He opened his nine eyes and the tongues inside licked the interior of the cornea. At the foot of the mound on the back of Altasa, the hovering mountain, a son of his was coming off a bridge made out of cries. Inheritance, he added their name mentally to the list of traitors he would devour as soon as Ald released him. He wasn’t trying to draw sigils on the dirt anymore: he drilled with his twisted claws like corkscrews into the floor of the crater, taking pleasure in knowing that the pain inconvenienced Altasa. But his freedom drew near. Anything Zaburanatea offered, he would double. No son of his was meant to be incorruptible. And by what he had seen, Ald wasn’t exceptional. Whiny, weak, crippled. A son like any other, just like Zaburanatea had claimed. Oh, how he hated Ald already. All of his children were unworthy of calling themselves so, but some had the lust, the drive, the hunger. Yet none with those urges would follow the treacherous bird imitator with such… zealousness. Did he wish to mate with the seductress? He could offer him the company of any sister, for as long as he wished. Had the deformed thing offered him power? He could give him a place by his side in the heavenly abode of Mother and him. If Ald wished Felsia, he could have Felsia. If he wished the world, he could have the world, so long as Father got to feed on it like he had always done. Give him a direct connection to the All-carver, one he alone could sever if the child misbehaved, too.
The little laugh of Caretaken echoed inside his head, prefect fodder for his hatred and anxiety. Father was normally patient. There was a time for everything, even to sate one’s hunger. That was, as long as he were free. Imprisoned, each day became his little eternity, the sun seemed to not move through the sky, the night never coming, and then never ending. The hunger burned, yes, deep and unquenchable. He had been born to consume his sons and daughters, to eat their flesh and leave the souls ready to meet Mother, to nourish her magnificence. And now the pangs made his limbs jerk, his eyes blink when he didn’t want to, his mind fog and forget what he was thinking about mere moments prior.
Altasa, Caretaken, Zaburanatea, Wintertoll. Four names, four unthankful betrayers. There were others, others he didn’t remember. How long ago had they imprisoned him? how old were his shackles of hair? And… why couldn’t he hate Caretaken? The thing was just spiteful, vile with no end at all. He had likely joined the others for no higher or fair reason, only for the unique chance of torturing him. So basic. So pure. He respected that. Altasa seemed to be herded into it by Zaburanatea: there was a point in hating him, but to seek out revenge against the thing would be a waste of his time, as killing even such a clumsy Masterwork would mean to channel an immense amount of power from the All-Carver itself. No, Altasa would live. And Wintertoll… to end him would be mercy, and thus a bad idea. Letting the Masterwork that hated his own kind live with his failure would be a far better retaliatory measure. To pull some strings, to make some Felsians and misshapen mate. He would encourage the creation of new Masterworks going forward. Wintertoll would hate that.
Lastly, there was the matter of Zaburanatea. Her power to modify nearly any aspect of the Carving made him doubt he would ever be able to get rid of her. She was a worthy champion of the Ratchet, no doubts. He could devour her form a million times, curse her with the foulest of magics. And the damned thing would find a crack in creation, a weakness in his hexes through which she could slip through and keep on being this scourge upon reality. Him and Mother had shaped the Masterpiece to serve them, filled it with sons and daughters they could consume. And this child of the wild had to ruin everything. Oh, how strongly he wished to find a way to torment her! To turn the crows into the right sort of murder!
But he would need to wait. Ald was barely arriving to Altasa’s back. Taking shy steps out of the invisible bridge, into actual matter. His claws dug in the little patches of soil near the rim of the Masterwork, and he almost fell when the cane of sound dispersed without a warning. This made Father snort. His only hope was a pathetic and hurting creature. But he also was Zaburanatea’s hope. What did she know that he didn’t? Was choosing this Felsian just a gambit to torture him, the purest of Mother’s sons, and satisfy her despicable thirst for some ungraspable concept of justice? Ah, but there was no point worrying about it, for he would soon find out.
