Chapter 9: Interlude 3 - Kha, Isaac, ?
-Kha
Kha sat, deep in meditation, feeling for the Great One's aura as he stood upon the construction he and the boy, Kov had worked on for days on end. They had designed and redesigned the walls of the fort until they had settled on a pentagonal design, with turrets at each point overlooking the wasteland outside the walls. The turrets had almost no stopping power, relative to the guns she had encountered fighting the gangs on Tectum, but being based on the designs of the Dark Ones, they were sure to be deadly. At various points along the walls, between the turrets were flamers, which would set alight any who had gotten past both the mines and the turrets that protected the wall.
Kha hated mines. Many a sister wytch had died during an assault on a ganger stronghold as a result of them, before her coven adapted countermeasures to spot and circumvent them. Most mines had mechanisms against tampering designed with knowledge from before the Dark Night so even the more mechanically inclined members of the covens were rendered useless. She had been fortunate in her disciplines being so…varied. Electromancy and telekinesis weren't the most powerful disciplines but they were versatile. Electromancy allowed her to trigger traps with electric mechanisms, while telekinesis allowed her to trigger mines at great distances. This was without their obvious uses in combat.
She missed her abilities, but she knew that she was never going to get them back. What the Great Ocean takes, it can never give back. That was the credo of the ritualist. The Great Ocean had taken her power and her eyes, she had been fortunate that was all that had been taken. More so, in fact, because it had vastly amplified her wytch sight.
Where it was barely worth mentioning, just barely allowing her to see the larger waves of the Great Ocean, she could now see the little currents and tides in her immediate vicinity. The currents were so clear now, that she could almost follow them to their source, allowing her to see the history of almost every object she came across. The more history an object had, the more she could see. And with her enhanced wytch sight, she had seen sights that even the Old Crone would have been amazed by.
With her new sight, she could see the Great One's presence in the Great Ocean. He was a golden beacon attracting and repelling the touch of the inhabitants of the Great Ocean in equal measure. His power was such that his mere presence had kept the tides from overwhelming her in her divinations. It astounded her that the Great One was unaware of this ability, but then again, did a star know that its radiance nourished the beings beneath its light?
So much power, but now that his father had forbidden him from attempting to access it, it stayed as it was untapped. A waste of talent, perhaps. But Kha found herself agreeing with Isaac, despite his madness.
What could it be, besides madness, that would cause a man to experiment with his body as Isaac had done in his desperate attempt to match his son? That he had succeeded did not make him less mad, just fortunate.
Despite his madness, Isaac was correct to cut off Esau's attempts to draw from the Great Ocean, because as Kha was coming to realise, the tides of the Great Ocean on this planet were tainted. She had thought it was because of the death of the Dark Ones and the Greenskins tainting the Great Ocean as rampant death and destruction were wont to do. She was wrong, in the days since she had been brought to her new home, she had seen enough to be certain that this malignance surrounded the tides of the mountains surrounding them, if not the entire planet.
It wasn't a malignance caused by death, that was something she was well acquainted with. This was a malignance caused by the denial of it. She had seen it only once before, but even with her subpar wytch sight at the time, the feel of it was difficult to mistake. One tended not to forget the feel of necromantic arts after being exposed to them, after all.
The problem was finding out where it was being practised precisely.
The Great One was passively staving off this malignance and so was Isaac, now that his presence in the Great Ocean had been changed. Another stroke of fortune that Isaac had stumbled upon, with her help. This had kept them all safe, but it had also meant it was difficult to pinpoint the origin of the malignance itself, protected as she was against it. It also meant that it was difficult to ascertain the strength of it.
Was there a single necromancer, performing great feats? Or was there a whole cadre performing minor ones?
Kha couldn't tell.
It was moments like these that made her feel weak, useless. The only talents available to her were ones she was unfamiliar with, as was the case of her divinations, or those that were dangerous to perform, in the case of her rituals.
Her soul had survived the consequences of a failed ritual, she was unwilling to try another one again.
She stood up, ending her meditations. She had to inform Isaac and the Great One of her findings, minor as they were.
