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Description

Next Chapter: I'm the one whose throne is vacant

Previous Chapter: The Butcher of Arowan and a Girl's Winter Touch

Beginning Chapter: I am the one who see's uncertain futures

  Pain, exquisite, uncompromising, cruel, and relentless. Morta heard the call like all sisters of the immaculate father. She knew this price well, for it was her own set when she was a child.

    Making the sign of the coal and cross should have been enough, but not for Morta. She hated things so simple because it was boring. That’s why sharp, delicate utensils that cut with precision, accuracy, and ease wouldn’t do.

    No, she demanded a jagged, rusty blade because it was dull and took effort to carve into your flesh.

    Those were her disciples, the men and women who went the extra mile. There is no room for delicate maids who wince before the needle falls.

    Morta’s flock smiled as they drew the blade across their breasts, drawing a masterpiece in red curled flesh.

    Careful now, scream, and you will be the first to die.

    There were two who demanded her attention—one from the metal forest and the other from Faulcetti’s gorge.

    The first was a graying man who shook his fist to the sky, wincing as he drew the blade across his chest; a failure.

    Morta bit her tongue, the water around turning bright red.

    “The law is the law.” She grinned from ear to ear. “I know exactly what to do with you.”

    Death, her mantle, her cloak, her profession so sweat. Still, she wasn’t in the mood to deal with two idiots in one day.

    After all, Nona wasn’t busy.

    She passed the message along, a perfect fit for her baby sister. Morta could feel the pressure building as Nona tore the covers from her bed, stamping her feet. An unfitting display for a dutchess, but not for a wetnurse.

    “That’s what you want to be, isn’t it?” Morta mouthed the words, her knuckles turning white pressed to her palm. “You will reach your potential even if I have to drag you by the hair.”

    Morta knew Nona would be a problem by the feel of her heart. Soft, gentle, a scarlet blush across the tissue as she laid it upon the metal crib. Decima was jealous, but that was before her first bleed giving birth to their brother. Ever since, they have worked to shape their baby sister.

    Dresses to make her bold, a schedule to make her honest, and tasks to harden her heart.

    Yes, Nona, who sheltered the stillborn and let the Gnatu suckle from her breast, would become a merchant of death.

    Fitting, but would her heart be able to draw the scissor and cut the line free? Of course, she could.

    This man, who shuttered from the kiss of pitted metal, wanted his wife dead, his pregnant wife.

    Morta smiled.

    Even innocent Nona couldn’t escape the rage in her heart as it is for all ilk of the endless storm.

    “Why, Morta?” Nona whispered. “Why are you doing this to me?”

    It’s your turn, sister.

    “Morta, is there no other way?” Came a distant voice from Decima, who yawned, resting control away from their brother.

    No, there isn’t

    Decima, too had grown soft in a way. Unable to give Nona the extra push. Not that she blamed her, the siblings were so close.

    They were only born hours apart, but Decima bonded to their sister like mother and child.

    She remembered them together, clasped in each other’s arms Decima pressed close to hear the soft thrum of Nona’s heart.

    “I love you, sister.” She said over and over.

    Did Decima even notice when she bled, dyeing the crib red? Did she even remember to push when their brother tore free from her body, binding their legs together? It must have been horrifying, it must have been painful, but Decima only smiled.

    Morta blushed; I love you too, sister.

Her family were the only ones that could get her to leave the liquid palisade. Morta drained the water, pushed past the glass, and embraced them as the wind kissed her cheek.

    That’s when she found the nick in Decima’s scarlet line, the thread of life, the immortal gift from their immaculate father.

    Their brother had betrayed them all.

    “How dare you harm my sister!”

    Her mind is fractured now, unable to remember her breakfast.

    “Why did I do this to myself?” She whispered in Morta’s ear, trembling like a baby in her arms.

    Morta reached out with a quivering hand to lay upon their brother’s head, knuckles white, face red.

    Next time you hurt her, I will kill you myself.

    Morta took a deep breath, the water filling her empty chest. She has lived in the liquid palisade ever since the immaculate father took her lungs. Water was heavier than air, and she could feel it filling the empty cavity, dense, wet, and warm.

    It helped alleviate asphyxiation.

    It was her fault, of course. Morta intruded upon her father's domain rewriting the eighteenth peninsula's history with blade and claw. Yes, she was angry at her daughter, angry at her sister, but she couldn't deny her own actions.