He would soon find out. If Clivanaratea had ever lied to him, if this journey had been worth the pain, the loss. He felt eyes watching, creatures hidden amongst the lush vegetation, not sure how many of them, but not worried about their intentions. This was the finish line, the destination. The climb ahead, the winding road around the mound, just the last step of a long and cruel staircase. Meet father, save him, and save Felsia. Or part of Felsia, anyway. How many had followed Mirn? Would he return home one distant day just to find a row of graves with names known, and grieving faces young and alien staring at this oldd Felsian that knew so many caretakers, that they have never met in the city, and who claims to have seen things he wishes for nobody else to see? This old man that asks a lone question: “Where is Kali, raised by Gleur?” And so a guard woman comes, in the flower of her youth or maybe a little past that, and with a stern stare she unsheathes a worn out, but well cared for, sword. Sword she points at him. And she, in turn, interrogates him. “And where is it? The biggest and meanest one in the Worldvein? The fish you promised me.” And he would laugh, and he would cry, and he would kneel and ask his ward for forgiveness. And together they would go visit Elvisat, that would, if he was lucky, be an older-than dirt hag, or, if he wasn’t, another grave in the line of dead brothers and sisters.
Because the trip would take years without divine aid, he was sure of it. He needed to ford the jungle, to avoid the dwelling of Leclerglossa. Looking back riverwards, he saw the World Ridge, its magnificence in the distance, how high the drop to the desert was, and wondered how he would get across it. How would he get off of this flying creature, at all? Questions for later, he shook his head.
“Up the hill, I suppose.”
“It’s a crater. You can get in through a little cave on the far side.”
“A crater? A rock from above impacted upon this Masterwork?”
“No. Our act of pulling Father down from his heavenly throne was rather…” And so she stopped to think of the right word, the raven staring into the crater’s ridge. “Tactless. I tied mother’s hair around his neck, Caretaken managed the legs and his claws, and Wintertoll froze his hands to difficult his struggling.”
His lips pressed tightly against each other. “I thought you had summoned him like we Felsians do.”
“How innocent it is of you, to expect we Masterworks to do things your way. But no. We have no use for sacrifices, or for Mother’s magic scribbles. The Ratchet provided most of what we needed. I gathered Mother’s hair to shackle him.”
“Call runes scribbles again and I will eat raven today.”
Unkindness feathery avatar blinked, holding a defying stare. “Should I care?”
Ald simply swatted her off his shoulder, sending the bird into an angry bout of flapping and cawing. “Whatever your opinion of Mother is, runes are an integral part of our culture and carving or drawing them is a respected skill.”
Then, some would say a miracle happened, as the carrion eater lowered her avatar’s head. “I am sorry. You are right this time around.”
Ald raised his arm like a falconer would, and the raven gleefully jumped onto it. “I could get used to you being wrong for a chance of pace.” Then he turned his stare towards the crater in front of them. “I am crippled; why do you make me jog everywhere?”
“I could tell you the truth or I could tell you a joke. It’s a technically a lie, though.”
Ald smiled through the pain and tiredness imprinted on his face. “I am afraid the sky will fall the day one of your ironies is spoken and it doesn’t contain a crumb of truth.”
The raven gave a little prick on Ald’s cheek, and he raised his lip. “The truth is that what awaits you is far more painful than a severed leg. Fret not, though: I am positive that of all the futures I can see, the one you are likely to enact will take you back to Felsia in one piece.”
Ald Raised a couple fingers as he approached the roughly hewn, andesite staircase at the foot of the crater. “Two pieces.”
“I am not taking the leg back to the city. It’s Leclerglossa’s chew toy now. Or lick toy: He doesn’t chew.”
Ald closed his lips tight and squinted a bit, overcome by disgust. “He can keep it.”
Reaching the wide and serpentine stairs, he leaned forwards. There was no need to climb them in two legs. No need to suffer any more than he already had, not until the moment of truth. In all three and one stick he pushed onwards, HE skittered from one regular step to the other. And found immensurable pleasure on the fact that those were stairs. Not rocks, not a slope, stairs! What a joy it was, to feel the roughness and angles not of stone carved by weather or landslides, but sculpted by hands or magic! And every crack populated by weeds, every broken edge aslant, every mark of claws or beaks from the animals that mulled and hid about, simply added to it. A perfect combination of design and chance, instead of the disgusting purity that the wild had subjected him to in the jungle and the cave. A staircase felt too much like civilization, it was overwhelming enough to make him smile, frolic from side to side as he climbed up. Coming in front of the wall, faced with the ridge he incorporated once again, and grasped the wall, not afraid to look at the vegetation below. It wasn’t a fall so long, and there were no tongues waiting for him to fall. Like this, without fear and smiling at each pang of pain that tried to get him back to the dark carve, he got through the tinnest platforms of the crater, carefully and making sure to have a good grasp on both his hands and his good leg.