Isaac had left, to collect the bodies of the humans she had been interred with on the ship of the Dark Ones. Kha had not approved of this action as Isaac had left. Wall or not, the greenskins posed a potential threat that the Great One could not deal with alone. Now that she had meditated on the tides of the Great Ocean, she saw the prudence in his actions, even as accidental as they were. Dead bodies left to rot, should the stasis pods fail, would end in their corruption in an environment such as the one surrounding them.
She found the Great One with the boy, Kov on top of the walls, reviewing designs of their defences. Kov hadn't gotten over her use of her talents on the ship, it seemed as he flinched with every step she took toward them. Kha was saddened, but she understood. She hadn't been in her right mind then and she had let the Great Ocean flow through her, unabated. That was more than even the most reasonable individuals could deal with. She was fortunate that he understood her rage, and had defaulted to fear, instead of hatred as many had on Tectum.
She greeted them, with a slight nod of her head as was custom on Tectum.
"Great One." she said in greeting. "I bring news of the dangers that may be surrounding us."
"Will the Orks be attacking soon?" he asked.
"No, Great One. This is another threat entirely." She saw the boy, Kov, bring his hand up and pinch the bridge of his nose while the Great One merely raised his brow.
"Speak plainly." The Great One declared, in a manner close to those of the higher castes of Tectum. In the time she had spent here, Kha noticed that the Great One had a habit of speaking to people in a formal manner as a matter of instinct.
He looked towards her expectantly.
"I fear we may be in danger of being assaulted by a Necromancer. Perhaps even a cadre of them." she announced. This drew blank stares from the Great One and the boy.
"Explain."
"Gladly, Great One. Necromancy, simply put, is the 'art' of using the Great Ocean to interact with the dead. This may range from simply summoning the spirit of one long past for advice, to resurrecting the dead."
Kha could see no doubt in his eyes. No talk about how spirits didn't exist or how they were folly. He had seen her abilities first hand.
"I see. And you say we are in danger of being attacked? Is my father in danger of the same?" He asked her, his voice calm. That was the thing about the Great One. Kha had found that the calmer he sounded, the angrier he was in actuality. So the calm in his voice didn't bode well. Did he blame her for not having been informed earlier?
Kha looked at his aura through her wytch sight. He was not angry, but annoyed. Not at her, but having a new threat to combat. And he was worried for his father.
"I do not know, Great One." Kha said finally. "What I see through my wytch-sight is an unease that has spread across the planet, a malignancy that indicates to me that necromancy or something close to it has been practised frequently, and in such great numbers that the planet is foul with the energies of the dea-"
The apparatus on his arm glowed before a klaxon rang. The Great One put his hand up, to forestall her.
"My Father calls me." he said, before he brought his arm up and the image of Isaac, in a room she would soon forget, appeared above his wrist.
"Esau." The image spoke. "The bodies are gone."
-Isaac
"I see." Esau managed, before looking away from the screen in annoyance before looking back. "I think I may know the cause. Kha says we are in danger of being attacked by necromancers and as I understand it, necromancy deals-"
"-with the dead." I finished for him. "Is she sure?"
From outside the view of the screen, I had a voice speak. It was Kha's. "I feel the currents of necromancy or something very close to it."
"What do you mean 'something close to it'?"
"I mean that the currents of the Great Ocean I see are like those that surround necromancers. It could not be necromancy at all but whatever it is, the boundaries between life and death are being circumvented somehow."
That was a problem. None of us were equipped to deal with anything mystical, much less anything like this seemed to be, besides Kha herself. The last thing I wanted to come across today was a damned zombie or something. Possibilities ran through my mind at a mile a minute until I thought of something.
"Kha, are there any signs that necromancy has been performed? That a lay person like can use to tell if it has been performed, I mean."
"Not really." she said. "There is typically a need of a sacrifice to perform it, along with a need of items to open the connection to the Great Ocean,"
"Items like?"
"It depends. For basic spirit summoning, you may need chalk or blood to draw a ritual circle along with a small sacrifice of some kind along with some candles. For more intensive forms of necromancy, you would need a bigger sacrifice.``
That was disturbing, but overall good news. There was no chalk, wax or blood besides what we had left here, so there was a good chance nothing like the worst case scenario had been performed here.