    Nona dared her too; she was upset at having killed another knave.

    “Why do you make me do it!” She yelled, tears streaming down her cheeks. “My heart aches, don’t you care!”

    “You have to be stronger than this, Nona.”

    “What of you?” She pointed. “You force the scissor on me and yet never use the needle.”

    A solid accusation.

    Morta was born with four scissors; she gave one to Decima and buried the other close to Nona’s heart so she could feel the sharp edge with each beat, never to sleep again.

    Until that day, she had never even thought to use the needle and spool. Why transform? Why build up when your job is to shed mortal coils, their souls seeking transition?

    Morta did so daily, cutting threads of men, women, and children.

    She came upon the crib of a child left face down the parents lost in a drunken stupor. She walked with the woman balancing upon a cliff and a man with a blade to his throat.

    How could she be so blind? The scissors were quick, painless, anti-climactic, boring.

    Morta hasn’t used them since; they rust beneath her wrists.

    Oh, she still brings them out. She did so now, letting the blades cut through her skin. She loved the scarlet pain and the sharp, sudden gasp as the tissue parted. A moment’s pleasure, nothing more.

    The needle, though, the needle could do so much more.

    Nona had opened her eyes, and Morta spent the next century piecing together an engine of demise, a tapestry of metal and fire.

    The Gnatu helped her, of course. The immaculate father’s tools brought materials from every age.

    After all, they were good at finding things.

    “We serve.” They said, dropping the metal shunts and copper wire.

    Of course, you do; you don’t have a choice.

    They brought skulls of great beasts, engines that belched fire, metal wheels sharper than any blade, scales harder than steel, and stacked gears as high as the heavenly towers. Morta and her husband used them to make the foulest instrument ever devised by Gods and man.

    The Clockwork Dread was born.

    Morta used herself as the heart, binding her legs and arms as she saw once done to her sister. It drained the blood from her and caused even she to cry out, but, oh, was the suffering worth it.

    Steam shot out; lights flickered, teeth chattered, disk-like blades spun and sparked as the engine rumbled.

    The harbinger of demise grinned from ear to ear.

    In Morta’s absence, men tasted longevity with death fleeting and uncertain, an existence rife with suffering, starvation, and grief.

    Those were the dark ages, and they went out with a bang.

    The Clockwork Dread spilled upon the eighteenth peninsula like a snake wrapping around the planet and squeezing until the shape warped.

    Soon, the tides receded, the mountains crumbled, and cities fell as engines torched the western woods and circular blades carved into the crust, the land bleeding fire.

    Men and women finally knew death within the iron maiden of its gut, boiled, smashed, carved, and split.

    Morta ushered in the fourth mass extinction of the eighteenth peninsula.

    Father was furious.

    While death was natural, Morta had unintentionally destroyed the kingdom of Velia and disrupted the grand design.

    As punishment, the immaculate machine split the Clockwork Dread in two and tore Morta’s lungs from her chest.

    She has lived in the liquid palisade ever since, gulping water like a fish on land.

    Nona wept that day, wiping tears upon her blouse.

    “I thought you were better than that.” She said.

    You bear some of the blame, sister.

"I'm so sorry, mom!" Her daughter wept.

You too Gama. I haven't forgotten you either.

    The scar is still there, you know. The ringed canyon in the planet where once the dreadnought squeezed tight. Mortals call it Faulcetti’s gorge; its significance is long forgotten.

    Morta toils away in her workshop now, inventing new and exciting methods, but never extinctions, not unless asked.

    Every virus had to have an Achilles heel, and tumors couldn’t be infectious. Her designs were vetted and approved, the needle her tool of choice. Still, no invention of hers would ever top mortal foolishness.

    They did her job nine times out of ten.

    Speaking of which, there was the matter of that other fool knocking at the door.

    Nona had already finished her job, scissors trembling in her hands.

    Good girl.

    Morta tapped on the glass, the sentient tools gathering close to listen. Pressing her head against the palisade walls, she reached out and touched their minds.

    Bring me Dread.

    They scattered metal clicking together, showering the floor with blue sparks. They hesitated, they shook, they begged for another way.

    Bring me Dread.

    The other half of her abomination still wandered the workshop, slipping through the vents and clawing at the walls: a thousand limbs and chattering teeth, clouds of smoke, fire, and brimstone.