It took him hours to go around the massive thing. In the middle of his path he crossed a bindweed with flowers so scarlet or so amber, but never both in the same flower. Golden bumblebees clumsily maneuvered around it, bumping into the Felsian without a care in the world before changing direction to go elsewhere.
The mists, a low cloud or another, crashed against the crater rim, condensed, and some of the cold drops rolled down the rock until they met Ald’s forehead. Bop, a little splatter of fresh water from above, and then another, surprising at first, and only soothing afterwards.
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However, he remained alert: a brother of his lurked on the flying island, and one would kill the other. Unkindness had said he would need to kill that unknown Felsian —not named after the city, but after the blood— And it was only natural, then, for said… creature to be prepared to receive him with violence. Would the raven aid him? or would he need to surprise this brother and cut his throat before he had time to react? With every suspicious sound his hand readied to unsheathe his remaining sword, the etched one,, before returning to the wall.
But an intelligent brother wouldn’t face him directly, would he? he would use arrows. The blissful nature of the place had to be a façade, and with every passing moment, his paranoia grew, rendering falls the lesser of his worries. The more he thought about this grand finale to his quest, to this tragedy waiting to happen, to the moment he would die or be rendered a murderer by fate, the less able to appreciate the landscape around him he grew.
Poor thing, Clivanaratea thought. Watching from everywhere, but with raven eyes only form a nearby branch to which her manifestation perched, she knew two things: that she could spare Ald this all-encompassing fear, this paranoia. She wouldn’t, though. He wasn’t far enough, still: he wasn’t in the crater, in front of the horrible being that had begotten him. He needed to be.
Father opened his eyes again; licked all of his teeth, each with a different tongue; widened his thirty-seven nostrils and inhaled, deeply. A new shadow invaded the little hole to his right. A cave that hadn’t been there yesterday, and a shadow that wouldn’t be there tomorrow. It was a tiny frail thing, and the sunlight that revealed it drifted lazily across the walls of grey stone. It crawled to him with painful sluggishness, he who cast the shadow. With, what a disgrace, a severe excess of cautiousness.
The handle transmitted the shakes of his hand to the blade as Ald turned the corner. His breath was heavy, and he wasn’t sure what he would find in the crater. He froze in place when the nine eyes were laid upon him. For an instant, neither Father nor son spoke, and then, either of them did:
“I thought you would look uglier,” one said, no matter who. “All reduced and hungering.”
Ald took a few steps closer, with extreme care, turning his head to the sides and looking above, to the lattice of variegated feathers that filtered lines of sunlight though, the sky through a strainer.
The rays of evening light plagued father’s skin, bright slits on the white fur. Mother’s hair, long, straight and fashioned into crude ropes remained tied around his limbs, his neck, and his tails. The ropes were anchored directly on the ground, grasping half-rings of stone that seemed to grow organically from the living mountain’s core.
Ald scurried up a bit closer, handle still rough against his palm and fingers. “The depictions we have of you don’t make justice to your true image, Father.”
“Artists embellish me a bit too much, son of mine.” Father opened his mouth, showing his teeth skirted by cylindrical tongues he could extend and retract at will, and the multiple tendrils of flesh that were born from the deepest crevices of his being. There was no palate to be seen inside his long jaw, only sharpened enamel and the pale pink of rotting gums.
“Too many… of everything,” muttered Ald, and sized the gargantuan shape of father up, with a set of jaws capable of swallowing him whole, with corkscrew claws as long as his swords, and yet manacled with ropes thinner than a heron’s leg. “Where’s the brother that aided in your capture? Is he stalking me?”
Father gave him a pointed look. “You are the one Felsian riding on the back of Altasa. The one son of mine outside Felsia and its outskirts. There’s no other, except in the lies of Zaburanatea.”
“Clivanaratea.” Ald gave a shy step forward, unsure whether to approach his savage progenitor or not. “And she never lied to me.”