"There are none of those here so it's unlikely that necromancy was performed here."
"Then perhaps the bodies were taken to someplace else where the necromancer has easier access to his tools." That made sense.
"Perhaps." I said, then a thought occurred to me. I looked at the keypad. It looked like there were puncture marks surrounding the keypad that weren't there before. "Esau, did you lock the keypad?"
"No I didn't." He said. "I didn't see the point. No one besides us is likely to know the Drukhari language and if any of the Drukhari survived, they would know to access the keypad anyway."
"Then the keypad was hacked."
"How did you come to that conclusion?"
"There are four punctures surrounding the keypad that weren't there before. It looks like something was attached to the keypad to force the pods open."
"I need to search the ship again, then expand the search from there. It would be foolish to follow the trail of whoever stole the bodies but we need to know where they are and who they are." I said.
"I agree." Esau concurred. "Do you need my help?"
"No, I don't think I do." I said, almost reflexively. Necromancy or not, I would not have Esau face this threat alongside me.
"I'll coordinate the drones to search the area, while I verify what they find myself. We don't know when the Orks will pop up. It could be in a few hours or in a few months so keep working on the wall." Even as I said it, my reasoning felt hollow.
The real reason was simple. I felt ashamed that I'd had to rely on Esau so much. I could feel him about to protest and interjected just before he could.
"Just in case, get one of the hoverbikes ready. If anything goes down, I'll call you. And if nothing goes down, I'll call you regardless. Alright, Esau?" That mollified him somewhat.
"Alright, Father. I will also be monitoring your health on the omni-tool." That was fair enough.
"See you later, Esau." I said, before dropping the call. I would have to have a candid conversation about this later. I turned around and left the room. It was time to get to it.
I ordered the drones to begin the search. There was no telling what I was actually looking for. What did a necromancer look like anyway? I had the mental image of a gruesome figure, stick thin and disgusting, digging at graveyards but for all I knew, they looked nothing like that. It was also possible, however unlikely, that it wasn't a necromancer that took their bodies in the first place.
All I knew was that whoever took the bodies had some technical prowess which told me precisely nothing about who they were exactly. I had them search for general life signs and signs of general disturbances in the ship.
It took all of five minutes before I realised that the whole ship was filled with signs of disturbances. The Drukhari and Ork bodies, that we could find anyway, were already burnt but the ship was filled with areas where the Drukhari or their slaves had died. This left dried blood stains and blood puddles all over the ship which the drones had flagged.
I tried to narrow it down to places that have been visibly disturbed within the last 24 to 48 hours. The scanners on the drones, as I found out, lacked the capability to do so, and even if they did have the capability, they lacked the software or the processing ability to transform that data to anything actually concrete. I would have to do the majority of the work myself.
I had the omnitool mark any entrances and exits that the drones found on the map I had of the ship. There were a total of five that the average person could fit through, besides the large hole in the ship's hull that we had used as ours. Two were large enough for even an Ork to fit through, while the other three would need the average person to squeeze themselves through.
I explored all of them, occasionally finding weaponry or random knick knacks that the drones had missed. I marked those for later collection and analysis by one of the MAMs.
Quite a few rooms were blocked off by debris, which I cleared out using the build gun. In those rooms I would sometimes find dead Drukhari bodies, either crushed by the impact of the ship crashing into the Orks or crashing into the planet. These bodies I marked on my omni-tool for burning.
There were no more human bodies, even in other stasis pods. Whoever or whatever had taken the bodies, only cared about taking the humans.
Briefly, I found myself wondering if some of the people that were in the now empty stasis pods were alive before being taken. If so, could we have taken them in as we did Kov and Kha? We likely could have, if I hadn't taken the decision to go home as soon as we found them. If I hadn't considered a few injuries enough reason to go home and forget about the ship. If only.
I hoped that wherever they were, these people, that they were okay. I quieted the voice in my mind that told me that they weren't and that it was my fault.
After spending a few hours exploring the ship. I found nothing that indicated the presence of anything other than myself. I did find a few more rooms blocked off from the rest of the ship by debris containing more technology we could work from along with a room that could be considered the engine room. I marked those down and then returned to the room that I had found Kov and Kha in.
