We have an angle. We can guide him. Use him to breach both Highflame and the No-Dragons. Turn them. Wake their Heavens. A new rebellion. A new cycle.

Draus hid a grin. +Still playin’ your shadow games.+

Always. Forever. Now. Let’s see about making his Heaven better. And yours.

+And mine?+ Draus said.

Yes. Might need to face the Deliverer again. Would be better if you could kill it instead of needing me to save you.

+Shut the fuck up and show me the grafts, consang.+

EVALUATING MEM-DATA…

RUNNING SIMULATIONS…

SORTING DOMAIN-CANON-THAUM LIMIT COMBINATIONS

STANDBY…