“She lies! She lies about truths; she lies about lies!” Father’s voice was an elegy of bending metal. “She even picks the form of a carrion eater to mock my dear children.”
Ald’s head tilted to a side. “Your what? We are but mere food to you. You are a necessary evil, and I have not come all this way to save you. I have come to save my city, and for that, I need new siblings. Siblings only you can sire.”
“Address my point, Ald. Zaburanatea lies to you. She lies to everyone.” And he stressed the last word. “Everyone but me. I don’t lie to Felsians.”
A raven landed on Ald’s shoulder, and it echoed Father’s words. “I don’t lie to Felsians.”
“You lie as often as you breathe, fiend!” Father stirred, struggled in vain against his restraints, his muscles bulging under the white fur, revealing their true shape: as most things in Father, his muscles hungered, and that which hungered had teeth on its surface, under the dermis itself.
The bird remained still, and Ald put his hand in front of the raven’s beak. No flow of air could be felt.
“I am a creature of truths. I may be ambiguous sometimes, and some would consider that a lie in spirit. I don’t believe lies can have a soul. But we do, and I think they are a scarce resource, worth preserving.”
Father shivered. The raven’s words seemed to burn his skin, and Ald did notice. He grasped his sword tighter, and took another step, rising as bit from his slouched position, as if emboldened, as if forgetting there could be another like him there, in the crater, stalking, ready to strike. “I know of no oath to uphold truth on your part. She took care of me when I lost a leg, and when I recovered she led me to you, as she promised.” He raised the sword, pointing at his progenitor with disdain. “Why would I believe you instead? You proved nothing to me.”
“I am the reason you are alive, insolent kid! What else do you believe I owe you when I already gave you the most precious of gifts? And pray tell me, Ald, because your father is willing to be pretty generous with his liberator.”
Ald stared at the raven, waiting for it to speak, but the bird only pecked his cheek playfully. It breathed, and soon enough, it flew away with all the usual chaos a bird would.
The ghost had vacated the machine.
“Oh Ald, she abandoned you? Zaburanatea left you all alone with your terrible, terrible father? What a shame. Now be a darling and try to untie my bindings, will you?”
“I am almost forty,” Ald spat, spinning the useless blade in his grasp, and regarding the golden ropes of hair.
“Toddler,” Father answered, as Gleur had once done, but with an added layer of contempt. “I am older than anything that breathes today. Mother’s firstborn, perfect and unchanging.”
Mother’s firstborn. Alds eyes shot wide open. Mother’s firstborn. Father was technically his brother, too, as every Felsian knew. And Unkindess was known to use exact wording to conceal the truth. “She wants me to kill you.”
“Progress,” Father said, gleefully. “Zaburanatea hates us progenitor gods. Me and Mother, both. And you know Mother is the fairest being in existence, her only crime ever was conceiving me. Well, me and maybe some of your less… illustrious full-siblings, son.”
The steps echoed from behind Ald, as if he was in a very, very small room and someone came down a hall. In a sudden burst forwards they wove a body out of feathers and Air,l gradually forming Clivanaratea’s sister shape. She carried an item blanketed in drapes, like a baby would be during a cold day. She held it in both hands, in front of her, as further away from her chest as possible. “Why don’t you tell him about Mother’s diet, Father?”
“Ah, right, Mother likes a peculiar food you won’t find on this plane. No big deal, son, for one day, you will learn. And you will be awestruck then.” Father said, not staring at Ald, but rather at the wrapped tooth.
“Ald, dear, please, hold this tooth from Mother,” she carefully offered him the wrapped item, lazy snakes of steam dancing upwards from her palms. “A dog walked over the deepest waters and climbed a staircase made out of pigeons to bring it here, and even wrapped like this it burns me. It will burn you too, but don’t drop it.”
Ald turned his whole body towards Unkindness. “Why? Killing Father will damn my people. Why should I do it.”
“This is a tooth from mother. Unveil it. Cut the ropes of hair with it if you want Father to be free.”
Ald carefully took it in hand, like he had once taken the engraved sword hanging on a wall of his room, the one all Felsians that completed the military service with and honorable attitude where gifted by their trainers. Back in the day, he had thought the weapon would burn his skin, and that the blisters would be worth keeping.
