Renner had never before imagined the body as being so complex. She and Jaldabaoth had continued their look through of the slaughterhouse, he explaining all the various steps in stripping the human form of its components.
It seems as if every giblet is some new bodily contraption for the processing or expelling of a bile. The many pieces as well, mechanisms of a sort, like linkages and pulleys of a bridge or golem. What wondrous little machines we are, and in that way, at once lesser and greater than the stories we tell of themselves. We, or they?
Of these parts, the most interesting was the brain. Jaldabaoth had named it simply “the seat of cognition,” and while he attested to foreign organisms in the intestines also having an effect on perception, it was the fatty lump inside the skull that was the center of a being.
It makes a certain sort of sense, doesn’t it? Divorced from concepts as the “soul” - which, by all accounts, does exist - that the mind would have a physical expression in the world, that it would be hewn thinly on the surface of bulbous tissue, it simply makes sense. Is that not an explanation for me? No grand statements of me having been the offspring of fiends, no latent foulness in the blood, but merely womanflesh given over to something other behind the eyes. Rotten luck, then?
Renner stuffed down a laugh, following her new master out from the main hall to a side room that seemed to be dedicated to the preparation of meat. Here, several crow-like demons were working, dragging out large slabs of flesh already severed from bone and dicing them into smaller portions, large cleavers struck down through portions again and again. Another of the mosquito demons hung in the space, resting on an oversized perch as its bulbous head swung back and forth. It nodded and flitted its wings as the pair passed underneath, lowering itself the best it could.
I suppose ‘we’ works for now, then. ‘We’ are fiendishly complex… “systems” as it were, and yet are merely that, weaker and inferior to those other beings gifted with stronger and more robust design, those that weave heapfuls of magic into themselves, or those things that ditch such petty physical forms altogether.
Approaching a door at its end, Jaldabaoth gestured, one of the corvids bowing, before rushing over to open it for them. The pair strode straight through, Renner giving the space behind one last look.
Perhaps this is yet another pretense of royalty. I'm sure plenty a farmer's daughter has gutted an animal and rooted around in it, and I’m sure a few of those have come to such revelations themselves. Such uncomfortable things are to be forgotten in church. Pray tell, is that its purpose? To convince mankind that it is something other than the flesh around it? Without such a myth, would not they all fold in on themselves in mad despair, lamenting their brittle bones and thin blood as inferior? Mankind is weak. Mankind is to be ripped to pieces. I will have a part in that. Wonderful.
The door shut, and the clamor went with it, the many sounds of the production floor muffled and distant. Renner turned around, finding she and Jaldabaoth in a dim corridor, featureless were it not for the light and the channel that ran underfoot. It had swollen considerably through the path of the abattoir, rushing with blood as fast as would a stream. Jaldabaoth went on in silence, seeming to have said all he wished too at the moment, Renner following after. The corridor was long, more channels of blood merging from underneath the walls at regular intervals, before the grating grew to nearly the full width. She kept to the side, the ducts eventually emerging into a squat chamber wider than any Renner had ever been in. Ascending a set of metal stairs onto a catwalk, she saw its area had been given over to vast, churning pools of blood, at least a dozen that steadily bled over into one another. Eye-stalks and other appendages came up from the meres, worm-like things swimming in the first darker pools, and slimes in the later, brighter ones. Passing through to the end, Renner marveled at the outflow of clear water, which ran off too far into the dark for her to see. Along the side of this channel was another door, one which Jaldabaoth opened and bid her in.
“My lord! How wonderful it is to see you!”
Pulcinella again, this time in a room so cluttered and stocked full of objects that Renner struggled to find the walls. Shelves piled high with papers and specimens suspended in brine were obscured behind stacks of cages, all sorts of chittering creatures in each. Several fires were going, one yellow, one blue, one pink, each supporting their own bubbling cauldrons, and many smaller flames beneath pieces of what Renner vaguely recognized as alchemical glasswork containing even more diverse colors. Small, horned demons with cloven hooves pranced in the space, carrying along all manner of implements or tending to the miscellanea. The centerpiece of what Renner hesitated to name a laboratory was a metal table, upon which lay an indistinguishable mass of gore.
