Immortal Progeny (Fragile Gods Book 1)

by Philippa Ballantine

  The enemies of Serey, or the conquered free peoples, were nothing but meat for the making of progeny and homunculi—though it was bought with screams and agony. Progeny were usually made from animals, homunculi from people, but that was not a hard and fast rule. As Vervain stumbled her way down the stairs, she was confronted on each side by sights displaying how truly twisted the practice of the 'faithful' were.

  Hands reached through bars, twisted faces peered out of her, torn and abused bodies writhed in pain as Vervain passed. If that was what belief created, she was glad not to believe. Whenever she paused, to stroke a hand or whisper a word of encouragement, the butcher swore and pushed her on.

  She harbored thoughts of escape when she was captured, but weeks of being denied the basics of life—water, food, even decent air—wore her down. Just staying upright was the best she could do. They passed the confinements for prisoners, and the stairs passed the working bowels of the butchers.

  Vervain saw many things in her life, terrible things humanity did to itself, but this place heady with the odor of blood was the worst. As she paused to retch ineffectually, she noted one thing: the priests of Serey would not need to purchase any pieces for homunculi from the pits owned by the Accord of Damnation. Their success at conquering the free villages and other temple-cities meant they had all they needed.

  Vervain stumbled on, wishing for a moment for blindness. She tried to hold onto the tenants of her training, tried to remember what she'd been taught, but it was hard when her senses were assailed, and she had so few reserves to call on.

  The stairs and she traveled on, thankfully away from the cutting, and at last to where the stitchers worked. Vervain felt as though she forgot to breathe as her eyes took in the vast cavern full of workers stitching together homunculi.

  "So many," she whispered to herself. Never had she heard of a temple creating so huge an array of homunculi at one time. Suddenly her own predicament didn't seem that important. What could they be for? her curiosity asked, rearing up anew. Vervain's own people, the witches as the theists called them, could never be as much of a threat as to warrant so many creations.

  She was numb as the butcher nudged her on again. A terrible grin flashed across his face. The stairs continued down, deep into the home of Serey, earth-sister, and apparently, deity of all terror. The final room was where the igniters worked. Here, the theists breathed life into their creations.

  Vervain stood looking out over that final room, and her heart sank. Lines of priests and priestesses laid hands on the broken flesh cobbled together. The ranks of human-like figures were jerking to half-life and then shambling from the room to some unseen destination.

  "Now do you understand, you godless heathen?" The voice at her back delivered the lines with such cheerfulness that for a moment Vervain thought it might have been some kind of new hallucination on her part.

  When she turned around it was to see the plump figure in the doorway pushing back her hood. She wore the beige robes of a priestess of Serey, but her face was that of hundreds of kindly grandmothers. Vervain swayed slightly on her feet, unsure what to make of this person.

  "I am Gentian, Stonekeeper of Serey," the woman said stepping forward to stand beside her. She looked out over the igniters at their work with the air of a matron at her loom. "As you can see, soon I will be the High Priestess of the One God."

  Vervain's body ran cold. She had heard such assertions from different theists at different times, but never so underscored by the actual possibility it could happen. The cult of Serey had been eating away at smaller temples for generations, but in the last few years they took over several of their main rivals nearby. They also made considerable inroads against the free people villages, which was where the Zoeker studied and lived. As long as there were no theists in those small settlements, her people would train, live, and protect the inhabitants. They had not counted on the temple-city of Providence growing so strong so quickly.

  Vervain fixed Gentian with a sharp look, taking in the shadows underneath the older woman's eyes. "It doesn't look as if you will last long enough to see it, old woman."

  She expected a backhand slap from the theist or at least her butcher, but the woman merely let out a dog-like bark of a laugh. "It is coming. Really does it matter if I do or not?"

  In Vervain's opinion, mortality was the only thing that kept humans sane. Those with no fear of death were sure to be the most dangerous of creatures.

  "A fanatic, then," she said with a sigh.