Now, as he unwrapped the tooth, he was receiving a part of Mother, an honor incommensurably higher than fulfilling a few tasks and learning to use a weapon.
Thus Ald revealed the contents of the wraps by peeling them with only two fingers, wary of the heat the object exuded, heat he initially wanted to attribute to her boundless love, as once described by the horrid entity grinning nervously with more teeth than there were on all other mouths and skins in existence.
The tooth was long and sharp, serrated on the inwards-curved side And this sight shook Ald, for in no depiction of mother she appeared as none other than a loving sister of flowing hairs and soft stare. His eyes wandered form the Tooth to father, and from Father to unkindness. “This is not a Felsian tooth. This cannot belong to Mother. And if this indeed belongs to Mother, she cannot be as beautiful as you always tell us she is.”
“Hush, ungrateful child! Don’t speak ill of her in my presence!” Father exploded, His claws scratching the ground and making Altasa shudder as he snapped his mouth and tried to reach Ald and devour him. For Ald, this was no surprise: Father was worse than he expected him to be, and that fit the image he had of him like a glove. Father, the hungering beast, the cruel one.
Mother, granter of life, the compassionate one. No mention of sharp teeth anywhere. No place for them to fit. “Clivanaratea, is this truly from Mother?”
“Yes, Ald. A baby tooth recovered from the place she was born in. An isolated patch of land amidst the waters that both Father and Mother call The Cradle.”
“Good,” then Ald addressed the drooling mess in front of him. “Father, how does Mother look, exactly?”
Father’s pupils constricted, the tongues abandoned her eyes and returned to his depths. “It would be wrong to deny that she had those teeth in her young years, in her larval stage. Back then she used to feed on the souls of sons and daughters of nature to grow strong and be able to bear me and you. But now she doesn’t feed on the souls of animals and plants anymore. She doesn’t need to.”
“Truth, for once. I respect you a bit more today, Father,” Unkindness said, and put a warm hand on Ald’s shoulder as he caressed the tooth, a pained expression flooding his face with every pang of pain it sent into his fingers. “She doesn’t need to, Ald. So, what do you think the adult Mother eats? She is a pyschophage, an animivore: a soul devouring entity. So if she spares animals and plants now, what does she feed on?”
“Iguanas grow up eating meat and transition to feed on vegetables during their adulthood,” Father said, licking the full extension of his lips in a single slap of thousands of tongues. “Mother is like an iguana in that regard, she feeds on materials of heaven that would be hard to describe to the living.”
“There’s not a single Felsian that has lasted a day in heaven, Ald. She ate them all. Mirn, Elvisat’s caretaker, every misshapen you have killed.”
In an instinctual rush of vigor and took the tooth from the base and described an arc to his right, aiming for Unkindness. “Liar! Zaburanatea!”
The masterwork had stepped back even before Ald Had started his swing, such that it only damaged the feathers of her dress.
Father cackled. He had won. Felsia would have rains again. He would feed onto the traitors without killing them beforehand, he would be forever mother’s Mate and Ald… well, he would give Ald something he asked for, if only to garner a bit of favor from his food source, to seem fairer in their eyes, in case he ever needed their aid once more.
“Delightful, Ald. Ignore her, and release me at once! Afterwards, I will give you anything you ask me for. I am not a traitor, unlike them. Power? A sister’s heart? Eternal life? Anything your heart yearns for, Ald. Anything.”
Ald turned and let his arm holding the teeth fall. “Lift the Ratchet.”
Father snarled a negative. “Something else, dear son. Don’t provoke me.”
Ald changed the tooth from one hand to the other to raise a singed palm, showing the feathers that fulfilled the role of ceiling that he did not mind the pain, and Father that he considered himself in position to bargain. “Show me heaven. Now. Show me the true Face of Mother, the souls of every old man and woman I knew and whose graves I have graced with flowers I grew myself. Show me the society of souls up you claim exists up there, basking in Mother’s grace.”
Father smiled with unparalleled malice. “If you wish to die, I will gladly end your life after being freed.”
“Want to see heaven, Ald? I can show you heaven.” Unkindness said., Her hand shooting to cover Ald’s face like a set of eagle claws.
The Felsian had no time to mumble a negative.