“Are you ready?”
“Almost, my Lord! I rushed back and threw on the brew as fast as possible, before getting together the base!”
Pulcinella straightened and proudly threw back his hand, gesturing to the bloodied lump on the table. Renner gazed at it, unable to resolve the pile into anything recognizable.
The… ‘vessel,’ then?
“I took only the freshest parts from the organ bank. Oh, that there are those so gracious they would be willing to bear the loss of their life to aid another in this world! My heart surges!”
This creature is mad, isn't it? Nothing else here seems so inclined to such rage; rather, I would hope so. I do not think I could bear my darling devil-dearest pirouetting with such a mirthful attitude… A thing that believes its dismemberments joyful, how novel!
“What is missing?”
“Well, the rings; the binding as well. This is her, yes?”
Spare him the indignity of replying.
Renner gave a cautious nod.
“Yes, yes, that gait of yours is quite distinct. Wonderful! Come over so we can get working.”
Renner loitered for a moment, then slogged herself over through an overwhelming sense of danger. Pulcinella went about while humming, turning around to prepare several needle ended vials with the drippings of some glasswork. Renner stood by, flicking her eyes to the table while it did so. Judging from the general shapes of things, what was piled on the table was the dismantled remains of a person - on second look, several people - skin having been removed, neatly folded, and set next to the mass. Still wet bone poked out from underneath the pile, and drawn across the table itself was a pattern of chalk marks that extended out to encircle four saucers filled with what Renner recognized as quicksilver, sulfur, salt, and gold.
This is to be some work of alchemy, then. A vessel for what? What will it hold? An object to ensure my safety? Allow my communion with my masters?
“Ah, here we go…”
The monster turned around, flicked the ends of the needle vials one by one, and then gently inserted them into the pile, depressing a plunger on the opposite end to inject whatever was inside. By the third of these, the flesh had begun to sag, losing its form as it sunk into itself. Air bubbles rose out of it, little lesions of quick-meat rising to the surface and popping. The bone began to sag as well, and with the fourth injection, the mass lost its constitution entirely. Seeming to flow along an invisible mold, it quickly took a humanoid shape, then, a vaguely feminine one. The skin unraveled itself from its pile and wound around the forming body, knitting itself together around it. Hair a number of colors flowed with it, taking root at the scalp. Then, the patchwork solidified, the mosaic of skin tones making clear to Renner that it was indeed made of over a dozen women.
“Oh! This will do quite right!-”
This- this is-
“-Isn’t the similarity stunning?”
Renner suppressed a cry as the fiend suddenly grabbed her, only realizing it had shoved something into her left hand after it broke away. She nauseously looked down, seeing she held a square of glossy parchment, upon which was a rendering of her. It looked wrong, flesh a tone too bright, the shadows of her form a bit too stark, and yet the image was in perfect detail. She was in her same aureolin dress, wide, bright eyes whose irises were oddly red. She tied it with the flash from earlier, realizing that she was looking at the product of some magical contrivance that could capture an instant of the world as it was. In a daze, she looked back to the amalgam, face seeming an even more jarring assembly of multiple people.
No- no, I don’t see a similarity at all.
“Ah, no matter! We are almost finished, yes? Of course, the hair.”
Pulcinella withdrew from its apron the lock of hair it had taken from her earlier, opening the mouth of the corpse and stuffing it in. Then, from a pitcher, it slowly poured in a viscous liquid that Renner could only liken to clotted blood, closing the mouth once it over brimmed at the corners.
“Now, the most important part. You’ve the rings, yes?”
Renner nodded, retrieving them from her breast pocket and offering them to the fiend. He refused, instead marching over to the blue-flame cauldron and pointing to it.