  Gentian's hand locked under Vervain's soft throat, jerking her head around. Strange, she had thought she had no more pain or fear left in her—but there it was. The Stonekeeper's smile did not look nearly as friendly so close up. "The only people worth anything in this world are fanatics, foolish girl! Without them, humans would be stuck in the rut of servitude to their baser instincts and nothing would ever change."

  Vervain looked into her eye, feeling her breath being squeezed from her. She knew if she knocked the old woman on her rear it would end with the spear in her gullet. It would be satisfactory, but then her questions would remain unanswered, and despite everything, Vervain was still curious about what was happening in the temple-city.

  She kept her silence, locked eyes with the Stonekeeper, and waited to see what would happen. Gentian flinched, and released her with a click of her tongue. "The young," she said, in a cheerful yet somehow annoyed tone, "they always think they know everything. Perhaps it is my role to educate you."

  For the briefest of moments, Vervain considered asking about the woman who visited her wearing her face, the one who looked as shocked as she was. Something gave her pause though; some part of her brain warned her dire consequences might be in store for both of them should Gentian learn of their meeting. The Stonekeeper wanted Vervain to be helpless and ignorant, so the younger woman decided to play it to the hilt. "Then please do. Why have you not already turned me into pieces for your homunculi? Am I not good enough for the high and mighty Serey?"

  "You know exactly what you are," Gentian said with an affable shrug, "and as soon as I saw you, I knew."

  So the woman with her face was known to the Stonekeeper. A hollow pit felt like it opened up in her stomach.

  The old woman poked her with one finger, as if testing a rise of dough. "I didn't know you survived the fall though...I thought there were only two left."

  Despite the fear gathering in her stomach, Vervain felt curiosity start to take shape along with it. "Two of what?"

  Gentian swept her arm out over the vista of flesh being molded and people studiously working at their tasks. "I have so many who will jump to my command, and the temple of Serey is expanding all the time, but there is one thing I am more proud of than all that." Her cheerful eyes fixed on Vervain's face. "A little girl who calls me mother and doesn't know a thing about me."

  Vervain took a breath. The Stonekeeper saw the resemblance, but she didn't seem to know the two of them met. It was probably better to keep it that way. "That's nice," Vervain said in a soft voice, wondering if she was about to step into a trap.

  "You are quite possibly the greatest danger to her." Gentian grabbed Vervain's chin once more and frowned as she examined it closely. "Tell me, do you know anything of your parents?"

  The idea had been bubbling in Vervain's mind; perhaps the woman was a relative, a cousin or a sister even. She answered, as honesty didn't seem to contain any dangers. "Nothing. I was adopted by our teacher, and he told me the woman who gave birth to me didn't want me. Many of our kind are abandoned because of our talents."

  Usually theists—at least those she'd been able to have conversations with that didn't involve swords—would at that point say she was 'touched by such-and-such god' or 'it was fate' her mother gave her up. Gentian, one of the most powerful theists in Rahvas, did not.

  In her blue eyes there was no burning flame of conviction, only the determined gaze of one who has had a taste of power and would not give it up for anyone. Vervain fin
ally understood, she was a fanatic, but not for a god. For the Stonekeeper, Serey was merely a means to an end.

  "So, no memories of any family at all?" Gentian probed, her fingers tightening painfully on Vervain's chin.

  "None." It wasn't entirely true. The fuzzy recollections she sometimes dreamt were not necessarily memories, but she hoped they were. Warmth. An embrace that seemed to go right through her. A burning kiss on her forehead.

  "What did the witches teach you?" One of Gentian's fingernails pressed so hard into her skin a thin trickle of blood ran down Vervain's neck. It wasn't enough blood to do anything with, she thought, though at that point she would have grabbed hold of any opportunity.

  "Akasha," Vervain gasped out, as the room began to swim in her vision. "You'd call it essence from the gods, but it is merely a natural occurrence we train long and hard to control."

