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Fenharrow's journal laid snugly within her pillowcase, hidden in a sheathe of cotton and thread. The hiding place was perfect for someone like her mother or her father, but for this woman, who was all cold, hard violence and nothing even remotely kind, that hiding spot didn't seem so perfect after all. Lidya could just envision her tearing the beloved pillow open, shredding it just to get to the journal within, and the waxy pages it held.
And by the gods, she did not look like she would have batted an eyelid if she told her where it was.
"The journal... it's yours?" She asked tentatively. The sharp blade of the sword dug into the skin of her throat, stinging and drawing blood. It almost perfectly traced the artery, following the path down to her collarbone, where it was quickly absorbed by the fabric of her dress. "I didn't一I mean, then the watch would belong to you too, right?"
Lidya didn't think stalling, or babbling, to a woman who had a very sharp weapon to her throat was a wise idea. Her mind had other plans, however, and she watched with wide eyes as the other woman raised a thin, white eyebrow, the entire action pulling away from the harsh lines of her otherwise stern face.
"You would be correct." The godling moved the sword up, under her chin, and tilted her head from side to side, slowly, as if she was inspecting a piece of meat... or something worse. "Fenharrow was my teacher, or mentor, if you will. I didn't expect him to give away his things so freely to a village girl."
The way she said it, emphasized it, seemed to have a deeper meaning; as if she wasn't calling her just a village girl, but calling her a village whore. Lidya wasn't foreign to that kind of prejudice, especially when the nobles had to venture through. This godling, this woman, was clearly from nobility, and had no shame in showing it.
"I am not a whore," Lidya bit out. It took all of her willpower to say it. "But if you want his things, then fine, I'll go get the journal. Here一take it!"
She pulled the watch out of her pocket, thrusting it towards the godling. Her arm was parallel with the sword, the cold metal almost cutting into the skin of her arm. The watch was still as unnaturally warm as it was when Fenharrow had given it to her, like the freshly drawn blood that the Vile Church would request of her family once every full moon. Without its warmth against the side of her leg, she felt almost cold.
"No." Lidya watched in disbelief as the woman lowered her sword. Not even the stinging of her throat could distract her from her shock. The fire opals embedded in the side of the blade, round and brilliant, shone in the sunlight as she put it back into its sheathe where it belonged. "Fenharrow gave it to you. He obviously wanted you to have it for some reason. The journal, as well, I would think... as much as I have trouble believing it."
Lidya remembered a story one of the Vile Church priestesses used to tell about a godling who wielded a blade of opals and diamonds, and wore a long, white braid, longer than any woman could possibly wear in civilized life. She would kill those who needed mercy, they would say, and take their bodies to be buried underneath the wings of the Vile Mother, where they would be one with her power and despair.
Verona.
The woman narrowed her lemon yellow eyes, pupils turning to slits. She didn't say anything even as the realization of who she was dawned over Lidya's face like a waterfall. Instead, she turned, looking back at the hastily dug grave and disturbed ground.
Forgetting Lidya was there, her face twisted into a scowl, and she dug the heel of her boot into the dirt, crushing the fenharrow flowers in the process.
"I told you I would walk on your grave one day, you old boggart," Verona hissed. The necklace around her throat gleamed in the morning sun, and once it caught her eye, she yanked it off her throat and tossed it away, in Lidya's direction. "You can keep your little charm, too, while you're at it. I hope you're in the deepest depths of hell, Fenharrow."
Just as Lidya was going to pick up the bolo tie and attempt to walk away, Verona rounded on her just as quickly. Two long strides sealed the gap between them, and she fisted her gloved hands in the fabric of Lidya's collar, dragging her so close that she could smell that Verona smelled of beast blood and madness.
"Good luck, little village girl," she hissed to her face. There wasn't anything but ill will in that sentence, and after spitting at her feet一Lidya was thankful it wasn't her face一she turned on her heel, stomped on Fenharrow's grave one more time for good measure, and vanished over the hill just as quickly as it had taken her to pull Lidya to her.
Just like that, with her presence gone, nature started up again一but so did the beasts. Lidya could hear their rumbling, breathy growls as if they were right in her ear, when they could possibly be over one hundred yards away.
With a quick glance at the sun, and the Vile Mother's draping wing peeking over the horizon, she made her way back home, clutching the pocketwatch so hard that the knobs and hinges dug into her hand.
Igni had watched the entire event play out with some sort of feline curiosity you could only find in cats一she was a bystander to it all, of course, but felt that if she had intervened and prevented Verona from scaring the poor girl, it would have just been worse for her.