I called Esau, both in frustration and as part of our agreed check-in.
"Father." He said in way of greeting. Looking at the background of the image, I could see that he had barely moved. Knowing him, he was still working through the use of drones, but it looked like I underestimated how worried he was. "Have you found anything?"
"No." I admitted. "I haven't. I found some Drukari bodies that need burning and pieces of technology we could use, though."
"I see. It seems that whoever this person was, they didn't care about the Drukari bodies." I hummed in agreement.
"Whoever took the bodies has likely long left the ship then." he continued.
"I agree. They could theoretically still be on the ship but I see no reason they would be."
"Have you begun a search of the areas surrounding the ship and the crash site?"
"No, I haven't. There are at least five exits that I found leading away from the ship besides the one we used. Starting a search without first identifying where they may have gone would largely be an exercise in futility."
"So what are you going to do?"
"Okay, here, I need your help." His eyes light up. Sometimes, because of his sheer ability and intelligence, it was difficult to remember that Esau wasn't even a month old.
I fabricated an omni-tool with no eezo, like the ones Esau made, using the build gun. I asked Esau to do the same. Then I attached the new omni-tool to the keypad, where it would relay any information it had to Esau's omni-tool. I chose to use newly fabricated omni-tools because I didn't know if the hacked Drukhari systems had viruses that could damage our systems in some way.
Esau connected the two omni-tools to the keypad and began work. Almost immediately, the projected screens of both my omni-tool and his turned red and beeped, signifying the presence of multiple viruses in the system. Esau was able to quarantine a few of them, keeping the omni-tools operational but the omni-tools would have to be destroyed after we used them here. If they were ever connected to our systems, we would basically be out of computers to use.
A weakness in our systems we would have to work on.
Still, the viruses had destroyed whatever encryption systems were present on the keypad and likely the ship, as the viruses had spread throughout all connected systems. This would allow us to access all the data present on the ship. We wouldn't be able to download the data directly, but we would be able to access and read it, which was excellent.
As soon as we figured this out, I decided to travel to the engine room to see if we could find a route to the leader of the vessel's cabins. In the engine room, I had seen some schematics of the ship as a whole, which would make the whole endeavour easier. Here, we could possibly find something resembling surveillance cameras.
I reasoned that for almost any civilization, methods of surveillance would exist. Especially when the civilization seemed to rely only on slave trade as a major backbone of their economy as the Drukhari did, or seemed to, anyway.
I travelled to the engine room, and after Esau deciphered the markings on the schematics, I made my way there through ruined corridors where I marked more items for collection and analysis. Along the way, I found myself making startling connections between the technologies I was seeing and how they were used. I saw multiple tesseracts and pyramids, which based on some of the designs being similar to the essence collectors, could trap entire souls.
This shouldn't have been startling to me, the Drukhari had many weapons that could literally steal years of life at a distance after all, but it was. Perhaps part of why it was startling was because as a result of my increased intellect and reverse engineering ability, I could build them too, and I could build them better. A part of me didn't know what to do with that information, but a part of me wanted to work on that technology and use it on myself.
I had used Ork essence to try to force my implants into a state where they would allow me to match Esau afterall, working off of half baked theories about how Esau's body functioned. And now the Ork essence was having unwanted and unseen effects, like forcing my growth to increase to some undefined limit. What else was the Ork essence doing? What did it mean for the Great Ocean to consider me an Ork? I needed to know, and these soul traps could be the first step to me figuring it out.
They could also prove a valuable weapon in fighting a possible necromancer.
I continued to make my way through the ship, navigating my way through crushed and warped hallways until I found the captain's quarters. Like the rest of the ship, it was filled with baubles that stood as testament to the Drukhari's sadistic sensibilities. Knives, hooks and chains lined the walls. Many of them still had blood dripping off of them. I looked closer. The blood was still clinging to the weapons even after over a week of disuse. These things were tools of exsanguination most likely.