“In here, my darling.”
She slowly stepped forward, peering over its walls to see a murky, deep green turmoil. Flotsam drifted up to the top of the roiling surface, herbs and giblets alike stewing in its iron walls. In partial disbelief, Renner gently looked to the demon, it cocking its head as response.
“Go on, put them in.”
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Its tone had grown firmer, spurring Renner to drop the rings into the liquid below. The boil was so intense she didn’t even hear them plot, sinking immediately out of sight.
“Your glove, your glove! Remove it, quickly!”
Renner made to obey the sudden new command, ripping the glove off her left hand as fast as she could. Pucinella snatched her wrist, swiftly poking the edge of her finger with a needle. She gave a stout exhale, a drop of blood falling into the cauldron below, its contents suddenly turning black. The fiend let go, Renner slowly drawing back as it poured the rest of the pitcher's contents into the pot, and then grabbed the still hot iron and threw it onto its side, contents spilling out onto a sieve. It reached into the residue, violently searching until its hand closed around an indistinct lump. Picking through the dripping sludge, it found the object of its desire, handing one ring back to her, while jaunting off to body with the other.
These processes seem fit to make my heart give. Ruinous magics, true and proper. Perhaps I have no taste for sickening reality.
Renner idly looked at the ring. It had been stained, leaving a wet puddle of black fluid in her palm. With her other thumb, she rubbed it confirming that it really had lost its brass sheen to become a matte black. Turning it over a few times, she pinched it between her forefinger and thumb and inspected it.
“Put it on.”
Renner stiffened, the command coming not from Pucinella, but from Jaldabaoth. She turned and bowed by way of apology, then, with a little hesitation, slipped it over her finger. It hung loosely for a moment, then shrunk, slicing right through her flesh and breaking the bone underneath with a sickening pop. She yelped, and then, the pain suddenly went, the wound vanishing before she could track.
“And just like that, you’re properly bound!”
Renner shook in place, braving herself to run her gloved fingers over the spot. Though it was not visible, she could feel the ring underneath her skin, sliding around on the inside. She swallowed, a sudden sense of permanence setting in.
It is a hidden thing, then; a bond between me and the dark intruders, one I may never shed lest I set upon myself. It’s… it’s magnificent.
“That ring is bound to your blood; as long as it runs through your veins, it will sing to the other, tethering you and allowing for transference.”
Transference of what? Ah, a point further.
Renner looked to Jaldabaoth, refashioning her glove.
There is a qualifier in that statement, and I have not the sense he is speaking of death.
“And when my veins no longer run with Vaiself blood?”
The devil drew back into a thin smile, then adjusted his glasses. Unable to make anything of his response, Renner approached the table, seeing Pulcinella finishing his work on the mosaic. Unlike hers, the wound from its ring was still visible, a purplish band encompassing the left ring finger under the flesh. Other markings were made upon it as well: a thinner, red band on the other finger, and a glyph of black scorch marks on the breastbone where Pucinella had taken a sunstone gem and pressed it in. Wiping its hands of the soot, it excitedly wobbled, false beak jittering with mirth.
“Mmmmm! We’re ready!”
Pulling from the air a thin stick, he struck it against the table, where it suddenly set itself on fire. Leveling it, he dropped it onto the chalk marks, the whole of the pattern suddenly setting itself ablaze. The saucers rattled, then drained of contents, the chalk-flame growing to nearly a blinding white. The body pulsed with light, then grew uniform; the patchwork blended together, flesh multicolored hair lengthening and turning a golden blond. Then, as the flame sputtered and diminished, Renner saw a perfect, bare replica of herself.
Mm, perhaps I was too hasty in my previous assessment. Yes, the resemblance is stunning. I’m almost doll-like.