Stepping out of the shadows, but not the kind of the Void, a male figure appeared just beside her, cloaked in darkness and a shining veil of stars. Long wisps of white hair floated about him like seaweed, draping across the air as if it was a physical manifestation and not just that: air. Even Igni could tell when Naicar was in a particularly pleased mood, and that was not a hard thing to tell.
"Verona dislikes her greatly," Igni began conversationally. The god did nothing but glance at her out of the corner of his eye, lip tilted into a smirk. "I think this will be an interesting phase of time to witness."
Naicar reached down, long fingers grasping at Igni's fur. The familiar resisted the urge to leap back and hurl. He didn't yank it out like she expected, or grab a handful of skin and pull her back to the Void. All he did was stroke the navy blue fur and trace the azure spots with sharp claws.
He was in a very, very good mood, indeed.
"Abretas favors her," Naicar said after a moment or two of gut wrenching silence. "But Molterr does not share his fondness一even if his own godling favored her before death."
Igni couldn't say anything about that. It was above her to comment on the feelings of gods and their godlings, so she stayed quiet, trying desperately to ignore the feel of long, sharp claws raking down the bones of her spine. Naicar was her creator, her true master, but there was nothing keeping him from killing her if he felt the need.
Benevolent, he was not. But just as cruel as his brother? Without a doubt. Perhaps even more so, with a startling lack of empathy. The Vile Church loved to manipulate the masses to their eventual graves.
"But it is an auspicious day." Naicar removed his hand from her fur, touching his fingers to his chin thoughtfully. The claws were so long that they raked against his eyelashes. "All of my kin have lost at least one godling this year, and that leaves us four godlings short. We will need four more to take their places... won't we?"
Uneasiness made Igni's fur bristle. Naicar never asked questions; he made statements. Abretas and Molterr never questioned him, and nor did the Vile Mother, who was so enveloped in her grief that she had no use for godlings. Naicar had taken the Vile Mother's share and divided them between the three brothers. Each god had at least three godlings at one time, but never more, and never less.
Naicar's, not Abretas's, word was law, and no one knew it.
"We will have to have a ceremony," the god decided. The familiar knew he had already chosen his candidates. "In a few days, perhaps, on the day of Abretas一what better than the holy day of the Vile Church...?"
Igni's stomach revolted at the sneering tone his voice took. It was instinctive for her to feel this way towards the god, especially after he had turned her skin inside out and flayed her with weapons and magic unimaginable. There was nothing worse than to know your creator thought you were nothing but a waste of skin.
The familiar watched as the god vanished without another word, waiting patiently to see if he had changed his mind, then turned to Fenharrow's grave. The thousands of nicknames she had given him through the century flickered through her mind, the memories as fresh as the day they had made them. But they would fade, and soon, she would forget them altogether.
But for now, she was still Igni, and that was enough.
She took a shady spot beneath the tree, curling up beside a large root covered in moss. The beasts would not notice her, even if she tried to make them see; she was invisible to them, a piece of the Void that their little beastly minds couldn't fathom.
Tricky. Scatterbrain. Nutty-nut. Mousy. Igni rested her head on her paws. Fenharrow. Why did you have to go and mess everything up? Now Naicar has more plans and more power to obtain.
Her new godling wouldn't be awake for some time yet. He was still sleeping on the other side of the Vile Mother, where it was dark and full of beasts, and that left her with enough free time to have come here. But it would be a long journey with the new one, and soon, she would become just as attatched, just as concerned for the new one as she had been with Fenharrow.
Despite what the old godling had believed, she could feel things. She knew what anger, love, and sorrow was一she could feel them just like he did, because they were linked soul to soul. They might not have been her own; they could have been his. But it did not change the fact that she still felt them as potently as he did, even the surprise he felt as he had looked at the village girl, because she was a spitting image of his long lost daughter. She was surprised, too一but it was her own.
Fenharrow having a daughter was something she hadn't known even after one hundred and thirty-two years of knowing him. He did not share his memories with her like she did with him. He kept them under lock and key, sealed with the godsblood. Igni was not so lucky as to have that kind of ability. She was an open book, while he was a chest under lock and key.
"What else did you hide from me?" She wondered aloud. Her voice, high and shrill, was only for her ears. A cat's voice, for sure. "It would be in that journal of yours, wouldn't it?"
With a flick of her tail, she got to her feet. She wouldn't suffer not knowing a moment longer. She deserved to know the truth一she was his familiar. She would forget it, in time, but she had to know for certain.
Had he been lying to her all along?
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"The gods are upon the earth," the priestess announced softly. "I feel their presences like death upon the soul."