  "Not that. Tell me of the other power in you." The Stonekeeper gave her a little shake. "Something wakened in you as I battled the heathen progeny. My igniters down there felt it like a flame taking root in a homunculus. What is it?"

  Vervain caught a glimpse of the workers below in her peripheral vision. They didn't really seem that bothered, but that could just be because Gentian was above them. She didn't look like the type who put up with slacking.

  "I don't know what you mean...I'm just a witch like many of the others you have carved up and used." The fate of her colleagues was one that gave her nightmares, but standing before that eagle-eyed woman, Vervain began to wonder if that was really the worst the theists had to offer.

  Gentian nodded. "I believe you, at least when you say you don't know what it is, but I think you are lying to my face about not feeling it." She nodded to the butcher, and he moved forward with surprising swiftness for his size.

  The butcher wrapped his arms around Vervain, clamping one at her waist and one at her throat. Air suddenly became in very short supply. Even if she had been well fed and rested, she would not have been able to resist him, and without access to akasha she didn't have nearly enough defenses. Suddenly, Vervain wished she listened to Setna and studied unarmed combat. It was just at the time she felt her mastery of the akasha much more pressing.

  With the theist close to cutting off her throat, she regretted that choice.

  Gentian was at their side, and she had a small silver knife in her hand. In the half-light of the laboratory, it gleamed. Vervain's teachers looked down on the theists for their small-minded reliance on faith, but they agreed on one thing: They were complete masters of the manipulation of blood and flesh.

  "Since you are such sticklers for experimentation," Gentian said with a certain amount of spite in her voice, "I think you will appreciate what we are about to do."

  Vervain suddenly found a reserve of energy she didn't know she had. She bucked and wriggled in the butcher's grasp as Gentian brought the knife down towards her arm. Her eyes were wide and her pulse racing. She thought she'd be braver in face of the theist horrors, and a part of her felt guilty she was failing them so miserably.

  The bright pain brought everything into focus as Gentian sliced across the soft skin of Vervain's inner arm. The butcher twisted her elbow hard, forcing the stream of crimson blood to scatter on the floor like fallen petals. The Stonekeeper closed her eyes and muttered something to herself that was impossible to make out.

  A surge of sensation ran up Vervain's spine. It was something she never felt before and it took her moment to process it was something between pain and pleasure. Her skin ran cold while heat built in her body. She let out a muffled scream because she could feel her carefully crafted control leaving her along with the blood from her body. It was pouring out of her, and she had no way to stop it.

  As much as she scrambled to hold onto control, and failed, the blood continued to spill onto the dusty floor of the cave. It wasn't that much really, but to Vervain it felt like a flood of water leaving her. She watched it impact with the dirt in a strange fog. The world had no hold on her anymore. All that mattered was the blood, the dirt, and the brightness buried in the place in between.

  It didn't surprise her when the curl of green erupted from the ground, the whirl of a fern frond in that improbable place. Watered with her blood, it sprang into being, moving to unseen winds and growing towards her as if she were the sun itself.

  "Impossible," Vervain muttered to herself, even as the bright green leaves unfurled from the stem at about the height of her waist.

  Gentian's eyes widened, and even the butcher holding Vervain let out a grunt as if he'd been hit in the gut. After a moment to recover, the Stonekeeper bent and examined the fern as if it were some kind of precious gem. "Something new from nothing," the prisoner heard her murmur to herself.

  "It's not...it's not," Vervain whispered, though she had no idea why she was trying to deny the reality of what happened. She felt weakness rush through her veins, which only a moment before were full of energy. Vitality was apparently only a fleeting possibility to her at the moment.

  The Stonekeeper turned over Vervain's arm. It was as smooth and unblemished as before. For a moment it looked like Gentian might cut again, but in the end she sheathed her knife inside the belt under her robe.