The flame died entirely, the room growing silent and still. Her clone’s azure eyes flickered open, lazily tracking over to Renner, then Pulcinella, growing wider as it seemed to realize its situation. Her duplicate shot straight up from the table, gargling great spurts of clear fluid thicker than mucous. At the limit of Renner’s perception, Pulcinella drew a hammer from his belt and clobbered her imitation on its forehead, the body limply slamming back onto the table. Another injection, this time in the space between its eyelid and brow, creature occasionally twitching as more of the fluid disgorged from its mouth. At last, the fiend withdrew, and her double lay docile on the table.
“Finish with its development, and send it to the Iblis hall when done.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
The scheme clicked for Renner.
A vessel for me. A husk I may puppet, or perhaps inhabit and take control of just as I do with my body. It will be left here, in this realm, while I navigate the one above in that of my birth. How perfect. How flush. Never an interruption, never a sign of my treason. A chink in the armor, hidden from all. As expected of my masters. Yes, this was the correct choice.
She looked on at the clone in awe, struck with the foresight and ability of her new masters. Pulcinella and Jaldabaoth looked on as well, the devil eventually breaking his gaze from the body and turning to his fellow.
“What is the progress on the fungus experiment?”
“Near to sporulation, my lord. No more than sixty-hours, I’d say.”
Jaldabaoth began to walk, slipping past the table deeper into the laboratory
“With me.”
Renner nodded, then shuffled after him. They passed through a great mess of other oddities: shelves stacked with yet more jars; bodies in various states of decay hanging from a branch of the gantry system; precariously piled notes that threatened to topple at any time. Once they were past the second batch of shelves, Renner realized the space was much more vast than she had initially assumed, that such was the clutter that it was not possible to draw any clear sightline through it. Eventually, after forging through the mess for a full half-minute, they came upon a wall, a single iron door sat within it. Opening it, they spilled out into another long corridor, counting at least twenty doors to a side. Walking down, Jaldabaoth’s tail idly bobbed, eventually coming to a bare door labeled with something Renner guessed was a number. Jaldabaoth opened it, and bid Renner in. It was a small room, more akin to a cell than anything else she was familiar with. In it, sat in a corner, was an odd vegetative mass, lush, yet spotted with all sorts of sicky hues that put Renner in mind of her stomach.
“Do you know what this is?”
I haven’t a clue. It’s all just a mass of mushrooms and outgrowth to me. It’s not as if it’s…
Renner cocked her head slightly, then realized with a start that she was looking at a person. Whoever it was, they had been completely overtaken in the plants of decay, caps and pleated sheets sprouting every which way. A large, bulbous protrusion grew from the abdomen, what she could mark as skin burst from the stress having itself been shot through with plant growth. The most recognizable of the parts was a leg, having shriveled up and made to fold on itself. Renner took a last look, assembling what she could of the body. There, twitching of the stalks under which the right hand should have been buried.
“A person, one who is not yet dead, yet has become food for new beings, my Lord.”
“This girl was one of our early take. A hamlet in the deep south lost to your people’s memory, but still in reach of us. We set upon it at night, an exercise in collection. It was… effective. Techniques and practical experience for the employment of summons in abductions. Tell me, do you know her name?”
A low chill rolled over Renner, Jaldabaoth’s voice taking on a soft, deadly quality.
This is rhetoric. He intends to teach me something. Cooperate.
“No, my Lord.”
“It could be the most beautiful name known to her people.”
Jaldabaoth stepped forward, lowering himself into a kneel, and slipping his fingers around what Renner pieced together as being the head.
“It has surely been spoken in love, in affection, reverence, hatred, loathing, and in a thousand other ways. Her mother would coo her with it to sleep at night. Truncations and mispronunciations of her brothers and sisters and family and friends. Perhaps a village boy smitten with her would whisper himself to sleep with it. Maybe an accursed enemy of hers would spit it with all the force she could. It exited the mouths of hundreds, each time inflected a little differently, or attached to some new purpose. But I would not know.”
He paused, taking a moment to separate the head from the wall and cradle it himself.
