The light of the world wasn’t so kind to his tired eyes anymore. All of his extremities, restrained by bonds he couldn’t ever break. This betrayal was unending. How many time had passed? he had stopped counting the moons long ago. They didn’t feed him, they didn’t release him, and they seemed to have no endgame to this. And he had more power than most of them combined, yet they had, somehow, gotten ropes made out of her hair to bind him. How many masterworks were implied in this conspiracy? He had counted some, maybe six, maybe five, he wasn’t sure anymore.
“Zaburanetea, release me at once.” He called once and again, but this insolent child never listened.
Now and then he tried to use his long tongues to draw sigils under his body, to call forth the power of Mother to break him free, yet the dirt on the ground erased them sas soon as they were drawn. His was a living prison,
“Zaburanatea, I know you are here, bring me food, I am starving.” He barked. He didn’t remember how it felt to taste the flesh of a Felsian or Misshapen anymore. His muscles suffered from spasms, his whole body shivered from hunger.
Threads made out of a white, fluffy substance creeped around the walls. Once and again, the face of a woman came out of the dove feathers, laughing under her breath.
“That’s not the name I go by. Call me like they do: call me Piteousness.”
“Thank me for granting you a name, unlike your mother, stain on creation. I am as pure as you irreversibly befouled.”
“And I am as free as you are bound. Has Mother even granted you a name? I think she didn’t. You are just another piece of her machinations.” she teased him, knowing herself safe form his tongue and saw. He could not consume her, and she could not kill him.
“My name is only hers to utter, and I hear her calling for me in pain. Release me, Zaburanatea, and I give you my word: I shall pardon every last one of your transgressions.”
He jerked, but the ropes of hair would never give in.
“My people need new blood to keep existing without engendering more masterworks.” She said, jumping around the walls of the crater as a formless mass of liquid feathers.
“So do Felsians,” he said, licking his lips.
“Felsians don’t deserve to be born anymore,” she sentenced, and approached him, crawling through the floor like a carpet of ivory caterpillars.
“And your people do?” He asked, showing his endless teeth.
“No. They do not, either. But the end result will be the same. They will keep reproducing, getting more deformed with each generation. More like me. Less like you.”
He trashed against his bonds, unable to release any of his multiple extremities. The nine eyes in his face injected with hatred. “Let us strike a deal as it follows: loosen my shackles and I will do the same with the Ratchet’s influence on your followers. They will be free to have children just as deformed as they are: not more, not less. No need for a constant drip of new blood to keep their motley society going.”
Zaburanatea approached him, jumped on his back and he felt like being pounced by a pillow.
“You make me an offer, as if I were supposed to want what you are willing to grant. My people need new blood, that much is true. They hail me as a deity of the abandoned, and there are no lies to be found in such a statement. But how dare you think I care about their bodies!”
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
“Let me feed on them, then. I will only consume their flesh,” he said, licking every one of his teeth with a different tongue.
“No. That is not my choice. I am far too removed from the problems of my aunts and uncles to be able to make a fair judgement. He whom shall get you free is coming. A follower of ravens with a city to save. Now, Father, wonder: will he choose to save their bodies, or will he choose to preserve their souls?”
Father tried to get on his feet. His twisted claws scratching helplessly against the floor. His eyes wide open. Fear, why was he falling prey of fear before that statement? “You got a Felsian to do the dirty work of the deformed? You are a disgrace. I will ask Mother to damn you personally, Zaburanatea,” he braved through the sheer terror of being confronted with the prospect of someone saving the souls of his offspring.
“Deformed? You created the Ratchet so nobody would take Mother from you,” She jumped off the muscular, white and hirsute back of Father. She took the form of a female Felsian, half her body clad in white dove feathers, half in black raven ones. “Piteousness or Dole if I wear white before you, Unkindness or Murder if I wear black. But never Zaburanatea.”
“I have the divine right to name my children as I please. You exist to sate our hunger.”
“My mother died when she laid the egg I was born from. It pierced her brain on the way out. My real father is just the Ratchet. You are only the horror. Nameless if someone won’t call you Father.”
Father foamed at the mouth. He wanted to devour her, to chew her flesh and see if she could survive his teeth made to consume the world. “I will make any Felsian that comes to me an offer so generous he would release me, and then, I won’t ever forget your treason, foulchild.”
“Our enmity is no treason. The ratchet may be mindless; it may engender us without purpose. But I have forged mine: I will offer a single Felsian the chance to break this cycle. The Misshapen I watch over and the other Masterworks just helped a little bit. This town of sentient disgraces may get new blood, the most intelligent of Masterworks get a little fun, and I… I may get to enjoy a godless world.”
“Deicidal moron! Even if I am gone the Ratchet will remain. You will have a world of animals and so-called-Masterworks. A world without gods is a world without civilization.” Father said, and laughed horribly.
Unkindness paced around him, smiling softly, like a mother watching her child argue against going to bed. “Once again, you assume I care, and I don’t.”
“Even then, how do you plan on giving me death? No mortal weapon may harm me, no magic of mother fueled by anything but my very pure blood will even scratch my flesh.” Unkindness extended one of her hands, and a few seconds later, a flock of birds, doves on the left half of their bodies, ravens on the right, carried a long, draped object into her hand.
Father went silent, his eyes wide. He tried to cower, run away despite his shackles.
“Don’t uncover that thing. Stash it away, stash it away!”
His pleas fell in deaf ears as unkindness removed the tattered cloth that unveiled the sharp, twisted, elongate artifact. “A baby tooth from Mother,” she said, admiring the argentine shine of the body part. A, instant later, she had no option but to let it fall, ribbons of melted flesh dripping from her hands. “You have no idea how much it hurt to retrieve it. I had to train a dog to carry it here all the way from The Cradle.”
“No dog could swim all the way from that island.” Father argued, his stare fixated on the tooth on the floor.
“I froze the waters, made him walk over the bridge of ice as I preserved him from the cold. He was a pretty good boy, died of old age under my wing.”
The whole place shook in pain when the tooth began burning the ground.
“Ah, my bad, Altasa" she said, and, with new hands, grabbed the thing and quickly enveloped it in the cloth again, pain evident on her face the whole time. “Well, Father, I’d love to extend this little chat with you, but I have a son of yours to guide: someone that won’t instantly get his flesh torn asunder by the tooth’s purity.”
Father let out a defeated laugh. “I will use that tooth to kill you when I convince him to side with me. I can offer infinitely more than you can.”
Unkindness simply shook her head. “I didn’t pick a hero, I didn’t pick a man of flawless good,” she said as birds flew off from her dress, unmaking her form.
For the remainder of the day, father howled for help, scaring earth and heaven, making the clouds above and the land below shiver in fear. Making the masterworks squeal with joy, and the misshapen that inhabited at the foot of Altasa pray to Dole for protection.