Sunlight was let into the room by a hole where a small chunk of the ship's hull was missing. The chunk was too small to compromise hull integrity of the ship, even in space, but it was big enough to have caused explosive decompression here, which was likely why there were no bodies in this room.
It took some searching around the room, and some direction from Esau before I found myself accessing the captain's command console. Here, I let Esau do his thing again, until we found what we were looking for. The ship was continuously recording video from select areas around the ship. It was also attempting to transmit the video somewhere, but thankfully the crash had destroyed whatever transmitter the ship used. It didn't capture footage from all areas in the ship because many of the surveillance devices used had been destroyed in the crash. Thankfully, what the ship was able to capture was more than illuminating.
"Alright, let's reverse the footage until the day we arrived on the ship. Then we'll work forwards from then on." I thought about watching footage from earlier on, but with Esau seeing what I was seeing, it was a bad idea. Any earlier footage would show either torture, a typical pastime for the Drukhari, or people dying. He had already seen too much death already and if the trend continued, would have to see more. It would be up to me to limit that as much as possible.
The footage on screen largely stayed the same, besides the presence of dead bodies lining the corridors. We slowly went through the footage until we saw ourselves explore the ship. God, I looked awful. I was dirty, my hair was unkempt and even in the grainy darkness, I could see a tiredness in my own eyes. Esau, as always, looked impossibly immaculate despite his humble attire.
We skipped through the footage, right past us finding and freeing Kha and Kov until we reached the point we exited the ship and continued past that point until we saw movement.
We saw three Orks walk through the corridors from a different entrance on what looked like the other side of the ship, taking everything that wasn't nailed down. A squabble broke out over who had the better loot before one of the Orks took out a gun from a holster on its hip and shot the other Orks dead before taking selected items and leaving.
That was potentially problematic. At least one of Gritzz's boyz was still alive. I was thinking up multiple reasons why we hadn't heard from the Ork in question - even the most stealthy of Orks were barely subtle after all - until the answer presented itself.
The Ork flew into the frame of the camera, having been sent flying back into the ship at high speed. The Ork stood up, and just as it recovered, the figure entered into frame.
It looked somewhat like a cartoonish caricature of a human being dressed as a snail. Its limbs were long and thin, and had a metal shine to them. They looked almost skeletal and tapered off into thin points. It was almost twice the width of the Ork and even taller with its torso covered by a black robe. That put it at something like four metres tall from what I could see. It had no facial features besides one unblinking glowing eye and a mouth that was filled with sharp needle-like teeth. It carried a jar-like apparatus on its back, blue and semi transparent. In it I could see what looked like bones, human ones at that.
As the Ork stood up, recovering from the blow, the hands of the metal creature opened up through invisible seams into a set of long, thin hinged finger-like tendrils. The tendrils hit the Ork and it was taken apart in an almost clinical manner. Soon all that was left was its head and bloody viscera.
The metal creature picked the head up, examined it, threw it onto the floor and stepped on it, crushing it entirely. It then continued to walk through the corridors, swaying as it did.
We watched it travel through the corridors examining every single body it met. Ork and Drukhari bodies, it ignored entirely. Human bodies, on the other hand, were stuffed into the jar on its back. Luckily, for the humans it ran into and my conscience, they were all dead.
Each stasis pod was opened up with one of its 'hands' turning into a configuration of metal that stabbed into the keypads, presumably infecting them with a series of viruses. It then collected more bodies from the pods, stuffing them into the jar in a grotesque display. Then when the jar was full, the creature left with no fanfare.
As it left, I saw something that chilled my blood. One of Esau's drones flew past it, its body in the way of the drones flight path. The creature simply swatted the drone out of its path and continued on its way.
"Esau, did you see anything like that on drones' video feed?"
"No I did not, Father."
"So whatever this creature is, it's invisible to our surveillance systems. We need to get that fixed as soon as possible."
"I will work on fixing it now." I glanced to him. He was visibly frustrated.
Modifying the drones would barely be any work for him. Maybe a minute of altering the design to include Drukhari sensors before reclaiming each drone and rebuilding it with the build gun. Even at a hundred drones, that would be fifteen minutes at work at most with the improved build gun. What frustrated him wasn't the work. It was that he had to do it in the first place.