Lidya's father, Gaol, stopped mopping the floor. The puddle of water and blood sloshed across the wood, still in motion, even after the mop had stopped moving. Everyone else around him froze, too, heads slightly turned to peer at the priestess from the corners of their eyes.
Long, flowing braids ran from her scalp to her feet in rivers, braided down with ruby embedded ribbons and diamond encrusted hair clips. They waved to and fro as she moved, bare feet stained dark with blood, both dry and wet. Her elaborate robes never reached her ankles, and were of red and white, the colors of the Priestess of the Vile Church.
Gaol watched as she made her way to the window, where in the distance, she could make out the fenharrow tree that grew just beyond the graveyard. His heart sunk to his knees, having remembered that Lidya visited that area often一but he could do nothing about it now. If she was there, it was too late.
The priestess had observed his expression through the eyes in the back of her skull, cleverly hidden behind a sheer veil of woven silver and crimson thread. She could see out of them just as well as she could the ones in the front, and cleared her throat to address him. He was a devoted member of the church, of the Vile Mother, and even if his daughter and wife were not, he deserved to know of their wellbeing... even if the priestess was not allowed to do so.
"Your daughter is well, Gaol," she said in her permanently soft voice. "As is your wife. The gods have not touched either of them this day."
Gaol could only drop his head, the wispy strands of hair on his bald head barely stopping the light from the window catching his scalp. "Thank you, priestess."
Like a rusty, badly put together machine, the cleaners went back to work, each at their own pace. Clean the floors, scrub the altar, polish the skulls一things they did often but not nearly as well as the night rotation. Gaol's persisting presence, even through the day hours, never ceased to confuse the priestess, but she knew he needed money... She just could not understand why he put up with two shifts of the same thing.
"Because humans are creatures of habit." The priestess's head snapped up quickly, her hind eyes roving around to find the source of the voice. Even the secondary mouth upon her abdomen chattered it's sharp teeth as she looked for the disembodied voice. "Hello, good priestess."
Naicar appeared before her, like a dream, wearing the skin of a long dead human turned beast. He smelled foul, like all dead and rotting things do, and wore a rictus grin that did not seem to fit the corpse he was inhabiting. It was far too wide and stretched the rotted skin to its tearing point.
"My Lord." The priestess bowed, falling to her knees and pressing her hands and arms firmly to the floor. "What will you have of me?"
The servants all stood still, frozen in time. Even Gaol, with his relieved smile, stood firm in his place.
"What will I have of you, indeed?" The corpse echoed, vocal chords shrieking and warbling. Naicar stepped forward, but found himself hindered by a broken leg, the bone snapping forward like a twig. "Perhaps not today, then."
The priestess wanted to kiss the floor, bloody as it was. She had no idea what the god wanted from her, or why he had appeared to her in a dead body--but whatever his first plan was seemed to be involved a fully functional body.
"No matter," he continued, as if the body of a dead person unconforming to his needs was a normal occurence, and waved his hand dismissively. The joint popped and the entire hand fell loose. "Tsk. I need you to send word to the other kingdoms and villages that there is to be a new godling ceremony in two days time; can you do that, priestess?"
The priestess squeezed her eyes shut. It was times like this that she liked to remember her true name. It wasn't priestess this or priestess that. Avola. Her name was Avola. But no one used it anymore. Priestess Avola. She was not her own person. She was a pawn, as the eyes in the back of her head and the mouth across her abdomen would have her remember.
"I don't... My Lord, it will take us days to make the necessary arrangements, not to mention the travel time the letters would have to一"
"Did I say anything about letters?" Naicar toed her head up with a rotting foot. She let him, ignoring the feel of maggots creeping up her cheek and dropping to the floor. "No. You'll do it yourself, even if you're run to your death on those pampered feet."
"My Lord," she protested,"I cannot possibly accept this task alone一"
"You will, or I'll pull your guts out through your throat and end you this very instant... Priestess."
Avola shivered. "Yes, My Lord."
"Good, good. Don't disappoint me... Or you will face the consequences."
And within seconds, everyone was moving again, only to stop to look at their priestess bowing to a corpse ridden with maggots and rot, with tears streaming down her face and the back of her neck.
Priestess. Slave. Whore. Whore to the gods.
She got to her feet, wiping snot from her nose and maggots from her shoulders. It wouldn't make any difference if she didn't disappoint him. The outcome would be the same.
Avola would die, and it would always be in complete servitude.
"For what it's worth," Gaol whispered as she passed by,"I think you were a good priestess."
The mouth across her stomach smiled.
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