Chapter 1: Sacrilege

The horsemen arrived on a Friday, orders of destruction written on their blood crazed faces. Beneath the hooves of their massive mounts, wicker baskets and fallow crops crumbled, wooden doors splintered, and bamboo frames snapped. Homes and histories disintegrated, ground into dust.

Dark figures filled the horizon. A human chain, hijabs and kamilavkas snapped in the blood-soaked wind, smelling of iron and salt and flame. Saris shimmered as the sun took his retreat down to the world below the edge of the Earth. Between the horses and the broken stones and bones, the mothers of the village blazed like a rainbow of carnations scattered at the feet of the gods themselves. Angry, unforgiving gods. The kind with skulls around their necks and corpses beneath their feet.

The kind who kill.

And kill, they did.

Across the sea of sod and soil, far from the women chain that right then buckled at the flurry of swords and hooves, ragged jigsaws of tilted tents lined the steppes. Angsty quilts of rugged roofs and mazes of bronze pots and jarring jade jewels. Spoils of war. Muddied snow and the croak of crickets and condors echoed against their lost shells. Melting into the hicks and huffs of hoarse voices louder than the scorching flames from the fingers of the infamous Konoha Black Ops to the Far East. The armored devils armed with their heathen magic tricks of terror. A long road away from the ragged canopies of the tribes that called this dry wasteland their own.

This was their home.

People who aren't from the steppe can't see it. They can't see past the ocean of grass and yaks. Endless fields of emptiness and wilderness. They get stuck on the vastness of it all.

At one time, great empires paved their roads here. The kings and emperors of the world used this land to send princes off to marriage, diamonds off to palaces, workers off to walls, and merchants off to markets. No more. All that remained are the blades of grass the tint of rotted teeth and felt tents that reek of decay and destitution.

Life wasn't easy here. The tribes squabbled with one another for the scrapes they could steal and the riches they could wrap in their chubby, stout fingers. They were marauders, unaccustomed to the rigid day-by-day of the stuck-up savages that call themselves "shinobi". Breakfast at dawn? Dinner at dusk? Study at the academy? Recruitment into the army? Bollocks.

Morning meant dried meat and mounting the nearest horse for a raid. The sweat of the brow told you how long you had to find your next meal. For as the higher the sun stood in the sky, all were ripe for a kill. Yak. Deer. Squirrel. Man. The more loot you found, the better. The more bodies you piled? No matter. And when the sun took his slumber beneath the steppe's floor, all the men returned to camp with their spoils. And the one who won the most decided whose shares were whose.

A feast at firelight and a few fucks by moonlight and the day was done.

That was how I came to them.

As the last woman collapsed under the force of the man's sword, slicing a straight line from eye-to-eye, she collapsed into her bloodstained sari. A final victim of the day's raid. The last defender of the vault of wonders the women protected. The man dismounted and shoved past her corpse, eager to be the first to loot the lucrative temple that stood on the other side of the now-shattered human chain.

Within were statutes of confounded-faced gods. Incense burners and bronze bells on purple pillows. Flowers in every shade lined the ornate pathway up to the altar at the end of the hall. Sitting atop the hallowed pedestal was a manger, coated in silk blankets and gold-lined trinkets.

The man approached his prize and seized his rewards, stuffing the sheets and jewels into the felt sack at his hip.

Then he heard a wail.

Deeper in the manger was a baby boy. Couldn't be more than a day old. A feeble thing. Useless. He could get more money for the diaper it wore around its frail waist.

Knife in hand, he reached in the manger to put the thing out of its misery.

Then there was red.

An explosion.

The man screeched and his fellow horsemen flooded into the temple. Before them, the ornate rugs of the temple were stained with blood splatter. A few chips of bone and scorched skin scattered among the incense burners. They looked at their comrade in horror as they pieced together where his face should be. Or his arm.

He had neither.

Gazing into the manger before them, they expected a trap of some sort. Maybe one of those pagan paper bombs the shinobi shipped around, self-destructing and sending fire and fury upon whoever had the misfortune to touch them.

But no.

There was only the baby.

The babe had a few blonde sprinkles for hair on his head. They looked like hay shavings. Bright blue eyes shined below that gazed in wonder at the brown and tattered faces surrounding them.

He raised a chubby hand, almost as if to touch his observers.

And then upon opening his puny hand, they saw the source of their friend's demise.

A mouth.

Inside the baby's palm was a mouth. Teeth, like a lion's, lined the top and bottom lips. And from within, a velvet tongue slithered out, taunting the revolted faces fixated on it in disbelief.

And as the tongue danced, sparks flew from its tip. As if it were dancing fireworks on its taste buds, tiny explosions set off all around it. Smoke kindled from the outbursts, smelling like burnt hair and seared flesh. This was their friend's killer.

A magic mouth.

One man screamed to kill it.

Another protested, unwilling to see himself turn out like the mangled mess in a pool of blood behind them.

And then the tallest bellowed for them to stop.

"Silence!" He roared.

The men quieted. They watched their boss with anticipation.

"We will keep him. The bonbu will pay well for him when he is grown."

And just like that, it was done.

By some miracle, the men carried the child to their horses. They strapped the manger between two mounts, careful in every move so as not to spur the demonic appendage from its hiding place in the baby's palm. Each wraparound they made was done with utmost caution. If they caused so much as a flare, they could lose their hands. Or worse.

And then they rode, taking him back to their camp. Ready to raise him until he grew to an age where they could sell him as a slave to the foolish ones in the east. The shinobi. The tricksters who loved deadly circus shows like they'd witnessed. Madmen who played god and paid good coin to pawn gods in the making.

That was how I came to be.

"What will we call it?" the men whispered as the dusk settled and the stars sat across the sky.

"Tei-Ta Ra." Their leader muttered back. The men nodded unanimously in agreement.

Tei-Ta Ra. The God of Misfortune. A trickster spirit who roamed the steppe and punished men who grew too greedy in their looting. It was fitting.

And so I was named. Tei-Ta Ra of the Western Clan. God of Misfortune.

The bonbu could never say it right. The language was foreign on their tongues.

Deidara they would say.

And I would laugh. If only they knew of whom they spoke.

"Close enough, hmm."