He blamed himself. The drones were his design, so the fact that they hadn't noticed this creature felt like a personal slight against his ability. In reality it was barely an inconvenience but in his mind it was like he had failed, and Esau never failed.
"It's alright, son. We'll work on a new drone design together." From the look on his face, you would have thought that I had slapped him.
"You don't trust me to work on the drones alone?" he asked, his voice absent from emotion at the end.
Ah, shit.
I knew that Esau had a complex mix of a superiority and an inferiority complex. He found it difficult to see the positive traits in people. It was easy to see why when he was so better than everyone at everything. Something that would take an ordinary person months of work to perfect took him a short afternoon. In the same vein because he was so gifted, any shortcoming on his part, real or perceived, was devastating.
I could almost see it now. Minor issues would build on each other in his mind until they became insurmountable. Every time he would try to correct any perceived errors until his corrective actions became far worse than the actual error.
I had thought his issues would be something I would have time to work on. Over years where I would help reinforce his self image while steering him away from a path that would ultimately become self destructive.
I saw now that I had months at most. If I didn't take the first steps to getting him away from that kind of thinking soon, he would be hurting himself and others trying to reach a standard that was increasingly impossible to obtain.
"I do, son. I know that you could modify all the drones in what, ten minutes?"
He frowned. "Less."
"Less than that even." It felt mildly patronising to say but I was pushing him away from talk that put himself down. Bringing up a talent we both knew he was good at would work to reinforce his image of himself. Working on his self image now, before he really spiralled, was the best option here.
"Your ability to modify the drones was never in question. I just wanted to work on the drones with you because I thought it would be fun." He didn't snort per se, but it was a close thing.
"Come on, Esau. Do you remember the first time you tried to show me how you made your own omni-tool?"
"Yes."
"Well, I'm a bit smarter now than I was back then. I wanted to work with you on a few projects together. Just me and you. No Kha and no Kov. How does that sound?" I could see him mull it over.
"Any project we would work on would benefit from having more people helping."
"That is true, but I didn't hear a 'no'." He snorted,
"I guess that I didn't actually say it." That was that then, for now at least.
"Make a list of stuff you would like to work on with me, then we'll work on them as soon as possible, alright?"
"Alright, Father." Alright.
Now we had to look at the rest of this footage and figure out what the hell was going on. It was clear that we had missed much of what was going on around us. We had assumed the planet was empty, besides ourselves and the Orks that were no doubt building up their infrastructure hidden in the mountains or some other corner of the world. We were wrong.
In hindsight, it made sense that there were other living creatures. Within 24 hours of me arriving here, Esau's pod crash landed, followed by both the Orks and the Drukhari. The debris scattered all over had told me that that was a fairly common occurrence. Assuming that most of this debris was a result of the equivalent of space trash, there was a good chance of at least one species landing on this planet and building a culture here. This is without the possibility of an alien species being native to the planet itself.
We skipped past the video, taking note of the entrance and exit the creature used. An avenue for future investigation. Kha had said that necromancy or something like it was being performed here on this planet in what she thought was likely large numbers. The creature had collected the bodies of human beings. It didn't take a genius to put two and two together.
The creature was collecting human bodies from the crashes and was taking them somewhere to bring them back to life. Based on what I had seen, it was likely doing this through technological means.
I would have thought it insane, but the Drukhari had items that directly messed with people's souls. Bringing people back from the dead was only a single step above that.
Why they would do it was less of a mystery. It could be any number of reasons. More people meant more resources to draw from, both mental and physical. That was if whatever process was used kept the mind intact in the first place.
We kept looking through the video. The creature didn't return.
We had noted the direction it had left in, but besides a stray thought to follow the creature, I decided to leave it alone. Despite how much I was disgusted by it, following it would be a bad idea. We also didn't know what kind of support the creature had. It could be alone, but it likely wasn't. Fighting it could be a walk in the park, especially with my new enhancements, or it could be the most difficult fight I ever had.
A man who has not prepared his children for his own death has failed as a father, and I was unwilling to fail Esau by dying before my time arrived. Or any time at all, in fact.
