Chapter Fourteen

“But I shall not allow my people’s memory to be cast down upon the rocks. The glory of the Golden Sphere reigns eternal.”

 

Six women stood in a semicircle just inside the kitchens, all at attention. Whatever was coming, whatever cosmic abomination a being like God would consider a “visitor,” none of them knew. Instead, they stayed stiff and silent as they waited on God’s orders.

It just stood still, wooden lips closed. No expression. Then, it turned back to the servants.

“My dear sisters,” it said, “I require extra diligence from you today. Our guest will expect a high standard of service, and so I will have five of you in the kitchens, ready to receive any order. Prepare yourselves as best you can. I will not tolerate failure in this matter.”

The six servants nodded, and Leshin silently hoped she wouldn’t have to do much work. She’d prepared and thrown away four entire feasts’ worth of human flesh today already, and she had barely any energy left as it was.

“High sister,” God said. Leshin stood straight. “I would have you accompany me tonight. When our guest arrives, you shall stand by to take its order. You shan’t say a word to it, even if it addresses you, even if it demands an answer. No matter what happens, you will not speak. Do you understand?”

Leshin nodded, unsure whether to sigh in relief that she wouldn’t have to do any extra cooking or to scream in horror at the prospect of spending time with God. Instead, she simply let the numbness wash over her and bathed in its cold embrace.

God snapped its fingers, and Leshin found herself wearing a beautiful, silken servant’s gown, plain white except for a sash across her waist embroidered with gold and silver. With that, God waved for Leshin to follow it down the hall across from the kitchen door. They walked for a while in silence, and Leshin idly listened to the tapping of God’s wooden toes against the cobbles below.

Once they reached the door, Leshin opened it with a curtsy, stepping to the side.

It opened not to the dining hall beyond but instead to a tiny room with pale green walls—too smooth even for plaster—and a single wicker chair with yellow cushions, upon which sat a plain, plain man. Perhaps the plainest man Leshin had ever seen. He had vaguely brown skin; dark, not-quite-wavy hair; and a short goatee that lay somewhere between unkempt and passable. His tunic was beige, his drawers black, and his eyes betrayed nothing aside from a dull amusement. Over his shoulder leaned a thin pole of absurd length, bundled in cloths bound with old ribbons. 

And as he stood to greet her, Leshin soon realized that the man had at least one truly odd feature, which was his unnatural height. Indeed, he stood near twice as tall as her, perhaps even dwarfing God itself. She would compare the two, but God seemed to have disappeared. Another doorway had arrived in the old one’s place, ebony-carved and illuminated with golden leafs.

“Hello,” the stranger said with a kindly smile, bending over a bit to meet her eyes. He waited a moment, expecting her to greet him, but by God’s command, Leshin simply bowed, then gestured for him to follow her through the black-and-gold doorway. As she beckoned him on, she watched as he had to duck just to keep from scraping his head against the glossy white doorframe. As they emerged back in the temple’s stone hallway, she led this odd visitor down to the very end, then waved him through a massive set of oaken doors, lit from the sides by two sconces that emitted an eerie green glow.

It aims to intimidate him, Leshin realized as she walked into the dining room. A wrought-iron chandelier hung just a few feet above the table, bearing candles of emerald flame that cast thin, shapeless shadows across the table. At the head sat God, its face so shadowed that all she could see were its teeth, bared in that same terrible grin. Flanked by its six supposed “guests,” it appeared nothing short of the god it claimed to be.

“Honored Al’Ruon,” the visitor said, casually bowing at the hip, “thank you for indulging my imposition on such short notice.”

God cocked its head, smile twitching. “Welcome, dear Hierophant. There is no imposition. I would never dream of turning away an individual of your… stature.”

The gangling man took his seat at the end of the table, but his chair, designed for God’s slighter stature, proved a tad too small. He grimaced. Shifting a little, he caressed the ancient wooden frame, and for a moment it seemed to glow with a pure, cleansing light.

“Would you mind?” he asked, apparently addressing the chair.

Almost instantly, the wood began to grow, sprouting fresh bark and roots from the ends of its legs, lifting the seat a few inches up. Just enough that the man’s thighs could meet the seat, in fact. With that, the visitor scooted the chair up to the table and rested his wrists on the rim.

