Luck walked slowly through the street, his hood up. The wind carried the ghost of a scream that eerily sounded like Lieutenant Vernon. He knew it wasn’t really. The somnleaf left him numb and full of dread for when it finally ran out.
He needed sleep to recover what was left of his magic. He needed sleep to get Vernon’s face out of his head.
He took the back alleys, knowing the homunculi couldn’t follow. Even with their compasses, it would be a nightmare to navigate, but his feet followed a trail that he couldn’t place.
Rain crescendoed around him.
He was sure the gods were making it obvious the man still cried.
He ducked into a narrow alley that brought him to a rundown shrine. Lady Mahala would pray after something bad would happen. She, like all the other Pomolish, believed fervently in God-Nothos’ promised world. He wasn’t sure if Tibalt Kinderum believed the same.
What happened to magi after they died? Would he and his brothers get to go there too?
Luck stepped inside. It was only a one-room wooden hall with a giant hole in the leaking roof, letting light and rain equally pour through onto a weather-worn statue of Nothos amidst a field of papertears.
Under one of the dryer spots, was a dark-haired woman in a wooden fox mask being shoved against a timber beam by a large man, dressed in an expensive coat. Dangling from the lapels were old brooches that screamed highborn. Perhaps a lordling.
“Think about it, Hosana! They don’t care about you!” the lordling hissed.
The woman looked much frailer next to him; with bandaged hands, frayed hair and worn, her dress a washed-out green with a knockoff of Lady Mahala’s dragonfly coat on her shoulders.
Despite that, Luck could hear her mutter “Get lost.”
“We can take care of you. Get you out of this dump! Fix up your face—”
She shoved him. “Get lost!”
It didn’t do much. He grasped the woman by the shoulders, but Luck teleported between them and tore him away.
“Wh-Who–?” the lordling spluttered.
“Get lost,” Luck said.
Luck had height and muscle over the lordling. His black eyes reflected nothing, his half-mask unmistakable. The lordling fled the shrine shouting back, “Think about it, Hosana!” as he slammed the door shut.
There were faint whispers. A small crowd of children were hiding behind the altar, all now peeking out.
“It’s alright now, little loves, let me see your faces,” the woman said softly. The children all rushed out and huddled around her. She glanced up at Luck. “Thank you. We’re just holding a little service. You’re welcome to stay.”
Her voice sounded familiar in a way Luck disliked. He pushed back the thought of who it reminded him of. He instead bowed his head and stepped away from the small congregation. “I was just waiting out the rain. Are you alright?”
“Yes, thanks to you. Here, at least have a warm drink…” Behind her rattled a steaming kettle full of warm milk and a large bowl of pistachio biscuits. She provided him with a chipped mug and started portioning out the rest to the other children.
Luck took it and waited by the door. He pushed out his compass to make sure the lordling stayed gone.
The masked woman turned to her congregation. “Now, little loves. Drink up, be warm. Where were we? Ah yes… We’ve no need to be sad for our lost sister. God-Nothos will care for her now.”
“She drowned. Agura’s got ‘er,” one of the children mumbled.
“Not even the deepest depths of Lord Agura’s drowned kingdom can stop Nothos,” said the masked woman. “His moonbeams will catch her soul when the night is right, and she will live again.”
“Can Nothos beat up Agura? Make it all stop?” asked another.
The masked woman topped off their mugs.
“That’s not how God-Nothos does things, not after what his previous incarnations did,” she said. “Each new god was born out of violence, and no one knows what our new god will bring. Each of them were selfish and wanted different things for us ikka… our only salvation is found in Nothos’ promised world, found over the Golden sea.”
A ragged girl bitterly hunched over her cup. “Maybe he should.”
“The birth of a new god brings drastic change. Do you know how much the abyssal plain around us shifts with a new incarnation?” the masked woman chided gently. “Do you know what this world was before the gods?
“Nothing. Just an all encompassing abyss where nothing existed, but Serka. They grew lonely in their nothingness and plucked out their endless eyes and breathed life into them, turning them into stars. They fastened the worlds around them, studding the abyss with the universe. Mighty cosmic beasts filled their worlds; a rich garden full of dragons, fey and leviathans.
“But that wasn’t enough. Serka’s beasts were… immortal ornaments, and they fell out of love with them. In their despair, they ripped out their own heart, hoping they would leave this endless, timeless abyss… But they didn’t. Serka was forever in their abyss, and they still existed but they also reincarnated into a new god.
“Ikkurum was sympathetic to their previous self’s despair. So she borned children from her own flesh and blood to worship Serka and sing their praises. These new beings are the children of Ikkurum, also known as ikka or man. Ikka grew bountiful harvests of food, made wine, farmed honey as offerings to Serka. They sang songs of praises and danced all night. They were more artistic and sensitive than Serka’s wild animals, which delighted Serka. But did the cycle of rebirths stop there?
“Serka loved the ikka so much, they wished to take some of their favourites deeper into their abyss. Ikkurum stopped them, a fight broke out and Ikkurum was killed.
“The third god, Agura was born. He walked along the world to see why Serka could not love their children, and how to mediate the fight between his older siblings on the ikka. And he soon found his answer. It is because life lasts forever Serka didn’t see them as precious and grew bored quickly of their constancy. Only when something could bloom briefly, and change rapidly, would it be more beautiful and cared for, as the time spent with it would be short.
“So Agura dug giant pits of intricate tunnels beyond the Golden Sea, beneath the oceans. There he built his own kingdom. He would slay life at random, and drag them to the darkness. Life was now finite and their souls would descend into the abyss that is Agura’s kingdom.
“Ikkurum wept hails of salt when mourning their dead, their tears scattered into the oceans, causing the waters to forever be salty. She tore Agura’s soul out in her rage. It did little to quell her temper, and as her heart darkened, so did the ikka she made — filling us with poisonous sin. She wants to love us, but we are imperfect, broken things that continue to fuel her bitterness.
“Next was Darlgin the bold warrior. He gave man the power to wield to magic. From magic, they created fire and iron. He encouraged war amongst the stars, beast, ikka and even the sea and wind. He brought chaos in the universes. Solar systems exploded and vanished, lightning was born on the battlefield between wind and sea, and many of Serka’s children died. He was eventually slain by his own half-ikka, traitorous, backstabbing, bastard, ugly, fucking ungrateful piece of shit—!”
“Hosana?” a child whispered.
The masked woman’s head was bowed, the friendly smiling fox face now uncomfortably sinister in the thick tension. She took a sharp breath.
“Sorry, sorry…” The woman’s tone wavered. “The point is… every god has brought such cataclysms with every rebirth… Nothos doesn’t want to force change, but let us do that on our own in our time. The gods have waited before time itself to see us grow, what’s another few centuries?”
The rain slowed down. Luck peered outside.
“Sir, would you like another cup before you go?” the woman called out to him.
He bowed and left his mug on one of the pews. “No thank you, miss. I’ll be on my way now.”
The children stared at him, catching his black eyes under his hood. They whispered to each other, huddling closer to the masked woman. They were right to be afraid. He fled, still hearing Lieutenant Vernon scream.
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