I stood up to leave. Immediately, I staggered as I saw a flash of green in my vision. It looked like a better fight would be coming to me soon.
I froze. I reached up to feel my facial expression. I was smiling. Shit.
I hurried my way out of the ship. The Orks would be attacking soon.
-?
The Artisan walked through the sands of the wastelands towards the mountain valleys that hid the City of Bone. The walk was long, and even though it was carrying what could be the future of the City, it was unhurried.
Haste made for waste after all.
It walked for hours on end, days by its count before it reached the ravine that served as the direct road to the City. Here it ignored the vermin that vied for its attention, begging for any scraps that might fall from its hands. Once, the vermin were human, hundreds of years ago, but generations of living in the tunnels of the valleys had changed them. One of the vermin felt adventurous and tried stealing from the Artisan's collection of biological material and was dismantled for his trouble. The Artisan left its remains for the rest of the vermin to consume when hunger inevitably consumed them.
The collection of biological material was tedious work, and especially dangerous when collecting from the wastelands but it was rewarding, when the stars aligned. And from the collection of material collected by it, it seemed that they had. This particular stock was as pure as was possible, untouched by the curses of the waste. The Artisan would be rewarded greatly for its work.
The Artisan travelled through the ravine, navigating the jagged rocks. sandy peaks and dark tunnels. Some of the knowledge deciphered from ancient texts had indicated that this ravine was once a place where water flowed, freely and unrestricted. Personally, the Artisan doubted it. Naufrag was a cursed place. It was hard to imagine something as holy as water flowing freely here at any point.
The sentries on each side of the ravine, dressed in the flesh cloth typical of the City of Bone, spotted it and began playing the drums that would announce its return, but the Artisan ignored them. They were vermin as well, though they had ascended through the flesh pits, and thus were below it.
Slowly, it began to feel the low vibrations of the music as it travelled down the ravine, signalling the mountain clans to ready themselves for its arrival. The Artisan felt a shadow of a smile dance across its features, hidden from all through the chassis that it was interred in. It made a point to show off the material in its collection because it knew that they had not expected it to return with as many biological samples as the sentries had no doubt reported.
The more it walked, the louder the drums became and soon the drums were supplemented by the singing of the women of the valleys, the Sisters of Bone. They were readying themselves for its arrival. Good. That meant it did not need to wait for the ritual to begin.
Soon, the Artisan arrived at the threshold separating the City of Bone from the rest of the mountains and after walking past the sentries that stood as security, found itself walking on floors of welcome metal again. Over part of the hull of one of the ship that the ancients had arrived in.
Here, the Artisan began to hear the Orator speak.
"The Artisan comes to us, my brethren!" the Orator said in his typical noisy manner. The Artisan understood the need for ritual for without it, the Way of Flesh could not be preserved but did the Orator need to be so vociferous?
The Artisan navigated the labyrinthian corridors that led to the City proper and heard the Orator speak again.
"It comes to us, my brethren!" the Orator exclaimed again. This time the voice was accompanied by the sounds of exclamations of men, women and children alike. The City of Bone was celebrating. The Artisan sped up, it was a point of personal pride that it had never been so late as to miss the third exaltation. The Artisan exited the corridors, into the Arena where the people of the city shivered in jubilation all around it, just as the third exaltation began.
"It comes to us, my brethren!" the Orator exclaimed for the third time. Now the citizens of the City of Bone were near euphoric as they had seen it arrival.
"It arrives, my brethren. So let us be ready for it."
At the sound of this, the ritual began, The citizens; men, women and children alike consumed from a chalice that was in front of them by the Sisters of Bone. Immediately, they began to convulse in the stands as the fluid travelled through their bodies. Some fell off the stands, into the arena proper from the force of the convulsions. Almost as one, the convulsions stopped and the people died; man, woman and child alike, died.
Here, the Sisters started to sing. It was a beautiful song, of conquering death, and bringing life. Even a creature such as the Artisan felt its spirits buoy. It was like quenching your thirst after spending months in the desert. It was perfect. The people, dead, just minutes ago, awakened as if to hear the song of the sisters.