“Well, I suppose you have an idea of what to call me,” the man said. “I always do prefer to skip the introductions, Honored Al’Ruon. Although, I’ll say I’m quite curious what your master has told you and your kin of me… While I try to avoid the old fool at the best of times, he has been rather insistent of late.”

Its… master?

Leshin’s whole world rocked.

No… That’s…

Everything went fuzzy. Her ears rang. It didn’t make any sense. God was—God was everything. God was all.

She shook her head, took a deep breath.

Surely he has no ken to whom he speaks, she thought, easing the panic that tore through her mind. After all, what could ever stand above the creator of everything? Of the entire universe? No, this stranger had to be mistaken. Nothing could look down upon God itself.

(that you know of)

Shut up, she thought, pushing that little voice in the back of her mind away. There was only God. There had to be.

And yet, as God sat wreathed in emerald candlelight, at the very center of its seat of power, it wore all the signs of angst. It drummed its fingers on the table, shoulders tensed. Even its back teeth—which, Leshin had come to learn, resided a short way inside its wooden maw, hidden just behind its perpetual grin—clicked in a steady rhythm. Wincing at how stiff God’s face looked, Leshin braced herself for the spray of blood as God smote this foolish man before her very eyes.

“I know… very little,” God said, faltering, to Leshin’s terror. “I have heard your name—or title, I suppose—through the whispers of wisps and spirits of forest and water. With reverence, anticipation, in fact. And in one of my master’s older… communiques, I was instructed to receive this ‘Hierophant’ with a generous meal and report back everything it said. That is all the information I have, unless you care to enlighten me.”

Master… Instructed…

It took all of Leshin’s willpower not to crumble to her knees right there.

“Sort of defeats the purpose if you tell me you’re planning to snitch, doesn’t it?” the unholy visitor said, a charming smile lighting on his mischievous face.

God’s smile returned, and at the sight of it, Leshin let out a long breath, even despite the horrific confirmation that, indeed, something at the very least equal to God existed out there in the universe… or outside of it.

Something God itself has sworn fealty to…

“Then you would consider yourself an adversary?” God said. “My master should have no need for reconnaissance. The Old Lord is all. What use does he have for a foe, Chalzaera?”

The threat was obvious. God leaned forward, its fingers scratching deep gouges into the tabletop with a fury Leshin had never seen in all her years. She cringed, lost in her own mind.

“‘All.’” The stranger, this Hierophant, chuckled.

God leaned ever further forward, an undeniable eagerness in its clawed-out eyes.

“My dear, I do hate to break it to you, but while The Old Lord is everything to most—and most everything to the rest—he is nothing to One.”

Leshin barely had a second to watch a flash of shock flick across God’s face.

Then, the world ended. With a hideous screech, all of creation seemed to

bend

 in

on

itself,

with swirls of light and matter warping into a blurry lens around God’s dumbstruck form for a split second before whipping back into shape. With a silent pop, all particles in the universe and its surrounding neighbors hurtled away from God at the speed of light, forming a solid sphere of force that rapidly expanded, like a cosmic balloon, off into the Void Between All Things.

All

went

black,

but then Leshin blinked. And blinked again. Even if she saw nothing, she still saw. Somehow, she had survived. For a few moments, she glanced around at the silent void surrounding her. Silence. Peace.

And then, in an instant, the world swirled back into place. Within a few moments of its utter annihilation, the room reappeared. No different from before. Had Leshin closed her eyes for even just a minute, she could have missed the entire event.

“My apologies,” God said, its hands trembling. “I have been quite—quite rude. Leshin, dear,” it said, waving a hand.

Snapping back to attention, Leshin marched up beside God and stood at attention, whipping out the notebook from her breast pocket.

“My sisters are excellent chefs, Hierophant,” God said with a nervous laugh. “Order whatever you wish, and they will prepare it to your specifications.”

It horrified Leshin to see God act this way. Monstrous as it was, powerful as it was… could Leshin even call it God anymore? No, this was the creator of everything! Everything! Had she not just witnessed this creature obliterate and recreate the entire universe around itself in no more than a few seconds? What could stand above a being capable of that?The idea of God, its very definition, “that than which nothing greater can be conceived,” weighed so heavily on Leshin’s body and soul every moment of every day. How could she even consider throwing it all away?