    Dread swung down from the ceiling and grabbed hold of the Palisade, resting it under its chin as Morta sloshed around like fish in a tank. The tube fit like the piece of a puzzle, and wires slid in from above, piercing her back, draining her blood, and granting control.

    Without Morta, it was just a mindless tool pounding the walls for meaning, but there was direction, purpose, and understanding with her. She learned a valuable lesson from her brother and sister.

    The upper half of the Clockwork Dread became her chariot while its brother was miles below in the bowels of her father’s domain. The beast struggled, still chained to the walls, the land shaking at every hour.

    Why destroy something of such magnificence, such progress? Even enraged, her father understood.

    Bound to Dread, she was so much more, snapping with a thousand hooked feet, grinning with a mammoth’s skull, and crushing the floor with a thunderous weight.

    In this form, it was easy to cross between worlds. Morta once showed her nephew how and he adopted it as an art, delicate, precise, boring.

    Morta was anything but subtle.

    She tore open the fabric of reality with a quick jerking motion that left lines frayed, time scarred, and opened up a hole so violent it bent the workshop’s foundations.

    Upon the eighteenth peninsula, the sky’s turned black, and the winds howled a maelstrom ripping through the forest, trees torn up by the root.

    The Clockwork Dread unwound from the whirling storm of radiance and lightning, bringing Morta to rest above the flee who dared knock.

    He was as she had predicted, kneeling in the dirt, bloody dagger in hand with a pulsing wound across his chest and a sickening grin upon his face.

    The man was not afraid as the engine sputtered, the teeth clattered, and the knives crossed sparks flying in the air.

    He was a fool.

    Who is it this time? Your brother, your sister, your lover? He paid the price correctly, so the least she could do was hear him out.

    He would get to the point eventually, first the groveling and the shin kissing. Morta yawned; maybe she’d kill him too.

    The scissors poked out from under her wrists as a flashing light caught her attention. The violet eye of Dread spun from left to right, a chunk of metal prying loose from its jaw.

    “I thought you were better than this.” Came Nona’s words once more.

    Morta burst out laughing, fetching the needle from her neck.

    “You’re right, Sister.” She said with a grin. “I can do so much better.”

Description

Next Chapter: I'm the one whose throne is vacant

Previous Chapter: The Butcher of Arowan and a Girl's Winter Touch

Beginning Chapter: I am the one who see's uncertain futures

  Pain, exquisite, uncompromising, cruel, and relentless. Morta heard the call like all sisters of the immaculate father. She knew this price well, for it was her own set when she was a child.

    Making the sign of the coal and cross should have been enough, but not for Morta. She hated things so simple because it was boring. That’s why sharp, delicate utensils that cut with precision, accuracy, and ease wouldn’t do.

    No, she demanded a jagged, rusty blade because it was dull and took effort to carve into your flesh.

    Those were her disciples, the men and women who went the extra mile. There is no room for delicate maids who wince before the needle falls.

    Morta’s flock smiled as they drew the blade across their breasts, drawing a masterpiece in red curled flesh.

    Careful now, scream, and you will be the first to die.

    There were two who demanded her attention—one from the metal forest and the other from Faulcetti’s gorge.

    The first was a graying man who shook his fist to the sky, wincing as he drew the blade across his chest; a failure.

    Morta bit her tongue, the water around turning bright red.

    “The law is the law.” She grinned from ear to ear. “I know exactly what to do with you.”

    Death, her mantle, her cloak, her profession so sweat. Still, she wasn’t in the mood to deal with two idiots in one day.

    After all, Nona wasn’t busy.

    She passed the message along, a perfect fit for her baby sister. Morta could feel the pressure building as Nona tore the covers from her bed, stamping her feet. An unfitting display for a dutchess, but not for a wetnurse.

    “That’s what you want to be, isn’t it?” Morta mouthed the words, her knuckles turning white pressed to her palm. “You will reach your potential even if I have to drag you by the hair.”

    Morta knew Nona would be a problem by the feel of her heart. Soft, gentle, a scarlet blush across the tissue as she laid it upon the metal crib. Decima was jealous, but that was before her first bleed giving birth to their brother. Ever since, they have worked to shape their baby sister.

    Dresses to make her bold, a schedule to make her honest, and tasks to harden her heart.

    Yes, Nona, who sheltered the stillborn and let the Gnatu suckle from her breast, would become a merchant of death.