The song ended and the Artisan returned to reality. It looked to the stands and saw that all who had died had returned to life. Good. It meant that all of them had kept the faith. This was fortuitous indeed.
As the song ended, the people in the stand began their part of their ritual, biting their tongues to draw blood and letting it flow from them and into the chalices that sat in front of them.
The blood flowed from the chalices, through microtubules down into the ziggurat in the middle of the arena. Here, the Artisan was ready. It removed the container from its back and carefully arranged the bodies at the entrance of the ziggurat, laying them into the depressions present in the ancient stone. Some of the bodies lacked the organs and humours necessary for the ritual, but the Artisan was in luck.
It had collected many bodies, all of them pure. That was almost unheard of and had been a feat he knew the other Artisans would not match when it was time to return. The Artisan substituted organs from bodies that were less suitable where possible and began work, connecting the bodies to the systems of metal that were hidden in the stone.
The ziggurat was ancient, even more than the ancients that had settled here thousands of years ago, and many of its uses were unknown. What was known, however, was that the ziggurat would return any man to life, as long as it was fed blood and as long as the sacrifice was of a high enough quality.
The Artisan held hope that the materials collected were suitably pure. If they weren't, it meant that some other Artisan would have the honour of having collected the materials necessary to awaken the Golden One. An honour unmatched throughout all of time, for what could match the achievement of awakening a god?
They had learnt long ago, that the vermin that abounded Naufrag's wastelands just did not suffice as material for the ziggurat. The clan leaders had claimed that it was because they were not worthy. The Artisan's predecessor had instead theorised that it was because they were diseased and sickly, from generations of interacting unprotected with the materials that landed periodically on Naufrag.
His work done, the Artisan stood up and signalled that his part of the work was done. The Orator nodded from atop the ziggurat and began to speak. For all that it disliked him, the Artisan had to admit that the Orator looked splendid. He was dressed in a humble flesh cloth robe, created in the bio-forges as was tradition, accented by a golden necklace and a gold bangle on his right arm. His head was shaved clean, showing the runes tattooed onto his head by the sisters of bone. He spoke, his voice spreading throughout the arena via the arcane effects of the necklace..
"The Artisan had returned to us!" Here there was an applause, which the Orator allowed to continue for some time. "It has returned to us! From the perilous, diseased wastelands where even our vermin kin avoid. Yes, my brethren. The Artisan comes to us from Star Fall!"
Again, the applause rose anew.
"And as was prophesied by our Sisters, it brings back components needed to awaken the Golden One! We find ourselves at the precipice of greatness, my brethren. We find ourselves close to apotheosis. So close, oh so close." The Orator paused so that the people could consider his words. After a moment or two, he continued.
"For hundreds of years, we have fed the Golden One and we have been rewarded! Our kin below us-" He stamped his feet for emphasis. "-shun us! They see us as beasts! As savages!"
He laughed, and the people laughed with him.
"They are fools. They think themselves above us, and yet they lock themselves away, below us." He paused again, letting the crowd laugh. "They do not know the Ways of Flesh, as we do! They do not know the Song of Bone! They have never felt the blessings of the Golden One! When they die, they are not revived! When they die, they stay dead."
Here, he momentarily affected a saddened face before it turned into a face filled with anger.
"But do not pity them! They shun us! They shun the Way! For this, they will not achieve absolution! Today is the day! When the Golden One awakes, He will destroy them, and lead us across the stars!" The people erupted into a raucous cheer, one that even the Artisan found itself a part of.
"Let us begin." The Orator opened his arms wide and looked to the sky. The Sisters began to sing. This one was a song of victory, and of absolution. The bodies in the stone depression awoke and began to scream. The Golden One had accepted this offering. The Artisan was awed.
This was what it had lived its whole life for. What it had sacrificed its body for. What it had become trapped in its metal chassis for. It's god had finally been fed enough to awaken. Light shone from beneath the ziggurat, engulfing the whole arena in a white light. It was time.
Within the ziggurat, the Golden Man stirred.
9.1. Perk(s) earned this chapter
None.
A/N: I will be taking some time this week to edit the previous chapters. This wont affect my schedule but it has been clear upon rereading that there have been various typos that need fixing.