But then, what does “greater” even mean?

“Ah, hello there. Leshin, was it?” the stranger asked, breaking Leshin out of her stupor. He looked entirely undaunted, as though God’s omnipotent display had counted for nothing. Instead, he seemed far more interested in speaking to her than the deity across the table. For a few seconds, he waited for Leshin’s reply, but as per her orders she said nothing.

Disappointed, the stranger glanced Leshin up and down with an inscrutable expression. He turned back to God. “This one would be your prime tribute, then?”

God—or the thing that called itself God—winced.

“Nonhuman candidates,” the stranger said with a piteous smile. “To avoid provoking your… urges?”

“Yes, they can be quite distracting,” God said, its lips twitching. “Leshin, dear, do fetch us something to drink, will you? You simply must try some of the local distillates, Hierophant—my Kinfolk are quite brilliant gourmets.”

“I’m sure, my lady,” the stranger said, nodding with a kindly smile. But right before she turned away to leave, Leshin caught his eye for just a moment. Despite looking so ordinary, the stranger’s face had turned dark and intense for a split second. What she saw in his gaze was sympathetic, but behind it lay a quiet rage. Either way, orders were orders, and Leshin scurried off to the kitchen.

As Leshin burst into the hall, she rushed over to Ilaki, who stood just outside the kitchen door holding a cup of water and a hot towel, both of which Leshin gratefully took.

“Orders?” Ilaki asked.

“Just… Just drinks for now; the best we have.”

With a nod, Ilaki sprinted off through the kitchen, turning left and bolting down the stairs to the cellar. Leshin waited for several moments, counting each agonizing second she spent adjusting her white tunic and wiping the cold sweat off her face. It was a mercy when Ilaki returned with a bottle of Okolehao, one that Shina had been aging for some vague span of time that could have been a month or several years. Time meant nothing.

Ilaki embraced Leshin in a tender hug, and Leshin trembled in her arms. But she refused to let it linger, and soon enough she found herself facing the door.

Say nothing, say nothing, say nothing, say nothing, say nothing.

Leshin walked back into the dining room.

“—through this line of questioning, I just don’t see the relevance…” God turned around, watching Leshin enter, flashing an irritated sneer.

“The relevance, Honored Al’Ruon, lies in your intrusion into the Third Sphere, but that is hardly my—ah,” the man said, noticing Leshin, “yes. And then there is the matter of your… attendants. This one clearly understands us. You have educated your servants in the Tongue of the Wills? I’m certain you are aware of the—”

“All my Kinfolk know it,” God said, interrupting him. “What use would I have for a people who speak a tongue foreign to me?”

“My dear, you speak a tongue foreign to yourself. Have you—”

“There was nothing before,” God snapped, and the world shook once more, nearly forcing Leshin to her knees for the second time that day. “There is only God.”

“Indeed…” the stranger said, expressionless. He turned to Leshin, and that intense edge behind his gaze returned. “I’ll say, then, you do allow your master’s candidates to step awfully close to these… friends of yours.”

He gestured to the six statues of incomprehensible visage that sat between God and himself on both sides of the table. Leshin accidentally glanced at the one with swirling, green patterns on its mask, always seated on the right hand of God. It always seemed to (call) steal her gaze away from her master, but she paid the price every time. As always, she had to fight back tears as the veins around her eyes tensed, ready to burst and rain blood down her cheeks yet again.

“I recognize the isolation of your position,” the Hierophant continued, “but you must know that leaving Chalzic Fountainheads to sit in the open practically invites tragedy. I can scarcely imagine what might become of your candidates were they to even brush up against one. At best, utter annihilation. I doubt even you could recover their souls… to your master’s disappointment, I imagine.”

He smirked, pointedly locking eyes with Leshin and rapping his knuckles against his chair. “After all, only one who shelters their mortal face with blessed endelwood may inherit—”

God shot to its feet. “Shut. Up.”

Leshin finally collapsed to the ground, struck by the force of her master’s voice, drawn instinctively to cower. The bottle rolled under the table. She pulled herself back upright just as she noticed God glaring at her, its puppet-like hands clenched so tightly that its wooden palm began to crack.