“Nor would anyone. This, for there is no one to remember. Her mind has been obliterated, brain steadily consumed by the myconid planted inside. Nothing occurs within. She is, even in this vestigial state, the last of her people alive. The rest have been processed into unrecoverable states, flesh having slipped down the gullets of both her and others of her kind, bones already used for the creation of new warriors. Even were we to have preserved a portion of their bodies, most would be too weak to bear resurrection. She, her tribe, and everyone she could have plausibly interacted with are gone. What records their elders had kept were destroyed. Their oral tradition wiped from the world. Her home, where she lived her whole life up until that night, razed until it was cinder.”
He let go, rising back to his full height.
“In a few days, the myconid will break through her skull wall, step out, and join its kin. What remains of her is unfit for full processing; her flesh will be spent simply as feed for smaller stock, her skeleton will be taken and reanimated. Anything left after will be masticated and extruded as construction material. Your name is Renner Theiere Chardelon Ryle Vaiself. I pray I needn't say more.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
Renner again bowed, the pounding of her heart threatening to drown out the world. She stayed there for a moment, only rising when she had the strength to.
“One last thing. On the subject of names, I am Demiurge, Guardian of the Seventh Floor. Our master is Lord Ainz Ooal Gown, leader of the Supreme Beings. Never forget this.”
So it is him, then.
“Yes, my Lord.”
The first to be known, to act perceptibly. Interesting. To act to save Gazef’s life, make himself an enemy of Slain, and in doing so, prevent the collapse of the royal house but days later. A cunning master indeed. I’d hazard it no matter of happenstance that he was the first to interfere. There is more to be known here. Things for the hearing and doing of which I do not see.
“Are there any outstanding liabilities to you?”
“Yes, my Lord. There is an individual, Count Alec Resenen Pell Keveleos. He is a member of the Eight Fingers council, and he is aware of my unique constitution. He was to be eliminated on sight during the raids on the fourth, but in the chaos, we lost him. In addition, he and I had a particular shared goal, the silencing of those women rescued from the brothel by my Climb. I hired a mercenary band to ensure their safekeeping, one under the control of the syndicate. For the preservation of predictable politics, they too will need to go.”
“The women will be dealt with immediately, the matter with Eight Fingers settled in the coming days. If any of their men-at-arms attempt your assassination again, they will be dealt with much the same as before.”
I was to be assassinated? This… is not surprising. I wonder how. A poisoning? Must have been, I don’t see how an assault would work. It’s almost a little embarrassing to say as such. I suppose Keveleos really did wish me dead, and I suppose Demiurge had identified me as a useful agent before then, if not as servant, then as puppet. To such a manipulative mind, is there such a difference?
“You will be updated as necessary by your new adjutant. Are there any other hindrances or threats to your duties?”
“Not in an imminent context, my lord.”
“You speak of your Kingdom’s crises?”
“To an extent, my Lord, but the deeper rot that lies underneath.”
“This will be expunged or exploited in time. You will be returned to Valencia with the expectation that you will have a general outline of your Kingdom’s history within one week. I trust you will budget your days and manage your assets for research appropriately. Your time with us is to be spent learning the true functions of things; this, before you are tasked with more in-depth analyses.”
“I understand, my Lord.”
There is to be no half measure here. I am to throw myself into this, to dedicate every effort to their service, and to his. Power in slavery, yes, but joy in it as well. All actions are to be accepted. Any commands to be carried out. Every thought furnished upon request. I am to be forthright to them. No hiding behind my mask; I am to offer myself as I am, and leave myself fit for their meddling.
Demiurge finally looked back to her, a queer smile settling on his lips.
“Oh, and, on the matter of your precious dream, it will have to wait. What is to come will require an accumulation of fighting power, and we cannot yet spare such a loyal bodyguard for duties other than armed service.”
At this, Renner couldn’t help but break into a smile. The devil had told her to wait for her prize, and with the might of her new masters, meant that having her dog as desired was nothing less than a certainty.