    Fitting, but would her heart be able to draw the scissor and cut the line free? Of course, she could.

    This man, who shuttered from the kiss of pitted metal, wanted his wife dead, his pregnant wife.

    Morta smiled.

    Even innocent Nona couldn’t escape the rage in her heart as it is for all ilk of the endless storm.

    “Why, Morta?” Nona whispered. “Why are you doing this to me?”

    It’s your turn, sister.

    “Morta, is there no other way?” Came a distant voice from Decima, who yawned, resting control away from their brother.

    No, there isn’t

    Decima, too had grown soft in a way. Unable to give Nona the extra push. Not that she blamed her, the siblings were so close.

    They were only born hours apart, but Decima bonded to their sister like mother and child.

    She remembered them together, clasped in each other’s arms Decima pressed close to hear the soft thrum of Nona’s heart.

    “I love you, sister.” She said over and over.

    Did Decima even notice when she bled, dyeing the crib red? Did she even remember to push when their brother tore free from her body, binding their legs together? It must have been horrifying, it must have been painful, but Decima only smiled.

    Morta blushed; I love you too, sister.

Her family were the only ones that could get her to leave the liquid palisade. Morta drained the water, pushed past the glass, and embraced them as the wind kissed her cheek.

    That’s when she found the nick in Decima’s scarlet line, the thread of life, the immortal gift from their immaculate father.

    Their brother had betrayed them all.

    “How dare you harm my sister!”

    Her mind is fractured now, unable to remember her breakfast.

    “Why did I do this to myself?” She whispered in Morta’s ear, trembling like a baby in her arms.

    Morta reached out with a quivering hand to lay upon their brother’s head, knuckles white, face red.

    Next time you hurt her, I will kill you myself.

    Morta took a deep breath, the water filling her empty chest. She has lived in the liquid palisade ever since the immaculate father took her lungs. Water was heavier than air, and she could feel it filling the empty cavity, dense, wet, and warm.

    It helped alleviate asphyxiation.

    It was her fault, of course. Morta intruded upon her father's domain rewriting the eighteenth peninsula's history with blade and claw. Yes, she was angry at her daughter, angry at her sister, but she couldn't deny her own actions.

    Nona dared her too; she was upset at having killed another knave.

    “Why do you make me do it!” She yelled, tears streaming down her cheeks. “My heart aches, don’t you care!”

    “You have to be stronger than this, Nona.”

    “What of you?” She pointed. “You force the scissor on me and yet never use the needle.”

    A solid accusation.

    Morta was born with four scissors; she gave one to Decima and buried the other close to Nona’s heart so she could feel the sharp edge with each beat, never to sleep again.

    Until that day, she had never even thought to use the needle and spool. Why transform? Why build up when your job is to shed mortal coils, their souls seeking transition?

    Morta did so daily, cutting threads of men, women, and children.

    She came upon the crib of a child left face down the parents lost in a drunken stupor. She walked with the woman balancing upon a cliff and a man with a blade to his throat.

    How could she be so blind? The scissors were quick, painless, anti-climactic, boring.

    Morta hasn’t used them since; they rust beneath her wrists.

    Oh, she still brings them out. She did so now, letting the blades cut through her skin. She loved the scarlet pain and the sharp, sudden gasp as the tissue parted. A moment’s pleasure, nothing more.

    The needle, though, the needle could do so much more.

    Nona had opened her eyes, and Morta spent the next century piecing together an engine of demise, a tapestry of metal and fire.

    The Gnatu helped her, of course. The immaculate father’s tools brought materials from every age.

    After all, they were good at finding things.

    “We serve.” They said, dropping the metal shunts and copper wire.

    Of course, you do; you don’t have a choice.

    They brought skulls of great beasts, engines that belched fire, metal wheels sharper than any blade, scales harder than steel, and stacked gears as high as the heavenly towers. Morta and her husband used them to make the foulest instrument ever devised by Gods and man.

    The Clockwork Dread was born.

    Morta used herself as the heart, binding her legs and arms as she saw once done to her sister. It drained the blood from her and caused even she to cry out, but, oh, was the suffering worth it.

    Steam shot out; lights flickered, teeth chattered, disk-like blades spun and sparked as the engine rumbled.

    The harbinger of demise grinned from ear to ear.