“Oh dear,” the stranger said to Leshin. “Are you alright?”

She said nothing, she said nothing, she said nothing, she said nothing, she said nothing.

“I will not have you corrupt my sister with your cryptic whispers, Hierophant. I have my reasons for allowing my sisters to choose death—and I will not tolerate you goading them into suicide! You have made a mockery of me in my own home, and I will not stand for it! Why have you come? To turn my family against me?”

The Hierophant turned back to God and interlaced his fingers, stone-faced.

God seethed, hissing through clenched teeth. “Answer me, Hierophant!”

The man sighed. “My lady, I have come for the same reason I go anywhere. I arrive where I arrive, that is all. But if you would do me a favor, now that I am here: when the Harvest comes to call for your… sacrifices, I would ask that you pass them a letter to your master. Correspondence from an old acquaintance of mine. A time and a place. He figured I would be an appropriate messenger in this matter—third party and all.”

“You came to… deliver a letter?” God said, its flash of fury dulling even as it stood there with its fists balled.

“Of course,” he said. “What else would I come here for?”

“I… I don’t know… why…” God stuttered, entirely failing to confine its obvious distress. Was it trying to keep up appearances? Now? After everything this man had taken from it without even lifting a finger?

“Yes, well, I rarely have any say in where I end up,” he said as he set on the table a small slip of parchment, aged and folded into a note sealed with wax. “Nor where I will be summoned next.”

“Then… your business is concluded?”

“That’s it, yes,” he said, standing up and retrieving his bundled-up pole from the floor.

“You’re an… errand boy?” it said, numb.

The man shrugged. “I’m no one of any particular significance.”

“Then what is stopping me from rending you from existence?” God said, leaning forward and planting its palms on the table with a feral snarl.

The man smiled, a tired look in his eyes.

“Well, I suppose you can try.”

God said nothing after the man left. All things considered, he hardly even stayed ten minutes. He didn’t even have a glass of Okolehao. Leshin completely forgot to serve it, having dropped the bottle and never retrieved it. Instead, God just sat in silence. Hours passed with Leshin unable to leave nor move, as it hadn’t dismissed her yet.

The room slowly chilled, the candles and the fireplace having long burned themselves out. And as much as Leshin had dreaded what God might do to her in its fury, its silence terrified her that much more.

Everything had changed.

Leshin didn’t know what to think about the words her master’s unwanted visitor had uttered, but one way or another, she would never see her master in the same light. Despite its name and visage, its strength and its cruelty, it was not and could never again be God to her.

Only a monster.

And in the end, hours upon hours after the man had left, The beast simply waved her away. No torment, no demands of praise, nothing.

She walked back to the servant’s quarters to find Ilaki and Shina pacing back and forth just behind the door. The others just sat on their beds, quiet but obviously agitated. Leshin just stared at them, empty.

“Leshin,” Ilaki said, “I’m so sorry… I wish I could have—”

“It didn’t do anything to me,” Leshin muttered. “I just stood there.”

“What?” Shina said, glancing over to Ilaki. “When you didn’t come to ask for dinner…”

“It’s meant to be God,” Leshin whispered, (it will pay in blood) her whole body shaking. “It didn’t even…”

Leshin slumped onto her bed, pulling a blanket up over herself and huddling underneath it, quivering.

The two attendants glanced at each other, and Ilaki sat on the edge of the bed—Leshin could just barely make out her blurry outline through the sheer fabric. “What was the visitor like?” Ilaki asked. “What was it?”

“A man,” she murmured. “Tall… of the same kin as the prisoner in the basement. Middle-aged, dark eyes… Looked like nobody at all. But he wasn’t—he was… He made it angry. Like I’ve never seen before.”

“What did it do to him?” Shina asked in a grim, hushed voice.

“Nothing… just… let him go. He terrified it.”

The sisters and attendants of God stared at her in awe. She simply rolled over and pulled her pillow over her head. And her mind turned in circles—oh did it ever turn. Over and over, orbiting one word: the one the stranger had called the beast that had enslaved her.

(it will weep it will burn it will die)

Whatever God, this “Al’Ruon,” truly was, Leshin (refused) to let it live.

 

Nothing will ever be the same again.