  She smiled at her captive once more, a sad mockery of grandmotherly concern washing over her face. "All along we thought you children were nothing more than filthy heathens, but now look at you. It just goes to show Serey works in strange and unknowable ways.

  She jerked her head towards the butcher. "Take her down to the cells in the laboratory. I must meditate on exactly how to use this gift our goddess has sent us."

  The look on her face terrified Vervain, but she felt unconsciousness tugging at her relentlessly. Her eyes barely stayed open, and she didn't have any strength to resist the tug of exhaustion. For once it seemed the best thing was to give up for a little while at least.

  Chapter Four

  Mother or Not

  "You go too far." His fellow chimera’s voice, edged with disdain, was the first thing Croombe heard as he folded the world around him and appeared back in the cave.

  The spines slipped once more inside him, to whatever terrifying place they came from, and for a moment he felt like a man rather than a thing. It was a fleeting impression however.

  She who waited for him—mother, creator, tormentor—made sure of that.

  He turned his head carefully, glancing up at the vaulted, unnaturally flat cavern walls, which gleamed bright green from some tormented algae that grew there. That too was his mother's creation, probably one she mastered before moving into him.

  He could only wish to have its blissful ignorance. Croombe didn't want to turn, but he felt her eyes on him, and it was not a sensation he could bear for long.

  The Rainbow Queen was getting some more alterations. The flesh of the dead she wore sometimes rotted and fell away. At her feet knelt a young male stitcher, trembling and half-naked while working on a patch in the small of her back. Her moving hair twisted around her shoulders, clamping, brushing his flesh, and making soft sucking noises like the deep sea creatures it once belonged to.

  Her face though remained as it had been since that guardsman burned her with a toppled temple brazier before flinging her into the abyss. Only her winged progeny saved her that day. She had not had her face fixed, a reminder of the need for vengeance.

  The stitcher was shaking as he worked, and with good reason. She was not known for being a good patient. Still, the Rainbow Queen was not what she been—once her name alone brought men low. Now she relied on a captured priest to do her stitching, while she was only queen of a damp cavern and her ramshackle creations that didn't even deserve the name of homunculi.

  Too much rot had set in, and it got worse with every passing year. The darkness of the dead she stitched into her skin twisted her. To be chimera was to battle that madness every day, but it was in their bones to claim godhood.

  Croombe was the height of her achievement in that regard. Still,
he wouldn't be chided; he wasn't some mortal child coming to her with scraped knees, nor one of her terrible creatures.

  "And you," Croombe said, crossing his arms, "forget I am not one of your failed experiments. I am chimera like you, so by our very definition there is no such thing as 'too far'."

  Her odd-colored eyes, gleamed in the green half-light as she twisted about to glare at him. The poor stitcher paused in his work, a tear leaking out of the corner of his eye. "You risk a great deal making yourself known to her. Serey Stonekeeper is no fool, and if she catches you even I won't be able to save you." She gestured him up to her, and after a moment he complied.

  "I realize that." He stared right back at her. "The girl is worth it...whatever she is."

  She grinned; her teeth filed to points were as hazardous as her fingertips. "So many years watching and still no answers. Perhaps you should let me have a little taste..."

  "Whatever she is, she is mine." Croombe emphasized his claim by letting the spines show, just a little, reminding her of his own power. "You made your claim on one of the others."

  The Rainbow Queen was flashy, demanding, and full of herself since she had come so close to attaining actual godhood. The truth was, she had fallen, and it had been he who claimed an interest in the one girl who showed promise. The one she claimed was lost to the Zoekers, while the third, the mark of the Unseen, was traded away into the pits to become nothing but parts.

  She tilted her head and smiled. "But I am your mother, dear Croombe, therefore what you have is mine."

  He shuddered, the recollection of the Void sucking at his mind and body overwhelming his thoughts. She might have spat a baby into the world, but she had also laid it down too close to the Void. It entered him and made him a creature of change, he knew that, but he was also fully aware it had not made him a god. He was not yet as mad as his mother.