    In Morta’s absence, men tasted longevity with death fleeting and uncertain, an existence rife with suffering, starvation, and grief.

    Those were the dark ages, and they went out with a bang.

    The Clockwork Dread spilled upon the eighteenth peninsula like a snake wrapping around the planet and squeezing until the shape warped.

    Soon, the tides receded, the mountains crumbled, and cities fell as engines torched the western woods and circular blades carved into the crust, the land bleeding fire.

    Men and women finally knew death within the iron maiden of its gut, boiled, smashed, carved, and split.

    Morta ushered in the fourth mass extinction of the eighteenth peninsula.

    Father was furious.

    While death was natural, Morta had unintentionally destroyed the kingdom of Velia and disrupted the grand design.

    As punishment, the immaculate machine split the Clockwork Dread in two and tore Morta’s lungs from her chest.

    She has lived in the liquid palisade ever since, gulping water like a fish on land.

    Nona wept that day, wiping tears upon her blouse.

    “I thought you were better than that.” She said.

    You bear some of the blame, sister.

"I'm so sorry, mom!" Her daughter wept.

You too Gama. I haven't forgotten you either.

    The scar is still there, you know. The ringed canyon in the planet where once the dreadnought squeezed tight. Mortals call it Faulcetti’s gorge; its significance is long forgotten.

    Morta toils away in her workshop now, inventing new and exciting methods, but never extinctions, not unless asked.

    Every virus had to have an Achilles heel, and tumors couldn’t be infectious. Her designs were vetted and approved, the needle her tool of choice. Still, no invention of hers would ever top mortal foolishness.

    They did her job nine times out of ten.

    Speaking of which, there was the matter of that other fool knocking at the door.

    Nona had already finished her job, scissors trembling in her hands.

    Good girl.

    Morta tapped on the glass, the sentient tools gathering close to listen. Pressing her head against the palisade walls, she reached out and touched their minds.

    Bring me Dread.

    They scattered metal clicking together, showering the floor with blue sparks. They hesitated, they shook, they begged for another way.

    Bring me Dread.

    The other half of her abomination still wandered the workshop, slipping through the vents and clawing at the walls: a thousand limbs and chattering teeth, clouds of smoke, fire, and brimstone.

    Dread swung down from the ceiling and grabbed hold of the Palisade, resting it under its chin as Morta sloshed around like fish in a tank. The tube fit like the piece of a puzzle, and wires slid in from above, piercing her back, draining her blood, and granting control.

    Without Morta, it was just a mindless tool pounding the walls for meaning, but there was direction, purpose, and understanding with her. She learned a valuable lesson from her brother and sister.

    The upper half of the Clockwork Dread became her chariot while its brother was miles below in the bowels of her father’s domain. The beast struggled, still chained to the walls, the land shaking at every hour.

    Why destroy something of such magnificence, such progress? Even enraged, her father understood.

    Bound to Dread, she was so much more, snapping with a thousand hooked feet, grinning with a mammoth’s skull, and crushing the floor with a thunderous weight.

    In this form, it was easy to cross between worlds. Morta once showed her nephew how and he adopted it as an art, delicate, precise, boring.

    Morta was anything but subtle.

    She tore open the fabric of reality with a quick jerking motion that left lines frayed, time scarred, and opened up a hole so violent it bent the workshop’s foundations.

    Upon the eighteenth peninsula, the sky’s turned black, and the winds howled a maelstrom ripping through the forest, trees torn up by the root.

    The Clockwork Dread unwound from the whirling storm of radiance and lightning, bringing Morta to rest above the flee who dared knock.

    He was as she had predicted, kneeling in the dirt, bloody dagger in hand with a pulsing wound across his chest and a sickening grin upon his face.

    The man was not afraid as the engine sputtered, the teeth clattered, and the knives crossed sparks flying in the air.

    He was a fool.

    Who is it this time? Your brother, your sister, your lover? He paid the price correctly, so the least she could do was hear him out.

    He would get to the point eventually, first the groveling and the shin kissing. Morta yawned; maybe she’d kill him too.

    The scissors poked out from under her wrists as a flashing light caught her attention. The violet eye of Dread spun from left to right, a chunk of metal prying loose from its jaw.

    “I thought you were better than this.” Came Nona’s words once more.

    Morta burst out laughing, fetching the needle from her neck.

    “You’re right, Sister.” She said with a grin. “I can do so much better.”